Jesse Jackson speaks at Occupy London:
Let me express my thanks and joy to be a part of the occupy family today. We marched across America. Occupy Wall Street, Occupy Chicago, Philadelphia. As we seek to define Occupy in a certain way. Occupy is a spirit who’s time has come. From New York, to San Francisco and the world… here in London. Occupy is addressing the gaps of inequality, unfairness and corruption. Occupiers are the canaries in the mind warning us of the dangers. Too few have to much… to many have too little… too much poverty… too much wanting in lands of plenty and too many costly wars.
Jesus was an occupier… born under a death warrant. A jew by religion in the lineage of the profets. Born in poverty, born under Roman occupation. Upon the threat of his life meringues have took him to Egypt as a refuge. He represented hope for the oppress, he served the poor, he challenged the prevailing ethos in Rome. Ghandi was an occupier… he marched the sea protesting colonialism. Brother King was an occupier. Mandella an occupier. They are exalted as marters now but rejected as occupiers, as protesters, as radicals… called terrorist by governments.
The occupiers cause is a just cause… a moral cause. They should not be dismissed but heard. Listen to their message. Banks got bailed out; people got left out. Protest are criminalize while not a single bank has gone to jail for their crimes of corruption and greed that drove the global economy on the brink of collapse.
The church must be merciful. Jesus occupied the temple and chased out the robbers and the thieves. And reclaimed the whollyness of the church. The message of Christmas is a poor persons wholly day… not Santa Claus’s shopping day.
