A lot has gone on this week and it has been draining. It has been like in the Frank Miller graphic novel Dark Knight Returns, when a retired Bruce Wayne is watching the news coverage of wars and social unrest and he wonders to himself why. This week has been a why moment for a lot of people, especially myself.

I can see why a lot of people would want to throw in the towel, why they would put their energy into knowing stats about baseball, or shutting off the news and blissfully living life ignoring the things forcing them into oppressive situations. There doesn’t seem to be hope; any way of rallying to fight the overwhelming odds.

I have the frustration churning in my gut. The thing that had tempered me, that had held me back in a lot of ways, was the apathy of the vast majority of people. Most of us are part of the 99% crowd but we are unwilling to stand up and be counted or support those who would fight for us. For me, the time has long passed where I am willing to blindly charge the battlement and hope people are behind me willing to fight. Too many times I have turned around to see no one behind me. Even worse, there have been events recently where I have seen people I know who have either unwittingly or of their own volition who have turned to the other side.

Things this week have made me change my point of view of the Occupy Wall Street movement; and I’m sure many would have said it would have been an eventual change. They may not have a traditional leader or a consensus of opinions as to how we fix things, but the groups marching do know how we got to this point. They know we have to stop pointing fingers, making accusations or waiting for someone else to do the right thing. We have to start now and say it is time for a change; it is time that we stop letting 1% of the population get all the breaks. If it hurts their feelings to call them wrong, then so be it. They have had years to prove they aren’t that way. Some in their group have said they understand our pain and frustration but the vast majority of the 1% and their allies feel the rest of us are malcontents, are rebels, are bums and un-American.

They are wrong. I refuse to live as a serf. I refuse to be a cog in a machine. I refuse to be a slave. I refuse to be defined by people who have their own agenda and work for the very corporations who have their boots on our necks. As said in the great television series The Prisoner and the motto of this website, I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered. My life is my own. I am not a number, I am a person.