Unions Endorse Occupy Wall Street Demonstrations

Looks like Occupy Wall Street demonstrators have picked up some steam.  They've been protesting on wall street for months now and they've sparked similar protests in other cities across the United States.  For example, there is now Occupy Boston.  What is Occupy Wall Street?

It's a group of frustrated Americans who have had enough of the big banks and brokers profiting while the average American is struggling. Larry Hanley, President of the Amalgamated Transit Union, had this to say about the protestors.

"These young people are speaking for the vast majority of Americans who are frustrated by the bankers and brokers who have profited on the backs of hard-working people," Hanley added in a statement. "While we battle it out day after day, month after month, the millionaires and billionaires on Wall Street sit by -- untouched -- and lecture us on the level of our sacrifice."

He now and up to 20,000 union members will join the protests.  Other unions are supporting too:

President Michael Mulgrew of the United Federation of Teachers, the sole bargaining agent for most nonsupervisory New York City public teachers with 200,000 members, said he was proud to support the demonstrators.

"The way our society is now headed it does not work for 99% of people, so when Occupy Wall Street started ... they kept to it and they've been able to create a national conversation that we think should have been going on for years," Mulgrew said.

To read the full article visit cnn.com.

Those are the facts, here's my opinion.  The only thing separating us from a poor third world country are Unions.  There would be no minimum wage without unions.  There would be no standard 40 hour work week without unions.  Vacation?  Yeah right.  Without unions none of this would ever have come along.  So when the unions endorse a protest, I'm behind it as well.

I'm 28 years old, and I thank God I'm not 10 years younger.  I got out of college and into the job market before everything went down the toilet.  I took some financial hits during the recession, but at least I had a job and a career begun.  Young adults now getting out of college have paid an asinine amount of money for an education.  How are they suppose to pay it back without jobs?  They're frustrated.  As they should be!  The big banks and corrupt people on wall street have put us where we are.  Then we bail them out and the CEO's have their golden parachutes.

Some people call the demonstrators "socialists, or communists."  They're neither.  They are just trying to get things back the way they used to be when there was an American Dream and decent paying jobs.

After looking through some of the images from the demonstrations, I think this one sums it up pretty well.