Video- US experiences Egypt-style awakening

Americans are fighting to change the political system and policies which created a wealth divide that led to deep social inequality.

The recent wave of protests across the US is also aimed at taking back the democracy which Americans feel they have lost.

Press TV has interviewed with Sara Flouders, Co-Director of International Action Center, to share her opinion on this issue.

Press TV: Sara Flounders, that keeps coming up, doesn’t it? This one percent that is ruling over the 99 percent or the 99 percent not pretty much getting the fruits of what the American system in general has to offer them. Can you explain on that for us?

Flounders: Well the 99 percent which really means poor and working people in the US. It means those who cannot even get a job. It means students who have no future. It means the largest prison population in the world. The 99 percent is all those who in any way do not benefit in the richest country in the world. But really if were to talk about it in global terms, it is much more than 99 percent because the world over, a handful of the owners and rulers of Wall Street make investment decisions that control the entire planet today.

Press TV: It is interesting that you [the other guest of the program] say it is a democracy, the press was dictated from the top. Sara Flounders, what does that mean, it is a dictated democracy? If you could tell us your views on that and also why it did take so long for Americans to wake up based on what we are saying?

Flounders: Well it is a tremendously exciting development that hundreds of thousands of people are waking up. There are many thousands in the streets taking actions and future actions are coming in the days ahead. That is important. But it is important to recognize that the US is not a democracy where all the people make decisions. There is a tiny handful at the very top who have always been the decision makers and rulers. So in that sense it is not at all a democracy.

I think it is important for us and in this new movement to separate ourselves from voices like Mark Dankof who are racist, anti Semitic and divisive because our strength will be in our unity and building solidarity with the struggles and people, so the world in building solidarity among people hear that the policy is set in Wall Street not Tel Aviv. Tel Aviv is an adjunct to US policy in the Middle East. Yes it is a war machine that oppresses the Palestinian people but the policies come from Wall Street, from a tiny handful who have investments in many, many other countries and also carry out disastrous policies here at home.

And what the awakening that is going on is really, an example of the strength of international solidarity that looking at the example of Tahrir square, looking at the examples in Egypt and Tunisia, looking at what happened in Athens, in Madrid, people here are deciding, young people especially that their future is with the people of the world and their struggles.

This is a break through. It is an enormous development that someone who has lived through years of like a freeze here, to see it beginning to melt, to see people beginning to ask questions and hoping that they are making conclusions that build unity and solidarity and do not listen to the voices of division of really a racism of an anti Semitic bigotry. Because that voice, that can be the real resistance right here in the US and I think what we are seeing is just the beginning.

What happened yesterday with tens of thousands of union workers, of school walk outs, all going to join the Occupy Wall Street, tomorrow going across the Brooklyn Bridge, the Haiti demonstrations saying end the occupation of Haiti, Occupy Wall Street. What is happening in Washington D.C at Freedom Plaza, so important as a confrontation of US wars, on the anniversary of the 10th anniversary of the war on Afghanistan and also what is happening in cities all across the country, I mean it is hard to keep down.

I live in Jersey city, a small town just across from New York City. There is today an occupation beginning in front of Goldman Sachs. So things are taking unexpected turns we never could have predicted even a week ago or two weeks ago when things were just getting on the way on Wall Street.