UK's Progressive Tea Party

Found this article while catching up on some Nation
issues. It is EXCELLENT - I was so excited about it that I hope it goes
viral.... try to take a few moments and read what they've accomplished and how -
it's awesome...

How to Build a Progressive Tea
Party
Imagine a parallel universe where the Great Crash of 2008 was
followed by a Tea Party of a very different kind. Enraged citizens gather in
every city, week after week—to demand the government finally regulate the
behavior of corporations and the superrich, and force them to start paying
taxes. The protesters shut down the shops and offices of the companies that have
most aggressively ripped off the country. The swelling movement is made up of
everyone from teenagers to pensioners. They surround branches of the banks that
caused this crash and force them to close, with banners saying, You Caused This
Crisis. Now YOU Pay.

http://www.thenation.com/article/158282/how-build-progressive-tea-party

"Instead of the fake populism of the Tea Party, there is a movement based on real populism. It shows that there is an alternative to making the poor and the middle class pay for a crisis caused by the rich. It shifts the national conversation. Instead of letting the government cut our services and increase our taxes, the people demand that it cut the endless and lavish aid for the rich and make them pay the massive sums they dodge in taxes."

What should US Uncut target? “It’s important to go after brand names that exist in every city in America,” says Tom Purley, a UK Uncut participant. “The key to our success was that it was so easily replicated. People could do it anywhere. It took something that seems like a remote issue and connected it to a place they see every day.” Most of the companies that engage in the worst tax avoidance in the United States are Big Pharma and financial companies, which don’t have stores. But the GAO also named a number of major brands that are exploiting tax havens. They include Apple, Bank of America, Best Buy, ExxonMobil, FedEx (whose president, Frederick Smith, was named by Obama as the businessman he most admires), Kraft Foods, McDonald’s, Safeway and Target. That’s a wealth of potential targets.

American citizens should ask themselves: I work hard and pay my taxes, so why don’t the richest people and the corporations? Why should I pick up the entire tab for keeping the nation running? Why should the people who can afford the most pay the least? If you’re happy with that situation, you can stay at home and leave the protesting to the Tea Party. For the rest, there’s an alternative. For too long, progressive Americans have been lulled into inactivity by Obama’s soaring promises, which come to little. As writer Rebecca Solnit says, “Hope is not a lottery ticket you can sit on the sofa and clutch, feeling lucky…. Hope is an ax you break down doors with in an emergency.” UK Uncut has just shown Americans how to express real hope—and build a left-wing Tea Party.

Love It! I hope what started in Madison over collective bargaining rights, and spread to other states these last couple of weeks - continues to grow and takes on the actual HEART of the problems of our damaged economy and our quality of life...government's colusion with the corporate elite's fleecing of American taxpayers.