OCCUPY!!! Wealth re-distribution at El Camino College
Normally, our Thursday afternoon excursions to El Camino College are fairly placid affairs. But today, I was surprised to hear a chanting, hollering mob protesting on the campus. What’s an evangelist—with a whole lot of Gospel tracts—to do?
I don’t know what you would do, but this is what I did with my Presidential Trillion Dollar Bills.
And this is what my friend Dr. Donnie did with his Giant Money!
Richard Chavarria:
December 8th, 2011 at 8:25 pm
Good job, Donny. I hope you don’t quit passing out tracts.
bud e.:
December 8th, 2011 at 11:04 pm
Good job Pastor Steve and Dr. Donny.
Those tracts aren’t going to pass themselves out.
Kaitlyn:
December 9th, 2011 at 2:02 am
Wait… you did what!? O_O
Did you just try to hand out fake money at an Occupy protest? That’s not very sensitive.
Steve Sanchez:
December 9th, 2011 at 6:50 am
Yep! With a great Gospel message on the back. Everyone loved them! I shook hands with a lot of them… they even smiled back!
Hayzoose:
December 9th, 2011 at 11:13 am
You did something just as useful as prayer.
Is that Dr. as in MD, or Dr. as in Dr. Johnny Fever or Dr. Funkenstein?
Steve Sanchez:
December 9th, 2011 at 11:28 am
Yes.
Nameless Cynic:
December 9th, 2011 at 2:18 pm
I like how you occasionally have absorbed the Fox News message so well that you just let the terminology slip out. (“Wealth redistribution,” in this case.) It kind of shows how you feel about the Occupy movement, Steve-0.
So, how do you feel about the economic inequity in America today? You know, from a biblical perspective – like in Matthew 6:24-25, Mark 10:25, 1 John 3:17, and like that.
Oh, and especially Proverbs 31:8 – “Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute.”
Hayzoose:
December 9th, 2011 at 4:11 pm
Okay. Maybe my post wasn’t perfectly clear, but are you writing yes to the true efficacy of prayer and tracts; or to he is a MD; or he is Dr. Johnny Fever?
Hayzoose:
December 9th, 2011 at 4:17 pm
Watch your mouth. Jesus was a laissez faire capitalist.
Steve Sanchez:
December 9th, 2011 at 6:14 pm
Here’s an article you may find interesting about this. (You may have to register to read it though.)
Here’s the first paragraph:
Read the rest here: http://wwww.worldoncampus.com/2011/11/ideological_opponents_argue_capitalism_s_morality
Nameless Cynic:
December 11th, 2011 at 8:27 am
Steve,
OK, so I’m getting mixed messages here. It’s looking like you meant “wealth redistribution” ironically; on the other hand, you’ve used Fox News buzz words and phrases often enough that it’s reasonably easy to see where you stand on most issues. But I repeat the question.
How do you, personally, feel about the Occupy movement?
Steve Sanchez:
December 11th, 2011 at 10:30 am
The El Camino Occupy has some valid concerns, i.e., the increase in admins pay at the expense of student classes, etc. The Wall Street movement and it’s ancillary alliances seem to be a little unfocused and irresponsible.
phil:
December 11th, 2011 at 12:00 pm
The majority of the Occupy protestors aren’t “destitute”. If they were they wouldn’t be wearing new clothes from Urban Outfitters, drinking fresh Starbucks coffee, camping out in NorthFace tents and sleeping in Pantagonia sleeping bags.
carl:
December 11th, 2011 at 12:44 pm
Nameless Cynic
Regarding your two comments to Steve…..
You are guilty of…..
“Failed mind reading” -Nohm
Nameless Cynic:
December 12th, 2011 at 7:15 am
Carl,
So they aren’t a bunch of homeless people and filthy hippies?
Careful, you’re getting your talking points confused.
Nameless Cynic:
December 12th, 2011 at 7:48 am
Carl,
“Failed”? He’s not a complete Fox News zombie (hence, something positive about the El Camino movement), but you DID notice the rest of that statement, right?
Steve,
Well, without a GOP commissioner (google “Dick Armey Tea Party” sometime) keeping the group focused laser-like on… whatever it is that the astroturfed Tea Party wants (“Taxed Enough Already” when your taxes are the lowest they’ve been in decades?), a true grass roots movement has a hard time seeming “organized. Particularly with a corporate media trained to spread the latest talking points by Carl Rove.
But the primary goal is correcting the broken economic system that’s given us greater income inequity than most of the industrialized world, at levels approaching the Great Depression.
Here: I know it’s NPR and you’re trained to hate them, but read this.
Steve Sanchez:
December 12th, 2011 at 8:23 am
Actually, I only see Fox when it’s playing on the big screen (in subtitles) at my gym and I listen to NPR quite frequently.
phil:
December 12th, 2011 at 10:22 am
@Nameless Cynic
Was that comment for me or for Carl?
I’ll give you my opinion.
I don’t think the Occupiers are homeless or hippies. I wouldn’t want to insult either group.
Most of the Occupiers are trust fund hipsters that are protesting the very system that supplies them with their designer skinny jeans, iPhones and ironic t-shirts because… it is after all… ironic.
Nohm:
December 12th, 2011 at 10:59 am
Carl, I don’t think you understand what “failed mind-reading” means. Correct me if I’m wrong, but Nameless Cynic isn’t telling Steve what he (Steve) thinks, believes, and so on.
Nameless Cynic:
December 13th, 2011 at 8:03 am
Phil,
You’re right. Got the wrong name (I’m poking at Carl up above, you might notice).
You have a fascinating view of the Occupy movement. They’re all doing it ironically? Really? They can’t possibly be honestly concerned about economic inequity, can they? You don’t think that there’s any chance that they can see when the deck is stacked against everybody but the rich?
Nuanda:
December 13th, 2011 at 7:13 pm
In boom times, all boats rise, right? And, all boats rise the same percentage, if you stop to think about it. This is why the gap widens between the top percent and the rest of us during these periods of time. Do the math. The same percentage of a greater base is a larger gain. But, it doesn’t matter during the boom times; because all boats are rising, it’s hardly noticed. It is only during the leaner transitions that it is noticed. And then we all shake our fists at those living on the top of the hills, as Marx used to say. But, we only have this greater disparity because of the incredibly long run of boom times, the longest in history for any civilization. Your thoughts?
Nameless Cynic:
December 14th, 2011 at 12:17 pm
My thought is that you’re being somewhat ridiculous. We aren’t in a “boom time” – a lot of economists are saying that the current recession actually qualifies as a depression, just not quite on a par with the Great D.
And all boats are NOT rising. Middle-class incomes have been stagnant for almost 30 years (here’s one report, although there are any number of studies out there to support it), while the super-rich incomes keep going up.
Seems like somebody in some famous book did something to the money-changers – I swear I’ve heard that before…
Nuanda:
December 14th, 2011 at 4:00 pm
Well, I of course was not saying that we are in boom times currently. Before the Great Recession, we were, and I thought you would naturally gather that. Here are some better graphs, because they break out the different percentiles, from 1967 thru 2003: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:United_States_Income_Distribution_1967-2003.svg
Here’s another showing my point, from 1979 thru 2005: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Income_gains.jpg
And still another from 1947 thru 2007: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:United_States_Income_Distribution_1947-2007.svg