FACE TO FACE: Do the Occupy protesters have legitimate gripes in Canada?
The 1950s and '60s sitcom Leave it to Beaver depicted the trivial travails of an American one-income family. Ward Cleaver trotted off to work each day while an impeccably dressed June stayed home to unravel the zany predicaments Beaver and Wally got into. It was a typical, though antiseptic, prosperous, upper middle class existence.
One need not be acquainted with the Beaver to know that prosperous, one-income, upper middle class families are a thing of the past.
Were Leave it to Beaver set in 2011, June would be working full-time. She and Ward might have lost their home and Wally and the Beav would likely have joined the burgeoning Occupy Wall Street movement, which this week spilled over into the streets of Canada.
Although last Saturday's demonstrations in Canada could hardly be compared to the storming of the Bastille, they are at least an expression of the collective dissatisfaction North Americans feel towards a 30-year loss of middle class prosperity.
Admittedly, the protesters are a bit of a motley crew, without leadership and focus. This only shows that unlike the American Tea Party, Occupy Canada is a grass roots movement not yet propped up or manipulated by a political party or special interest group.
Their eclectic look and scatter-gun complaints will likely allow espousers of trickle-down economics to focus on this and dismiss them as having legitimate concerns.
But no one can doubt the undeniable point that unites them: the increasingly obscene gap between rich and poor in North America, the former having seen almost all the benefits of any gain in prosperity over the past three decades
Choose your own shocking statistic - they are increasingly more available and stark. How about: Over the past 33 years, the top 1% of Canadians has increased their incomes by 300% while working Canadians have increased their wages by $1,500.
Is it any wonder people are protesting?
With any luck, Occupy Canada will ultimately focus on what is really required to save our economy and the country - a redistribution of wealth from the ludicrously rich to the working and middle class.
Perhaps then Ward and June Cleaver would get their house back and once more tackle the weighty problems befalling Wally and the Beav.
Face to Face columnist Jim Nelson is a retired Tri-City teacher and principal who lives in Port Moody. He has contributed a number of columns on education-related issues to The Tri-City News.
