So What?

Tents gone, ground scraped clean by front-end loaders, posters power-washed from the wall, forty final stalwarts in jail, poets gone home, Dewey Square unoccupied. So what?

So, 99% is no longer a statistic. The Ninety-nine Percent is a cause, it has a constituency and it is part of the national debate across the Internet, TV and newspapers. It is likely to effect the Presidential and Congressional elections next year. It will certainly impact the Senatorial election in Massachusetts.

But, the work is not done. Our leaders are a national embarrassment, bickering while we lack a uniting vision. America deserves better. We need representation and representatives beyond pledges and campaign funds.

It’s time for reform: make the lobby-ownership of Congressmen transparent, split banks too big to fail, tax all of us fairly and cut spending strategically so that Greece, Ireland and Italy are places we can visit and not models for our economic policy.

Business needs the confidence to hire and invest; workers need pride in their work and in their companies; bridges, towns and roads need repair and construction needs to get back to work.

Most of all, one hundred percent of us need a reason to believe in ourselves as one country. What’s next requires poetry as much as politics and economics.