White Shirts and Cowboy Boots

Rated “P” for Polemical Pool

(Language may offend)

Young Americans—college graduates, the underemployed, and foreclosed upon—are occupying Wall St., calling attention to banker swindlers and the crime-infested financial markets of Manhattan. In turn, NYPD has turned out the “White Shirts” or management class to harass and urge blue-collar cops to oppose members of the working or non-working fraternity. The middle management minders emulate their masters and have turned—claiming public safety and security–against those revolutionaries, who are leading the charge for fairness and income redistribution. It’s only a question of time before some “Robin Hood” shows up to focus the message thereby multiplying the forces of social dissatisfaction.

For a decade now, politicians and their ilk have been trying to “euphemize” (aka euthanize) the “working class” out of existence by referring to them as “middle class.” Due to the increasing wealth gap, the middle class has turned into the working or lower class—powerless and broke. Now those who wear the “white shirts” like clan robes, jackboots like the legions of WWII, and/or cowboy boots, like the Town’s code enforcement officers, stomp on the toes of activists–doing the dirty and betraying their classmates.

Save us all from such sobriquets—“Middle Class,” indeed. Nobody brought up among slippery slope suburban culture where “Good conscience–Bad Faith” is a principle underscored by “white flight” embraces this kind of mediocrity. We shop at World Cup and “resist mediocrity.”

Raise a cup of double espresso and salute the new cell-phone revolutionaries. They have nothing but “time on their side.”

Here in Taos, where members of the middle class, culturally speaking, are as rare as honest politicians, the occasional sight of such a rare bird is rather quaint. But the next time Senator Tom Udall speaks in Taos about supporting the middle class—especially the one extant up at LANL–the crowd should fold its arms and nod, quietly–“no, no, no.” But we, too, have an occupation force, calling attention to swindlers and corporate greed—not to mention dangerous Ospreys overhead.

In Taos, one man, Jumping Jeff Northrup, sign-man extraordinaire, maintains the gold standard of Tom Paine. Mr. Common Sense alerts drivers to big oil’s high prices and calls attention to the Corporate Media’s takeover of local government. The CEO of KCEC and DMC Broadcasting control the purse and privileges of the town and electric coop in what appears to be an old-fashioned coup, organized by a local financial oligarchy.

Northrup, whose activism has turned his hair white, is the sole and only protester who would stand up along the north-south highway and object to alleged corruption in the executive suites—not to mention the new party house i.e. Command Center safe house for trustees. His cojones, they say, are the size of a trotter champion. It’s only a question of time before he occupies Historic Taos Plaza along with McHenry’s “Food not Bombs” grocery brigade.

The Mayor and his toadies have sent out the Cowboy Boots to charge the picketer with high crimes and misdemeanors—offenses against the town’s right-of-way. What? Subsequently, the Cowboy Boot has turned the diminutive refugee from Chicago and Cambridge into a local hero—not unlike R.G. “Taos Needs a New Mayor” Wells. Even as the regulations are vague, arbitrarily and capriciously enforced—and in direct violation of the spirit and letter and case law governing civil liberties–Jeff stands for the spirit of the U.S. Constitution and the First Amendment at a time when the U.S. Supreme Court has replaced the traditional Virgin Mary with Corporate Conception.

Why, you might ask yourself, are the shills at DMC Broadcasting, where the Mayor presides over four (4) radio stations (that we know of) so frightened of one man and his homemade signs? Surely the occasional sandwich board in front of say a local sports bar, where the powerful will soon meet to eat and greet his honor and his Walmartian sidekick, is not in the public right-of-way? Surely, one white-haired codger, who even works on Sundays to warn visitors and locals away from gas gouging, is no threat to the downtown power brokers? Surely….