President Obama has decided to make “income inequality” — one of Occupy Wall Street’s central themes — the focus of both his State of the Union address and 2012 presidential election campaign, according to CNN.
In his last State of the Union speech before the 2012 election, President Barack Obama will pitch a series of proposals and will address the topics of economic inequality and a government that should ensure “a fair shake for all.”
And…
Given the treacherous state of the economy, the president’s campaign aides are attempting to make the theme of the upcoming election a choice about the role of government and the future of the middle class — not a referendum on the president’s handling of the economy.
They say this speech and its underlying theme — income inequality — go a long way to shaping that message.
The Obama Campaign has posted a video this morning that hits on this theme of “Income Equality”, which means the President is piggybacking the central theme of his re-election campaign on the framing that Occupy Wall Street created. That is the major reason to keep a close, critical eye on the #Occupy movement.
I put together the short video above by mashing up audio from the President’s new “Blueprint For America” film, footage of the results of #Occupy, and a video of a course taught at Occupy Wall Street in December called “Deconstructing Empire.” The course was taught by radical union-connected anarchist agitator Lisa Fithian and her friend Starhawk. In this section, you’ll see Starhawk pointing out that Occupy has changed the frame of the national dialogue from spending, deficits and other economic realities and switched it to (quoting Starhawk) “economic inequality.”