Sepia Mutiny has some coverage of Desi involvement in the Occupy Wall Street protests.  I originally read Manissa Maharawal’s comment on the Racialicious blog earlier and was rewarded with, as I had awaited with some level of anticipation, the convoluted rationale of rich First Worlder Desis complaining about the government, industries and culture from which they have benefited so richly.  Let me be clear, I do not believe that modern American finance, as it exists today, adds as much value as it’s proponents claim nor do I think that the return on equity in the Finance/Insurance/Real-Estate triad to which many have been accustomed is proper or necessary.  The fat in which societal poison is fixed can indeed be rendered although not without great cost.

The protesters are commonly described as espousing a dizzying array of causes and bearing the burden of innumerable shoulder-borne chips of social-justice rage but if they are all indeed committed to a new society in which all are equal, I feel a challenge is in order:  as a lifestyle activist of long tenure and fearsome zeal, I challenge all those Desis who attended these protests to rid themselves of the following advantages which inevitably distance themselves from the average citizen of our republic:

1.  Credentials:  You must live life without all of the educational and professional credentials you have earned.

2.  Money:  You must burn all money, liquidate all assets, end all lines of credit and divest yourself of all equity and stock.

3.  I.Q.:  you must undergo as many lobotomies as is necessary to lower your I.Q. to the level of the average citizen in your new utopia.

4.  Housing:  you must give up the 4-walls-and-a-roof privilege of the snooty First World elite and instead construct a cardboard palace of egalitarian virtue.

That ought to cover all possible ‘privilege’ available to the protesters and test their mettle as citizens of a brave,  new and ineluctably equal world.