You are just as guilty

The NYC General Assembly has published a declaration of the occupation of New York City. While I'm glad that the occupation seems to be gathering momentum and mindshare, and while I have sympathy for the sentiments behind the many "facts", I do believe that the 99% are not being completely honest about their complicity in the situation they're protesting. Let me add to the confusion. In the same order:

They have failed to use their shares in corporations, held via pension funds, as their voice with which to disapprove of bailouts. They have failed to put heat on underperforming executives.
They have failed to start their own corporations free of inequality and discrimination, and have chosen to continue to patronize corporations which do make themselves guilty of these blots on humanity's character.
Their farmers have chosen freely to use monopoly seeds; likewise they have chosen freely to poison their rivers with fertilizers and pesticides.
They have refused to use moisturizing creams not tested on rats first.
They have continuously sought a path of conflict with employers, when they use their collective bargaining power to exclude non-union workers from the workplace.
They have chosen freely to pursue an advanced education, one that is in excess of what any reasonable person would think of as a "right", and have chosen freely a field that is expensive to study, vulnerable to cyclical variations, and perhaps not even all that useful.
They have chosen freely to buy only the cheapest goods, goods that are cheap because only workers outside the US are willing to scrub toilets for less than a king's ransom. They have chosen freely, also, to run up their lifestyles to the point where their expenses match their incomes, so that they can afford only the cheapest of each of the very many goods they "cannot live without" (yet use only a few times before throwing them out).
They have ridiculed those concerned about privacy before being so was hip, as "net kooks".
They have continued to vote for the same two bought parties, despite knowing all along that campaign contributions run the show. That's if they even bothered to get their lazy asses to the voting booth. And nowhere did anyone hold a gun to their head and force them to vote for a bought candidate from one of the only two parties who have won anything in the last X decades.
They continue to demand unimaginable amounts of electricity, demand which (until only very recently) only oil can meet. They have refused to take public transport, because that is only for poor people and losers. No, a car in every garage is sine qua non!
They have continued to forgive unforgivable sins, such as fouling beaches, murdering wildlife in the process, spilling chemicals, and creative accounting.
They choose to let the media hold the reins to their emotional state. They have continued to worry more about bearded men in turbans attacking them with anthrax than about the disgustingly fatty freedom fries and polymer burgers they stuff down their throats, like daggers into their coronary arteries.

(You may interpret uncontested agreement where I have not mirrored a "fact", if you wish.)

I do not suggest that corporations are blameless. They are plenty guilty! Nor do I even suggest that what is in the 99%'s eye is a beam, but it is at least a little splinter. Corporations are composed of people, they depend on people as customers and employees. So do politicians in a procedurally if not spiritually democratic country. Yet the supposedly good 99% of men did nothing, and then evil happened. And now everyone acts surprised.

But please - do continue doing something, so that more evil may not happen. Better late than never:

The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago. The second-best time is now.