After Occupy Wall Street protesters expressed their demands and angst on a tumblr blog about "We are the 99%," conservative CNN commenter Erick Erickson started his own response, "We are the 53%" at The53.tumblr.com.
The 53 percent refers to the estimated percent of people who pay income tax.
Both sites feature photos of somewhat forlorn people holding up papers explaining their troubles. The group saying "We are the 99%" blames Wall Street. Those saying "We are the 53%" blames nobody and basically says to the Occupy Wall Street crowd, "Get a job!"
For example, one woman posts: "I am a 24-year-old woman. My Dad has almost always worked two (or more) jobs to keep a roof over our heads. My mom is disabled and therefore cannot work any longer. I started babysitting to earn my own money at age 11. … I get up at 5:30 every morning to go to work and EARN my pay. I do not lay in bed, doing nothing and expect to eat and live. I believe everyone is responsible for the pursuit of their own happiness, to go out and get it, not take it from others. The only thing you're entitled to is your freedom. I believe in ONE nation under GOD, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. I AM THE 53 percent."
A National Guard member posted, "You want something, go earn it like the rest of us are trying to do. I AM the 53 percent."
A 23-year-old woman wrote about how she has student debt and doesn't have a decent job yet, "I'm exhausted, I'm fed up but I will keep going. I will one day work a job involving my passions and talents, but, in the meantime, I can't waste precious time in a field, in tents and on my butt."
And so it goes.
E.D. Kain, a tech contributor at Forbes.com, called the We Are the 53% Tumblr website "heartbreaking." Why? He said there should be better visions of society than ones where people work really hard, have tragedies and continue to work hard.
In another post, Kain said the website is "attempting to show how the 53 percent of people in the US who pay income taxes are shouldering the burden for everyone else." But then he dismisses those sentiments by saying "pretty much everyone pays payroll taxes, paying into the biggest government entitlements. Nobody gets off without paying taxes in one form or another, especially sales tax. The many other burdens the poor and working class face are too many to list, ranging from mass incarceration to lack of access to healthcare and decent education."
Jonathan Schwarz at TinyRevolution.com said the 53 percent website tells him "that I've failed, you've failed, we've all failed, and because of that we're all going to die. These people not only won't fight the killer billionaires stomping on their windpipe, they'll brag about getting stomped on and ask for more."
John Amato at CrooksAndLiars.com had many choice words to describe the 53 percent website: Despicable, dark, disgusting, cruel, narcissistic greed, arrogance, ludicrous, moronic, lamebrain, gibberish, tragic, hilarious, lunatic, hatred and shame, shame, shame.
The 53 percent movement, or anti-movement, began earlier this month when Kevin Eder, 26, came up with the Twitter hashtag #iamthe53. "I would never identify myself with those occupying Wall Street," Eder told CNNMoney. "The frustration was born out of people claiming to speak for me who don't."
The Washington Post said the website was "the brainchild of Erick Erickson, founder of RedState.com, … Josh Trevino, communications director for the right-leaning Texas Public Policy Foundation, and conservative filmmaker Mike Wilson."
"What the 99 percent is missing is the element of personal responsibility," Trevino told CNNMoney. "The 53 percent want to bring that into the conversation.
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