"Tax The 1%": Political Statements by Suicide in DC Shall Not Go Down the Memory Hole

[HomerRamone]

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/04/13/1377534/--Tax-The-1-Political-Statements-by-Suicide-in-DC-Shall-Not-Go-Down-the-Memory-Hole

What kind of a society have we become? A man decides to commit suicide as an act of political courage, and is dismissed by both the police and media as unworthy of further examination?...

How would Americans react if these stories were given a full airing on the news? How many could relate to the sheer despair, his plea in addressing squarely the plight of economic inequality, or the implicit message that our present an economic system has a savage inhumanity as its core feature, and that feature grinds people down in the most undignified of ways and that the rich must stop gaming the system and pay their fair share? Our media chose to look the other way in speculation about any of these salient truths...

Both stories have been utterly buried by a colluding mainstream media. The same stale perfunctory non-reporting was assigned to both incidents. Not one reporter has been compelled to follow up on either of these deeply compelling, heartbreaking cries of despair, which is nothing less than an existential scream from the heart of America’s declining middle and working class...

Of these issues the two addressed we continue to bury our heads in the sand about. Wall St gets bigger and more intoxicated with greed and power. Their omnipresence exerts a dark cloud over all of our lives with respect to pretty much every facet of our lives, including student loans, consumer debt, fortified positions in the real estate and financial markets, and the fact that our electoral politics are officially an auction completely hijacked by their unopposed position as the highest bidders. Now we have the ostentatious spectacle HRC’s Presidency, already anointed by the Power Elite brokers. The whole charade is a mockery to anyone with a sense of morality, dignity and righteousness. This is not democracy. It’s plutocracy. The man with the Tax the 1% sign was saying something most people deeply resonate with: the current system of unbridled capitalism, concentrating wealth in the hands of the very few, is manifestly unfair and is destroying the lives of too many...

The unknown man is right; a society in which a few are living off the misery of the vast majority is untenable.

[Rex]

1. Anti-corporate messages are frowned down upon by the M$M.

Their paymasters don't want to damage their beautiful minds with thoughts of the serfs upset. Even worse to allow the serfs to see another serf kill themselves with an anti-Wall Street message taped to his hand.

[liberal_at_heart]

2. Suicides definitely increased with both our continual war with the Middle East and with the

2008 economic collapse. The more the rich squeeze the poor the more will die. The only thing the rich and powerful don't count on is that when people begin to die from their circumstances the less afraid of the rich and powerful they become. They figure they are going to die anyway. Why not die fighting.

[Enthusiast]

4. Yup...

[Enthusiast]

3. It's a fucking shame the electorate doesn't recognize this.

[ND-Dem]

5. unfortunately, societies where the few live off the misery of the many are the norm.

[ND-Dem]

6. According to news story, nothing political, just another mentally ill guy, nothing to see here,

Last edited Sun Apr 19, 2015, 05:47 AM - Edit history (1)

move on....

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/new-jersey-man-identified-as-mall-fire-victim/2013/10/08/02e2a734-2fcb-11e3-bbed-a8a60c601153_story.html


a black guy who set himself on fire (like those Vietnam-era Buddhist monks)

The New Jersey man who died after setting himself ablaze on the National Mall in Washington had railed against the government and told a neighbor “America is falling apart.”

John Constantino “didn’t like the government for some reason,” neighbor Joe Horner told The Daily News. “He said they were a waste of time, effort and money,” Horner, 56, said. “He said to me, ‘They’re no good. They don’t look out for us and they don’t care about anything but their own pockets.’”

Horner spoke out after Constantino’s family lawyer issued a statement saying his dramatic death Friday “was not a political act or statement, but the result of his long battle with mental illness.”

Horner said he saw his 64-year-old friend on Thursday and he showed no signs of being insane. “He was his happy self,” said Horner, who lives on a few doors down from modest, two-story, book-filled townhouse in Mt. Laurel, N.J., that Constantino shared with his wife.

Constantino, a father of three grown children who once lived in Queens, was friendly, outgoing, and a member of the neighborhood association, neighbors said. “If you needed a helping hand, that guy would help you,” Horner said. “It breaks my heart that he did that. I would have done anything to help but I didn't know.”

A second neighbor who only identified himself as John echoed Horner, calling the dead man “a good friend, a good neighbor.”

Constantino’s kin declined to discuss their family tragedy. “I am not aware of any anti-government statements made by him or any ill will he may have had against the government,” Constantino family lawyer, Jeffrey Cox, said.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/mental-illness-made-man-burn-national-mall-family-article-1.1479401

On edit: that was late 2013. The more recent mall suicide with apparent political motivation was April 11.

[RussBLib]

7. addendum

from the same link as the OP

Tue Apr 14, 2015 at 9:05 PM PT: You'll be stunned to know that the unknown man was a 22 year old named Leo P. Thornton, of Lincolnwood, Illinois. He was found with the sign, "Tax the One Percent," taped to his hand.

According to the local police chief (?), Thornton’s parents said he had Asperger's syndrome, which is a form of autism.

Thanks to indie17, who provided links to a Washington Post article and mentioned one in the Chicago Tribune that included this updated information. http://www.dailykos.com/...

Pam Martens at Wall St On Parade wrote an in-depth critique of just how diabolically the tax system favors the rich, and buttressed the gist of this diary.

It's pretty poignant just how prescient Thornton's last words are:

"Was the message of Leo P. Thornton of Lincolnwood, Illinois a critical piece of information for this Congress to hear at this moment in American history? You’re damn right it was.

Outside of Wall Street’s wealth transfer system, provisions in the U.S. tax code are the second biggest wealth transfer system to the one percent.

Together, these two systems have created the greatest income and wealth inequality since the economic collapse in the Great Depression. They threaten a repeat of the 2008 financial collapse because the majority of Americans do not have the wages or savings to support the broader economy...

Today, the infrastructure of the United States is in decay. Students are struggling under $1.2 trillion of student debt. In 2014 the Federal Reserve released a study showing that 52 percent of Americans would not be able to raise $400 in an emergency by tapping their checking, savings or borrowing on a credit card, which they would then be able to pay off when the next statement arrived.

But Wall Street CEOs and hedge fund managers are still partying and raking in obscene compensation like there is broad-based prosperity in America. And on top of that, they’re enjoying obscene tax loopholes...

We urge everyone reading this to write your own obituary for this young man and his message and share it on your social media site."

[BKH70041]

8. No thanks

I see no reason to potentially encourage someone who has a political message they believe needs to become a national discussion thinking they need to go to some prominent location and kill themselves.