After our assignment a few weeks ago on Occupy Wall Street, I decided to explore more venues and see what more people had to say about our current crisis.  Today, I attended The Queens College enter for Ethnic, Racial and Religious Understanding’s Economic Dialoge and Action. The event happened during Free Hour, and began with a short video clip from PBS.  The video highlighted the fact that the majority of the country do not know our economic structure.  A man went around with a graph detailing three different economies with the wealthy controlling different percentages of the country’s wealth.  The majority of America thought that America was Sweden’s economy, with the wealthy only controlling %36 of the wealth, as opposed to the wealthy American’s unbelievably high percentage of the wealth distribution.

After the video, the group broke up into smaller discussion groups, and we talked about how the financial crisis affected us and our families and what would we like to to about it.  This was really interesting because it allowed me to see different people’s reactions.  I did not always agree with them, but it was important to hear what they had to say.  I liked the dialogue, and will continue going to the various events hosted by the Center for Ethnic, Racial, and Religious Understanding.

This ties in with our continued discussions on Occupy Wall Street.  Sitting in today, I heard real people’s disgust with the government and their stories about family members who lost their jobs.  Many people were saying how they thought the American Dream had died years ago, and that we are in need of a new dream.  It was depressing to hear about people;s lack of faith in the government, but it was comforting to hear about their support of their friends and family.  We are in difficult times, and the one thing I learned from today was that it is important to stick together and discuss the issues.