Roseville mom part of Occupy movement

For Amy Anderson, 39, a preschool teacher and mother of four who lives and works in Roseville, enough injustice is enough. And too much of it stinks. Her activism has led to two arrests — in the early morning on Oct. 9 and Oct. 16 — for failing to leave the Occupy Sacramento encampment at César Chavez Park. "It's my overall frustration with the disparity between the haves and have-nots," she said, holding Scarlet Grace, 3, her youngest child at Chavez Park, named after the late labor leader of farm workers. Anderson noted the many people losing their homes to foreclosures, falling into homelessness and living in poverty. She also spoke before the Sacramento City Council Oct. 11 to request a temporary waiver of the city's anti-camping ordinance, which has resulted in police arrests of an estimated 58 non-violent protesters. Spurred by the Occupy Wall Street uprising in Manhattan, this self-defined 99 percent occupation movement in Sacramento and 100 cities across the U.S. targets the 1 percent at the top of the income ladder as perpetrators of economic injustice. How far has this trend gone to push Anderson and her fellow demonstrators to take to the streets in protest? In his 2007 book "The Confiscation of American Prosperity," Michael Perlman, a professor of economics at Chico State University, writes that as the U.S. gross domestic product tripled from 1970 to 2003, the "top 13,000 tax-paying households … saw its wages and salaries increase fifteen-fold." Meanwhile, "for the bottom 99 percent of taxpaying units, average income stood at $36,008 in 1970 and by 2004 was $37,295." Carolyn Nelson, 65, Anderson's mother, lives in Roseville and is a retired elementary and middle school teacher for the Western Placer Unified School District. Class inequality is out of control, according to her. "A lot of people in this country are hurting, a lot of people have been hurt by the policies of our government," Nelson said of such priorities that privilege big banks and corporations. "They have an unfair advantage over the middle and lower classes, and I am very worried about the future of people who have very little." Nelson accompanied Anderson to Occupy Sacramento Oct. 7. The day before, the encampment began with an estimated 500 people rallying in a march to the state Capitol and to a nearby branch of Wells Fargo, a big bank that U.S. taxpayers bailed out and saved from bankruptcy during the financial crisis of 2008. Sandra Delgadillo, 47, is a post-surgery nurse at Roseville Kaiser. Born and reared in Roseville, she said that the harm of health-care affordability facing family, neighbors and friends pushed her to join Occupy Sacramento, where she volunteers at a first-aid station. "As a nurse, I see that hardship in the health of Americans, which is why we need to make a change now," Delgadillo said. She calls for all Americans to have Medicare, the federal program signed into law in 1965 to provide medical coverage to Americans 65 and older. Delgadillo is a member of the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Union. The union is calling for a financial transaction tax on high-volume Wall Street trading to fund social spending for the 99 percent of Americans on Main Street.At Occupy Sacramento's general assemblies, demonstrators build consensus through dialogue and a show of hands. In this way, they agreed Oct. 15 to continue the encampment and rally there before the city council meets to address Sacramento's anti-camping ordinance today.