On September 17 a protest is planned for cities around the United States and Wall Street is one of the locations.  New York's Financial District is a place I've spent plenty of time in my life.  It is a place that has changed very much in terms of how it looks from what I have learned about the history made here. 

Most can imagine the streets could be paved with gold, but new money doesn't trickle far here. 

The generation who climbed into the subways and kept women in the typing pools were concerned with the opulence of their surroundings. They built the Financial Capitol of the World even as they funded two World Wars.  

From the Orient Merchants to The "Greatest Generation" we have signature structures, stalwart testaments to time and endurance, the architecturally beautiful dinosaurs of an economic history of America.

The once revered addresses and names carved in stone above the door are relics of an age that enriched those who made things or moved things or applied creative energy to endeavors. 

Those captains of Industry spent vast sums of their own fortunes to build monuments to themselves. They took care selecting craftsmen and materials to produce a masterpiece structure to bear their name. 

There was still crime, greed and other vices that surrounded the Empire Building of the Robber Baron eras, but at least they created more than phantom assets and favorable public opinion the richest make now.

It wasn't always a  flim, flam, paper scam where computer generated flips let you bet both outcomes up or down and always pocket a win. No matter the losers are the workers investing for retirement.

Wealth wasn't always manufactured out of thin air with sound bites and pundits and 24/7 ninnies repeating mantras with the percentage change of meaningless opinions, sandwiched between commercials for pills, to make the pills you take now work better. 

It was a very nice change for me this morning to be on the other side of so much 911 Anniversary.  With emotion and media farce behind me it was a chance to think of a new concept in this place and wonder about how it will be to Occupy Wall Street and what now occupies them.

Long before New York was a city it was an island trading port.  The modern life may obscure any suggestion of that maritime nature, but our  relationship with the sea converges on you at the tip of Manhattan. The Mouth of the Hudson swallows the East River and together they push past Governors Island and Ellis Island to meet the Atlantic. 

From the bottom of Water Street you can look across to the Statue of Liberty, feel the Spirit of Freedom in her torch understand how it drove so many hearts to seek Freedom at these shores. 

Maybe a dozen blocks away there is Ground Zero, a ghastly, partially constructed monolithic, still creeping skyward after a decade in the hands of those who build nothing and make nothing.  In fact they are nothing but the weak progeny of an accidental, corporate elite who only succeeded in destruction wrapped in a manufactured a notion that a broken government has failed us,. In fact it is a finely tuned, corporate welfare system that keeps record profits flowing.

Like every other part of the City, the Financial District has its own energy, a rhythm that's like a regional heartbeat that keeps the local commuting and commerce flowing like a choreographed, hustle, bustle waltz. 

For particular times of day in familiar places the cadence is part of the identity as sheer numbers create the surges of humanity that push toward specified bits of floorspace at appointed times.

The New York Stock Exchange was proudly flying the Flag of Japan. While I'm sure it wasn't their intent it should serve as a reminder that America's ethnic enemies campaigns can be reversed based on favorable trade agreements.

But this morning it was like the summer lull had lingered on. The back to school, back to work buzz wasn't flowing through the street in a way that felt characteristically full of life. 

What stuck with me most was how unoccupied Wall Street has actually become.  Part of the change has been trending with the Information Age.  Brokers and traders no longer need to be on the Exchange floor to have timely information.  Industrial giants don't need to have much more than their shares of stock on American soil.

Giants like Halliburton with Global Headquarters in Dubai can outsource and import, sole source and bank offshore. 

All they need to keep in America is the part you can sink the 401K money into. Wall Street has been unoccupied, unconcerned and unregulated with their cost to the American public.  All the malarkey about creating jobs by putting more money in corporate coffers ought to be played by now, the coffers are emptier than the words in the political speeches.  

Congress has dumped our National assets into an insatiable war machine and the cost plus "Patriots" that price them.  We mortal persons need to raise our voices to be heard over the MSM hot air spin corporatism relies on for survival. 

We need to move our money back to our communities and spend in ways that support one another.  We need to return goverment to its Constitutional role of public service and wrench it from the greedy grasp of those who use it as modernized corporate servitude.

One by one, day by day and dollar by dollar we will change the system; the truth and human passion for Liberty will get us there.

For all who protest or support an effort, be safe first and foremost, try to be civil and kind to those around you and remember we can have many events leading to change, but change is a process.

The Big Apple you see September 17, 2011 protest is as far the small port it once was, but the true Nature endures and incremental change can be epic, be patient and know each little thing does go somewhere.