The media are mistakenly characterizing the Occupy Wall Street movement as unemployed Millennials with a legitimate gripe against Wall Street consistent with the Tea Party, or as a rag-tag group of unemployed stoners with no coherent message, not to be taken too seriously.   After spending hours interviewing protesters in Oakland, California, both characterizations are way off base.  If either scenario were apt, these folks would be marching on 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and storming Congress.  Instead, they're taking on Wall Street and storming the homes of the wealthy and the buildings of large corporations. 

It's Mourning in America, friends.  Wake up to the fetid smell of Marxism taking over Main Street, intent on crushing Wall Street.

Each person interviewed in Oakland had the same story to tell, and if you listen carefully to the video from the main stream press, it's this: capitalism is the root of all evil. 

According to the Occupiers, Big Business has corrupted our government, corporations exploit workers, the rich control everything, the top 1% own somewhere between 30% and 60% of all wealth, the disparity between the rich and the remaining 99% is growing and the property-owning bourgeoisie is responsible for that.  The workers need to take control of the means of production and mount a revolution to overthrow capitalism by expropriating property from the bourgeoisie.  The workers need to rise up (fist pump), redistribute capital more equitably and establish a Marxist paradise -- slaying the neo-liberalism dragon and enthroning the worker, all in the name of "economic justice."

We can pretend this isn't the case by sticking our heads in the sand, but facts are facts.  When thousands say they want to overthrow capitalism and redistribute property, take them at their word, especially when their chants, signs, words, actions, websites and blogs all support that.  And when they are as highly-organized, highly-funded, highly-networked, highly-mobilized and highly-motivated as the Wall Street Occupiers are, then we need to be afraid, be very afraid.

How grassroots can this movement be when a simple scroll through the internet reveals that Big Labor and Big Community Organization are openly supporting it, organizing it, taking donations for it and drafting petitions for it?  Some of those organizations are MoveOn, SEIU, AFL-CIO, National Nurses United, Working Families Party, Van Jones' Rebuild the Dream, Adbusters, US Day of Rage, Take the Square, October 2011, We are the 99%,  Progressive Change Campaign Committee, CREDO and MoveOn's very own Avaaz.org -- the international progenitor of the Arab Spring.

A cornucopia of America's pop culture glitterati have thrust themselves into the midst of the Occupation with calls for revolution from Danny Glover; shouts of solidarity from Van Jones; cheers from Al Gore that OWSers are "pointing out the flaws in our system"; and professions from Michael Moore (whose latest agitprop was presciently entitled "Capitalism: A Love Story") that "There's a shared feeling among people down there that this economic system that we have is unfair." 

All of the people interviewed at Occupy Oakland spoke with one voice:  we must get rid of the system.  And they didn't hold back when probed: the system we must dismantle is capitalism.

It's no coincidence that three of the most progressive members of Congress have thrown their support behind the Occupation.  Congressman Keith Ellison cast the issue as one of class warfare -- pitting the "overwhelming majority of Americans" against the "super wealthy." Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky marched-shoulder-to-shoulder with fellow travelers at Occupy Chicago.  And, in contrast with her hateful rants about the Tea Party, Nancy Pelosi invoked G-d and blessed the Occupiers while prognosticating that they are going "to be effective." 

The most revealing endorsement for the Occupation came from the White House itself, as President Obama expressed sympathy for the protesters who demonstrated a "broad-based frustration about how our financial system [capitalism] works."  But the Occupation Revolution cannot come as any surprise to Obama given that he has been fomenting class warfare, redistribution and fundamental change since he happened upon the political scene.

Emails from MoveOn.org have consistently focused on demands for income equality and forcing corporations and the wealthy to pay their fair share of taxes.  The Bay of Rage website unabashedly explains that they are "an anti-capitalist initiative" that will "function during this period of austerity" as a "clearing house" for information and action.  At the bottom of the home page, the stakes are clearly laid out: "austerity or civil war."

Still don't believe me?  From the Bay of Rage website: 

This Friday, Oct 14^th, the 5th day of Occupy Oakland, an anti-capitalist bloc led the first march out of Oscar Grant Plaza (Frank Ogawa Plaza). A diverse crowd of at least 200 chanted "Fuck the police, we don't need 'em. All we want is total freedom", "Burn the Banks", and " 1, 2, 3, 4 - organize for social war" throughout the demonstration.

From MoveOr.org emails: 

They're called "the 99%," because they stand for all of us left behind by the massive concentration of wealth among the richest 1%. The protesters' unrelenting campaign against the corporate takeover of our democracy is being fought in the best traditions of nonviolent resistance.

The signs, placards, and chants focus on standing up for what the protesters are calling "the 99%" of us who are suffering while Wall Street bankers grow richer by the day.

Peruse the sites: references to the Arab Spring, calls for an American Fall (pun intended with all seriousness) and envy for uprisings in Egypt, Greece and London are ubiquitous, as are demands for revolution, resistance and the abolition of capitalism.

Marxist rhetoric plays like a broken record: bourgeoisie, oppressed workers, inequality, redistribution, capitalism and solidarity.   Fortunately, MoveOn is there to define for us the "oppressed": 

"The 99% protesters represent all of us who are being left behind: union workers, public servants, the poor, the unemployed, seniors, the disabled, young people graduating off a cliff to no jobs." 

Does this list truly represent 99% of the US population?  If 1% includes millionaires and billionaires, wouldn't the 99% have to include all of those mid-level executives, professionals and small business owners, etc.?  Yes.  But for purposes of this Marxist Revolution, if you have money in the bank or own property -- be it a hot dog stand or beauty salon -- then you are part of the bourgeoisie.  The 99% have lumped bourgeois property owners (who really make up the vast majority of the middle) together with the 1% of millionaires and billionaires.  To any rational mind this doesn't make sense, but it doesn't matter.  The property, hard work and success of Main Street and the American Dream have been targeted by the so-called 99%.

And just when "social justice" and "capitalist pig" have become part of the American vernacular, we have to acquaint ourselves with new buzz words parroted by Marxist retreads form the 60s and their "useful idiot" Occupiers:   "economic justice" is the latest moniker for economic parity among all of G-d's creatures and "neo-liberalism" is the latest in a string of dirty words blaming corporations for just about everything. 

None of this is being done in secret.  It's all out in the open.  We just choose to look the other way.

America has to wake up to this new reality:  the Cold War battle between communism and capitalism is back, only this time it's on our front porch.  It went underground in the 70s, got an education, put on a suit, bought a house and had a couple of kids.  Then it used the schools to educate new foot soldiers and manipulated the pop culture to indoctrinate the next generation of fellow travelers who seek to create a new world order in the image of old world Marxism.  Bill Ayers and his allieshave been very busy -- and successful. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, this bona fide fifth column has patiently been marking time,  waiting for the right moment to pounce on an oblivious, comfortable middle class, re-cast it as the wealthy ruling class, and take it down with a series of fatal bites to the jugular.  Gramsci told Marxists generations ago that they had to take over education and the culture to bring about the revolution. The smart ones listened and acted.

TV personalities like Geraldo Rivera can label this description of the Occupation as "harsh, paranoid or delusional," but I base my conclusions on the up-close-and-personal interviews I conducted at Occupy Oakland.

Pretending this is something different than it is, is a dangerous game.  In his Iron Curtain speech, Churchill lamented:  "Last time I saw it all coming and I cried aloud to my own fellow-countrymen and to the world, but no one paid any attention." 

And in Elie Wiesel's Night, the townspeople were as incredulous as Geraldo in heeding the warnings of Moshe the Beadle, who, left for dead in a Nazi massacre, miraculously found his way home.  Although Moshe tried to warn his landsmen about the atrocities he witnessed and knew were destined for them all, "the people not only refused to believe his tales, they refused to listen.  Some even insinuated that he only wanted their pity, that he was imagining things.  Others flatly said that he had gone mad."  Geraldo, America, are you listening?

Think of the suffering and treasure that might have been spared if the comfortable masses had taken seriously the warnings of Churchill or Europe's real Moshes. 

I am no Churchill but I admonish my fellow countrymen:  don't shrug this off as bunch of unsettled kids.  Don't wait for the Iron Curtain of oppression to fall while you go about your daily life, business as usual.  It's anything but.

Take a moment to surf the net, attend a MoveOn meeting or talk to a few occupiers.  "There's something happening here."  "There's battle lines being drawn."  "Young people speaking their minds".  "A thousand people in the street." We better stop and ask "hey, what's that sound, everybody look what's going down." 

It's your country and the Marxists aren't coming -- they're here.

"Working men of all countries, unite!"  Marx, 1847

"People of the world unite!"  Mao, 1970

"It's time for us to unite. It's time for them to listen. People of the world, rise up on October 15th!" www.15october.net, 2011

Sally Zelikovsky is a former attorney, turned mother of three.  She is the Founder of Bay Area Patriots and Coordinator of the San Francisco Tea Party.

 [See also: Occupy Wall Street and the Chicago '68 Riots - ed.]