There is a debate about who wields power in America that's taking place among the activists of Occupy Wall Street, historians, economists, experts, and journalists. They are defining a new debate about Who Rules America. In the opening episode of the series, we asked David Degraw, the Occupy activist who coined the phrase The 99% versus the 1% where entrenched power can be challenged. Speaking to us at the movement's giant May Day Rally, he said, "Occupy shows that people are not suffering alone, their coming out, raising awareness - we changed the national discourse." And yet they are, increasingly coming up against a wealthy elite, that professor Stanley Aronowitz told us, "is, generally speaking, unresponsive to the people, unresponsive to democratic liberties, and democratic procedures." Is it a conspiracy? The Canadian economist Leo Panich rejects the ideas telling us, "I don't think there's an external force controlling the American state. The American state is capitalist to it's core in the very way it’s organized." Political analyst Chip Berlet agrees, "the people who have the wealth are not a conspiracy, we know who they are, we know how they collect this money, they take it out of our pocket, they put it in theirs and it's not a big mystery." And yet ordinary people like Erin Crowell, a waitress and student in a small town in Wisconsin is losing hope, "I think the dream has shifted to hopefully I wake up tomorrow and I'm able to pay my rent and keep a roof over my head." This first episode introduces the key ideas in a debate at the heart of a renewed struggle for democracy that is up against a permanent establishment, no matter who is in power.
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Who Rules America? | S1E01 | The Debate Over Power

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0:00 Wall Street: Money Capital of America
1:06 Elections, Ads and the Horse Race
3:40 Who Really Rules America?
4:06 The Power Elite Explained
8:21 Working-Class Voices on Power
10:17 Capitalism and the State
11:22 Big Oil and Corporate Influence
13:21 Media and War Propaganda
18:54 Occupy Wall Street
20:18 The Vanishing American Dream