It has just been a few weeks since the Occupy Wall Street protests began, but already many other protests have popped up around the nation. You’ve probably seen them on the news various time as they’ve become a staple in mainstream media. The protests have become so inspiring that other countries are joining the fight against Fortune 500 companies. But the question is: why are the protesters so hell-bent on making a point against the wealthy?

The answer is simply because of how hard it is to live these days. We’ve all had our share of money woes. Maybe it’s not having enough money to buy the shirt you wanted or watching your parents choose between food or rent. Money is hard to come by these days, especially in the state our declining economy is in. People are fighting tooth and nail to snag a job to pay for bare necessities. Okay, maybe I’m just blowing things out of proportion now and being a bit dramatic. I mean, compared to people in other countries, even the poorest of Americans are rich.

It’s not like the 99 percent of Americans are struggling more than a poor child in a Third World country. It’s not that 99 percent of Americans just want a reason to get out there and join the mob for the sake of joining a mob. The 99 percent sense that the fundamental trade of our economy  — go to school, get a degree, work for an honest paycheck — has been broken, and all they want is to see it restored.

You can laugh and mock the movement, brush it off as nothing but a “First World problem,” but as corporations continue to systematically destroy the middle class, we are slowly devolving from a First World Economy into the second most polarized economy (Mexico being first) in the world in terms of income distribution.

Everybody is affected by this. Whether it is the semi-successful small business owner or a single parent trying to support his or her family on minimum wage. This is all of us fighting. That is why the 99 percent of us are occupying someplace, somewhere. Let’s face it, all of us here live in a First World so everything is a “First World problem.”

The system we all so strongly believe in is broken in so many ways. More than 25 million Americans are unemployed, 50 million live without health insurance, and 100 million are poverty stricken. All while the richest 1 percent lie through their teeth, get tax breaks, and reap billions. Amidst this chaos, politicians seem to all be caught up in a small competition on who can screw us over the worst.

Ever since 9/11 happened, the U.S. government has been gradually stripping away our rights. In some cases they seem to forget that the Constitution even exists (except for the most important Amendment: the Second Amendment, the right to bear arms. God bless America.) If we continue to let them do so, pretty soon the only thing we’ll be able to do is look back, dumbfounded and wondering what happened to the “free country” we all so happened to live in.

We are a nation of the people, by the people, and for the people. And despite what GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney said, corporations are NOT people. And it is time we stand up and stop letting the 1 percent run our country at the expense of the rest of us.

After all, we are the 99 percent.