Over the past year, there have been protests in some of the most unlikely places in the world. I’m talking of course about the “Arab spring”, where several Middle Eastern nations—many of whose citizens are not even legally allowed to protest—rose up to demand more rights and an end to corrupt leaderships.

It was a display of the power that a nation’s citizens can have; no matter how absolute a government’s rule, the governed can always have a voice. Now America, a country whose citizens are afforded some of the broadest rights in the world, is taking a stand against government corruption with The Occupy Movement, which has spread to 1,735 cities worldwide, most famously on New York City’s Wall Street.

Protestors are calling for a fairer distribution of the nation’s wealth. They believe that the richest 1 percent of Americans have too much influence over the government, a government that is allowing the so-called 1 percent to get richer while the rest struggle to make ends meet.

Now to me, there is no controversy in this movement. There are no politics, only the divide between rich and poor. A divide that has indeed been widening in recent years. A divide that grows as the rich get tax breaks and remain in steady jobs while the poor get laid off and struggle to afford necessities. A divide that will only continue to grow while the government simply treads water in economic reform.

However, many news outlets and politicians have written the protests off as drug-addled, radical-leftist kids just trying to cause trouble. Many conservatives roll their eyes at the “liberal yuppies”, who are too lazy to go out and find a job. The issue is that it’s not just kids and it’s no single political party. The group isn’t comprised of only one classifiable group. The protestors are simply people hoping to make the super wealthy take on more of the debt in this country and spark some reform in the government.

I am not going to say which political party I align myself with. I will not indicate if I think the American economy needs some good old-fashioned Reaganomics or if the President’s American Jobs Act could save this country because this issue is not about party politics.

It’s time that this country stops disagreeing with someone just because they are of the opposite party. Congress has done this long enough as America has fallen into turmoil. It’s time that we, as a country, come together to fix what’s wrong as The Occupy Movement shows.

Neither party is exclusively wealthy and neither party is exclusively struggling, yet both want to see America succeed. Regardless of the party I agree with, I, along with thousands of other students, will still owe tens, maybe hundreds, of thousands of dollars in student loans by the time we graduate college. I will most likely struggle to find a job to pay off those loans and I will most likely live in debt if our nation doesn’t shape up and fix this economic slump.

The Occupy Movement has taken Americans from all parties and ideals and is uniting as one people—as America—to tell politicians that we won’t silently take another five years of failure. This issue is not about what the Democrats or the Republicans want, but about what all citizens want—for the government to do more to help the 99 percent of people who do not control the majority of the nation’s wealth.