This was distributed by email last night as a working document. It will probably not be finalized until Sunday or so.
I thought you folks might have a discussion about it.
Have at it.
Declaration of the Occupation of New York City
As we gather together in solidarity to express a feeling of mass injustice, we must not lose sight of what brought us together. We write so that all people who feel wronged by the corporate forces of the world can know that we are your allies. As one people, formerly divided by the color of our skin, gender, sexual orientation, religion, or lack thereof, political party and cultural background, we acknowledge the reality: that there is only one race, the human race, and our survival requires the cooperation of its members; that our system must protect our rights, and upon corruption of that system, it is up to the individuals to protect their own rights, and those of their brethren; that a democratic government derives its just power from the people, but corporations do not seek consent to extract wealth from the people and the Earth; and that no true democracy is attainable when the process is determined by economic power. We come to you at a time when corporations, which place profit over people, self-interest over justice, and oppression over equality, run our governments. We have peaceably assembled here, as is our right, to let these facts be known.
They have taken our houses through an illegal foreclosure process, despite not having the original mortgage.
They have taken bailouts from taxpayers with impunity, and continue to give CEO’s exorbitant bonuses.
They have perpetuated gender inequality and discrimination in the workplace.
They have poisoned the food supply, and undermined the farming system through monopolization.
They have continuously sought to end the rights of workers to negotiate their pay and make complaints about the safety of their workplace.
They have held students hostage with tens of thousands of dollars of debt on education, which is itself a human right.
They have consistently outsourced labor and used that outsourcing as leverage to cut workers’ healthcare and pay.
They have influenced the courts to achieve the same rights as people, with none of the culpability or responsibility.
They have spent millions of dollars on legal teams that look for ways to get them out of contracts in regards to health insurance.
They have sold our privacy as a commodity.
They have used the military and police force to prevent freedom of the press.
They have deliberately declined to recall faulty products endangering lives in pursuit of profit.
They determine economic policy, despite the catastrophic failures their policies have produced and continue to produce.
They have donated large sums of money to politicians supposed to be regulating them.
They continue to block alternate forms of energy to keep us dependent on oil.
They continue to block generic forms of medicine that could save people’s lives in order to protect investments that have already turned a substantive profit.
They have purposely covered up oil spills, accidents, faulty book keeping, and inactive ingredients in pursuit of profit.
They purposefully keep people misinformed and fearful through their control of the media.
They have perpetuated colonialism at home and abroad.
They have participated in the torture and murder of innocent civilians overseas.
They continue to create weapons of mass destruction in order to receive government contracts.
They have participated in a directly racist action by accepting the contract from the State of Georgia to murder Troy Davis.
To the people of the world,
We, the New York City General Assembly occupying Wall Street in Liberty Square, urge you to assert your power.
Exercise your right to peaceably assemble; occupy public space; create a process to address the problems we face, and generate solutions accessible to everyone.
To all communities that take action and form groups in the spirit of direct democracy, we offer support, documentation, and all of the resources at our disposal.
Join us and make your voices heard!
Tweeted and recommended. I’ll have to say, that document looks pretty damned focused to me.
Wall Street murdered Troy Davis?
The medical staff was a contractor.
Picky. Picky. It’s a working draft. Maybe they will broaden it to Wall Street’s infatuation with the prison-industrial complex.
http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/article/670237/for-profit_company_oversaw_davis's_execution,_ha
d_prompted_complaint_for_illegal_purchase_of_lethal_injection_drugs/”
In any case, what’s so hard to imagine?
As I give this draft an initial reading, I am struck by how much of it reminds me of the very issues and ideas that have been batted around by leftist & to a lesser degree liberal/progressive bloggers for ages – and have been batted around by our forebears before then. It’s so nice to see this all in one place. They seem to have their message, and as long as they stay on message and stay persistent they improve the odds of being heard. I am delighted to see them emphasize that the process used to formulate this draft in their General Assembly is democratic, especially given the corporate media’s contention that this movement (along with those associated with the Arab Spring and the protests in Greece and Spain) as being non- or anti-democratic. Democracy takes many forms, including outside the standard legislative channels. When the legislators can’t seem to be bothered to seriously address our social ills, someone else will at least try. Kudos to these (mostly) kids for trying.
Remember. It is a working draft. I don’t know how large the drafting group was. It still has to make it through finalization by the general assembly.
Understood. Still not bad as working drafts go.
But it ain’t gonna happen.
Not that way it’s not.
As long as the system remains functional…no matter how close to failure it may be…only work inside of that system is going to produce any positive results in these directions.
Ron Paul’s approach…read Laura Trice’s article on 11 point plan if you have not done so already…is a blueprint for a practical revolution hat can take place within the present American system of government.
The results of an effective implementation of this plan would take care of most of the points in the “Declaration of the Occupation of New York City” above. Or…trying to implement it with the executive powers of the Presidency would shut this country down and/or cause some sort of serous civil strife. Either way, we cannot continue along the manseam path that is being laid out for us now. Not without totally surrendering our individual freedoms to the corporate-owned PermaGov we can’t. The kids in the street do not have a shot at seriously influencing what is going down and Ron Paul does have a shot. It’s a long shot, but his chances are improving by the day.
Why not stop talking about the impossible dream of a bunch of young romantics and start talking about the long-term effort that Ron Paul has made to get to a place where he can actually do something?
Because he’s not a “lefist?”
As Tina Turner kinda/sorta sung…”What’s ‘left’ got to do with it?”
Left, right, center?
What do these terms really mean?
They don’t mean shit, that’s what they mean.
Obama and the Dems are not “left” (except of course probably left behind in 2012) and the Republicans are not “right” by any meaning of the word. The are all corporate-owned centrists who merely sit on the left and right sides of the same centrist table.
Ron Paul is so out of the box that he cannot adequately be identified by any of those left/right/center terms. And that is precisely what we need if we are to survive.
A fourth dimensional revolution that takes place in this three-dimensional world of “left,” “right” and “center.”
Will it happen, this Paulist revolution.?
I dunno, but I do know this…if it does not happen we are all headed for Deep Shit Land. And soon.
Watch.
It’s gonna get interesting.
Soon.
Really soon.
Watch.
AG
You never struck me as a Paulista, AG. He might have the social libertarianism down, but he’s gonna let corporations do what they want.
If you’re in NYC, wander down there and diary a report of what you see.
i won’t have a chance to do so until Sunday. If then. (Busy times, just trying to make a living…)
AG
P.S. Regarding “letting the corporations do what they want,” read his 11 points.
Do you really think that “the corporations” want to see the end of the huge slush fund Federal Reserve (and their boy-in-charge Bernanke) plus the cash cow of perpetual war?
I don’t.
Deregulated private banks with no reserve requirements. Nothing could go wrong there, could it?
That “slush fund” as you call is the banking system reserves, which have grown through the interest that banks pay back to the Fed. There are a lot of problems with the Fed, but there is one heck of a lot of misinformations being spread about it as well.
There are some banks that would be delighted if the Fed disappeared. They could play fast and loose with their depositors money. The could privately create a reserve bank for profit.
And there would be no check to the money supply except for bankers’ self-restraint. Bubble and bust like it is 1893.
What Dr. Paul wants to do is take the government out of the business of regulating the money supply.
The situation is that the regulators and the Fed have become captured by the entities they regulate. In the case of the Fed, that capture occurred structurally in the 1913(?) act that established the Fed.
What attracts progressives to Dr. Paul is his wanting to reduce the size of the military and get out of the policy of “war without end”.
If folks elected Dr. Paul to higher office, the wouldn’t get just what they liked they would get the whole package. But he would face the same problems that President Obama faces with the Congress unless Dr. Paul has some very long coattails.
The current situation in electoral politics right now is one big “caveat emptor”.
That’s a critical point to make. The only real cred Paul has/had was the anti-war stance. The rest of what he offers is quite regressive. Getting rid of the Federal Reserve would not magically end corporatism. Hell, the era before the Fed was created was the era of the Robber Barons if I recall – an era marked by wide disparities in wealth and quite hostile to labor. I’ve seen nothing from Paul that would indicate to me that he gives a damn for us working stiffs. I’ll hold out for those who would offer a genuinely leftist approach economically. Simply expressing a willingness to shrink the military isn’t going to cut it.
To your point, there are lots of folks inside the system ready to work on stuff, but they are blocked by the blockheads at the top of their organizations.
All revolutions are inside-outside movements. You need both.
Btw, Vlad Teichberg, who organized and is running the livestream is a former derivatives trader, age 39. Romantic youth.
AG, is music an impossible dream?
Or is the expression of human spirit worthwhile for its own sake?
Of all people, I think you know.
The more intense the isolation & fear imposed by the dominant culture becomes, the more important any action is that negates it.
This is why it’s important to quash peaceful dissent with brutality. The gathering — negation of isolation & fear — is the crime.
Being alive (rather than indulging in the safety of consumerist onanism that passes for living) expresses itself variously; comparing the validity of being alive one way as opposed to being alive another way seems like an argument over the better instrument: bass or saxophone. Like, what?
We’ve just got to stay alive. We’ve got to express being alive. Being with other living people helps one find out how to be alive. Being with musicians helps one to be a musician. The difference is soul.
Some folks think the movie ‘Night of the Living Dead’ was fictitious ..
AG, this one’s for you:
Cohen
Let us pray so.
Miracles do happen…
AG