Occupy Wall St.
(Image courtesy of:biggovernment.com)
There are a large number of injustices in American society that motivate our occupation of Kiener Plaza, as well as the occupation by tens of thousands of concerned citizens of public spaces in cities across America, all inspired by Occupy Wall Street.
Each of us participating in Occupy St. Louis will likely have their own distinct list of grievances to be redressed, but there is one overriding political malady on which we would all agree. The very rich are becoming exponentially richer- leaving the rest of us, the 99%, with exponentially less and less. This translates on an ongoing basis into less of the economic pie, less political voice, less control over our jobs if we are lucky enough to have one, and ultimately less command over our well being, our future, our lives. And if the poorest 99% are losing out, the situation for the poorest 40%, 30%, 20% is beyond desperate.
This abysmal state of affairs is not the result of some unpredictable economic development or some unintended consequence of changes in technology or tastes. Nor is it the result of an economic tsunami flowing from foreign shores. We, the 99%, hereby declare by our occupations of public spaces that this vile, arrogant class warfare by the richest 1% will no longer be tolerated and will be reversed. And it is imperative that we take action now because neither democracy nor, ironically, capitalism as a tool of progress will survive in a nation destroyed by unbounded inequality.
[Drafted by Fredric Raines, comments welcomed.]
Okay but how exactly do you propose to reverse this injustice that you will not tolerate? I think that is the problem most of us have with the Occupy groups. If you have solutions to the problems, that would be helpful to know.
ReplyDeleteThank you for your comment.
ReplyDeleteThe call for solutions has been a very popular question and we hope to have a blog addressing your question within the next few days.
First step is to to get the public to accept the movement as representative of them. Meaning when they see you occupy, somewhere they should be able to see themselves. After the general public accepts this fact, then mass actions can be taken to begin to fix the corrupted system by reigning in corporate influence on the legislative and electoral processes.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, the current Occupy St. Louis group appears to be faltering on this most important initial step.
@Lokey, I completely agree that we need to represent the masses. We have to get everyone participating in the discussion in order to make the claim that the discussion includes everyone's view. Outreach is extremely important in the initial stages. I believe that the coverage we receive from various media outlets begins to trickle out the message that these participants are saying more intelligent things than are our elected officials. When we can empower others to join the discussion, we can grow exponentially.
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