1. “You are the 99%!”

    I was in New York City the last week and had the privilege to attend the @occupywallst march on Times Square on Saturday, aptly named #occupytimessquare.

    A lot of misinformation has been circulating regarding what the Occupy Movement means and what its goals are. People think it’s a bunch of unemployed misfits looking to take down capitalism, or even democracy itself.

    That idea couldn’t be father from the truth.

    The Occupy Movement is a rising against the fact that 1% of the population controls the majority of the wealth and political power in the world. This includes corporations and banks, which use their ill-got power and persuasion to make decisions that affect all of us - and we don’t get a say.

    With the onset of technology and the internet, everything is becoming decentralized. If you want to express your opinions online, start a group, build a business - there are communication and technology tools that can help you achieve just about anything. Organizations like Wikileaks are helping us move into a new era of transparency and accountability. More and more, it’s becoming obvious that we can move forward and do wonderful things as a global civilization - help each other, discover new things, innovate in ways we never thought possible - and do so in sustainable ways.

    Traditional government and large corporations however, continue to operate on a highly secret, back-room-handshake level, which doesn’t involve, or take into consideration, those whom their decisions most directly affect - you and me.

    Their decisions are motivated by greed of wealth and power alone, and don’t include the social responsibility elements that democracy calls for. And when mistakes are made, they’re not called on to be accountable for them and instead many times end up doubling their profits, getting 2nd and 3rd and 4th chances to use the antiquated, corrupt, unsustainable systems they’ve selfishly developed, and use these systems to push forward their own agendas.

    You can cite hundreds of examples of this - from lack of regulation on corporations who destroy the environment, to drug companies who skew studies and testing in their favor, to big business that ships jobs overseas to exploit cheap labor, to student loan companies who spend billions of dollars lobbying Congress each year to keep and create policies which favor them.

    This is not democracy. This is not a free market society.

    The Occupy Movement is our opportunity to say:

    We’re done letting a handful of people decide our fate as a global community and skew it in their favor.

    We’re done paying the price of their greed - either environmentally and socially, or with our health, our jobs, our homes, our livelihoods, and ultimately our human and civil rights.

    We’re done with short-terms gains that destroy our chances for a long-term future.

    It’s our time to stand up, be heard, and flex our rights to peacefully assemble, to protest, to exercise our freedom of speech, and ultimately to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

    You can join us: www.occupywallst.org

    Find and participate in a local Occupy Movement near you, or create one yourself!

    Read the Declaration of the Occupation of New York City: http://nycga.cc/2011/09/30/declaration-of-the-occupation-of-new-york-city/

    Or watch the video of Keith Olbermann reading the declaration aloud:

    Give it some real thought, and you will realize you too are the 99%.

    2. 1 year ago  Notes (0)