A new common sense... for a movement with no demands...

SECTION I - Common Sense from the "99%"

INTRODUCTION AND PREAMBLE

When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for the Citizens of a Nation to petition their own Government for a redress of grievances, the People have a duty to exercise their rights under the First Amendment collectively if they so choose. To this end, We the People hereby assert our right to peacefully assemble and petition our Government for redress when we feel that this is our best, and perhaps only remaining option to seek remedies.

We affirm that any lasting and workable solution must reach beyond mere politics, that political issues do not matter at a time when our collective voice has been nearly silenced. We believe that the current political climate has caused a paralysis of our Government. We find that our individual opinions mean little when we are no longer being properly represented. In fact, we believe that the Balance of Power between the Branches of our Government has been corrupted to the point where it can answer only to members of an affluent and politically active upper class. The impending result of this imbalance is that government of the People, by the People, for the People has almost perished from Our Nation. We believe that government has been influenced by an external source that has conspired to control it to the point of stalemate. We believe that this was forced upon us by "special interests", corporations, lobbyists, the banking and the financial sector including Wall Street and the Federal Reserve, who together have used unrestrained financial leverage leading to the corruption of many politicians, regardless of their political party, resulting in great damage to the People and to this Nation.


http://pastebin.com/gm2UV08D

They presented this to even the Super Committee... and of course to you and me.

For the record, I know it is creative commons, but I am only giving you a SMALL section of a long, but good read.

Already dropped it like a bombshell going off in quasi libertarian forum..

and I just copy and paste on this... to my own notes too.

bad me...

Feel free to finger waggle me, something about assumptions, and I did see it late at night...

Bad, bad me.

I think I may have just kicked a nest. ;)

alone. They are at ground level, their cages are.

If you kick the nest they look like water boiling.

:evilgrin:

but their bite HURTS... and the parrots are somewhat smallish.

(I confused jaws for stingers)



For those wondering.

The fire ants I'm referring to are of the bipedal variety. ;)

OWS needs to learn the art of talking points... you don't even have to dumb it down - just state your major points in bold and then give the extra verbiage.

I read most of it and I still don't know what the exact demands are.. yes... we all know things suck as they stand and the things outlined at the link are our wishes... but what the hell are the specifics?

I'm sorry - but in today's age... we need bullet points... we can expand on them.. but most of us have to at least start with them....

I have supported OWS from the beginning, but to be honest... I'm just not feeling it anymore.. I'm not sure what the extended point is. At first I agreed to bring attention to the issues.. but now that they have... they HAVE to expand or they're going to tank in public support.

Not even close..

You're welcome to do your own edit I'm sure.

win public support and for that you do need to consider the current state of PR and people's attention spans.. I am not going to edit b/c as I have said.. I am still not sure what the demands are. We know what is wrong and what our wishes are in a very large goal/mission statement like sense... but I don't see any specifics...

Which side would you be rooting for?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmJmmnMkuEM&feature=player_detailpage

"ECONOMIC JUSTICE."
"THE ENVIRONMENT MATTERS."
'CORPORATE MONEY OUT OF POLITICS."

Now they sent this quite comprehensive document to the Super Committee who SHOULD be able to comprehend it...

People said, but they are not political. Sending THAT to that committee IS a political act.

Oh and in today's age we should strive to return to substance and get away from talking point, IMO it''s helped to dumb down the population and to take us to this point.

substance we also have to master the art of communication and persuasion.

OWS needs to state plainly what they want AND what actions they would like to see Congress take to get there --- not we wish for or we would like kind of statements.. but specifics... and YES bullet pointed, easily digestible points.

I think they are at a cross-roads. They have brought attention to the income inequality and the unfairness in the system.. but now they have to morph and expand... If they want public support they have to have demands that the public can easily understand, support and repeat.

Seriously - I got it at first.. but now I am left wondering what the demands are - even after reading the link..

is far easier to digest.

And that one is also circulating.

Here


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, united, we acknowledge the reality: that the future of the human race 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 neighbors; 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 Executives exorbitant bonuses.

They have perpetuated inequality and discrimination in the workplace based on age, the color of one's skin, sex, gender identity and sexual orientation.

They have poisoned the food supply through negligence, and undermined the farming system through monopolization.

They have profited off of the torture, confinement, and cruel treatment of countless nonhuman animals, and actively hide these practices.

They have continuously sought to strip employees of the right to negotiate for better pay and safer working conditions.

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 bookkeeping, and inactive ingredients in pursuit of profit.

They purposefully keep people misinformed and fearful through their control of the media.

They have accepted private contracts to murder prisoners even when presented with serious doubts about their guilt.

They have perpetuated colonialism at home and abroad.

:begging emoticon:

Lemme see if I can find it... though Keith read it as a special comment.

We've tended to take our democracy for granted and think of it as something that's kind of nice and white bread and no danger to anybody. But of course it is dangerous -- or at least it was before it got undermined.

I've been thinking the last couple of days about the influence of the China Lobby back in the 1950's and 60's and how much of a corrupting influence its cash and other resources had on US politics. For example, the China Lobby pulled the original October Surprise back in 1968 and stalled negotiations with Saigon to get Nixon elected.

But it wasn't just Chiang Kai-shek over in Taiwan. It was all the dictators -- though chiefly those in Asia and Latin America -- who feared that any real spread of democracy would be their downfall. They were glad to accept American support to keep them in power, but they were equally glad to do anything they could to weaken the democratic example here in the US. And in turn, the people in this country who had no love of democracy were glad to accept their support and their cash.

That's where a lot of this current mess started -- in an alliance between anti-democrats here and anti-democrats abroad, much of it disguised as anti-communism. But for decades, they couldn't act too openly here in the US, both because the middle class was strong and prosperous and because people still remembered what real fascists looked like.

That's what's been changing since about 1980, when the last of the old fascists died and the middle class started being progressively downsized. These days, people like Karl Rove don't even bother to hide their contempt for democracy.

We need a revival of the democratic spirit -- but just going back to the old style of electoral democracy won't help at this point, because that's proven so easy to corrupt and undermine.

The idea of one man, one vote started in the Masonic lodges of the 1700's, and it proved surprisingly effective for a long time. But ultimately, voting doesn't do much if the government itself is still hierarchical and has all the powers of a medieval tyrant. We need something better, more firmly egalitarian, and less easily removed from the hands of the people.

also direct democracy in practice is messy. Just watch a large GA... so if we decide to go that route it will have to result in break up of large nations, or it will be messy. I guarantee. it. The Athens model don't work... we are too large.

I think we can fix some of this, with a few amendments, the first goal is to get money out of politics, getting proportional representation will get more parties... and will end the duopoly, having SHORTER, public funded elections will also help.

By our very nature and I don't mean Americans, I mean humans, we will need to acknowledge parties. They will rise. That was one of the mistakes the founders made, believing factions would not come to be, We MIGHT be at the point where with technology we can have a flatter political system, one my BIL dreamt, where everybody gets to vote on MAJOR initiatives such as war, and taxes. Problem is we have studies on how media can control people, so we also need to make ALL media public, and break monopolies.

Of course these are MY ideas, and I might break that thing and actually go to a GA as a citizen, and not as a reporter.