OccupyWallStreet: Theme Song

We at The Confluence have always said that if you are not living off your investments, you are working class, regardless of your education, profession or delusions of grandeur. Tea Partiers amuse me when they pick on the next level down, as if the life of a Tea Partier counts to the bonus class. Tea Partiers don’t mean squat to them. They’re just useful idiots that distract the public while the bonus class plunders at will. If you are a Tea Partier, here’s news for you: The top 1% think YOU are a parasite who doesn’t deserve respect or a decent working wage. Yep, even if you are a hard working American, like I was until recently, you are just a ungrateful leech to them, sucking off their largess. They could replace you with somebody in China. And if the Chinese get uppity, there’s always Bangladesh.

But this message seems to get lost on the Tea Partiers. Oh, I understand how angry you are. But you are directing your anger in the wrong damn direction. You can’t get anything out of the poor because they don’t have anything. You need to start looking to the top of the food chain or you’re just wasting everyone’s time.

Sure, there will be people who abuse the system. Sure, everyone has a brother-in-law that should be out on his ass. Everyone knows a neighbor who visits the doctor a little too often. But there are also plenty of people who don’t earn the money they party with in the Hamptons. They fly to places we can only dream about on private jets that are paid for with your 401K management fees. And they think they are so much smarter than you because they got a job on Wall Street, eating what they kill and pocketing the cash, while YOU toil away day after day, year after year, in a job whose returns are diminishing at an ever increasing rate. You’ll never catch them doing your kind of work for the money you make. You might be a teacher or a firefighter or an accountant or a drug designer for oncology chemotherapy. Your worth, as a person and your contribution to society mean nothing to them. They are programmed and rewarded for one thing and one thing only: to make money no matter what.

The good news is that they can only buy ads, they cannot buy your votes (unless you’re a member of Congress or a superdelegate to the DNC). And the votes of the 99% swamp the votes of the 1%.

If you don’t like the way corporations are running things, don’t blame the corporations, blame the rulemakers and

Vote. Them. Out.

And now, for a musical interlude:

OccupyWallStreet: Declaration of the Occupation of New York City

This is the Declaration of the General Assembly of the Occupation of New York City aka OccupyWallStreet.  I’m going to assume that the writers want this disseminated so here’s a big chunk.  As declarations go, this one follows the classic in many respects and it’s pretty straightforward without sounding like it was drafted by committee.

 

 

Declaration of the Occupation of New York City

Posted on September 30, 2011 by NYCGA

THIS DOCUMENT WAS ACCEPTED BY THE NYC GENERAL ASSEMBLY ON SEPTEMBER 29, 2011

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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 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, who are responsible for 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 or provide relief in order to protect investments that have already turned a substantial 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. 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. *

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!

*These grievances are not all-inclusive.

OccupyWallStreet: What they need

I was watching the LiveStream a couple of minutes ago before it got cut off.  Not sure if the bad transmission is due to jammed transmissions or whether it’s just the nature of the absolutely beyond crappy cell reception that is a common feature of New York City.  You’d think that in a city like New York, the technology would be the best and most optimized in the world, but you would be wrong.  It’s always been bad.  Don’t even try to take an old Tom-Tom to NYC.  The sucker can hardly ever find a satellite signal, which just goes to show how far behind we are as a nation and how little we have invested in infrastructure.  Where was I?

Oh, yeah.

So, Lorenzo(?) gave a bit of an update on the OccupyWallStreet movement.  He said that there are still places to bed down in Zuccotti Park if anyone is so inclined to visit there.  He said it gets cold and for those of you who aren’t familiar with NYC’s idiosyncracies, you can sleep in Zuccotti park but you are forbidden to put up any sheltering structures.  So, no tents, tarps, lean-tos or anything of that nature.  If it is October and it’s chilly, windy and raining, well, you’ll just get soaked through to the skin and cold.  This differs from what occupiers in other cities are experiencing.  Lorenzo says that campers are cold at night and would really appreciate donations of sweatshirts.  Lorenzo says that Wednesday is going to be a big day.

Also, they have a donations page you can visit.  They seem to be big fans of vegetarian paninis.  You can find a link to the donations page here:

DONATE

OccupyWallStreet: Adopt the 12 Word Platform

Jobs for Everyone

Tax the Rich

Medicare for All

End the Wars

Lather, rinse, repeat.

Spread the word.

Hey! OccupyWallStreet {{HINT! HINT!}}

You need to get this dude to play some music for you:

I’ll betcha if you ask real nice…