Forum Post: A general answer to "Why Occupy?"

Why Occupy?

While the Occupy movement is made up of a very diverse swath of the American public, with a wide range of grievances, one universally voiced objection binds the protesters together: corporations, and moneyed interests in general, possess an unacceptable level of power over the United States government. The root of this disfunction seems to be the amount of influence money has over elections; the candidate who wins is often the candidate who is able to fundraise the most money, and generally only the wealthy are able to donate in any meaningful way. A circularity of influence in American economics results from this situation (such that government regulates business, yet business has the loudest voice in who is able to govern, and in which direction they should govern if they hope to stay in office), leading to the concerns of the wealthy being inordinately favored over the concerns of the so-called 99%. In recent history, the corporate pressure in Washington has orchestrated the deliberate deregulation of financial markets, resulting not only in the current economic depression, but in the preservation of the very system which caused the decline of the worldwide economy. The reality of this corporate influence is hidden from the public by an increasingly thin veil, made up of dogmatic, simplistic pro-capitalism rhetoric, praising the free-market as our highest ideal, centering around the convenient precept that if we leave our competitive economy alone, the outcome will be the best for everyone (an idea we are expected to take for granted). More and more, this argument resounds with the sense that the banking and business executives in charge are saying, “Do not pay attention to the changes we make nor the loopholes we exploit in the system; anything which happens within the context of the “free market” is for the highest good-- didn't you hear about the invisible hand? Simply leave this complicated business to us; the “free market system” we operate can do no wrong. Here are some products to keep you entertained- do your part for the common good, citizen, and support us. Trust us, your society is in the very best of hands. Why shouldn't you just trust us?” The doctrine of the infallibility of the free market is simply not historically supported by evidence; unchecked, the “free-market” leads to cyclic patterns of economic collapse and repair, with each new recovery coinciding with the appearance of new loopholes designed for manipulation by those doing the rebuilding. A recurrent trend is the decline of wages for the majority, the increasingly powerless bulk of the workforce, in favor of increasing each company's competitiveness and profits. Furthermore, deregulation inevitably tends to enable the rise of monopolies, at the expense of general economic growth.

The policy of corporate personhood, officially sanctioned by the recent Citizens United supreme court decision, is entirely unacceptable. “...for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us... that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.” Abraham Lincoln's conclusion to the Gettysburg Adress reverberates with the immense weight of its content; is this not the one greatest virtue of United States, that the government's power should respond to the will of the people first and foremost? Yet, in an era where corporations are actually considered people, what value can this foundational principle possibly retain? In our current political system, corporations possess far greater power than any individual person can-- have these institutions really superseded the populace as the basis of our government? If we are to take any evidence from such decisions as that following the Citizens United case, it becomes apparent that democracy by the people and for the people, the real people, is in dire peril. Following that case, Justice Stevens explained his dissenting vote thusly: "At bottom, the Court's opinion is thus a rejection of the common sense of the American people, who have recognized a need to prevent corporations from undermining self government since the founding, and who have fought against the distinctive corrupting potential of corporate electioneering since the days of Theodore Roosevelt. It is a strange time to repudiate that common sense. While American democracy is imperfect, few outside the majority of this Court would have thought its flaws included a dearth of corporate money in politics." We in the Occupy movement expect a reversal of the Citizens United decision to be a crucial point in future congressional elections.

We recognize that this situation is profoundly dangerous to society as a whole. We are united in our resolve to repair our broken system so that it works fairly for all citizens; the advantage which the wealthy have woven into our financial system is totally unacceptable, and the financial elite have shown repeatedly that they are not able to responsibly handle the inordinate societal power they wield.