Forum Post: Call for National Online Occupy Petitions

The Washington Post reported that the Google SOPA bill petition successfully collected 7 million signatures according to Google. Imagine if a similar petition was so readily available for the National Defense Authorization Act and several other leading issues of our day.

I think America's greatest hope currently is to continue to promote this Occupy Wall Street movement as a non-partisan resistance movement. However, I think Occupy should be enhanced by greater ability to administer online nationwide petitions. These petitions should call for national reforms and regular referendums, perhaps quarterly.

The primary criticism with the Occupy movement is that it lacks focus. Of course this is a blessing and a curse. While much needed principles and statements are publishes there will always be rhetoric as demonstrated by all political parties and movements. However, the 99% knows that this movement, despite being labeled as poorly targeted, is somehow critical to the future of our world.

Great care would be needed in administering a national petitioning strategy so that we don't become further polarized on individual issues such as abortion, immigration, and gun control. The intent would not be to avoid these issues. The intent would be to act when for example a paragraph contained in a terribly written piece of legislation, spanning hundreds of pages, undermines civil liberties, access to healthcare, home ownership, services for the poor and middle class, fair taxation, and so on. And act where corporate greed runs rampant because no law stands in the way.

Major issues are being swept under the rug by corporations and most media outlets because they have mastered the ability of shifting our focus and changing the subject.

I’m issuing a challenge to all the smart people running this website and similar sites to further collaborate. Please continue to leverage open source and take your online efforts to the next level, as the corporate giant Google demonstrated with the SOPA bill petition this week.