Forum Post: Current official demand list and my reaction: care to give yours?
Posted 13 years ago on Sept. 28, 2011, 7:56 p.m. EST by npowell85
(249)
from Montana City, Mt
This content is user submitted and not an official statement
13 Prosecutions of the guilty: You offer no evidence or names. Are we to just have a witch hunt of the rich people and assume they did something because they have lots of money?
12 Rights of victims must take precedent in courts: No specific example have been given, and even if they did take you seriously and want to enact these changes, where are we to get the money to retro-fit every courtroom in the US with recording and dubbing equipment? You offer no solution to pay for the entitlements you request.
11 The United States must sign and ratify all human rights agreements with all other countries: Thats not asking much, just for global consensus. No big deal, they can knock that out next week. Also, the description and the title don't ask for the same thing so I don't know which one to argue...
10 Office of the Citizen: You want to create a giant new bureaucracy that is to independently investigate every accusation of local corruption. How do you pay for it? You accuse 60% of police of falsifying police reports and provide no evidence to back it up. And what does that have to do with Wall Street?
9 Equal rights for women: Women have equal rights now. You again offer nothing specific to base your claims on. Women's rights activists have been beating that drum for 200 years. If there is a problem you are not going to fix it by demanding it from this government, and you definitely aren't going to fix it by demanding it from Wall Street.
8 National Repeal of Capital Punishment: Has nothing to do with Wall Street or the financial meltdown. Can we please try and stay on topic?
7 Free Education Kindergarten Through College: You already have free education K-12 and theres no way to pay for every bodies college. Best we can do is guarantee that everyone will have the ability to get a government backed loan to go, and give them some extra cash to help with books, housing, and food. Oh yeah... we do.
6 End the War on Drugs: Great Idea! would save the country lots of money and create new tax revenue and jobs, and probably have more success driving down addiction rates than the drug war does. But, again, this is off topic and will likely drive away many potential supporters of your cause who agree with changing financial inequality but disagree with drug reform. Remember, not everybody is a hippie, but everybody is affected by the financial crisis.
5 Forgive Student Loan Debt and re construct the education system: You offer no specific way to pay for all the debt of the students or ideas for improving schools. The government is just suppose to take it upon itself to see that this is done to your satisfaction? How do we pay the massive student loan debt that the people currently have? That money has to come from somewhere. You are advocating that we take your student loan debt and spread it around to everybody then? So after I've paid off my student loans and my wife's, you want me to pay yours too? Thats not fair.
4 Restructure Campaign Finance Legislation: Very important for the future success of our country. But remove the word "fuck" from your vocabulary while talking about the changes we need to improve our collective lives. Seriously? Who wrote this stuff?
3 Forced Acquisition of the Federal Reserve for $1Billion USD by the US Congress: This doesn't fix the problem. The FED being private is not the issue. The issue is we have a debt based monetary system rather than a fiat one. Do some checking, I'm sure you will agree.
2 Repeal of the Patriot Act: Individual liberties are very important and this piece of legislation has set us further back than anything the government has done in recent times. However, it is not the fault of Wall Street, and it does not speak to the current problem. PLEASE PLEASE stay on topic
1 Eliminate Corporate Rights as Persons: This is what we need to be talking about. Only this. Start small and you could possibly make some kind of measurable progress.
Here's a different list of proposed demands I put together using input from people around the forum: https://occupywallst.org/forum/proposed-list-of-demands-please-help-editadd-so-th/
i agree mostly, and for your thread fer sure, but we need to talk about all of that.. your idea of focus is good, and you are leading them to focus very well here... but over all.. we do need to address ALL of the issues strongly. I agree with a laserbeam like focus on the core issues. I don't agree with excluding crucial sub issues. number 5; we need to start talking about REAL education reform, and defining what that is via science, because what we have now is a programming humanabots con scam. That is highly relevant and ironically the core reason why there is a rift between me and the protesters; they are ignorant. The only solution to this is for everyone to take a new level of personal education very seriously and do that very immediately and socially en masse.
I agree that most of these are all legitimate social issues, but some of them... 5, 7, 8, 10, 11... these are issues so complex that we have to have a real working democracy to expect and type of progress on them. They will each take a huge effort to take them on and some are just outright silly. A national protest to DEMAND video recorded court proceedings with copies handed out at the close of the day... come on... we are talking about social inequality of astronomical proportions and this is what people are spending their time and thoughtfulness worrying and debating about...
yes, each of them represents thousands of hours of homework time and everyones trying to be lazy about this. that does not mean we should not tackle the problems, it means we need 10 thousand people to split that workload and then do it- immediately.
as to issue 5, my objection is that the entire university system would have to be redone if it were made public, we simply couldn't afford to pay for everyone's college. And forgiving student loan debt? I think its a novel idea but to be honest, I have worked my ass off to put my wife through college and if everybody else ended up with a free ride, I would be pretty disenchanted
I don't agree it couldn't be paid for. I think it could. But i think any kind of financial issue is not the thing to focus on. A modern teaching methodology would give high school graduates the equivalent of what now is 2 or 3 phds. Lets start at the true core of the issue itself where it lives. The "educational" system is a Zombot Borg Hive Machine. Education reform is about how we teach kids, not about the financial situations around that. In the end i do think we need to make education free to any level... but thats not an immediate concern half as important as ending corporate personhood or recognizing what modern teaching methods are compared to the 200 years archaic nonsense thats actually going on in schools. I don't want a college degree of dumbled down control and mental cages. At my expertise level i read textbooks and spot propaganda warfare. Thats sick, esp at the advanced levels.
if we are talking about K-12 reform I am all for it. But the point where these college or just out of college age people involved in the protest are talking about free college and relief from student loan debt, it starts to take on a less philanthropic meaning.
lets set this back as a priority to 5 or 10 years from now. Lets focus on k-12 reform only then will we even have a glimpse of what the new educational ecology will look like.
I actually have a daughter who is in kindergarten now, and she is very bright. She can already read and do simple math up to 30 or so. Her public school put out a letter to parents at the beginning of the year. The letter stated that by the END of the year all the children would surely be able to read. So I went into the principle and said, now wait, my daughter can already read, in fact she can already do all the things listed on this sheet outlining the curriculum for the year. Don't you think we should consider moving her up to 1st grade so she remains challenged? And they said they have to wait for the results of a standardized test that will be conducted in November. So she has to wait half the year to be evaluated to confirm what I already have told them. So we spent thousands (and I'm not rich) on two years of preschool and countless hours of teaching at home to prepare her for school and now we have to continue to teach her at home because the school won't do it. So I guess what my rant is driving at is, I'm totally on board with school reform. But even with this being an issue so close to my own heart, I still would say it detracts from the core message, and while it is very, very important, I am not convinced that dividing our focus is what is best for the movement. but I welcome arguments to the contrary.
the reason why is simple. the core problem with the movement right now is all the intellectual work it hasn't done. all of that missing homework. All of that assorted dumble down programming. until the population learns that its been dumbled down everyone thinks they are plenty smart and that their mere opinion has merit. This is a core issue because if we don't face it, its where and how we fall down. its a peripheral issue compared to the other much more central focus issues, fer sure.
None of this can even be considered, until you FIRST force the enactment of 2 key pieces of legislation:
1) reverse the SCOTUS decision of the Citizens United case. 2) reinstate the Glass-Steagall Act, to its full and former status, and KEEP it in place via constitutional measure.
Once these two things are accomplished, you begin the domino effect of 30+ years of bad policy falling under extreme scrutiny. You shield the economy from further damage while other matters are addressed, AND, you begin setting gears in motion for serious campaign reform, at every level of government.
The upside of these 2 simple demands, is that they open the door for further litigation in a broad range of current law, while focusing on a real and tangible goal, without clouding everything into some massive list that will not likely be taken seriously in the short term.
I watched Michael Moore's interview with Lawrence O'Donnell tonight, and I was a bit surprised at his response to Lawrence's question about protester motive. Essentially, it confirmed my suspicion that this action has zero focus, and just as little understanding of how our political system actually works, even at the very basic level.
Thankfully, October 6th is mere days away. And the action that will take place there will seize control of the currently ill-conceived protest on Wall Street. People know what the problems are. They don't need protesters (who are protesting in the wrong place to affect change anyway) muddling things together into some illusory "mega-issue" that no one can actively respond to, because they can't determine a specific issue to latch onto and get fully behind.
The action in Washington WILL change that. And THAT will be what brings everyone together. Why? Because people will learn quickly that there is a natural order to things, and that you MUST have a "short-list" of issues to get behind, and how THAT small list of issues further relates to what's most important to each person individually.
The Wall Street protest (and the other smaller actions across the country) has heightened awareness. And on October 6th, the Washington protest will focus it where it belongs:
On Capitol Hill in Washington.
Check it out: http://october2011.org/frontpage
Thanks for your well thought out input... I agree that this type of message is what would make the difference, though my approach would be slightly different as I have stated repeatedly...
As to the protest in DC I truly hope that enough people are able to attend that it makes a big impact on the current system. Long drive for me, but I'm trying to figure it out...
you are sooo right on i hope everyone listens to this thoughtfully.
What about our voting process? H. J. RES. 36 is a bill that was introduced in house in Feb 2011. It states "Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States to abolish the Electoral College and provide for the direct election of the President and Vice President by the popular vote of all citizens of the United States regardless of place of residence."
important. it is a step toward direct democracy, and therefore individual freedom. But in my opinion, it doesn't have a place in this movement
These are these official OWS demands being voted on. How do people feel about them?
This is the link:
http://coupmedia.org/occupywallstreet/occupy-wall-street-official-demands-2009
These are the demands:
Eliminate Corporate Rights as Persons
Revise the intrepretation of the famous 1886 case where the U.S. Supreme Court supposedly ruled that corporations are "persons" having the same rights as human beings based on the 14th Amendment, which was intended to protect the rights of former slaves. As most lawyers know, the Supreme Court made no such decision. In the case in question - Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company, the court itself never rules on personhood. A court reporter by the name of J.C. Bancroft Davis (a former railroad president) snuck that "ruling" into the books.
What most people don't know is that after the above-mentioned 1886 decision, artificial persons were held to have exactly the same legal rights as we natural folk. (Not to mention the clear advantages corporations enjoy: they can be in several places at once, for instance, and at least in theory they're immortal.) Up until the New Deal, many laws regulating corporations were struck down under the "equal protection" clause of the 14th Amendment--in fact, that clause was invoked far more often on behalf of corporations than former slaves. Although the doctrine of personhood has been weakened since, even now lawyers argue that an attempt to sue a corporation for lying is an unconstitutional infringement on its First Amendment right to free speech. ( Nike v. Kasky.)
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized." — Fourth Amendment to the Constitution Forty-five days after 9/11, Congress passed the USA PATRIOT Act without reading it. This new law was supposed to protect you from terrorism, but it has really left you unprotected against lawless federal agents. The Patriot Act contains numerous violations of the Fourth Amendment. It gives federal agents vast new powers that have been abused to investigate innocent Americans. Vote Here
No Congress, no President has been strong enough to stand up to the foreign-controlled Federal Reserve Bank. Yet there is a catch - one that President Kennedy recognized before he was slain - the original deal in 1913 creating the Federal Reserve Bank had a simple backout clause. The investors loaned the United States Government $1 billion. And the backout clause allows the United States to buy out the system for that $1 billion. If the Federal Reserve Bank were demolished and the Congress of the United States took control of the currency, as required in the Constitution, the National Debt would virtually end overnight, and the need for more taxes and even the income tax, itself. Thomas Jefferson was concise in his early warning to the American nation, "If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issuance of their currency, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all their property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered." Article I, Section 8, Clause 5, of the United States Constitution provides that Congress shall have the power to coin money and regulate the value thereof and of any foreign coins. But that is not the case. The United States government has no power to issue money, control the flow of money, or to even distribute it - that belongs to a private corporation registered in the State of Delaware - the Federal Reserve Bank. Learn More about How Congress has the Right to Take control over the Federal Reserve Here: How to Gain Control over the Federal Reserve
Proposal One: Ban corporate donations to political campaigns while limiting individual campaign donations to $100. Background:Corporations in the U.S. exercise an inordinate amount of influence over the government. The amount of corporate money in elections makes it virtually impossible for people want to serve the public’s interests to be viable candidates. Lowering the individual maximum donation to $100 ensures that the rich won\'t simply buy elections. This demand is offered in order to eliminate the rich’s dominance of elections and subsequent effect on public and foreign policy. America has never had a popular democracy. It began as a country controlled by a handful of white land-owning men. Throughout its history, gains were made in achieving some level of democracy to American citizens. The age of rule by an elite 1% (a tiny minority) can be forced to an end soon.The majority of the American population sees the U.S. as a reasonably fair country and as a popular democracy. This demand challenges that assertion. America is a corporate democracy and it will be eye-opening to many people to witness how undemocratically big business and their political flunkies will fight to deny popular democracy even though those are the values that the elites have professed for so long. This demand forces them to put up or shut up on their fucking principles. The public will support restructuring of campaign finance as the tiny minority has recently collapsed the economy, wasted resources, and destroyed millions of lives in it pursuit of its wars for its own narrow interest. In the past they have been able to point to relatively high wages, a relatively high standard of living, and increasing growth (regardless of the reason) as reasons to uphold the status quo, but these conditions are deteriorating and people are again searching for a remedy. Taking away the tiny majority’s ability to buy every election will usher in popular democracy and with that new policies that may affect all issues and grievances moving forward.</span></p> more donations to a single person that is seeking or has a position in congress that exceeds $5,000 (five thousand) dollars within the time period of 1 (one) year. And no donations exceeding $25,000 (twenty-five thousand) to a single group, PAC, or super PAC within the time span of 18 (eighteen) months. Also, when a donation is made the persons employer must be listed. And if 25% (twenty-five) of all employees of the stated company donate to the same person or group then the company will stand to be investigated as to whether it is giving its employees the money and</p>
All members of all governments, Federal, state or local, must remain free of influence from outside factors. Lobbyists must remain at arm's length and not be allowed in any way to provide free meals, trips or gifts of any kind to any politician. All contact must be in written form to prevent influence peddling.
Redraft education financing legislation. Lower educational expenses for students instead of raising tuition costs. Pull money form the "WAR" system to refund education and continuing education.
The war on drugs has been going on for more than three decades. Today, nearly 500,000 Americans are imprisoned on drug charges. In 1980 the number was 50,000. Last year $40 billion in taxpayer dollars were spent in fighting the war on drugs. As a result of the incarceration obsession, the United States operates the largest prison system on the planet, and the U.S. nonviolent prisoner population is larger than the combined populations of Wyoming and Alaska. Try to imagine the Drug Enforcement Administration erecting razor wire barricades around two states to control crime and you’ll get the picture. According to the U.S. Dept of Justice, the number of offenders under age 18 imprisoned for drug offenses increased twelvefold from 1985 to 1997. The group most affected by this propensity for incarceration is African-Americans. From 1985 to 1997, the percentage of African-American young people put in prison increased from 53 to 62 percent. Today, 89 percent of police departments have paramilitary units, and 46 percent have been trained by active duty armed forces. The most common use of paramilitary units is serving drug-related search warrants, which usually involve no-knock entries into private homes. Because this is a Movement by the People and For the People, We are accepting proposals below in the Comments Section to be added to this formal list of Demands. Our Legal team will review and formalize those that are selected by a vote of 2/3 majority by the movement. Please remember you are only voting to include the available Demands into the Formal Demands Document
Currently Accepting proposals for actual plan
Currently Accepting proposals for actual plan
Click Here to Vote to Include in Demands
Judge Antone Scailia has stated, and the Supreme Court has reinforced on numerous occasions, that women, by the virtue of the fact that the founding fathers did not specifically use the terms woman, women or female in the Constitution, are not recognized as having the same rights as men. In a statement last year in Oregon, Judge Scailia specifically addressed this issue and stated that if the founding fathers wanted it, they would have included women in the Constitution. We want equal rights to men, including equal pay, equal benefits and equal standing under all laws and in all courtrooms where it has been proven in study after study, women are regularly denied their rights. This does not have to be an issue that requires a Constitutional Amendment, this can and should be ruled on immediately by SCOTUS and deemed to be the law of the land which may not be revoked or overturned by order of the court. Further, there must be an Amendment to the Constitution insuring these rights and all states must also include these rights in state constitutions.
Corruption begins at the local level. The FBI and the DOJ refuse to investigate matters of local corruption when it is their sworn duty of the Federal government. State and local governments work hand in hand thwarting any investigations of corruption, and do not investigate. Courts must be investigated for the evidence of local corruption, including drug dealing, protection of criminals, etc. It has been shown that 60% of police readily falsify police reports at the behest of higher ups. Repeated calls, filings in writing, and personal visits produce no investigation, even when evidence is given to them. Where there have been investigations, it almost always produces a guilty verdict, but those investigations are few and far between and usually limited to situations where those peddling their influence did not share with others in slush funds. Most of the time it is the public who gathers the evidence leading to prosecution, not the FBI or DOJ. We want complete investigations of all allegations of corruption, including those allegations at local and state level. No citizen should be placed in the dangerous situation of having to investigate crimes and collect evidence. That is the job of the government and one it does not do. The office of the citizen must be fully funded before funds may be allocated for any department supporting war, engaging in war or spying, either internally or externally.
Human rights should be the right of everyone, inside and outside our borders. When the US knowingly engages in, or allows others to engage in torture, that is a violation of everyone's human rights, not just the target. We want prosecutions for torture, not only of government officials, but those who commit this heinous crime on others within the US.
Courts in the US not only allow, but expect that human rights will be violated in certain types of cases. Mental torture is the tool of many sleazy attorneys who intimidate both victims and witnesses. This must end now and the rights of the victim upheld. We want all Bar Associations investigated and the hold they have on judicial nominees removed. All judges should hold bench for limited terms and must be subject to ongoing judicial review and all hearings involving judicial reviews must be held in public to insure that human rights as well as Constitutional rights have not violated. Judicial immunity must be removed, or at best, limited. Victim blaming must be limited and strictly investigated before it can be used as a defense. Rape kits must be provided at no cost to victims claiming rape and any police officer who does not photograph all crime scenes shall be deemed incompetent to act as an officer of the law and shall be removed from duty without possibility of reinstatement in any police department in the country. Falsified police reports shall also result in immediate removal and barring from any future law enforcement position. All court rooms must insure that all proceedings are videotaped and that video tapes of all proceedings are given to all plaintiffs, their attorneys, all defendants and their attorneys within at the end of each hearing and without delay and prior to leaving the courtroom. Videotapes of the judges, to include their desk tops and computer screens, must also be made available.
5.Restitution for previous wrongdoing by courts and police. Restitution by the US government of property of victims of violence seized by the courts must be made at 100% of value on the date victimization first occurred plus a fine of not less than `100% of that value be imposed on both the court ordering the property removal and the person who benefited from that removal. All courts must furnish the cases and this restitution is retroactive for the lifetime of the court. Courts are given no more than 5 business days to produce all files. Any file not produced or shown to have been tampered with will result in immediate removal from office or employment of any person who had direct contact with that file.
We want indictments and prosecutions of all crimes committed by banks, brokerage firms and insurance companies. We want a clear message sent to the entire financial industry, this will no longer be tolerated. All financial industry executives who had even the remotest of connection to the collapse of our system, must be prosecuted.
Those who are or have been involved in torture, whithersoever dispersed around the globe, weather personally or directing it's use, must be prosecuted for their crimes.
Great ideas here! Add them to what GandhiMindset is compiling; and you are right that Wall Street cannot do a DAMN thing to resolve these issue. It is all about Washington D.C. and what they are letting the Financial sector get away with. Add LIMITED TERMS to Washington Bureaucrats too. No more lifelong terms for ANYONE in Washington D.C. Items 1, 2 & 3 on your list are CRUCIAL to begin these discussions. Good job.
patriot, these are not my demands. They are the official OWS demands. The responses to them are mine.
OK. I get it. It's a good start. Wow. I hope you guys are getting enough sleep... and enough to eat. This is painstaking work.
Could you give a link to the list of demands? It seems like most of these would be better left for other movements to take on. By becoming this spread out it dilutes the effectiveness of the message and purpose of the movement.
see above
women do not have equal rights now. You think so. try being a woman.
I agree that there is a clear issue with compensation inequality and maybe some social prejudices but as far as things that a government could realistically impact, I think we have done pretty well in making sure there are equal rights. What are some specific examples of how you feel women are not treated equally in the US?
Pay inequality. Job access inequality. Still lots of male businessmen and women relegated to secretaries. Still male centered system. Still a glass ceiling for most women. Exceptional women crack through it, but that takes being 3 times better than any of her colleagues and she still won't get as far as a male would have. Republican assaults on assorted womens problems and issues from abortion to single mother hood. The list goes on and on and on. The "Womens movement" was infiltrated and subjugated by the capitalist system to double its slave pool. The end.
Ill concede to most of these points, but to abortion; I am not picking either side, but rather asserting that the debate has become less about women's rights and more about the perceived rights of the unborn. It's a very difficult and complex moral question that I think each person has to wrestle with themselves. But I could see an argument being made that as it is a moral question at this point, it should be left to the individual and not to any governmental authority. To be honest, it is hard to see these other issues as a man, to me it seems that women don't have as hard a time as you put it, but again, I've never been in the position so I'm not going to argue with you.
abortion is a simple simple issue really. I want to end all abortions. to do that we must actually deal with the assorted root causes of abortions, the first order of which is poverty and the second failed contraception. This is a wedge issue and its a control freak fascist evil game to try to deal with the issue the wrong end by trying to legislate the legality of abortion itself. The TRUE solution is outside of BOTH camps and cares not one whit for the organized stupid propaganda nonsense. Of course abortion is a tragedy and of course we should do everything socially possible to prevent it. And yet the entirety of the rest of republican stupid evil is the rest of what keeps everyone poor and unable to access contraception.
As I said before, ever since the CIA killed JFK (Gerald Ford was on Warren Commission, Ronald Reagan was on the Rockefeller Commission on CIA Activities in the US, which whitewashed CIA involvement, Bush Sr. was head of CIA) . . . all presidents were selected by the plutocrats and corporations found loopholes in the laws to fund elections. Ending corporate personhood will change little or nothing. ABOLISH MONEY!
Interesting. People who have supposedly traveled into the 'future' say that 150 years from now there is no such thing as MONEY.
Many famous ppl believed in eliminating money. Edward Bellamy wrote a novel called "Looking Backwards" around 1880. The book was very popular and was a part of the Populist party agenda.
http://666ismoney.com/MoneyQuotes.html