Forum Post: From the Drafting Committee of the 99% Declaration
Posted 13 years ago on Oct. 15, 2011, 8:05 a.m. EST by 99declaration
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Greetings, the drafting committee of the 99% declaration will present its proposal for a plan of action at 12pm in Washington Square Park to the student General Assembly and then later to the OWS General Assembly. We believe the first step to organizing is to elect Committees of Correspondence or Executive Committees to coordinate the Occupty movement Nationwide and Worldwide. Please come out to be heard on this plan of action to organize or to propose your own.
The is the text of the declaration: https://sites.google.com/site/the99percentdeclaration/
This is the plan of action: https://sites.google.com/site/the99percentdeclaration/home/the-steps-to-non-violent-revolution
And this is the resolution: https://sites.google.com/site/the99percentdeclaration/home/resolution-to-elect-an-executive-committee
This is a good start. Much of it is dependent on the same foundation of our old government. This is not enough. We need something a lot more sophisticated. The challenges we face are not just in our government.
We will prevail?
The Revolution has started - But it has to be a smart revolution. Read “Common Sense 3.1” at ( www.revolution2.osixs.org )
The 99% Declaration got circulated at this week's Occupy Jacksonville event. In short, it took a lot of flack. So, I judge this to mean the 99% do not all see the points presented in this document as so "self evident". Let me raise just one point based on my own views.
A speaker stated that we need to look at the whole situation from a larger viewpoint. We are in this mess because "the old system doesn't work. We need to throw it out and start over again." I agree with this. And let me be specific. The thing that doesn't work is REPRESENTATION. Sure, we needed representatives 200 years ago. Why? Because every form of communication was transported by HORSE! It took weeks to send a message from Maine to Florida. That's gone! Why are we living in the past. The problem with REPRESENTATIVES, is that they concentrate TOO MUCH POWER. So, they are targets of money and power. Setting up a new General Assembly in Philadelphia is just setting the stage for this to happen all over again. It's time to GET OVER IT! We now have the technology to let EVERY CITIZEN SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES! So, let's grab that opportunity right now. THE NEXT NATION WIDE GENERAL ASSEMBLY SHOULD ALSO BE NATIONWIDE! ITS TIME FOR DIRECT DEMOCRACY.
There are 2 keys, however, to make that work.
KEY one is to create a NEW role for elected officials. We could still hold elections in the congressional districts, or any other geographic. The important point is that those "officials" would be elected for a very different purpose. They would no longer be voting. Their job would be to gather and organize information into "bills" so that the whole population can vote on it.
Key two is to change the way "bills" are constructed and voted on. In short, bills would be required to FOCUS on single issues. No riders; no earmarks. Second, there would no longer be SINGLE bills to be voted on the way it is now. Each bill would be CONSTRUCTED through a process whereby the elements of the bill are also presented to the public for "vote". The public would have to determine, by "vote": whether the element is valid for inclusion, and what the public view of the element is. That is, the vote would be more like an "opinion" tally. For example, a jobs bill could have an element like "length of work week". This is NOT a yes or no vote. It's a vote that might produce a result like: 30% 4 days, 60% 5 days, 10% 6 days. The effort of the "representatives" would then be to construct the bill to address ALL of those elements.
By the time the process is done, the constructed bill should have very high support. So the only "overall" vote would be the ability of a general national vote to accept or veto the bill. If it is vetoed, it goes back for rework.
Again, my point is, let's not repeat the mistakes of the past. Democracy needs to be redefined for our high tech, high complexity, highly competitive world. ( longer discussion at http://A3society.org - democracy tab )
Nanook
I've just reviewed your document, " The is the text of the declaration: https://sites.google.com/site/the99percentdeclaration/ " You are mixing Grievances with Demands. Wrong approach. Grievances are grievances. Demand are demands. Demands are not appropriate in a list of grievances.
Did this ever come before the GA? I think there's a lot of good here. It's my opinion that we need to harness the current energy into a national convention and really make positive change!
I think you should be considering
1) phasing out personal income taxes 2) abolishing the Federal Reserve 3) returning the power of printing our money to the people's government
we don't need an exponentially growing central government with an exponentially growing appetite for collecting taxes on individuals.
Now it's all about who we send to Phillidelphia and how they are chosen. Let's focus on that process. A Congressional district is a lot of people, even just those who support us now, which is around a fourth to a third nation wide. It may be well over half by the time we are ready to vote. It may be a lot less if the people get scared because this is such a huge thing to do. Let's hear proposals for the physical mechanisms of voting to be used to make sure each person is counted exactly once. This is a big job to do in a short time.
Excellent start, but I think #16 regarding the reinstatement of Glass-Steagall should be in the top three.
Wonderful start! Here's my early/rough draft
My platform suggestions:
*Public multiple party and campaign finance only.
*End corporate personhood.
*All wars must end. War criminals must be prosecuted.
*Defense budgets should be cut to no more than russia and chinas combined budgets. which would still make us per cap way too high, but it's a reasonable starting point. drop 80 percent of defense budgets today.
*establish single payer or tri care for all... begin at half what we spend on health care now. which would almost take us out of most expensive in the known universe. Not one socialist dime should go to a health profiteer. Not one person should suffer while healing.
*Banks must be broken up. Restore glass-steagal
*Bankruptcy protections restored for the people with massive debt write downs/ Jubilee on everything from health bills, high credit card rates, student loans to fraudulent or simply collapsed value of mortgages..
*Establish fair trade instead of promoting the lies and theft, assault on American labor and ingenuity that we all know neo liberal free trade has caused for decades. We should make our own bicycles, light bulbs, mops, brooms, ipods, and such.
*End the war on drugs and outlaw for profit prisons. (see Portugals success with this)
*Immediately begin massive infrastructure projects in various types of clean energy, while establishing high speed fiber internet to every home in the land, and mass transportation infrastructure, insulation of existing homes, make clean water the norm, etc.
*Raise SS payments/income. Lower retirement eligibility age to 60/62
*Triple the minimum wage ... which would almost make today's min wage equal to earning power of min wage in mid 1970's.
*Tax the rich like it's 1959!
*Make government secrecy tantamount to treason
I think the 99% are well represented by a wide cross-section of the people with diverse needs and wants. I think the declaration should be simple. We want to fair representation in our government (laws, programs, actions, etc.). The message is being watered-down down by long lists. I think it's simple and boils down to "representation of the 99% in our government. Maybe the house of reps should be people from the working class. People who have or had real jobs.
We have updated it again so please check it out. We have limited it to 20 points but the National General Assembly of 870 delegates must meet and decide the final list of Grievances. The drafting committee believes that the first step is to organize on the local level and then go national.