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Forum Post: Keep your Eyes on the Prize - #1 Goal of protests should be to get the money out of our politics!!!

Posted 12 years ago on Oct. 28, 2011, 3:52 p.m. EST by LSN45 (535)
This content is user submitted and not an official statement

The majority of Americans want to see less influence from corporations and other special interests (including unions) in our politics. The #1 goal of OWS, first and foremost, should be bringing this about. Simply addressing the symptoms, while it might bring temporary relief, will not cure the problem. Right now both the right and the left our bought and paid for by corporations and special interests through our current system of legalized bribery (campaign donations) and paid lobbying.

We need real, loop-hole free CAMPAIGN FINANCE REFORM!!!

We need reestablish a the rights of flesh and blood American's over the rights of corporations!!!

We need to look at a system of publicly funding our campaigns so that real Americans, and not only the privileged can attain public office!!!

This should be THE demand and direction of the protest if we ever want our children to live in a country where there vote matters.

Once the corrupting influence is out, then Americans can truly decide what reforms they want and how the government should work. The question is not do we need more or less government - it should be what do we need to do to have the most effective government we can (America should have the most effective government, and the people should be deciding it, not multinational corporations with boards of directors full of foreigners).

Get the money and corruption out first and the rest will follow!!!!

15 Comments

15 Comments


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[-] 2 points by hollatchaboy (55) 12 years ago

you said it bro, enough with this wide net of psuedo-issues, the real shit is ending the influence big money has over politics. All the rest is just clutter.

[-] 1 points by LSN45 (535) 12 years ago

If the protests truly adopted this as their rallying cry and repeated it load and clear for everyone to hear I think real change would happen. I would love to see the psudo-news stations a talk radio folks try to spin it. If we don't choke off the supply and address the real problem - corruption/bribery in our political system - the chance of having other meaningful, lasting reform is almost zero. Explain it to those you come into contact with. Almost everyone I talk to about it agrees - even those who ignorantly made fun of the protests.

[-] 2 points by stanklem28 (81) 12 years ago

Get the money out of politics, and into the middle class.

[-] 2 points by CorporationNotPerson (129) 12 years ago

This will require ending corporate person-hood. Support the Human Worth Amendment. Learn more at: http://occupywallst.org/forum/human-worth-amendment/

[-] 2 points by LSN45 (535) 12 years ago

You are right - more and more people are catching on to this. I almost fell off my chair when I first heard the news on the "citizens united" ruling months ago. I could not believe it. If we ever want our children to live in a country where there vote actually means something we need to reestablish the rights of flesh and blood U.S. Citizens over corporations. To think that government created entities who's sole purpose is to make profit and shield personal liability should be treated on the same level insane. A real recipe for disaster as we have seen. It needs to be corrected!!! Spread the word!!!

[-] 2 points by CorporationNotPerson (129) 12 years ago

We are in complete agreement!

[-] 1 points by number2 (914) 12 years ago

all sides should be able to agree on that.

[-] 1 points by LSN45 (535) 12 years ago

And that is what we need -something constructive that the American people as a whole are behind. Once the system is fixed people can argue about the silly details.

[-] 1 points by MattLHolck (16833) from San Diego, CA 12 years ago

money can be rooted from politics by creating a publicly verifiable voting system

[-] 1 points by monjon22 (508) 12 years ago

Once money is out of politics, everything else will follow. We cannot have those who write the laws and regulations in the pockets of the elites.

[-] 1 points by LSN45 (535) 12 years ago

Exactly! Even after the campaign process is reformed it will probably take years for the current set of "corporate lap dog" politicians to die off (literally - more strict term limits are needed but that's one of the reforms that will finally become possible once the money is out). Just think about it - having elected officials that actually represent the people. REAL statesmen, not the children of elite/monied families that have been marketed to us like a new box of detergent.

[-] 1 points by gawdoftruth (3698) from Santa Barbara, CA 12 years ago

thats not the number one prize. the number one prize has to be to end the corporate oligarchy, just removing money form politics will be both pointless and useless if you do that and the oligarchs remain in power.

we need a third party and we need an article 5 convention, both of which as main points make "getting money out of politics " look like a peripheral detail.

A third detail would be actually bothering to have an information revolution.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPR3GlpQQJA

I have been active here since the very beginning, and since the very beginning I have been trying to make some core points. These points clearly have not been digested or fully understood by the mob, and so I'm going to try to make a further attempt here again.

  1. Merely protesting in the streets will not bring change. In fact merely protesting in the streets is in fact a means to the end of avoiding the real work of a revolution, which consists of the evolutionary solutions, answers, problem solving process, and new political alignment we create.
  2. This forum is absolutely disorganized. It won't be read by most people and it won't and can't function as a core organizational system.
  3. Back at the very start of this, I petitioned the admin to add multiple sub forums and a wiki. Multiple sub forums were promised but have never arrived. I think that this tells us that the intention actually of this forum is message control and containment. The entire purpose really of this forum has always been to keep us spinning in disorganization. We are hanging out on a forum that expressly exists to actually keep us confused and disorganized.
  4. The real work of a revolution isn't going to happen on forums, it needs to happen in a much more organized fashion using collaborative software.
  5. The assorted other details about how to collaborate, how to work open source direct democracy, how to focus in on science instead of isms, how to become hyper rational about this, are details which are essential and crucial, without which we can predict the movement to fail.
  6. Technically speaking we are not 99 percent, we are one tenth of one percent attempting to represent the 99 percent. Our core mission must be to communicate to and with the 99 percent, and get them to join us. This forum will not accomplish that and neither will any of the other main websites.
  7. You can follow other people out to other wikis and other websites, where they will try to get you to get involved with what they want and their program, but frankly speaking, there is no other website and no other operation out there which understands the complexities involved with meaningful organization. In short, everyones being led to get involved here there and everywhere else, scattering the movement in directions which ultimately do not gain us critical mass, criticial momentum, or critical systemic lucidity.
  8. I have managed to get a wiki put up and have already put on that wiki evolutionary details which make it more organized than anything else. I can't do this alone. There are 10 or so wikis now out there, most of which were created in response to my pleas for a wiki, and several of which are in domains owned and operated by some corporation, (wikia, etc) And which we can thus assume will simply be closed, shut down, or deleted if they become useful to the movement.
  9. Probably at least half of the invites you have to go participate at some other site are people who are scamming everyone to waste time and energy, distort the movement, co opt it, and etc. When you walk off into a closet ask yourself how you know that the closet isn't created by some fed, or by some republican, or by some democrat, in order to sway things in their direction.
  10. The only meaningful strategic option we have for real change in this country is to create a new third party, and take every political office in this country.
  11. Once that is done, we can have an article 5 convention. If we have an article 5 convention before getting rid of the oligachs, that just opens the genie from the bottle for them to abuse that process with their corruption and evil.

For these reasons, I beg of you to please immediately join me on the wiki. We need to have all of these details and all of these ideas put together in an organized fashion, rather than posted in a long scrawl which will never be read.

http://occupythiswiki.org/wiki/THE_99%25_POLITICAL_PARTY

http://occupythiswiki.org/wiki/Main_Page

http://www.followthemoney.org/?gclid=CMbY87bB-qsCFUPt7Qod9HE8mQ

http://maplight.org/us-congress/guide/data/money?9gtype=search&9gkw=list%20of%20campaign%20donations&9gad=6213192521.1&9gag=1786513361&gclid=CP61oYbB-qsCFQFZ7AodcTF0jw

http://www.opensecrets.org/

http://occupywallst.org/forum/our-new-wiki/

http://occupywallst.org/forum/non-violence-evolution-by-paradigm-shift/

[-] 2 points by LSN45 (535) 12 years ago

We are saying the same thing - the whole point of getting rid of the money and legalized bribery is to get rid of the corporate and special interest influence in our politics.

[-] 1 points by gawdoftruth (3698) from Santa Barbara, CA 12 years ago

yes. but thats more complicated than simple laser beam focus on one thing.