Forum Post: More on Open Letter on Occupy Endorsement of Election Boycott & Gender Parity

We are continuing the Open Letter: If we are breaking any posting rules, on behalf of half the human race, and indeed all of it, we are REvolutionary enough to break them! Previous posts on the Open Letter http://www.occupywallst.org/forum/open-letter-to-all-occupy-incl-foundersfamilies-re/ http://www.occupywallst.org/forum/open-letter-incl-founders-re-endorsing-election-bo/ http://www.occupywallst.org/forum/open-letter-to-all-and-founders-families-re-electi/

Also availabe with graphics at http://5050whatoccupyowestowomen.wordpress.com/2012/09/12/open-letter-to-occupy-women-and-men-on-election-boycott-and-gender-parity-declarations/

These issues were aired in emails to the planners of the National Gathering in Philadelphia. (check back to https://5050whatoccupyowestowomen.wordpress.com soon where excerpts from emails sent to Occupy about this will up available). Again, in Philadelphia and Simultaneously in Washington DC-Maryland, brave, globally and sacredly informed women shared truly R-evolutionary Declarations that were offered in advance of the Gathering, made available to the planners of the Gathering and could have been discussed and adopted by the entire Occupy Movement on the ground in Philadelphia, instead of only the Feminist General Assembly, which neverthless did include both women and men in susbstantial number.

Yet, not even one of these Declarations was read at the July 4th General Assembly at the Gathering, because the woman who read them at the Feminist General Assembly, (which, again, was attended by enough both women and men to be counted as a General Assembly, and indeed, Feminist General Assemblies arose in the first place because many women in the Occupy movement felt marginalized in too many General Assemblies) was given insufficient support and recognition for this brave and globally important act, and thus actually suppressed from any real active, timely attention for the larger General Assembly, by the planners and then most attendees of Occupy on the ground in Philadelphia. No one was even ever told they were being simultaneously declared by a woman occupier in Washington DC-Maryland, who was a central figure in the majority approved decision to make these Declarations for gender parity, in honor of the Independence Day period Gathering.

Also, not just a few, of those NOT in the official National gathering planning group (who, with no transparency, never even listed first names on the website), but offering input to it in conference calls, realized and communicated the need for the gathering to focus an action on the male corporate dominated conglomerated media, many of the companies which have headquarters in Philadelphia, the name of which is Greek for Sisterly and Brotherly Love, not Big Brother. (see list of Big Brothers at http://arkearthinbalance.webs.com/Media2.html including their office addresses. On a planning conference call and with follow up-email, the National Gathering Planners were specifically asked to do an action on Big Media's, to confront its failure to tell the stories of publically funded elections and equal office for women that have occurred successfully in many countries around the world, but not in the United States. (A follow up email was sent to the planning group We will soon upload a copy of this email to this website.) Yet, this input was totally ignored by the Planners of the Gatherings in Philadelphia, both with no response and no vote on it during conference calls. Follow-up emails were again sent in time for the March back from Philadelphia to New York, but were again ignored by the Planners of the March , which could have culminated in a March on Corporate Media, the fourth branch of government which is essentially controlling public understanding of the functioning of the other three branches, in NYC as a culmination of the July events, but didn't.

The situation was just as bad in the work of the Occupy Movement in Tampa and Charlotte for the RNC and DNC. The most obvious Elephant in the Living Room fact about these Conventions is that they are endorsing all male tickets, after almost 250 years of all male tickets. In addition, the races at all levels of their parties will again at best produce a gender imbalance of 16%/84%, unheard of in other countries. But with one notable and important exception, (the same brave woman who read the Declaration in Philadelphia), as far as we know, not one Occupier carried a sign that said 5050NOW, even though emails reached OccupySouth and involved organizations about this in plenty of time to remedy the situation before the nomination speeches, and on the websites promoting the event in Charlotte .
Both women and men in the Occupy Movement were complicit in this, ignoring the passionately concerned voices of Occupy women who attempted to raise the consciousness quickly by phone, in the name of billions of women who have been unrepresented for thousands of years, but with never any courtesy of a response.

The Occupy Movement has made initial strides to overcome the marginalization of women that has occurred in most decision-making, but there have been some criticism that it has not yet achieved this goal. http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2011/11/the-occupy-movements-woman-problem/248831/ and http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/nov/30/occupy-wall-street-women-voices

A similar pattern occurred in the Chicago May Day protests, which again, were protests, which unlike Tahrir, Iceland's Kitchenware Revolution, and every real Revolution, made no attempt to call for a new Constitution, and ask the present government to resign if it didn't meet public demands. The May Day protests, failed to connect that the day falls on Beltane, the ancient May Day Holiday highlighting gender mutuality of a Goddess and God, and although they dealt with labor issues - since May Day is International Labor Day - did not include the now well known gender balanced approach to economics that includes women's unpaid work, home and community activity of both women and men in a balance of love and work , and the more gender balanced Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genuine_progress_indicator#The_components_of_GPI, with a standard for gender representation, rather than the man-only-made Gross Domestic Product Paradigm (GDP)(see http://soularsolar.webs.com/aboutgendertender.html

Announcement of the Gender Parity Declarations and why they are so important was sent by emails to Occupy Wall Street in advance of 911, with the subject indicating it was time sensitive, and stressing the relationship of gender parity to preventing all variety of 911 emergencies that grow out of decisions made by mostly one gender. It emphasized the timeliness of posting it on the Main Announcement Section on 911. It described the Gender Parity Declarations as one of the most important achievements of the Occupy Movement, and we thought the Press Department would do a press release on it. They still can. NOW.

When it was apparent that these were not included in the Main Announcements, in honor of the meaning of 911, we took the step of publishing the announcement at http://www.occupywallst.org/forum/women-of-occupy-declare-gender-parity-an-overdue-h/ But in understanding of the prima facie and self-evident central importance of this issue to people of justice and peace, let it be our public understanding that the essential call for gender parity, and change to economic paradigms that count the paid and unpaid work of all people, especially women, and an end to all discrimination against women, via a non-violent Revolution, will appear on the Occupy Wall St Website today, and be added to the section which describes the Tahrir Revolution to one that includes not only the technique of non-violence, but includes a call for this time full gender representation, and boycott of on obviously 1% staged "election".

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