Forum Post: Movement Needs A Cohesive Message
Posted 12 years ago on Oct. 30, 2011, 3:29 p.m. EST by daveperkinsjr
(0)
from Roanoke, VA
This content is user submitted and not an official statement
Relatively quickly, the Tea Party gained political power by politicizing their movement with a few basic tenets. We need to do the same. Otherwise, the power structure will "wait us out". Money in politics is the head of the snake, the root of all corruption and the problems we have now. Politicians will not pass laws or protect us because they are paid by banks and insurance companies, and then get jobs lobbying for them. So our demands must go to the core of the issues- or it just looks like whining. Here are the "demands" 1. Real Campaign finance reform. We want politicians who will pass a reform that all campaign contributions of cash (or like kind ) must go to an election fund, controlled by an independent delegation of 100 citizens, selected randomly, like jury duty. The funds are divided equally among all candidates for the office which is open. Contributions can not be designated to a particular candidate. The parties nominate their candidates, and their campaign receives an equal amount of money for the election.Buying politicians, as it is now, is corruption by another name..."campaign contributions" 2. Term Limits: We will support candidates who support a constitutional amendment for term limits in congress. The founders didnt envision career politicians. they are what the banks and insuance companies buy. A Senator may serve 2 terms maximum, and a Congressperson may serve 3 maximum.
These two items would work toward getting the government off the banks and insurance companies payrolls- and could be supported by both Tea Party AND 99%ers.
May I suggest that the demands be tiered.
The first tier would be what would cause OWS to go home. Perhaps that would be the restart of a jobs economy but one that wouldn't reward criminality and would preserve the middle class. I would also include in the first tier bringing Wall St. criminals to justice, the nationalization of the Fed and an end to the fraud of free trade (restart American manufacturing). And of course splitting off the commercial banks that consumers and businesses depend on from the blood-sucking speculative investment banks (i.e., Glass-Steagall). The last would do more than anything else to get job creation moving.
The second tier in my suggestion would be changes needed to bring about the other tiers -- an end to computerised voting (paper only), an end to corpoRAT personhood, and publicly funded campaigns to further curb the corpoRATs. Now we have an illegitimate voting system -- they can tell us whatever they want about who won.
The third tier would be other changes needed to create a society that responds to people's needs and not corpoRAT greed and criminality. Here I'd place such items as Medicare for all, education funding, respect for the environment etc.
Obviously I can't speak for you, only those sleeping in Zucotti can do that, but I wanted to give my suggestions (I do try to make it down there 2-3 times a week, though).