Forum Post: Occupy Wall Street and 'We the People'

https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions

‘We the People’ appeared online September 22, 2011. It allows anyone to submit a petition online for any proposal they would like. The petition must privately earn 150 online signatures before it is publicly viewable on the website. When ‘We the People’ debuted, if a petition received 5,000 signatures within 30 days of that petition appearing, the White House said they would publicly respond to that petition. As of October 3, 2011, the White House has increased the petition threshold to 25,000 signatures within 30 days.

I think it's some kind of cosmic serendipity that Occupy Wall Street and We the People happened to spring up within days of each other. I think everyone who aligns themselves with the Occupy Wall Street movement could further the cause by joining We the People and voting for petitions they support, and encourage as many people as possible to participate. Occupy Wall St on Facebook already has about 90,000 members, many of them extremely active. It should be easy for us to get approval for petitions month after month, forcing the White House to acknowledge our voices each time. Sure, they could dismiss our petitions, but every time petition signers see their proposal was ignored, those signers will feel slighted and even more energized to raise awareness to their cause.

If enough OWS members agree that increasing civic engagement in politics is a common goal of OWS, then the We the People platform could be one outstanding forum for making that happen. I'd like to see OWS members, when interviewed, make mention of the We the People platform. When interviewers challenge us with the, “what does this movement represent?” question, we can still preface our explanation with “well, I can’t speak for everyone involved…” but then go into “but I encourage everyone to sign up with We the People at whitehouse.gov/petitions, and to vote for the proposals they want to see the White House address…the petitions I personally support include…” This way, everyone who is interviewed can keep true to the integrity of OWS as a decentralized, leaderless movement, while still being able to comfortably articulate to interviewers and the rest of the world what specific proposals we as individuals want to see addressed.

Let’s bury this ‘Occupy Wall Street protesters don't know what they want’ criticism as best we can, and move on to whatever the next challenge will be. I think the We the People platform is one resource available to us that takes so little time to use, that there's no good reason not to participate. If you like this idea, please pass it on!

Peace!