Forum Post: Open Letter to All Occupy Incl Founders/Families re Election Boycott/Gender Parity
Posted 11 years ago on Sept. 12, 2012, 11:18 a.m. EST by occupiersboycottelection
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Open Letter From Election Boycott Sisters and Brothers to ALL Occupy and OWS Founders about 911 through the 9/17 anniversary, and everyday from now until the socalled " election"
To: All Women and Men of Occupy Including Their Equally Important Sisters, Female Cousins, Mothers & Women Colleagues and Phil Arnone and Kalle Lasn,
Also available with graphics at: http://5050whatoccupyowestowomen.wordpress.com/2012/09/12/open-letter-to-occupy-women-and-men-on-election-boycott-and-gender-parity-declarations/ We invite this Open Letter, or a positive response to it, be reprinted on the main Announcement Section of the OWS website. We believe it will bring forth a period of soul-searching at OWS that will help it succeed as a real REvolution
We actively and urgently want to help the New York, North American and Global Occupy Movement, including its most well known founders, to stop missing the Elephant in the Living Room of nearly lost democracy, in North America, the so far failed US and failing Canada: the lack of equal gender representation for women, especially most extremely in the US government, and to achieve, live up to, not reneg on, and meet its own pledge for equality in decision-making, as the only way it will achieve all its goals as a Revolution for democracy, and true service to the humanity of the 99% (and transformation of the 1% away from its current self-and-other destructive and errant path of domination, that will destroy the Earth). by publically advocating an active Boycott of the US 2012 pseudoelection, its lie-and-deliberately half-truth telling TV and Radio and Print Media, and a new period of global Constitutional Conventions, especially in the US in 2013, necessary to usher in a dangerously delayed New Millennium, under new paradigms of democracy and peace.
An Elephant in the Living Room is something so big that it is hard to not see, but, at least for a time, everyone doesn't see it.
The intent of this Open Letter is to be constructive and catalyze a soul-searching on these issues by all Occupiers, female and male both, to generate overdue positive change, It is not intended to dismiss the importance or potential of the Occupy Movement, or deny its good intentions. It is given the spirit of mutual respect, and we hope it will serve a Higher Purpose. It is our belief that telling truth always brings forth good results. It is the suppression of truth that spells the death knell of any effort, especially a real Revolution.
In all its most well known Marches and many more daily actions and announcements of reasons for a Revolution , the US Occupy Movement has never once publically protested the fact that the US Corporate controlled pseudogovernment, in the 92nd year since 1920 when an all male Congress "granted " women the vote that was denied them by the all male so-called founders in 1789, ranks 92nd if you count ties (78th nominally) in the representation of women/balance of gender, with less women in office than Afghanistan, Iraq and the United Arab Emirates. http://www.ipu.org/wmn-e/classif.htm
Why do so few people talk about it? Because the North American culture itself , which falsely prides itself on world leadership for good, is deeply imbedded - largely because of its media' s failure to report news on this over a 20 year period - in regressed habits of patriarchy affecting the interaction of both men and women among themselves and with each other, and most importantly, during the period when Nordic Countries, India, most of Western Europe and many countries in Latin America and Africa were climbing out of partriarchy. The Corporate Media, (we have an open letter to CBS https://openletterstochiefevilofficerss.wordpress.com/, and will soon add more Open Letters to All Media CEOs and many journalisits) which most people, even many Occupiers rely on for information, deliberately censored this truly Good News, and now has marginalized it in such a way to increase US women's sense of futility and unnecessary gradualism and disguised its critical importance to attaining democracy and reigning in Corporate Wall St manipulation of US (and Canadian) politics and social, environmental and war culture policies.
Note: At the very moment we were composing this letter to OWS, the website of the IPU, the Interparliamentary Union, the sister organization to the United Nations, which keeps the monthly statistics on women's presence in national legislatures, underwent a sudden and noticeable change: for 20 years, its main page had a clear and prominent link to the ranking page and a database about women's participation and representation in every country (you can see the old page by searching for www.ipu.org at the Wayback Machine, it comes up with http://web.archive.org/web/20110726185442/http://www.ipu.org/english/home.htm, which is in contrast to the brand new watered down version http://www.ipu.org/english/home.htm The whole website has lost its vivid appearance and looks washed out and lacking in resources compared to the old version, and you pretty much have to know the ranking page's url http://www.ipu.org/wmn-e/classif.htm already to find it quickly. The IPU is just down the street from OWS in New York. OWS should ask them to join them in a protest on the Media. (see below)
At the 2012 Occupy National Gathering in Philadelphia and coordinated with a simultaneous cooperative effort for Washington DC starting at CBS headquarters , women of the Occupy movement Delivered Revolutionary Declarations on Canada Day, July 1st and the 4th of July, that Declared Gender 5050 at all levels of public decision-making office to be an overdue demand and Divinely Endowed Inalienable Human Right, They also included other related rights to end discrimination against women via an updated ERA and CEDAW, and especially in the counting of paid and unpaid work (i.e . via the use of the Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI) instead of the GDP), the balancing of family and other work, and other related rights, such as publically funded elections https://5050whatoccupyowestowomen.wordpress.com/2012/09/08/women-of-occupy-declare-the-right-to-5050-representaion-and-related-rights/
The July Declarations, which are both national and global, are available at:
You can find/watch these Declarations at:
https://5050whatoccupyowestowomen.wordpress.com/
http://5050whatoccupyowestowomen.wordpress.com/2012/09/11/the-declaration-of-by-and-for-women/
http://5050whatoccupyowestowomen.wordpress.com/2012/09/11/declaration-of-the-revolutionary-transformation-of-the-united-nations-and-interparliamentary-union-into-the-united-familycommunity-true-government-of-the-planet-earth/ http://5050whatoccupyowestowomen.wordpress.com/2012/09/12/declaration-of-transformation-of-occupy-general-assemblies-to-full-empowerment/ http://www.womenoccupy.org/2012/07/watch-reading-of-the-womens-declaration-from-the-natgat-femga/ http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/23772401/highlight/275250#utm_campaign=www.womenoccupy.org&utm_source=275250&utm_medium=social We asked that they be timely posted to the main website, but made them available yesterday via the Forum, in connection with the meaning of 911. http://www.occupywallst.org/forum/women-of-occupy-declare-gender-parity-an-overdue-h/
The Declarations have been circulating on many women's blogs and websites, and emailed to several thousand people, male and female, and have already received more support, female and male, than the 1776 Declaration of Independence did when it officially started the Revolution of those times. But we believe these rights are self-evident truths to billions of people, to all people of justice and peace, and this is the heart of the REvolution for Humanity in these New Millennial Times. These documents together form the basis for a Revolutionary Constitutional Convention in Spring 2013, and pave the way for a real election to be held in November 2013, to be organized by the people of North America, female and male, of all races, not the controlling hand of Corporations.
It is like the weights on a Scale. The abdication of responsibility to equally empowering and weighing the female 51%, tips the scales to domination and the abandonment, subjugation, impoverishment and ultimately, extreme environmental endangerment of the 99%, both the 51% female and the 48% male together, on every derivative policy issue, (in fact, the 100%, for even Big Brother will die in the catastrophic events his rule will bring to the Planet Earth.) But balance on the Scale brings forth excellent decision-making, the fulfillment of human potential and the sustainable peaceful caretaking of the Planet Earth and its future in the Universe.
continued in next post