Forum Post: Our Demands Must be Huge. . Part 2

4) We demand that the United States will stand for FAIR trade before it stands for free trade. This means that any country that has lesser environmental or labor standards than those created by our laws and regulations will pay tariffs in order to access our markets. This include companies that are supposedly American but choose to do the bulk of their business overseas and then come to us with their so-called "cheap" products. We are tired of the corporate propaganda that calls this "protectionism." If that means that we intend to protect our workers, our businesses, and our Earth, then so be it, We are Protectionists. Any foreign country that does not allow workers to freely organize and strike, any foreign country that pollutes with impunity, creates an unfair competition with our workers whose forefathers have literally fought and died for these rights. We refuse to have a hundred years of progress obliterated by the so-called "global economy." As has been said, this applies equally to any American company that takes advantage of these unfair, inhumane differences in global living standards. We also make clear that we hold no grudge against our working brothers and sisters in Mexico and China and around the world. We sincerely hope that through our struggle, their living standards will be improved as well, as opposed to their lives and health being consumed by the endless capitalist hunger for profits.

5) We demand a fair, progressive tax structure. That the repeal of the Bush tax cuts is supposedly controversial is laughable to us. We demand a return to the tax structures that were in place in the period between WWII and 1980, an historical time that saw the rise of the middle class in America, which is the source of all of its Peace and Prosperity, the very same middle class that has been in obvious, precipitous decline since the movement to unfairly lower the taxes on the wealthy. The money lost by our nation during the last three decades of tax cuts for the rich and powerful are now either to be paid by the middle class or poor, who can not afford them, or, as has been the case of late, to be foregone altogether. This has led to a class of people who feel no responsibility to their country whatsoever -- calling themselves "job-creators," they ship our jobs overseas, calling themselves "hard working Americans," they live on inheritances, tax cuts, tax shelters, and the labor of unfairly compensated workers, American and otherwise, calling themselves "democrats" and "republicans," they live in a world completely divorced from responsibility for their privileged place in our society, from the responsibility and sacrifice that is required for true Democracy and true Republicanism. In the meantime our children are not educated, our bridges fall to the ground, and our old people sit in rooms without heat.

6) We demand an end to the American Empire. We do not believe that controlling other human beings through military force is possible or desirable. We do not believe that wars for the control of resources, or “vital American interests” is anything but criminal theft and murder. We reject dressing these terrible deeds in the clothes of freedom and democracy. Freedom and Democracy are never imposed from without by military force, they are incubated from within, as was the case in Tahrir Square. We need the innocence that comes from not spilling foreign blood. We need the money wasted on this destruction for constructive good in this world. We, unlike the so-called capitalist “freedom fighters,” believe in the free market. If oil, or anything else, becomes very expensive because of these peaceful policies, we believe the free market of American ingenuity will find unheard-of, peaceful ways to make up the difference, and much more.