Forum Post: We, the 99%, have the ears of the nation - now what?

To introduce myself, I am a 27 year old democrat from Tampa, Fl; I am currently studying “registered nursing, generic track” at a local community college.

It is no secret that we, the American people, are becoming increasingly disillusioned with the hypocrisy, infighting, and general impotence of Congress to take action to improve our nation (let alone address simple issues).

On a personal level, I am becoming more and more convinced that it just doesn’t matter who is elected to office, Democrat or Republican, since as soon as they enter the Capitol Building all the promises made during their campaigns fly out the window.

It bothers me that I have become so jaded about the state of American Democracy and I want something to be done to restore the trust between government and citizens. I want our representative democracy to be restored to what it was intended to be: elected officials representing the people of our nation, not the corporations of our nation.

In my understanding, the bulk of the mistrust and corruption involved in the American Election process can be traced to one fundamental flaw: there is little, or no, accountability in campaign finance. Those being elected answer first to their corporate sponsors and second to the American people.

There is a proverb in Spanish (I will translate and paraphrase into English): “Tell me who your friends are, and I will tell you who YOU are.” The American people need to know who our elected officials’ “friends” are before we can hope to make an educated decision on whom to elect to office.

It’s up to us, the 99%, to take the first concrete step of addressing this fundamental problem in our democratic institutions: we need begin a national petition to demand either an Executive Order, or congressional bill, restricting corporations from donating to political campaigns entirely and also requiring all individuals running for Elected Office to publically publish records of ALL campaign contributions (above a pre-set threshold, say for example $1,000).

There needs to be some tangible action, something visible, to counteract the direction in which our democracy is heading and the first step is to fight for transparency and accountability from our government.

“Change You Can Believe In” will never happen unless the fundamental flaws of our 21st century democracy are fixed. I believe in Barack Obama’s vision for the future of USA…but without REAL structural changes in Washington D.C. we, as Americans, will ‘lose’ in every sense of the word.

-Ryan (Tampa, FL)