Forum Post: What if anything have you heard about www.the99declaration.org?

This is a letter from the website: A Message To Our Brothers and Sisters With Occupy Wall Street Add comments .

The 99% Declaration and National General Assembly has nothing to do with me as a person. These two ideas were developed by thousands of people from all over the world and they are good ideas. Not “good” as in “clever” but good for the betterment of our people who are suffering terribly. According to the 2010 census, 150,000,000 people live in poverty or in low-income households in the wealthiest, most prosperous country in history.

Although this is not about me or any other one person, I have caused unnecessary friction due to my own faults. I have apologized to #OWS for the declaration going viral on 10-18-11. Please understand that this was not our doing. The Huffington Post reported that our suggested grievances were the official OWS demands only three days after we announced this working group to the NYCGA. They did this without speaking to us or making any kind of confirmation of the story. The document also had the words ”draft” and ”suggestions” written in it. I have also apologized for remarks I made in anger directly after our webpage was taken down in late October.

I will not apologize, however, for what we are accomplishing because this opportunity, provided to us by #OWS and the 99% Movement, may never come again. Citizens United, SOPA, NDAA, misuse of FISA and the Patriot Act have now changed the game and we must organize and act before the corporations are permitted to consolidate their power to such a level that they will directly control the military. We already know they indirectly (if not directly) control the police. Sections 1031 and 1032 of the NDAA will permit the military to obtain military jurisdiction over American civilians and deprive those citizens of the protections guaranteed in the Bill of Rights and codified in the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure and The Bail Reform Act which ensures that every citizen be timely brought before a magistrate and apprised of the charges he or she is facing and an immediate bail determination made based on a list of objective factors. The NDAA will also deny access to counsel and the Writ of Habeas Corpus. The President has stated he will sign this bill because it is necessary for national defense. “Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.” -British Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger.

The four board members of this group (soon to be seven) cannot be delegates nor do we have any say about what goes into the final petition of grievances. This group’s ONLY functions are to hold an open and transparent election and provide a venue in Philadelphia for the elected delegates to meet and ratify a Petition for a Redress of Grievances as authorized by the First Amendment to the Constitution. The board also acts as a blind trust, which receives anonymous donations that will not be disclosed to the delegates so they are not influenced in any way. Delegates may not take money from anyone except to pay for their expenses to and from Philadelphia. If we can raise enough money, we will transport all 876 delegates and house them for their stay in Philadelphia while they attend the National General Assembly. It is this model of a blind trust funded by the taxpayers that we seek to replace the current corrupt funding of political campaigns by corporations and other concentrations of great wealth.

I think it is critical to mention that The 99% Declaration’s requirement of a transparent election was never intended to be a slap in the face to #OWS and their use of direct democracy. In our view, an election representing all of the geographic sections of the country is necessary for the courts to require the government to redress the grievances voted on by the National General Assembly. If you research the history of the Petition for a Redress of Grievances for abolition, temperance, the suffragette movement, anti-war protests and civil rights, you will find that the courts have rejected past petitions because they were not deemed sufficiently representative of the American people. We have required an election for a very specific legal reason: to give full force and effect to an important section of our Bill of Rights. By using the very same geographic distributions the current corporate state uses to elect its stooges and keep them in power, the government will be forced to address and redress the petition voted on by duly elected delegates of the people from the same geographic regions as the Corporate Congress.

When the petition is ratified in July, signed in front of Independence Hall, and served on all three branches of government; all politicians who are running for office in 2012 will be asked their positions on the grievances and solutions listed in the petition. Should the politicians ignore the petition, Clause V of the declaration will be activated and the electoral revolution will begin. Independent candidates will be run in all 435 districts (and the 33 open senate seats) who will take a pledge to immediately redress the grievances in the July 2012 National General Assembly petition within their first one hundred days in office. These candidates will run as independent American citizens with no public “party” affiliation and only one mandate: enact the will of the 99% and remove ALL private sources of campaign contributions in politics.

Our group seeks to unify the movement under one banner of The 99% and we beseech #OWS to please elect and run candidates in the delegate election in March and come to Philadelphia to support the ratification of this petition. Direct democracy cannot legally and effectively be used on this level and that should not be a reason to abandon the concept of an election of delegates free of the corrupting influence of money. For those of you who seek a more drastic solution, we ask that you please grant us this chance to peacefully transition from corporatism to real democracy. If we fail, we will have the same corrupt corporate lackeys in place serving only the needs of the 1%.

We call upon all of the Demands Working Groups to please send us their ideas and suggestions for incorporation into the final petition. The delegates will be elected in March and then work from March through June to come up with proposed points to be in the final petition. Between 7-2 and 7-4, the 876 delegates will then vote on each proposal one by one and decide what should be in this FIRST petition for a redress of grievances at this FIRST National General Assembly. We are suggesting ten or twelve points in this petition but the delegates may include as many or as few as they so decide. There is no reason that this effort cannot continue parallel to and in synergy with #OWS’s continuing peaceful resistance to corporate state that has insidiously stolen our democracy while we sat on the couch and watched Family Guy and American Idol. #OWS has reawakened the American consciousness and gotten us off the couch, out the door and into to streets.

In solidarity,

        -Michael Pollok