The 99% preamble to a Declaration of Action

    By Oxy Mora on Fri, 10/21/2011 - 9:46am |

    Here is a quick take on a 99% Preamble.

     

    We the 99% have re-awakened in this fourth century of our American Democracy to find certain grievances in sore need of redress. Grievances in the main result from the drift of our democracy toward financial oligarchy and control of our politics and government by money-centric special interests. We hold certain over reaching truths at the heart of our grievances to be self evident:

    The top 1% of our populace has accumulted an extreme 40% of the nation's wealth, manifested in the isolation of capital, the rationing of capital at the grass roots level, and control of the political and governing process by the few;

    Capital has been concentrated in large financial institutions and large and multinational corporations who in the furtherance of wealth accumulation consistently pursue the same asset class at the same time, manifested in alternating cycles of hoarding cash resources and subsequent over-investing, and resulting in devasting dislocations for working Americans and families;

    Large financial institutions, facilitated by an antiquated Federal Reservce system, exist in sacrosanct status in which we the people provide an implicit guarantee against failure and receive explicit penalties when excesses are perpetrated, manifested most recently in a near systemic collapse, a  bailout by taxpayers and continued exorbitant fees and interest charges for essential financial transactions by financial institutions for purposes of their recapitalization.

    Globalization and the mobility of capital have put our citizens on an international chopping block of lowest common denominator wages, manifested in a loss of manufacturing, and a lowering of wages, skills and economic expectations;

    The isolation of capital in the hands of large corporations and financial institutions, in league with the mobility of capital stemming from globalization, limits investment by U.S. entities to a pure "return on investment" construct without regard to domestic needs and aspirations, manifested in the investment in jobs overseas instead of at home at a time of extreme unemployment;

    In a climate of oligarchical control of our commerce and governing institutions, characterized by reverence for unwieldy, sacrosanct, and authoritarain institutional and corporate entities, the Supreme Court has wrongly and subversively defined money as speech and corporations as people, manifested in the increasing control of our politics and government by large, money-centric entities.

    Based upon these self evident truths singularly and collectively generating a dangerous drift of our democracy away from full employment, growth of wages and the expectation of a better life for ourselves and out children, we set forth specific grievances and courses of action:

    Comments

    Oxy, this is an elegant summary of OWS's primary grievances, and I applaud the effort. But I can't help the feeling that something important is missing--the same thing that is missing from the OWS protests in general.

    (To the vigorous supports of OWS, please don't jump down my throat here. I'm trying to be constructive, not to dismiss the protests.)

    The missing bit, I think, is the positive vision--the proposals for a better future. The old-school progressives of the early 20th century had plenty of complaints about the moneyed oligarchs, but their primary beef was not that they were rich and powerful but that they were blocking the progressives' proposed reforms. Those proposals were numerous. Here were a few of them:

    • workplace safety
    • child labor laws
    • women's suffrage
    • 40-hour work week
    • minimum wage
    • liquor prohibition
    • environmental conservation
    • revision of the tariff system
    • income and inheritance taxes
    • currency reform / central bank
    • anti-trust regulation
    • unemployment protection

    Your preamble implies a few positive proposals, such as higher taxes on the rich, campaign finance reform, trade restrictions, and unspecified changes to the Federal Reserve, but these are poor shadows of old progressive agenda, and the details are cloudy. There have been plenty of other goals expressed at the protests, from anarchy to animal rights, but they lack universal support.

    In short, Occupy Wall Street has defined itself by what its against. Its very name incorporates its enemy. But it needs to define itself by what it is for.


    by Michael Wolraich on Fri, 10/21/2011 - 12:14pm

    Good point but oxy did, after all, describe this is a preamble to a Declaration of Action.  The Declaration of Independence (which might be viewed as in part a preamble to an eventual  governing document, the U.S. Constitution, with that 11+ years interval in between) was, after all, long on grievances and more than a bit vague on proposing a positive vision, let alone specific positive alternatives. 

    Rereading it a few minutes ago it comes off as about 99.2% grievances (more extensive and also more specific than in oxy's language).  Such positive vision as was contained in the document was pretty well hidden and seemed mainly implicit and in the form of a negative--in the form of basically telling the British to get lost, we can and will do better ourselves.

    But I take your point.  I've made a similar one myself here lately--and duly had my throat jumped down.  laugh


    by AmericanDreamer on Fri, 10/21/2011 - 12:37pm

    Fair enough, but a declaration of independence (or war) doesn't require much explication. A declaration of action, on the other hand, raises the obvious question: what is the action?


    by Michael Wolraich on Fri, 10/21/2011 - 1:32pm

    I did it backwards, posted my specifics yesterday and backtracked to a preamble today, 
    realizing I had skipped what I think needs to be a foundational "Ah ha", from which and on which moral authority stems. I think the moral authority needs to stem from what is "self evident". My thinking started with KRXAHal's post last week which I thought I was quick to criticize over its length and wide swath of points. It's hard to whittle these things down.Of course I'm trying to put myself in the shoes of the protestors, which is perhaps not logical. Since the name of this movement is occupy "Wall St"., I am focusing in on the financial and economic ills and eliminating others which might or might not be secondary effects.  


    by Oxy Mora on Fri, 10/21/2011 - 1:48pm

    Thanks Dreamer. I had posted my specific 5 points yesterday and then overnight thought I needed to back up and create an overall context.

    There have been a lot of questions raised about what the movement is or should be about and it's none of my business because I'm not participating in it. But as an exercise I thought I would list my five points, then created the above preamble.


    by Oxy Mora on Fri, 10/21/2011 - 1:35pm

    In short, Occupy Wall Street has defined itself by what its against. Its very name incorporates its enemy. But it needs to define itself by what it is for.

    They are in the process of proposals to do both and more.  There are many different documents being written on defining themselves in several working groups. They have officially defined nothing. All documents being written are merely trial offerings for General Assembly to consider.

    The declaration is just one of many things there is a working group on; it would be like the Declaration of Independence in that it is for citing grievances before moving on to what they will be suggesting as solutions, but it is just one of many proposals that are being worked on to bring to General Assembly discussion/vote.

    Actually it's very controversial, there is a hot & angry discussion on the General Assembly website about it right now:

    Stanley Ford posted an update in the group Group logo of The 99 DeclarationThe 99 Declaration 1 hour, 15 minutes ago

    Everyone please, take pause. This is a working group nothing has been decided. This started out as a simple idea, like all great things before it. And it’s author did address the GA on Oct. 15th. We are asking that he be allowed to address the GA again this Sunday. At this point NOTHING has been decided but we encourage all to debate the Declaration and it’s Amendments as a working group. Many National GA’s are on board with forming a Second Constitutional Convention and we need to address the means by which we can have a National General Assembly.

    I've seen several angry comments that these working documents are being picked up by media and blogs as representational, that there is no clear explanation to outsiders that this are in-process documents by whoever cares to try one, not anything more, not representing the group.

    Another example of a working group statement rejected by General Assembly and being reworked on is the one I linked to on Dan's thread.

    There is also the Demands group, The Peoples' New Economic Charter group, The Political and Electoral Reform group, etc. Many are also talking working a national assembly of groups nationwide in Philadelphia July 4, 2012, ala a consitutional convention.

    These are all simply people working on things to be presented in General Assembly for a vote on whether what they write can represent the movement. Chances are the Assembly won't like it and send them back to rewrite again.

    What seems to be the one consensus/guiding factor right now is rigid adherence to  a general assembly yes or "no, try again" to all working group proposals, a real slow and arduous process. Nothing officially represents the group unless the general assembly agrees with much disapproval. They haven't okay'ed much at all as yet except for specific logistics of operating. An example in the Oct. 19 General Assembly minutes I linked to, as well as on that statement, they also brought up photocopy printing costs and printer shops for the working groups to use, which they thought they were ready to go on, but the printing working group, after getting a lot of bids, and chosing a print shop, was challenged on whether they were a union shop, so they now have to go check that out, find a union shop (good luck with that on photocopying!) and come back to general assembly again on it with revised costs for a union shop.


    by artappraiser on Fri, 10/21/2011 - 1:53pm

    If not anything else it does give one a deeper appreciation for those that developed and agreed upon the founding documents for this country.


    by Elusive Trope on Fri, 10/21/2011 - 1:54pm

    Yes. On the other hand, they had a much smaller population of people who could write to chose from and they, er, self-selected . Here apparently so far there is the situation where anyone in this country who would like to start another working group to write a document defining this movement is welcome to come to NYC and do so and eventually get it vetted by the general assembly?surprise Am I reading this whole thing right? I don't see any kind of restrictions on starting another group except for others complaining that your group duplicates another already started and trying to cajole/pressure the new group that they should work within the old one, and they can argue that no, their topic is different.

    One problem that might happen is General Assembly starts to get like the "3rd international comintern enlarged plenum" or similar, i.e., so long and boring that people give up attending them.


    by artappraiser on Fri, 10/21/2011 - 2:10pm

    Just a few random observations:

    Many - though certainly not all - people connnected with OWS keep saying things like, "the occupation is the message" or "the occupation is the demand" or "we are our demands."   They don't see the movement as having the primary purpose of advancing a political agenda which will then be pursued in the political sphere.  They believe they are creating a new social order at the occupation sites, and the whole point is just the process they are developing for organizing their new social order.

    There is some suggestion that they believe only after drawing a critical majority of people out of the existing order and into the alternative order will the opportunity exist for using that massed power to take on "the 1%". 

    The main impulse right now seems to be disgust, disaffection and a desire to withdraw from the established political processes.

    There is some resistence to viewing problems in systemic or policy-based terms as opposed to moral terms.   Much of the discourse suggests that the people in the movement are concerned about Wall Street greed, not some structural institutional defect in the way the modern capitalist economy is organized.

    There is an apolitical spirit that runs through much of the movement.  People who want to debate political agendas are frequently admonished for being divisive.

    There is a strong anarchist current in the movement.   For example, one idea that keeps getting bandied about is the call for a massive withdrawal of deposits from Bank of America on November 5th (Guy Fawkes Day).  Clearly the idea lurking behind that effort - for those who support it - is to crash "the system" by starting some kind of bank run, not to reform it via politics.  While Great Depression II might seem like a bad thing for most ordinary people, for anarchists its the destructive intital phase for some kind of new birth.

    Environmentalist ideas seem very prominent.  There are frequent themes that the 1% have poisoned the world, destroyed its food and water, destroyed human health, wrecked the climate and given us a generally toxic world.


    by Dan Kervick on Sat, 10/22/2011 - 12:19am

    Ya know what Dan . . .

    Where you said: "For example, one idea that keeps getting bandied about is the call for a massive withdrawal of deposits from Bank of America on November 5th (Guy Fawkes Day)."

    The wife and I did that with BofA 40 years ago... More power to the movement if it works, if only to the point of getting more publicity for the sun to shine on BofA to remedy the diseases they've let loose all these years.

    Afterall it was written in OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY by Louis Brandeis in Harper's Weekly December 20, 1913:

    "Publicity is justly commended as a remedy for social and industrial diseases. Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants..."

     

    ~OGD~

    .


    by oldenGoldenDecoy on Sun, 10/23/2011 - 2:27am

    There is a bio of Brandeis out for a year or two now, by historian Melvyn Urofsky, said to be very good.  I'm looking forward to reading it.  Issues he was immersed in have come full circle and are (have been for some time now, actually) highly relevant in our day, again.  I read OPM a year or so ago--unlike the bio of him, it is short, a collection of essays he wrote for Harper's back then:.  On Robert Reich's short list of about 7 or 8 books all progressives must read it is available in full for free online at: http://www.law.louisville.edu/library/collections/brandeis/node/191

    One line of argument then was, very roughly: in response to the hyperconcentration and domination of corporate wealth, is the best way to deal with it to break up the trusts and make sure neither corporations nor the federal government are too big and powerful?  Or, do huge corporations inevitably require a large and aggressive federal government to regulate them in the public interest?  

     


    by AmericanDreamer on Sun, 10/23/2011 - 9:04am

    My wife and I are also planning to move our money.  Nevertheless, this idea of having everyone make the move on a single day seems aimed at creating panic and triggering another fiancial sector meltdown.


    by Dan Kervick on Sun, 10/23/2011 - 10:30am

    And the last time I checked the Demands working group, the focus was on whether to change the name to something like Solutions. 


    by Elusive Trope on Fri, 10/21/2011 - 1:56pm

    Yes, clearly, precise wording is a big big deal to many, much ado about the text. Should be no surprise, I guess, given that one of the main catalysts was Adbusters, with Situationist and Lettrist roots.


    by artappraiser on Fri, 10/21/2011 - 2:26pm

    As someone who believes there-is-no-outside-the-text, I suppose I would say that if one is going to give much ado about anything, it would be the text.  But as someone who also believes in the impossibility of closure, it is a heraculean task that these folks have embraced.  And the question arises whether had the "founding fathers" enlarged the circle of inclusion and participation, would we have been able to get to the Declaration of Independence, let alone a Constitution. 


    by Elusive Trope on Fri, 10/21/2011 - 3:14pm

    I was fortunate to come by a copy of the Acts of Pennsylvanis, 1782, printed by Francis Bailey that all might review the Constitution and cumulative acts of Pa. in the process of writing a new U. S. Constituion. I just checked it for curiosity's sake--it has 520 pages in and of itself. Complexity.


    by Oxy Mora on Fri, 10/21/2011 - 3:43pm

    Thanks, AA. If I get back to the city early enough on Sunday, I'll try to attend the GA. It would be interesting to see.


    by Michael Wolraich on Fri, 10/21/2011 - 4:17pm

    I'm betting that when the smoke clears, the movement will be for economic fairness.

    A decent life for everybody, so we don't have to feel crappy about people who fall through the cracks, and a shot at something better for anybody who wants that.

    And maybe some high taxes on the "Trustafarians" who live off money that somebody else made for them some time ago...

    Is that Socialism? Huh--maybe so, maybe so....


    by erica20 on Sat, 10/22/2011 - 3:33pm

    Curious what group formulated this.  I don't see it at the NYC GA site.  Or is this your own take on what the preamble possibly should say?


    by Elusive Trope on Fri, 10/21/2011 - 12:38pm

    This came to me this morning during my first two cups of coffee. It's way too long but, as they say, I lack the time to make it shorter.


    by Oxy Mora on Fri, 10/21/2011 - 1:31pm

    That's as good an approach as any.  Since the movemnt has no leaders, no one can sau who does or does not speak for OWS.   At this point I think it would just be best to let a hunderd flowers bloom.  Thrown the agendas, manifestos and proposals out there.   Let it all rip.  People should just start forming their own progressive action groups and mini-movements, instead of waiting for OWS to define an agenda.  Think of OWS as just one important opening eruption in a chain reaction of seismic events.


    by Dan Kervick on Sat, 10/22/2011 - 8:07pm

    Right on Dan . . .

     

    You get it...

    "Think of OWS as just one important opening eruption in a chain reaction of seismic events."

    My intial "eruption" and "seismic event" began in '66 . . . In Memphis, Tenneesee of all place while srving in the US Navy.

    Here's a little diddy I penned back then from Silly as it Seems

    It's been one long chain reaction ever since then...

    ~OGD~


    by oldenGoldenDecoy on Sun, 10/23/2011 - 2:38am

    Can we hire the 5th Dimension to sing it?


    by Donal on Fri, 10/21/2011 - 12:39pm

    There's a good thought and a good candidate. I've been watching the "Singoff" and there is a group there who could put some life in this preamble. The group is Urban Method--a rap based group, a genre I hate, but they have a unique take on it.  


    by Oxy Mora on Fri, 10/21/2011 - 1:29pm

    Donal!!!!!  Damn it, I love them, now you've forced me to load up my IPod with their stuff too. If you can get them to come and sing anything, I'll be there. It sure will make my bike ride more fun.


    by tmccarthy0 on Fri, 10/21/2011 - 3:47pm

    All right!


    by Oxy Mora on Fri, 10/21/2011 - 5:51pm

    ME TOO!


    by Richard Day on Fri, 10/21/2011 - 8:49pm

    You know I read this, at least three times and went over comments.

    How can the Denver folks agree with the DC folks and agree with the NYC folks....

    All I think about is how the Dems, the good dems not lieberman or brown or the dems in name only, can use this for their advantage.

    Oh this is the wrong approach.

    Hell, there is a war going on.

    Barry could conquer Iraq and then go on to conquer Iran and Syria and god knows what else and the repubs would solidify their peeps to diss it all.

    Teapartiers are actually soliciting small businesses and large businesses alike to not hire people.

    Their stated attempt is to make my President look bad.

    They hate Americans, they hate freedom, they hate humanitarian efforts to fix the situation. They don't care.

    They do not care if the sick die as a result of pre-existing conditions.

    They do not care if soldiers coming home have no home.

    They do not care if the hungry go hungry.

    They do not care if innocent babies born here receive no citizenship--too bad Rubio!

    They do not care if the lower 40 so to speak lose more of their income to taxes.

    They do not care if more Americans are forced to live on the street.

    They do not care if more minorities end up as free slave labor for the benefit of international corporations.

    They do not care if 20%? of the population are kept out of the election process.

    They do not care if the unemployed are badged with the mark of Cain so that they will never be hired again.

    They do not care that 50% of minorities between puberty and 30 end up as slave labor for corporate prisons.

    They do not care that the lower classes receive no valuable education.

    They do not care if America is caught up in wars that last forever--just so that the indendent contractors (who are international corps with no national predisposition) end up with the moolah.

    They do not care that those aged cripples receive no renumeration.

    They do not care that those who have stolen the capital necessary to expand real business do no jail time.

    This is all extremely depressing to me.

    the end


    by Richard Day on Fri, 10/21/2011 - 8:03pm

    Teapartiers are actually soliciting small businesses and large businesses alike to not hire people.

    Wow.  Where did you come across that information?


    by AmericanDreamer on Fri, 10/21/2011 - 8:17pm

    This maxim is all over the place for chrissakes!

    But if you wish to refresh:

    http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/10/18/1027737/-Tea-Party-Nation-asks-businesses-to-stop-hiring-as-expression-of-tea-party%C2%A0solidarity?via=blog_1

    the end


    by Richard Day on Fri, 10/21/2011 - 8:47pm

    In case you don't trust DailyKos (I don't), here it is straight from their mouths.


    by Verified Atheist on Sat, 10/22/2011 - 12:08pm

    Why, I believe the Republicans have just placed a tax on tea.


    by erica20 on Sat, 10/22/2011 - 12:44pm

    Oxy, I'm not following OWS as well as I should, but have the leaders looked at some of the more simplified descriptions of what the founders were doing?

    "Live free or die."

    "No taxation without representation."

    The founders wanted to be FREE of the British Government, so that they could run things in ways that were more FAIR to them. The Government happened to be far from them, all the way across the Atlantic ocean. OWS doesn't have this luxury, we live in the same country as our government, so a geographic solution isn't possible, and I'd suggest that FREEDOM as a concept isn't so applicable.

    But what is applicable is FAIRNESS. We can't get rid of a faraway opressor. We all have to live here, and if we want our country to be fair, we have to figure out how to do it right here. The only reason for FREEDOM is so that we can live in a way that's FAIR.

    "Freedom isn't free unless it's fair." (Which is really just a less European-sounding restatement of "There is no freedom without justice.")

    I dunno, it just seems to me that rather than mucking around in the constitutional weeds, we oughta be energizing people around simple but profound ideas, expressed in ways that will make sense to ordinary Americans. I mean, isn't much of what OWS is doing really about letting the 99% know they exist?

    For example:

    Dear 1%, Shitty aint the new fair. Live Fair. Signed, the other 99%.

    "If you think your vote should be worth more than my vote because you have money, that's treason." (Wealthy people often say this kind of stuff, and I think it's ok to let people know that it's Un-American to do so.)

    Live Fair. The Fair trade people already have a slogan, "Make your mark--live fair." And most people are familiar with the idea that "free trade" hasn't quite done the trick. Everybody who's not in the top 1% of the population wants to live in a society that's fair (as Pres Obama said in April.)

    OWS is making it clear that there's a whole group of people who aren't happy with the 1% because what they're doing isn't fair. And I just don't think that describing the reasons why needs to be this complicated. What am I missing?

     


    by erica20 on Sat, 10/22/2011 - 1:33pm

    Coming to a decision about what is fair and not fair is part of the problem in the recent past.  Is it fair that those who pay their mortgages on time have to subsidize those that bought houses on payment plans they couldn't afford in the long run?  Is it fair to redistribute the wealth to those who are in the most need?  Is it fair that government tells a company how much it should pay it workers in relation to its executives? 

    One way to look at the split between conservatives and liberals (to use that general binary) is a fundamental difference in how they define what is fair. 

    One way to look at it is that the conservatives will say that there are and always will be winners and losers, and it isn't fair to punish the winners in order to turn the losers into winners, whereas the liberals will say it is unfair that there winners and losers, and the winners need to make a sacrifice in order for everybody to be winners.


    by Elusive Trope on Sat, 10/22/2011 - 4:10pm

    It's fair to punish winners if they cheated or stole. Winners like to attribute success to hard work alone, and that is certainly a major factor. But some people work hard and some work the system. Many do both and claim a certain amount of graft is part of life.

    I think losers should be responsible if they make poor decisions, as described in Working Poor, but some are simply being exploited by the winners. Some of those losers that bought too much house were misled by hard-working winners, some were greedy and some were both.

    Those "flip this house" type shows made it seem so easy, almost a certainty, that anyone could buy, renovate and sell a property and make money. Were people misled by a sophisticated media campaign simply losers? Were the people behind that campaign really winners?


    by Donal on Sat, 10/22/2011 - 6:22pm

    Were people misled by a sophisticated media campaign simply losers? Were the people behind that campaign really winners?

    That depends on who one asks.  Which is the whole point. 


    by Elusive Trope on Sun, 10/23/2011 - 1:58am

    ... I'm not following OWS as well as I should, but have the leaders looked at some of the more simplified descriptions of what the founders were doing?

    There are no leaders.


    by Dan Kervick on Sat, 10/22/2011 - 7:59pm

    And do not forget it took araound 35 years between the time they decided that England sucks and should drop dead and having something to replae it with.


    by cmaukonen on Sat, 10/22/2011 - 11:31pm

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