THE MESSAGE: WE ARE HERE, AND WE ARE SINGING OUR SONG

My blogger friends 'got it' before I did. it's margaret, Counterlight, and Rmj at Adventus understood Occupy Wall Street well before I did. My heart was with the demonstrators because I believe the big banks and the finance marketeers do real evil. They manipulate the economies of entire countries and virtually the entire world so they get theirs now and to hell with the consequences for anyone else. And Wall Street symbolizes not only the bankers and financiers, but also the greedy, global corporation giants, who put the bottom line before real people. But, to be honest, when I thought about whether I'd be out there with the demonstrators, I thought I'd have to be clearer about goals. There it rested. I still wondered what would get me there if I were nearer to a demonstration.

Occupy Wall Street has now released an official statement which is posted below.

From PlutocracyFiles at Daily Kos:

Declaration of the Occupation of New York City

As we gather together in solidarity to express a feeling of mass injustice, we must not lose sight of what brought us together. We write so that all people who feel wronged by the corporate forces of the world can know that we are your allies.

As one people, united, we acknowledge the reality: that the future of the human race requires the cooperation of its members; that our system must protect our rights, and upon corruption of that system, it is up to the individuals to protect their own rights, and those of their neighbors; that a democratic government derives its just power from the people, but corporations do not seek consent to extract wealth from the people and the Earth; and that no true democracy is attainable when the process is determined by economic power. We come to you at a time when corporations, which place profit over people, self-interest over justice, and oppression over equality, run our governments. We have peaceably assembled here, as is our right, to let these facts be known.

They have taken our houses through an illegal foreclosure process, despite not having the original mortgage.

They have taken bailouts from taxpayers with impunity, and continue to give Executives exorbitant bonuses.

They have perpetuated inequality and discrimination in the workplace based on age, the color of one’s skin, sex, gender identity and sexual orientation.

They have poisoned the food supply through negligence, and undermined the farming system through monopolization.

They have profited off of the torture, confinement, and cruel treatment of countless nonhuman animals, and actively hide these practices.

They have continuously sought to strip employees of the right to negotiate for better pay and safer working conditions.

They have held students hostage with tens of thousands of dollars of debt on education, which is itself a human right.

They have consistently outsourced labor and used that outsourcing as leverage to cut workers’ healthcare and pay.

They have influenced the courts to achieve the same rights as people, with none of the culpability or responsibility.

They have spent millions of dollars on legal teams that look for ways to get them out of contracts in regards to health insurance.

They have sold our privacy as a commodity.

They have used the military and police force to prevent freedom of the press.

They have deliberately declined to recall faulty products endangering lives in pursuit of profit.

They determine economic policy, despite the catastrophic failures their policies have produced and continue to produce.

They have donated large sums of money to politicians supposed to be regulating them.

They continue to block alternate forms of energy to keep us dependent on oil.

They continue to block generic forms of medicine that could save people’s lives in order to protect investments that have already turned a substantive profit.

They have purposely covered up oil spills, accidents, faulty bookkeeping, and inactive ingredients in pursuit of profit.

They purposefully keep people misinformed and fearful through their control of the media.

They have accepted private contracts to murder prisoners even when presented with serious doubts about their guilt.

They have perpetuated colonialism at home and abroad.

They have participated in the torture and murder of innocent civilians overseas.

They continue to create weapons of mass destruction in order to receive government contracts.*

To the people of the world,

We, the New York City General Assembly occupying Wall Street in Liberty Square, urge you to assert your power.

Exercise your right to peaceably assemble; occupy public space; create a process to address the problems we face, and generate solutions accessible to everyone.

To all communities that take action and form groups in the spirit of direct democracy, we offer support, documentation, and all of the resources at our disposal.

Join us and make your voices heard!

*These grievances are not all-inclusive.

There it is, what I asked for, and I was not overly enthusiastic about the statement, even though it's based on the splendid 'Declaration of Independence'. It's so 18th century. It's long. The 21st century folks with their short attention spans won't get the message. The demands must be expressed in easy-to-understand language, briefly and punchily, to get the point across today.

Sadly, I still did not 'get it'.

And then I read the op-ed by Richard Eskow at The Huffington Post, and the scales fell from my eyes.

Even the sympathizers don't always get it. I'm sure I get a lot of things wrong too, but here's one thing I do understand: Change doesn't begin with policy. It begins with perception. And you don't change things by asking. You change them by acting.

But it begins with perception. "All money is a matter of belief," as someone once said.

In the New York Times, Nick Kristof shows that he understands the #OccupyWallStreet movement more than most of his peers. "The protesters are dazzling in their Internet skills," he writes, "and impressive in their organization."

But like many other sympathetic observers, he misses their most important point when he says "the movement falters in its demands" because "it doesn't really have any."

As movement participant Nelini Stamp told the Take Back the American Dream conference this morning, "We don't have demands. If we make demands of Wall Street, we're saying that Wall Street has the power."

But the fact that the movement doesn't make demands of Wall Street - or Washington, for that matter - doesn't mean it doesn't have demands. It does, but they're not directed at Wall Street, or K Street, or Pennsylvania Avenue. They're directed at you. And at me, and at every other citizen in this country.
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But the "one demand" that matters most is directed at our society, not our policymakers, and it's much more fundamental than these excellent ideas. The demand is this: "Come back to sanity." That's the underlying demand that unifies all those items on the #OccupyWallSt website. Our culture is insane today, and they recognize that. Create a transactions tax, and they'll simply rob us another way - until we restore our society to sanity.
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But the main point is: This is a song, not a policy platform, and there's no one composer. Everybody's making it up as they go along, and everyone else is welcome to join - as long as they don't lose the beat.

Please read the entire long, splendid op-ed.

The demand: 'Come back to sanity.' The main point: 'This is a song.'

Yes, I see. Or rather, I think I see, although I could still be getting it wrong. I hope not. What took me so long?