Message from Occupy Wall Street, 99 Percent: All Who Were Wronged by Corporations, We Are with You

As the Occupy Wall Street protests grow and become more widespread, mainstream media reporting on the movement has blossomed. Keith Olbermann was the first to provide major coverage of the Occupy protests. Then, MSNBC, ABC, CBS and others began their own news feeds on the broadening movement. Initially, media representatives noted that the Occupiers didn’t have any specific goals or demands. And while this may well be true, it would seem many journalists and pundits missed the point entirely.

A broad movement is founded on ideas, not on specific goals or demands. Ideas like this one, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men were created equal.”

One can imagine the British Aristocracy, much like the current corporate aristocracy, asking for more ‘specific’ demands or goals from the colonists at the time leading up to the American Revolution. But the colonists’ goals weren’t specific, they were broad: independence from Great Britain and, by extension, a tyrannical Europe. Likewise, the Occupy movement’s goal is broad: independence from corporate oppression and, by extension a tyrannical system of economic inequality and injustice.

Reading the statements posted by the Occupy Wall Street governing body – its General Assembly – one comes to the conclusion that it is a broad movement which aims to deal directly with the cause of the world’s current economic misfortunes: wrongdoing by the wealthy and powerful who use large corporations as monstrous tools by which to perpetrate and enforce a vast and growing economic oppression.

In a statement posted on September 29, the Occupy Wall Street movement said: “We write so that all people who feel wronged by the corporate forces of the world can know that we are your allies.” The statement went on to post a long list of grievances against corporate abuse that included:

The taking of homes through an illegal foreclosure process, despite not having the original mortgage.
The taking of bailouts from taxpayers with impunity, while continuing to give executives exorbitant bonuses.
The perpetuated inequality and discrimination in the workplace based on age, the color of one’s skin, sex, gender identity and sexual orientation.
The poisoning of the food supply through negligence, and undermining of the farming system through monopolization.
The profiting off the torture, confinement, and cruel treatment of countless animals, the active concealment of these practices.
Stripping employees of the right to negotiate for better pay and safer working conditions.
Holding students hostage to tens of thousands of dollars of education debt.
Consistently outsourcing labor and using that outsourcing as leverage to cut workers’ healthcare and pay.
Influencing the courts to afford corporations the same rights as people, with none of the culpability or responsibility.
Health Insurance companies spending millions of dollars on legal teams that look for ways to get them out of their contracted obligation to provide care.
The rampant spying on persons and selling information on their private lives as a commodity.
Using military and police forces to prevent freedom of expression.

Deliberately declining to recall faulty products thereby endangering lives in the pursuit of profit.
Determining economic policy, despite the catastrophic failures these policies result in.
Donating large sums of money to politicians, who are responsible for regulating them, creating a conflict of interest.
Continuing to block alternate forms of energy to keep us dependent on oil.
Continuing to block generic forms of medicine that could save lives or provide relief in order to protect investments that have already turned a substantial profit.
Intentionally covering up oil spills, accidents, faulty bookkeeping, and inactive ingredients in pursuit of profit.
Purposefully keeping people misinformed and fearful through their control of the media.
Accepting private contracts to murder prisoners even when presented with serious doubts about their guilt.
Perpetuating colonialism at home and abroad. Participating in the torture and murder of innocent civilians overseas.
Continuing to produce weapons of mass destruction in order to receive government contracts.

Though their list of grievances is long, it encompasses an overarching theme of protest to the brand of dominator corporatism that has emerged over the past twenty years. It singles out big corporations as oppressors and shows how public government, in many cases, has been forced into enabling a vast corporate power grab. It is a reaction to an age where hedge fund managers, executives and others can profit from collapse of entire countries while constructing their own personal safe-havens against the broader collapse they are helping to engineer.

The protesters’ justified indignation against these corporate abuses and others are forming a foundation of dynamic action against the greedy and self-serving special interests while fighting for a more just and equal world. They are the true Tea Party of the people defying a globalized corporate system that has enabled, created and concealed these excesses and all people from every corner of the globe would do well to support the Occupy movement.

Sources:

http://nycga.cc/2011/09/30/declaration-of-the-occupation-of-new-york-city/


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