Occupy

The Way Forward

by hopper

NOV 1, 2011

Dear Occupy,

We love you.  We really do.  But you need to get out of the park and go uptown.  And you need to go with a message that calls for specific legislation.  If you don't, you'll go no further than, well, the park (and the man is about to throw you out of the park). Time is running out. So we have a suggestion.  

Right now Occupy is demanding both everything and nothing.  A walk though most camps will reveal signs and opinions on just about everything from the Fed to corporate personhood to income inequality.   The movement has been deliberately loathe to boil it down to a few core issues and actually, even to make any demands at all.  When it comes to moving forward, this is a problem.  In fact, it makes it pretty much  impossible.  There’s no way Occupy will affect change on such a wide front, the disparate, ambiguous message will have trouble attracting society at large, and the narrative will continue to be that the movement is just angry and doesn’t know what it wants.  That the rich are too rich, or the poor too poor, or that capitalism and the banks suck, won’t get it done. 

Unless Occupy plans to storm the halls of congress or the Supreme Court with pitch forks and torches, we need to narrow the message to something that lawmakers, if properly motivated under the threat of losing their job, can get done.  But to what?  Occupy is not one person, or one group, or one opinion.  People have their issues and will likely be reluctant to give them up to adopt another issue - unless they can be convinced that what we ask them to focus on will solve their issue as well.  And of course there is such and issue, and that’s bribe money in politics. Our elected representatives are bought and paid for by the 1%,  it's destroying this country, and everybody knows it.  Solve that problem and a lot of other things will fix themselves.  

Without money in politics the transnational corporations won’t be able to buy their tax breaks and destructive trade policy from “our representatives” in government.  Without it the banks won’t be able to buy their deregulation.  Without it the special interests won’t be able to propagandize the electorate into voting against their own self interest, etc, etc.  Ban money from politics, make our current system of outright bribery illegal, and we can do a world of good. 

This is of course not rocket science.  99% of Americans have already had this idea and are in favor of it – get money out of politics and, solve most of our problems - but to this point they haven't seen a way to do anything about it.  Pretty much everybody, liberal or conservative, white or black, rich or poor is in favor of getting money out of politics.  Literally it’s only the 1% that likes that status quo.  We call this exercise the 99% movement.  This issue can to make it so.

So we have a movement that must move forward quickly or fizzle out. And to move forward must coalesce around an effective, easily defined and communicatable issue in order to do so.  And we have an electorate that agrees on this one, big, important issue but to this point hasn’t seen a way to a damn thing about it. 

The movement needs the masses, this issue will move the masses, the movement has the attention of the masses, this issue will bring the masses to the movement, masses to the movement will make it successful. 

The fist step is to establish a consensus among the movement.  Sell those already participating in it on the logic that if this issue is moved far enough down the road it will solve their issue whatever it might be; and on the notion it’s not only possible, but with their commitment, likely to succeed. 

If it can be achieved that Occupy LA and Occupy Wall Street and Occupy Oakland and Occupy anywhere USA are all articulating this one issue and how it can and will solve most all the other issues, the mainstream media will have no choice but to report that the movement has evolved to demand that money be banned from politics. 

And then society at large will actively support and become part of the movement. How could it not? Tell the 99% this is their chance. Speak now or forever hold your peace.  People have been dying for a way to stop the whoring of our government to the moneyed interests.  Invite them to turn out.  Get them to turn out in the streets to demand it and we have an effective movement. 

At that point the Occupy can organize a succession of marches – ban money from politics marches.  And people will turn out.  In short order we could potentially have hundreds of thousands of people in the street. 

Then change will come and fairly quickly.  Politicians will have no choice but to at least notice and respond.  The electorate will realize it can force this to be by voting out (or not voting in) anybody who has not pledged or is not acting to solve this problem that is killing America.  We can make this the issue of our time.

Specifically the demands are make lobbying illegal, make political advertising illegal, severely restrict and regulate monetary contributions, both in what can be given and how it can be spent. Get rid of Citizens United. If anything here runs afoul of the constitution, amend the constitution.  Replace this system with publicly financed elections and in exchange for their right to broadcast over the publicly owned airwaves, require the networks to broadcast debates and candidate statements. 

At the risk of jumping the gun and speaking for others, we are the 99% and this is what we want.