People, Power, Politics & Protest
Occupy Wall Street and the Pursuit of a More Perfect Union
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From the American Revolution to Tahrir Square, everyday citizens have brought on many great moments of sweeping historical change.
As the foundation and centrepiece of all political power, with every institution existing for their benefit, it is the obligation of the citizen to assert their individual and collective sovereignty in the face of institutional power.
Urged by a feeling of mass injustice, the New York City General Assembly has established a national Town Hall— this time in Liberty Park— so that our voices may be heard and our concerns addressed by fellow citizens domestically and globally.
The recent trends in American politics have been towards the greater division of the people from one another, the depletion of their political influence and the expansion and ascension of institutional power.
Any attempt to modernize health-care, infrastructure and education is vilified bitterly as socialism and class warfare. Yet middle-class Americans watch, helpless, as downward mobility and shrinking opportunity is their reward during record corporate prosperity. In a system that favours and exalts the few, ‘equity’ is a dirty word.
By focusing on only the most contentious issues, the media and political class intentionally reinforce the divisions between Americans and gain power of office or influence by inciting them.
At the expense of issues they can agree on, citizens battle over abortion, capital punishment, immigration, race, sexuality and religion, drawing distinct lines between people. All the while, new legislation barely falls under the scrutiny of the public eye.
Corporations have exerted undue influence over the political process through the decisions of the Supreme Court, their presence in the Executive branch and by courting representatives to pass favourable legislation—or by writing it themselves.
As globalism and free trade break down barriers to business, the average citizen finds it harder to travel transnationally and many do so under the duress of suspicion.
While corporations have achieved first amendment rights, the individual right to privacy has slowly been eroded. The notion of corporate personhood has extended rights normally reserved for natural persons to multinational corporations, while the individual rights of the people are diminished.
With billion-dollar campaigns and carefully controlled marketing, elections in the United States are more of a spectacle than a process—built for a society where the pinnacle of civic participation is grandly writing letters to representatives or feebly checking a ballot once every four years.
In pursuit of a more perfect union, the people—unable to rely on existing power structures to deal justly or fairly in protecting their interests—have sought to redress their grievances by asking the participation of all Americans in democratic action.
Apathy and ignorance are not tolerable any longer. Freedom is indivisible to the point that acceptance of an unjust condition by a fellow citizen is acceptance on your behalf as well. People must be informed, and must understand the full scale and breadth of the encroachment on their political power.
Remember, that in order for you to become the person you are today in America, someone had to stand up for you years, decades, and protests ago.
What if the one thing holding back the tides of change today is the false notion that it somehow felt different for those people back then than how it does to you now?
