RSS“Occupy Wall Street” Founding Statement:
“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 cor- porate 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 re- quires the cooperation of its members; that our system must protect our rights, and upon cor- ruption of that system, it is up to the individu- als 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 pro-
cess 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 assem- bled here, as is our right, to let these facts be known.
They have taken our houses through an ille- gal foreclosure process, despite not having the original mortgage.
They have taken bailouts from taxpayers with impunity, and continue to give Execu- tives exorbitant bonuses.
They have perpetuated inequality and dis- crimination 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 sys- tem through monopolization.
They have profited off of the torture, con- finement, and cruel treatment of countless ani- mals, and actively hide these practices.
They have continuously sought to strip em- ployees 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 work- ers’ 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 de- liberately declined to recall faulty products en- dangering lives in pursuit of profit.
They determine economic policy, despite the catastrophic failures their policies have pro- duced and continue to produce.
They have donated large sums of money to politicians, who are responsible for 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 or pro- vide relief in order to protect investments that have already turned a substantial 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 mur- der prisoners even when presented with serious doubts about their guilt.
They have perpetuated colonialism at home and abroad. They have participated in the tor- ture 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 ad- dress the problems we face, and generate solu- tions 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! Occupy Wall Street”
— October 4
Interesting how this has gone- we may not have thought a huge decline in gasoline demand would be so early and obvious. Or leave such tidy relics. They’ve neatly left the sign- the building code must not have required its removal. Later (and in other environments), we imagine the derelict sites of gasoline stations may look rather different. What do you think?