This is my contribution to get the ball rolling. I don't expect everyone's post to be of the same scope; some people's ideas are larger and of a much broader reach, some are going to be smaller ideas perhaps about direct actions or town-specific events. All are welcome, and all are taken seriously.
The Next Step (or, How Serious Are We?)
There’s been a lot of talk about demands. The general public outside the Occupy movement seems to be of the mindset that a revolution can only be taken seriously, only be considered legitimate, if they have a concrete list of demands. We, not being terrorists or hostage-takers, have trouble with the logic there; nevertheless, we must strive to reach an understanding. We must find a way to reach those that would be sympathetic to the cause, by using methods they fully comprehend.
The people that make money in crisis situations (the 1% we refer to) HAD money to begin with. Their wealth not only made them immune to the population’s hardships, but put them in a position to profit from them. Their wealth puts them outside the system. This is the part where you roll your eyes. “Well of course it does,” you think, “wealth does that.” It’s the golden rule; “he who has the gold makes the rules.” They influence lawmakers, hire excellent lawyers to find loopholes in the rules they can’t bend, make nice with politicians, etc. Just the Citizens United v. FEC decision alone practically insures that the wealthy are heard and accounted for by saying the money corporations spend on lobbying and contribution = speech and thereby assures their dominance. It’s what we rail against and sacrifice to end.
But why does it make such a difference that they are outside the system? Because they are not dependent on the system. If things go bad, they hop a flight out of the country and let the power-lawyers battle it out. You’ve seen it on the news; some politician, celebrity, CEO does something terrible and gets a slap on the wrist at best. We’ve all stood around the water cooler with friends lamenting “if that were you or me, they would have locked us up and thrown away the key.” But here’s an obvious fact that you must understand: their independence from the system is their power.
That leads to the main point; you cannot change a system you are dependent on. Seems logical, but it bears stating in very blunt language. If you depend on a system for your information, your sustenance, your education, your survival… that system will do as it was designed to do with or without your approval. If you attempt to steer that system, all the things you rely on that system to provide you with will be taken away, or at the very least the threat will be made. The system does not need you; you need it. And as long as you do, you can scream “but the Constitution!!” as loud as you like, and all you’ll get for your troubles is a sore throat.
I see it in your eyes… some of you are about to mention revolutions past to prove me wrong. Great, wonderful struggles of bygone eras when the peasants, the down-trodden workers rose up and demanded equality, and won. Without bloodshed? Oh, that wasn’t a defining point in my argument? Certainly it was. The moment you conspire to murder the members of another class you put yourself outside their system; personally abolishing their laws and deciding to find sustenance and survival elsewhere. The leaders of the American Revolution were great men, but they were also murderers, traitors and terrorists, depending on who you asked. If you’re skeptical, consider for a moment the Red Army Faction of Germany (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Army_Faction ) and think about what the “fathers of our nation” might have been called had they failed.
So how hopeless is all this, if the only ways out of the system are to become wealthy or become a criminal? Perhaps there’s a third path. Many people in America are familiar with a cultural movement called the Maker Culture. For those of you unaware of this, I’ll try a brief description. The maker culture is a reaction to the pervasive consumer culture most of us find ourselves in; it is a culture made up of hobbyists, backyard engineers, and genuine professionals that prefer to meet their own needs by making their own functional devices rather than buying them. They make small items, yes, but also large machines for farming, metalworking, and industrial applications (
http://opensourceecology.org ,
http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2010/02/why-i-believe-in-maker-culture.html ). People from all over are coming together to declare an independence from consumerism.
With traditional systems failing so many families, living off-the-grid has become an attractive concept for many as well. “Off-the-grid” is the idea that people can produce their own energy, food, sustenance items, without relying on electric companies, water services, traditional infrastructure (
http://www.livingoffgrid.org ). The combination of these two similar ideas leads to an interesting prospect; is it possible to create an independent community? Homes and other buildings are currently being built that produce their own power, treat their own water, dispose of waste responsibly, and even grow food, all while being built from natural or recycled materials (
http://earthship.com ). People are living off the grid now, independent of any services most people take for granted.
So here’s where I finally reach my point. I call for us; the occupiers, the counter-culture, the civilly disobedient, the non-violent resistors to come together to show the people what we want. Let’s stand up and build our society from scratch. The tools and resources are at our disposal, the time is at hand to make our active list of demands in the flesh. We start with a community, one town where there was no town before. Sustainable, independent, harming neither the environment nor the communities around it. We govern it ourselves, based on the principals of consensus and direct democracy. We look out for each other, provide for each other, and exist as a family of equal people in a community, for the first time. And when it is built, and when it works, we show the world what can be done.
“Yes”, I hear you say, “but it will be hard.” Of course it will. Everything worth doing is. We will still be dependant, for a time, on existing systems until we find ways to produce those goods and services for ourselves. How long was a fledgling America dependent on its European parents? Was it not four hundred years from the time the first Europeans came to the American continent to the time the first shots rang out in the Revolutionary War? The people of the United States have relied on their system for but half that long, and can do it without bloodshed.
This movement has its share of teachers and educators. We have our farmers and truck drivers, as well. We have laborers and supervisors, engineers and builders, nurses, EMTs, and firefighters, brave men and women young and old who are willing to sacrifice for a better future. Yes, the movement will continue beyond this project; it has to. But this project, this experiment may be just what this movement needs to capture the imagination of the people. “We are the 99%” is a brilliant ideal, but to bring all 99% together we need to be heard above the scream of pop culture. The endless stream of commercials and rhetoric and propaganda has made the movement little more than a footnote in the wasteland that is mainstream media. Be not afraid; in a short two months we have changed the conversation about politics at dinner tables, in college dorms, and in factory break rooms across the country. From Smalltown, USA to Tahrir Square in Egypt, people are expressing support and a resolve to change things.
Now we need act on our beliefs. If this experiment succeeds in showing the nation what democracy should look like, it changes how things are done… it fixes things. If it fails at awakening the populace, it stills serves as a template for those who would build such a community around the country and even the world and remove themselves from a society they can no longer support. The only way the experiment achieves nothing greater is if we don’t try it. The worst that can happen is that we build something together we can be proud of, and live in it among an indifferent society. We live in an indifferent society now, on its own terms.
For the hope of a better world. OccupyCommunity.
