W
e arrived in Greece thissummer just as street-ghting broke over Athens. For days the police rainedtear gas on the people who occupiedthe capital’s main Syntagma Square.People would disperse and reormright on the steps o the parliament.Te subways were turned into med-ical centers or the wounded.Tere is a worldwide movemento rebellion and resistance build-ing. What started in unisia andEgypt has shaken and overthrowngovernments, then jumped to Spainto Greece to England — and now to New York City and across theUnited States.In Greece a generation is wakingup. Tey call themselves the Indig-nant. Tey reject old politics andthe old parties. Tey reuse to acceptthe cutbacks and austerity mea-sures imposed by the global banksand the European Union. Tey aredetermined, angry and righteous.Tey had challenges in Greece.Right-wing ultra-nationalists triedto inltrate the movement. Policeattacked. Some tired let partiescondemned the movement say-ing it’s not ocused on elections orminor reorms.One popular symbol is the heli-copter: the people want the Greek government to leave, resign, y intoexile. Or just get the hell out. And why not here? I the people o Egypt can run out Mubarak, why can’t we run out the American politicians who serve the banks and brutalize us?Te banks are global. Tey haveglobalized their sweatshops andcutbacks. We are globalizing therebellion. A young woman who is active inthis Greek movement o the squarestold us:“I didn’t involve mysel withpolitics directly until 15-year-old Alexandros Grigoropoulos waskilled by police three years ago. Anhour ater the murder, riots startedeverywhere — i you were youngand a bit active, you couldn’t helpbut participate.“Tis murder was just thebeginning or people who wereoppressed by the system. Ater the1980s the actories were closing, andthe youth o Greece ound it hadnothing. In 2008 unemploymentreached a critical point.”Crisis, unemployment, cutbacksand police murder. Isn’t this what we ace here too?In Greece, we were asked repeat-edly: What is happening in theUnited States? Will you join us? What are you doing?Now we can answer: We aremoving here too. We are learning. We are reaching out. We don’t have to accept the worldimposed on us by banks, politiciansand police. We are the uture.
by
eric
ribellarsi
and
jim
weill
The RevoluTionBegins aT home
Wall Street Protests Enter Third Week
Laning Wl
Economic SHocK, SociAL cRiSiS:
Tens o thousands challenge the Greek government and European bankers at the ThessalonikiExpo, Sept. 10. Police deployed military-grade tear gas against the largely peaceul protesters.
THiS iS WHAT An occUPATion LooKS LiKE:
Music and mass democracy break out at Liberty Square, just north o the New York Stock Exchange. Working groups ormedia, arts & culture, ood, childcare, direct action and the democratic General Assembly meet each day to strategize the next moves orward.
Photo: Jed Brandt
W
hat is occurring on Wall Street right now is remarkable. For overtwo weeks, in the great cathedral o capitalism, the dispossessed haveliberated territory rom the nancialoverlords and their police army.Tey have created a uniqueopportunity to peaceully shit thetides o history like the sit-downstrikes o the 1930s, the civil rightsmovement o the 1960s and thedemocratic uprisings across the Arab world and Europe today.Our system is broken. More than25 million Americans are unem-ployed. More than 50 million live without health insurance. Perhaps100 million live in poverty. Yet theat cats are showered with billions intax breaks while politicians competeto turn the screws on the rest o us.Te Wall Street occupation canorce those in power to oer conces-sions as happened this year in Spain,Greece and Egypt. No one can say how many people it will take or how things will change exactly, but i weunite there is a potential to trans-orm a corrupt political process andrealize a society based on humanneeds, not hedge und prots. Ater all, who would have imag-ined a year ago that unisiansand Egyptians would oust theirdictators? At Liberty Plaza in Lower Man-hattan, thousands gather every day to debate, discuss and organize whatto do about our ailed system that hasallowed the 400 Americans at the topto hoard more wealth than the 180million Americans at the bottom.It’s astonishing that this estivalo democracy has sprouted on thistur: where the masters o the uni-verse play the tune that both politi-cal parties and the media dance to.Te New York Police Department, which has deployed hundreds o ocers to surround and intimidateprotesters 24/7, could arrest every-one in minutes. But they haven’t, which is also astonishing.Tat’s because assaulting peaceulcrowds in a public square demand-ing real democracy – economic andnot just political – would remind the world o the brittle autocrats whobrutalized their people demand-ing justice, beore they collapsed inthe Arab Spring. And the violencehas already backred. Ater policeattacked a march last Saturday that started rom Liberty Plaza, thecrowds only got bigger and mediainterest grew.Te Wall Street occupation hassucceeded in revealing how corpora-tions, politicians, media and policehave ailed us as institutions oer-ing something positive to humanity.Our current leaders tell us they willspread the nancial pain by impos-ing the “Buett Rule,” a tax increasethat asks the wealthy to sacrice theequivalent o a tin o caviar per year.Meanwhile, the rest o us will haveto sacrice healthcare, ood, educa-tion, housing, jobs and perhaps ourlives to eed the erocious appetiteo capital.Tat’s why more and more peo-ple are joining the Wall Street occu-pation. Tey can tell you about theirhomes being oreclosed, months o grinding unemployment or mini-mum-wage dead-end jobs, stagger-ing student debt loads, or trying tolive without decent healthcare. Tey represent a generation o Americans who are told to believe in a systemthat only oers them “Dancing With the Stars” and pepper spray tothe ace. Yet against every description o this generation derided as narcissis-tic, apathetic and hopeless, they arestaking out a claim or all o us –and that’s why we all need to join in:to support this nucleus o a revoltthat could shake America’s powerstructure as much as the Arab world was upended.ens o thousands o peopleneed to be protesting the Wall Streetelite, who are out driving Bent-leys and drinking thousand-dollarchampagne with the money they looted rom the nancial crisis andbailouts as Americans literally dieon the streets.rue, the scene in Liberty Plazamay seem messy and chaotic but it’salso a laboratory o possibility, cre-ating a diversity o ideas, expressionand art.Many people say they supportthe occupation, yet hesitate to join.It’s clear that the biggest obstaclesto building a powerul movementaren’t the police or corporate powers– but our own cynicism and despair.Te views o some were coloredby Te New York imes sayingprotestors were “Gunning or WallStreet with aulty aim.” Many o thecriticisms boil down to “a lack o clear messaging.”But what’s wrong with that? A ully ormed movement is not goingto spring rom the ground. It hasto be created. Tat is why it’s calledgrassroots.Protestors are presenting plenty o sophisticated ideas: end corpo-rate personhood; tax stock trad-ing; nationalize the banks; socializemedicine; und government jobs with a
real
stimulus; lit restrictionson labor organizing; allow cities toturn abandoned homes into publichousing; build a green economy.But how can we get broad agree-ment on any o these? I the protest-ers came with a ready-made set o demands it would have only limitedtheir potential. Tey would haveeither been dismissed as pie in thesky – like socialized medicine ornationalized banks – or something weak such as the Buet Rule, to beco-opted by a ailed political sys-tem that would only undermine themovement.Rather, it is only through com-mon struggle, debate and populardemocracy that we will create genu-ine solutions which have legitimacy. And that is what is occurring downat Wall Street.How many times in lie do youget a chance to not only watch his-tory unold, but to come together with multitudes o people whobelieve in genuine democracy asa reality and not a antasy, and toactively participate in building abetter society?I we ocus on the possibilitiesand shed our despair, our hesitancy and our cynicism, and i we collec-tively come to Wall Street with criti-cal thinking, ideas and solidarity, wecan change the world.For too long our minds havebeen chained by ear, by division, by impotence. Te one thing that mostterries the elite is a great awaken-ing. Tat day is here. ogether, letus seize it.
by
arun
gupta
The message from egypT, syria, Tunisia,spain and england is simple: Join in!rise up! our ansWer To Them has To beyes. and iT has To be yes To each oTher.hoW many Times in life do you geT achance To WaTch hisTory unfold
Daily marches around Wall Street have launched a movement.
Graphic: Adbusters
NEW YORK UNITES!
WEDNESDAY
OCT. 5
Student WalkoutsUnion Marchesoccupywallst.orgnystudentsrising.org
NEW YORK UNITES!
WEDNESDAY
OCT. 5
Student WalkoutsUnion Marchesoccupywallst.orgnystudentsrising.org
OCCUPY_JOURNAL.indd 19/30/11 5:50 PM
17dec17feb26mar5may
TUniSiA
Twenty-six-year old producevendor Mohammed Bouazizisets himsel on ire in responseto years o petty police harass-ment in Sidi Bouzid, Tunisia. Hissel-immolation sparks a waveo protests against the decades-long autocratic rule o PresidentZine el-Abidine Ben Ali. Aterour weeks, Ben Ali is orced todissolve parliament and lees toSaudi Arabia.
EgyPT
Using canvassing, social net-working and citizen-made media,organizers launch an 18-day pro-test in Cairo’s Tahrir Square. Vio-lence by the regime’s thugs andthe blocking o internet traicinspire hundreds o thousands oEgyptians to join, swinging worldopinion against President HosniMubarak’s dictatorial governmentwhich alls on Feb. 11. The dualsuccess inspires an Arab Springo pro-democracy activism rom Yemen to Bahrain to Syria.
WiSconSin
More than 20,000 Wisconsinitesprotest Gov. Scott Walker’s (R)austerity budget and his attackon collective bargaining. Hun-dreds o students are arrested. Aprotest in Columbus, Ohio againstsimilar attacks on the public sec-tor draws nearly 4,000 protest-ers. Demonstrators at both ralliescarry Egyptian lags and signsdrawing a parallel between theirstruggles.
London
500,000 protestors take toLondon’s streets in the Marchor the Alternative, a movementcoordinated by the Trades UnionCongress. Teachers and publicsector workers hold massivestrikes in support o themovement.
gREEcE & SPAin
Tens o thousands o protestorsgather in Athens ater plans wereannounced to cut public spendingand raise taxes in exchange or a110 billion euro bailout. Three weekslater, more than 1,000
indignados
camp in Puerta del Sol, Madrid’scentral square. 30,000 supportersgather or a series o mass assembliesthat put orward popular demands,including a greater say in the politi-cal process and an end to austeritymeasures enacted by the Spanishgovernment.
i
am a 27-year-old journalist living in CrownHeights, Brooklyn. Journalists, as a rule, do notreadily identiy themselves with organizations ormovements. We’re supposed to strive or objectivity.Get the whole story. Look at things rom all sides. Wedon’t want to have our work undermined by any ali-ations. We don’t want to advocate. Tat’s a job or PR reps. Advocacy, to us, is the Dark Side.But I am announcing my solidarity with theOccupy Wall Street movement.On the morning o Wednesday, Sept. 28, I letor Brussels, Wisconsin. It’s your average Midwesternsmall town: population o a ew hundred, one gas sta-tion, a couple o churches and a ew too many bars.Tat’s where my mom and stepdad live. I ew outthere to help them move out o their home. Well, technically, it is no longer their home. Tenew owner is Freddie Mac, which along with Bank o America is kicking my mom and stepdad out o theirhome.Tat house has been in my stepdad’s amily orover 100 years. He and my mom remodeled the placeabout 10 years back. My mom had made sure there were enough bedrooms or when my sisters and I cameback home with grandchildren or her to spoil. Tat’snot going to happen there, now.It is dicult or me to grasp this. I don’t think Iully will until I am nished clearing rooms and lug-ging boxes.It’s hard, and it doesn’t eel right. Didn’t Bank o America get more than $100 billion in bailouts?Didn’t they receive a tax reund o $1.9 billion romthe IRS, alongside the $4.4 billion in 2010 prots? Why do they get saved by the government ater hand-ing out countless high-risk loans, and then again get asaety net rom government-sponsored enterprises likeFreddie Mac when recipients o those loans have todeault? How is this okay?I moved to New York in January o 2010 andlanded an internship at Tomson Reuters in spite o the estering nancial crisis. It was originally supposedto be an unpaid internship, but I convinced them tochange it to an hourly wage. It was also supposed to be20 hours a week, but over time I pushed them to makeit ull-time. By the summer they decided to turn my position into a salaried gig. I was ecstatic.But I wasn’t happy with the work. First o all, it wasn’t journalism. I wrote an internal newsletter. I you were not a Tomson Reuters employee or a program-ming guy at a bank I can guarantee that you never readmy newsletter. Second, it didn’t eel like I was doinggood work. I wrote a monthly newsletter or the com-pany’s global stock network – a complex system thatshoots trade inormation rom stock markets all overthe world to banks and brokers and billionaires.Our clients were among the most powerul peoplein the world.Comort the aficted. Afict the comortable.Tat’s what a journalist strives to do. Me? I was com-orting the comortable.Economist Edward Wol’s work has shown that,as late as 2007, the top 1% o American householdsheld 34.6% o all privately held wealth in the UnitedStates. Within this afuent contingent, Wol notes,the wealth distribution is again hyper-concentrated tothe top .1%. Te vast majority o the households inthis bracket include players in the nance and bankingindustries.Tis bothered me. A lot. My work went against alot o my principles, and this aected my well-being.I grew depressed. I started eating less. My sleep cyclestarted going haywire. I doubled down on my drink-ing habits.Finally, last August, I quit. Since then, I’ve beenreelancing. It’s been great. I’m broke, yeah. But it’sbeen great.I used to cover border issues in Arizona, and I didsome immigration work in southern Mexico. Herein New York, I’ve been gravitating towards the policebeat. Never did I think about covering nance ornational politics. Never did I want to write about ournation’s nancial crisis.But then Freddie Mac and Bank o Americapushed my mom out o her home.So here I am. Committed. o the dialogue. o themovement. o what some o my ellow young menand women camped out in Liberty Plaza are callingTe Revolution.My riends have already told me that I’m crazy.Tat Occupy Wall Street is nothing more than abunch o dirty, jobless kids who have no idea whatthey’re ghting, who are merely beating drums andbarking at cops. But that’s not what I’ve seen.Te movement knows precisely what it is ght-ing. It is ghting the astoundingly unair distributiono wealth in our country while 46 million Americanslive in poverty – and that is by ederal guidelines thatsays a mom and two kids are no longer poor i they make $19,000 a year. It is ghting the reality that WallStreet and Capitol Hill are one in the same. It is ght-ing, tooth and nail, the disintegration o the Americanmiddle class. Simply put, it is ghting greed.I can also tell you that it’s new. Tat structureisn’t yet in place the way some might want it to be.Tat demands have not yet been ully sculpted andarticulated.But the Occupation is only in its second week,and it is gaining more momentum than anyone haddreamed. Numbers continue to grow in that smallsquare. Makeshit beds pepper the western end. Pro-test signs line the north. Someone has set up a library to the east.Beyond that, the rest o the world has begun to pay attention. Food, supplies and donations are streamingin rom well-wishers who cannot occupy the squarethemselves. Doctors are manning the medical station.Lawyers are consulting the recently arrested. Electedocials, musicians and other public gures have comeby to count themselves among the Occupation’s ranks.Tings are moving.I you are a New Yorker, and you haven’t yetstopped by Liberty Plaza – do it. It’s astounding.Te excitement. Te empathy. Te absolute ortitudeo these olks. It almost moves me to tears to standamong them. Tey are there because so many amongus continue to struggle. Tey are there because badthings are happening to good people. Tey are thereor my mother.And when I return to New York this week, I willbe there too.
by
david
kempa
Pushed out of our homes
and into the street
i
n just over ten days, over 40 cities have emergedto join the Occupy Wall Street eort. Eruptingin an astonishing way, this movement is bring-ing together diverse backgrounds and skills to work together to address excessive corporate inuence ingovernment. Browsing through witter, Facebook and Youube, the depth o participation and excitement isright there. Contrasted to the excruciating politickingo Congress, in which solutions, i they are decidedupon, do not go into aect or a year or two, many areeeling the hope that real change can emerge rom thisleaderless movement in which people are leaving theirhomes to occupy thier communities.In New York, we have been witness to the generos-ity o many anonymous people dropping by Liberty Square with donations o ood, medical supplies, tents,tarps and sleeping bags. Helping the campers is notunique to NYC. In Chicago, protesters reported thesame solidarity in the occupation developing outsidethe Chicago Federal Reserve.Meetings are being held almost daily to start anationwide Occupy eort in October; already the listo cities that have signed on is jaw-dropping, and sur-prising. Birmingham. San Diego. Las Vegas. Omaha.Boston. Lexington. San Francisco. Philadelphia. KansasCity. Washington. ampa. Denver. Pittsburgh. Bualo.Charlotte. Richmond. Austin. Salt Lake City. Asheville.Miami. With new occupations popping up every day.I occupiers cannot get answers and solutions romgovernment through the ballot, they will do it throughthe power o their presence in an “inconvenient space.” We are at the beginning o a monumental change inthis country, and the world. Te system won’t changeitsel. It’s up to us: our bodies in the street, our talentsput to work, our passion given lie. Systemic changerequires more than “protesters” and “activists.” You. Youramily. Your riends. Your neighbors. All o us. Now.
by
m
ichael
l
evitin
, g
rim
& j
ed
b
randt
NYC — occpy tg
we occup
bec
corporate tax dodgerbankrupting our ecomy daughter deserves
the world is on the cchange and I plan toscales in favor of all t
I trust people who sleeptrust bankers, traders, orwhen I hear “Grandma, wthe American Rising?” I cstood and said ENOUGH!
the $1 in my pocket iExxonMobil paid in t
the “American Dream”make people work theI can’t fnd a good job evework hard.
@madmike711
democracy is built, n
I’m sick o my aith beioppression, injustice, git’s time they eel howbuy your acade o a d
NYC schoolchildren deshedge-fund sponsored lgood school.
@ourschoolsny
“Every generation nee(Thomas Jeerson).
@a_
25Jan
WE’RE ALL in THiS:
The occupation has spread beyond its frst days to include an increasing number o amilies,local union workers, teachers and students rom across the fve boroughs.
OCCUPY_JOURNAL.indd 29/30/11 5:50 PM
17sep
WALL STREET: dAy 1
2,000 people rally in responseto a call to occupy Wall Streetand march to protest corporateinluence in the political process.They set up camp in ZuccottiPark, just north o the New YorkStock Exchange, renaming itLiberty Plaza. Lupe Fiasco do-nates 50 tents in support o theoccupation.
dAy 7
Protestors march to UnionSquare, where police arrest 87people or demonstrating in thestreets, many o whom expressanger over what they perceiveas the unjust execution o TroyDavis three days prior.
dAy 9
Occupiers orm working groupsto discuss organizing tactics ona national level and to begin pre-paring direct action plans throughsocial networking and communityoutreach. They initiate liasonswith teachers, union workers andother activists to build towardsSaturday’s march.
dAy 10
Protestors continue daily march-es on Wall Street and join withUnited Postal Service workersat a rally to help protect ederal jobs. On the same day, over 700Continental and United pilotsdemonstrate in ront o WallStreet. Over the next two days,the General Assembly o New York City approves a Declarationo the Occupation, see above.
dAy 13
Members o Occupy WallStreet stage citywidemarches, perorm guerillatheater and rally the 99% totake back the streets – andtheir uture!
e
ither you join the revolt takingplace on Wall Street and in thenancial districts o other cit-ies across the country or you stand on the wrong side o history.Either you obstruct, in the only ormlet to us, which is civil disobedience, theplundering by the criminal class on WallStreet and accelerated destruction o theecosystem that sustains the human species,or become the passive enabler o a mon-strous evil. Either you taste, eel and smellthe intoxication o reedom and revolt orsink into the miasma o despair and apa-thy. Either you are a rebel or a slave.Choose. But choose ast. Te state andcorporate orces are determined to crushthis. Tey are not going to wait or you.Tey are terried this will spread.Tey have their long phalanxes o policeon motorcycles, their rows o white paddy wagons and their metal barricades set upon every single street leading into the New York nancial district where the suits useyour money, money they stole rom you, togamble and speculate and gorge themselves while one in our children outside thosebarricades depend on ood stamps to eat.Speculation in the 17th century wasa crime. Speculators were hanged. oday they run the state and the nancial markets.Tey disseminate the lies that pollute ourairwaves. Tey know, even better than you,how pervasive the corruption and thet havebecome, how gamed the system is againstyou, how corporations have cemented intoplace a thin oligarchic class and an obsequi-ous cadre o politicians, judges and journal-ists who live in their little gated Versailles while 6 million Americans are thrown outo their homes, a million people a year gobankrupt because they cannot pay theirmedical bills and 45,000 die rom lack o proper care; where real joblessness is spiral-ing to over 20 percent, where the citizens,including students, spend lives toiling indebt working dead-end jobs, when they have jobs, in a world devoid o hope, a world o masters and sers.Te only word these corporations know is more. Tey are disemboweling every lastsocial service program unded by the taxpay-ers, rom education to Social Security, becausethey want that money themselves. Let the sick die. Let the poor go hungry. Let amilies betossed in the street. Let the unemployed rot.Let children in the inner city or rural waste-lands learn nothing and live in misery andear. Let the students nish school with no jobs and no prospects o jobs. Let the prisonsystem, the largest in the industrial world,expand to swallow up all potential dissent-ers. Let torture continue. Let teachers, police,reghters, postal employees and social work-ers join the ranks o the unemployed. Let theroads, bridges, dams, levees, power grids, raillines, subways, bus services, schools and librar-ies crumble or close. Let the rising tempera-tures o the planet, the reak weather patterns,the hurricanes, the droughts, the ooding, thetornadoes, the melting polar ice caps, the poi-soned water systems, the polluted air increaseuntil the species dies.I you do not shake o the 1% very, very soon they will kill you. And they will killthe ecosystem, dooming your children andyour children’s children. So either you riseup and dismantle the corporate state or a world o sanity – where we no longer kneelbeore the absurd idea that the demandso nancial markets should govern humanbehavior – or we are rog-marched towardsel-annihilation.Tose on the streets around Wall Streetare the physical embodiment o hope. Tey know that hope has a cost, that it is noteasy or comortable, that it requires sel-sacrice and discomort and nally aith.Tey sleep on concrete every night. Teirclothes are soiled. Tey have tasted ear,been beaten, gone to jail, been blindedby pepper spray, cried, hugged each other,laughed, sung, talked too long in generalassemblies, seen their chants drit upwardto the oce towers above them, wonderedi it is worth it, i anyone cares, i they will win. But as long as they remain steadastthey point the way out o the corporatelabyrinth. Tis is what it means to be alive.Tey are the best among us.
by
chris
hedges
N xc l.
iT’s now oR neveR
y
use
s who we bailed out areomy again.
@usuncut
a better uture.
@jstlilone
sp of greathelp tip theat is good.
n the street more than Ioliticians.
@critmasspanic
here were you duringn say “On the frst day I”
@Timcast
s more than GE, BP andaxes last year.
@usuncut
is a slogan created tomselves to death.
@yarazza
n though I am willing to
ot granted.
@reverendmanny
g used to justiyeed, and war.
@protestchaplain
ed up we are. We don’temocracy.
@sir_younis
erve better thenotteries to get into a
c
ds a new Revolution”
sh_anderson
24sep26sep27sep30sep
a
s we gather together in solidar-ity to express a eeling o massinjustice, we must not lose sighto what brought us together. We write sothat all people who eel wronged by thecorporate orces o the world can know that we are your allies. As one people, united, we acknowl-edge the reality: that the uture o thehuman race requires the cooperation o its members; that our system must pro-tect our rights, and upon corruption o that system, it is up to the individualsto protect their own rights, and thoseo their neighbors; that a democraticgovernment derives its just power romthe people, but corporations do notseek consent to extract wealth rom thepeople and the Earth; and that no truedemocracy is attainable when the pro-cess is determined by economic power. We come to you at a time when corpo-rations, which place prot over people,sel-interest over justice, and oppressionover equality, run our governments. Wehave peaceably assembled here, as is ourright, to let these acts be known.Tey have taken our houses throughan illegal oreclosure process, despite nothaving the original mortgage.Tey have taken bailouts rom tax-payers with impunity, and continue togive Executives exorbitant bonuses.Tey have perpetuated inequality anddiscrimination in the workplace basedon age, the color o one’s skin, sex, gen-der identity and sexual orientation.Tey have poisoned the ood supply through negligence, and undermined thearming system through monopolization.Tey have proted o o the tor-ture, connement, and cruel treatmento countless nonhuman animals, andactively hide these practices.Tey have continuously sought tostrip employees o the right to negoti-ate or better pay and saer workingconditions.Tey have held students hostage withtens o thousands o dollars o debt oneducation, which is itsel a human right.Tey have consistently outsourcedlabor and used that outsourcing as lever-age to cut workers’ healthcare and pay.Tey have inuenced the courts toachieve the same rights as people, withnone o the culpability or responsibility.Tey have spent millions o dollarson legal teams that look or ways to getthem out o contracts in regards to healthinsurance.Tey have sold our privacy as acommodity.Tey have used the military andpolice orce to prevent reedom o thepress.Tey have deliberately declined torecall aulty products endangering livesin pursuit o prot.Tey determine economic policy,despite the catastrophic ailures theirpolicies have produced and continue toproduce.Tey have donated large sums o money to politicians supposed to beregulating them. Tey continue to block alternate orms o energy to keep usdependent on oil.Tey continue to block generic ormso medicine that could save people’s livesin order to protect investments that havealready turned a substantive prot.Tey have purposely covered up oilspills, accidents, aulty bookkeeping, andinactive ingredients in pursuit o prot.Tey purposeully keep people misin-ormed and earul through their controlo the media.Tey have accepted private contractsto murder prisoners even when presented with serious doubts about their guilt.Tey have perpetuated colonialismat home and abroad. Tey have partici-pated in the torture and murder o inno-cent civilians overseas.Tey continue to create weapons o mass destruction in order to receive gov-ernment contracts. *o the people o the world, We, the New York City General Assembly occupying Wall Street inLiberty Square, urge you to assert yourpower.Exercise your right to peaceably assemble; occupy public space; createa process to address the problems weace, and generate solutions accessible toeveryone.o all communities that take actionand orm groups in the spirit o directdemocracy, we oer support, documen-tation, and all o the resources at ourdisposal. Join us and make your voices heard!
*Tese grievances are not all-inclusive.
declaratin f the occupatin
Approved by consensus on sept. 29, 2011
At the new york city GenerAl Assembly in occupied liberty squAre.
choose. buT choose fasT.
the stAte And corporAteforces Are determined to crush this.
OCCUPY_JOURNAL.indd 39/30/11 5:50 PM
|