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Occupy Austin | July 4th GA Visioning Process | #oatx #ows
Occupy Austin is planning a Fourth of July rally on the state Capitol grounds to compose a list of grievances and hold a series of teach-ins and marches. This is the first locally organized effort to collectively answer the question, “What do y’all want?” since the 99 percenters were evicted from Austin’s City Hall steps in early February.
Hecklers and academics aside, no one is more concerned with the future of the Occupy Austin than its own participants. For the moment, fundamental questions about organizational process and personal identity preoccupy many of its most active participants, who eschew structure and are deeply suspicious of the very nature of politics. What is complicated enough; how seems nearly unattainable.
What does indepenence mean to you? #J4 #OWS
- On July 4, 1776 men gathered in Philadelphia and wrote these words: “But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”
- For the past 40 years our government has been invariably pursuing the interests of corporate greed over the interests of the people. This one Object has been their aim at the expense of the people that consent to be governed. We can and will create a full list of grievances, but that list would be much too long and incomplete. Instead, we can explain what it is that we would like to achieve and then begin that process.
- Since we are part of a movement that has no official leader and no official hierarchy each of us brings our own values to the movement. For me, I am passionate about alleviating poverty and homelessness. For others they are passionate about the way our government and society privileges people with lighter skin. For others they see the destruction of our environment as the paramount problem that we are facing today. Yet, the secret that no one in power wants to admit is that all of these issues are the same issue. They are rooted in our desire to control. People create a system of power over others so that they have a feeling of control. This system of power over people, plants or animals is a system of inequality that must be brought down. The Occupy movement is the last chance that this country, and this globe, has to fight against the powers that will destroy our world.
- It is our right and our duty to throw off the Governments, around the world, that are invariably pursuing the corporate profit over the health of our people and our planet. We are lucky enough to be alive in a time when we, as a global people, have become aware of the ways in which our governments are colluding with one another to frighten us into thinking that there is a scarcity and that we must fight each other over the crumbs that they give us. We must stand up and say that as The People we are united.
- We are going to create the new world that we want to live in. We will no longer listen to your lies that tell us that we have to choose our issues to fight. We will no longer believe the lie that profit is more important that the life of the forests. We will no longer believe the lies that the only way to create prosperity for some is to build it on the backs of the poor. We will no longer believe your lies that only people who have money afford to have the best healthcare. We will no longer believe your lies that people in poverty are there because they do not work hard enough. We will no longer listen to the television that instills fear of those who practice a different religion or wear different clothes or speak a different language. We will embrace this diversity. This diversity is what makes us strong. We know that those of us standing up in Chicago and in New York and in Madrid and in Tahrir Square and in Tunisia and in Syria and here in Austin, TX are all brothers and sisters. We are fighting a united fight and we are winning.
