As Ordinary Citizens In an Extraordinary Democracy We Must:
Renew the Promise of Our Country for All Its People
Renew Our Promise to Serve Our Country and Each Other
Live Up to The Promise that Was and Is America.
We, the 99%, are tired of having our voices ignored and our needs disrgarded.
We, the 99%, are tired of having our Democracy and our Economy run by and for the corporate elite.
We, the 99%, are unwilling to allow both the demcracy and the economy of this Country to be demolished just to protect and serve the 1% who would rather rule than be governed and whose immense wealth and power have combined with their insatiable appetites for more wealth and power and their dangerously short-sighted visioin to bring both our Democracy and Economy to the edge of ruin.
We are the 99%.
We have occupied hundreds of American cities.
Our occupations have forced the 1% to take notice.
It is time for us to take action.
It's time to Occupy Our Democracy.
As with the Occupy Wall Street movement, there will be many who are impatient to skip to the end. To announce a specific policy or partisan agenda.
But if we are truly intent on reclaiming our Democracy, we must begin at the beginning.
A Democracy Occupied by the 99% must begin by engaging a greater share of the 99% to actively excercise their role as Ordinary Citizens in an Extraordinary Democracy.
We must go about the hard work of clearly establishing the nature and ulimate power of our 'informed consent of the governed'.
This work can be accomplished in hundreds of ways. But it must be accomplished to show both the 99% and the 1% that the inherent potency of democracy in this United States has not been lost.
The many "Occupy" sites have begun this process in their own ways. This is not an effort to either criticize or replace such ongoing efforts.
It is merely an additional suggestion from another ordinary citizen in this extraordinary democracy.
Part I:
We Need to Talk
Chapter 1. Where Are We Bound?
Do you have a vision of where you think your fellow citizens and Nation should be going, what our future should be? Do you find yourself frustrated that today’s politics seem to be angry, empty and misguided? Do you find your neighbors and family separated by politics or separated from politics?
To take politics in our Country from what it has become and make it into what it should be, the time has come for all of us to join a national movement to Occupy Our Democracy.
The first step to Occupy Our Democracy is to engage a broader segment of our citzens in the task of seting a course – of choosing a direction. It is time for all Americans to start a conversation about where we as a Nation and as a people are headed. (You may have think this is self-evident, but consider that the current state of of our Democracy and our Economy thinks otherwise - in part because of the comprehesive efforts to convince us that we are either too polarized or disenfranchised for overwhelming opinion's held in private by our citizens to have any effective impact on our Nation's direction.)
We must reacquaint the American public with their own values, principles and beliefs to an extent that they both believe their opinions matter and expect them to be followed. We must take the 'passive' consent of the public and turn it into 'kinetic' consent. One way to do that is to reattach our beliefs and opinions on policy to basic values and principles. To do that, each of us must answer these basic questions:
In the continuing search for a “more perfect union”, to make this Nation greater in a better world:
• What should our Nation be responsible for providing its citizens?
• What should we as citizens be responsible for providing to our Nation and to each other?
• What should we as a nation and as citizens of this Nation be responsible for providing to the world community?
These questions rephrase a famous call to arms by asking both “what your Country can do for you” and “what you can do for your Country”. They ask what we owe to our Country and what we as a Nation owe to ourselves, our children and our fellow citizens both of this Country and of the world.
We are not asking you to decide or even talk about how to achieve these goals. That is an important, but later discussion. In fact, at this point we would like to focus exclusively on our goals – our direction – our proposed destination. Most discussions about goals, about what we should do, are too easily sidetracked by questions or objections over how or when we will accomplish our goals – to the point where our discussions on the nature and extent of our goals are never allowed to reach any decent resolution. So, our first covenant with each other should be to focus on goals, at least for this stage of our discussions. Once we decide what it is we should do, there will be plenty of time to talk about how and when to do it.
Determine your values and your pathway will be determined.
You may be asking why we should make this effort. Is it really worth the time and energy in our already too-busy world?
Unless we as a people know the destinations we want to reach, how can we set our priorities, create plans and develop budgets for getting there? If we really want these discussions to have substance and sincerity, we cannot allow them to be conducted solely by political candidates in the frequently self-serving and cynical arena of political campaigns. We must engage in these discussions first amongst ourselves. Then we can determine how well our politicians are promoting what we have decided we want to do and whether they are taking us in the direction we have decided we want to go. The need for this discussion is clear and we cannot wait another minute to begin.
As a people, we are discouraged and distracted. The ties that bind us together have begun to fray. Without the moderating voices of ordinary Americans participating in the civic discussion, our process has become dysfunctional and our political discussion has become both shrill and empty.
By talking about where we are bound as a Nation, instead of which candidate is best, we can take some of the noise out of the discussion. By trying to discover where we want to go, we may discover that where we stand is closer together than we think.
We need to renew the promise of our Country for all its people and renew our promise as citizens to serve our Country and to serve each other. We need to live up to the promise of who we should be and who we can be as a people and a Nation. As Americans, we have not lived up to the dream that was and is America.
It is time to change that.
The time has come for all of us to Occupy Our Democracy.
This statement is an effort to get ordinary people talking about some very basic, but very important things. It is an effort to make conversations about these things part of everyday life again. The movement to Occupy Our Democracy starts with five basic assumptions:
1. All great issues begin with a discussion of right and wrong by the people of our Country. This discussion of right and wrong requires no special skills or knowledge. It requires moral standards, common sense and a decent regard for humanity.
2. On the issues that are central to our lives, there is a fairly large majority that has common beliefs and goals. Most of what we hear on public policy is self-serving noise. If we could focus on the small percentage of our differences that are real, we would probably find out that our differences, though genuine, are not insurmountable.
3. Most of us became part of this democracy through accident of birth and have not done enough to deserve it or to preserve it.
4. To be truly Occupy Our Democracy as citizens we must recognize that we have mutual obligations and responsibilities. Our Nation and our people must stand up and contribute what is right, what is fair, and what is just. All of us must live up to our potential. All of us must keep our promises.
5. We, right here, can create the vision and direction for our Country, our State, and our Community. We are not waiting for leaders, or political candidates, or our party, or some new interest group to start moving us in a better direction. We are not waiting any longer because we have come to the conclusion that:
We Really Are The Ones We Have Been Waiting For.
Not the Big Businesses. Not the Bankers. Not the lobbyists and special interest groups. Not the President. Not your members of Congress. Not your political party. Not the Establishment Media.
Not the 1%.
You and I. The 99%.
When you say the words “Occupy Our Democracy” out loud, they sound idealistic and presumptuous and seem to describe something either not needed or conversely beyond our reach. However, there is another way to look at it.
By saying we are here to Occupy Our Democracy, we are saying that ordinary people can set our Nation’s direction and each of us can take a new direction in setting the direction of our Country and our own life.
This is not taking ourselves too seriously. It is taking the need for change seriously. It is taking our citizenship seriously – taking the obligations and responsibilities of a democracy as seriously as the liberties and freedoms, taking “we the people” and “consent of the governed” as seriously as “what’s in it for me”.
You may ask ‘What right do you have, or do we have to talk about these things, to pretend we understand the complex problems or have the skills or knowledge to craft solutions to those problems, to pretend to decide things like this or pretend that we have any real say?” When these doubts rise up, we must all remember:
It is not about your right, or my right.
It is about our obligation as ordinary citizens in an extraordinary democracy.
It is not about what each of us alone can do as individuals.
It is about what all of us can do together.
Paul Wellstone once said:
The challenge is to mobilize millions of Americans from all walks of life to participate actively in a historic movement to restore our democracy. … We need to invite ordinary citizens back into American politics to work for what is right for our Nation.
Consider yourselves invited.
What it comes down to is that the pieces of our lives that we value most are those we share in common. Together as a people we can neglect them or preserve them, but we cannot have them on our own. This is why we need to come together in this historic moment in history – to encourage people to share with each other what they think is important – so that what is important in our lives and in our Country does not get lost.
The civic conversation step in this movement to Occupy our Democracy begins with the three basic questions that ask us to define:
• Our Nation’s duty to the people,
• The people’s duty to our Nation, and
• Our duties together as citizens of the world.
Over time, we as individuals, and eventually as a Nation, will answer these questions. As we do, we will create not only goals and destinations; we will create a set of promises to each other and to our Country about how we will shape our future. Together, these questions, these answers and these solemn promises will help us Occupy Our Democracy.
All right, let’s get to work.
End of Part I, Chapter 1.
(Coming: Part II, Chapter 2. Discussion Guide: What Should Our Nation Be Responsible For Providing Its Citizens? Chapter 3. Discussion Guide: What Should We As Citizens Be Responsible For Providing To Our Nation And To Each Other? Chapter 4 . Discussion Guide: What Should We As A Nation Be Responsible For Providing As a Citizen of The World Community?)