The OWS protesters have had a great start and the momentum is growing. Bill Maher said that they were "militantly vague", and that is probably true.
The reason that is true is because the reality of the level of change that HAS to occur is so sweeping, and the national effort that will be required to enact that change is so herculean, that if it wasn't totally vague then many people would lose heart and fall into apathy again.
Here is the change that must occur to restore our democracy and American way of life. And how this change can come about.
We need a constitutional amendment that will do the following two things.
1. Remove all private monies from federal campaign and lobbying activities (including those belonging to the candidates)
2. Institute a parlimentary system of governance whereby party representation is determined by vote percentages. (I.E. if the green party gets 10% of the national vote then they get to have 10% representation in congress)
Thanks to Ezra Klein for the following graphics:
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/...
The problem with this is that your elected officials are part of the club, they are completely entrenched in this dual party, same-coin-two-heads, system whereby graft and cozy financial arrangements with industry players enriches BOTH parties. They are all wholly and totally corrupt (with very few exceptions).
Our government is broken. The reason it is broken is because there is no representative democracy left in this country. Everything is being done for political gain and political gain is measured in $$$.
That is the problem and the solution is listed above.
what has to happen now is a growing support and alignment of the OWS movement into more and more large cities. This movement needs to solidify these solutions and demand a constitutional amendment. This is paramount because this constitutional amendment will not happen with the crowd we have in government today.
so, by the time that the 2012 elections come around, we MUST
1. Make support of the constitutional amendment a requirement for re-election.
2. Vote out every single incumbent that is up for election.
3. Hold a long and economically destructive general strike until the constitutional amendment is enacted.
It will take about 500-1000 times more supporters in the streets than we have right now. They will have to join together with outlying supporters who provide shelter and food.
We will have to be beaten, arrested and peppersprayed on a massive scale.
in short, it will have to be a revolution.