The origin of #OccupyWallStreet

[Barry]

As far as I can tell, this is the post from Adbusters that started the whole movement. It's worth a read. I'd like to see the movement begin to focus on our "uncomplicated demand". I think they got it right with "ending the influence money has over our representatives in Washington".

If the Occupy Movement becomes a catchall for all the liberal causes for the last 30 years, it's power will be defused. On the other hand, things have generally been proceeding pretty well so far!

Since the movement is anchored in physical occupations, I am concerned about what winter will bring. Seems like a ripe time for a more traditional (inside) gatherings and time for focusing, educating, and planning for the movement in general and the 2012 elections.

Barry



https://www.adbusters.org/blogs/adbu...allstreet.html

Alright you 90,000 redeemers, rebels and radicals out there,

A worldwide shift in revolutionary tactics is underway right now that bodes well for the future. The spirit of this fresh tactic, a fusion of Tahrir with the acampadas of Spain, is captured in this quote:

"The antiglobalization movement was the first step on the road. Back then our model was to attack the system like a pack of wolves. There was an alpha male, a wolf who led the pack, and those who followed behind. Now the model has evolved. Today we are one big swarm of people."

— Raimundo Viejo, Pompeu Fabra University
Barcelona, Spain

The beauty of this new formula, and what makes this novel tactic exciting, is its pragmatic simplicity: we talk to each other in various physical gatherings and virtual people's assemblies … we zero in on what our one demand will be, a demand that awakens the imagination and, if achieved, would propel us toward the radical democracy of the future … and then we go out and seize a square of singular symbolic significance and put our asses on the line to make it happen.

The time has come to deploy this emerging stratagem against the greatest corrupter of our democracy: Wall Street, the financial Gomorrah of America.

On September 17, we want to see 20,000 people flood into lower Manhattan, set up tents, kitchens, peaceful barricades and occupy Wall Street for a few months. Once there, we shall incessantly repeat one simple demand in a plurality of voices.

Tahrir succeeded in large part because the people of Egypt made a straightforward ultimatum – that Mubarak must go – over and over again until they won. Following this model, what is our equally uncomplicated demand?

The most exciting candidate that we've heard so far is one that gets at the core of why the American political establishment is currently unworthy of being called a democracy: we demand that Barack Obama ordain a Presidential Commission tasked with ending the influence money has over our representatives in Washington. It's time for DEMOCRACY NOT CORPORATOCRACY, we're doomed without it.

This demand seems to capture the current national mood because cleaning up corruption in Washington is something all Americans, right and left, yearn for and can stand behind. If we hang in there, 20,000-strong, week after week against every police and National Guard effort to expel us from Wall Street, it would be impossible for Obama to ignore us. Our government would be forced to choose publicly between the will of the people and the lucre of the corporations.

This could be the beginning of a whole new social dynamic in America, a step beyond the Tea Party movement, where, instead of being caught helpless by the current power structure, we the people start getting what we want whether it be the dismantling of half the 1,000 military bases America has around the world to the reinstatement of the Glass-Steagall Act or a three strikes and you're out law for corporate criminals. Beginning from one simple demand – a presidential commission to separate money from politics – we start setting the agenda for a new America.

Post a comment and help each other zero in on what our one demand will be. And then let's screw up our courage, pack our tents and head to Wall Street with a vengeance September 17.

for the wild,
Culture Jammers HQ

Adbusters #97: Post Anarchism – How To Live Without Dead Time (with #OCCUPYWALLSTREET campaign materials inside), hits newsstands on August 2. Go to adbusters.org/subscribe and subscribe!

[Iolchan]

Well, Barry, The Idea of Direct Action has been around for at least one hundred years - ever since the time of Georges Sorel, at least.

And George Soros, who financed Obama; and is the money-man who owns Adbusters, has simply co-opted certain Ideas that were floating out there, in the Ether of the Internet.

For instance: this one, that is, I, myself, wrote, back in 2007, in A Manifesto for Paleoprogressives, >towards the end of my spiel< these words:

"In the present time, unconscious Paleo-Progressives contain within their scattered legions many social and political sub-groups. They come with a wide spread of tendencies:

Some are classical, academic Liberals of the old Ivy League schools of the Eastern Seaboard.

Some are urban, intellectual Blacks; some are rural, freedom-marching, progressive Black Baptists.

Some are rural back-to-the-land types, the remnants of the Sixties - Some of theses are Greens; some are self-described "Left/Populists" or "Socialists."

Some call themselves "Progressive Democrats;" some have "Libertarian/Socialist" tendencies...

Some are Chicano radicals who favor the building of alliances with the Zapatistas in Chiapas, et cetera...

Some are pro-Life, "Cultural Conservatives;" who remain, in economics, either Jeffersonian, or Socialist. Some of these are liberal, even evangelical Christians; some are Jewish.

Some are even so unconscious of what they really are, that they regard themselves as "Conservatives," of various tendencies...

All of these groups contain people with threads of Paleo-Progressive Consciousness. They should put aside whatever divisions divide them, and unite as a bloc.

It is my hope that All Paleo-Progressives will come out, and shake themselves, and realize who and what they are, and take the field. Once again, it is time for a Revolution in America. If the People lead, the leaders will follow.

The Question is: - Will it be a violent Revolution that the Oligarchy can put down violently, exterminating many good people in the process =OR= will it be a non-violent, Gandhi type Revolution, with the eyes of the World watching, engaging in mass sit-ins and shut-downs of the Institutions at the center of political, and economic, and military power on Wall Street, and in Washington, D.C., until such Institutions are altered and changed forever, and re-structured to operate in a non-predatory manner - in the interest of We, The People ?

If such a Movement is to be effective, it must work lawfully, and peacefully and by the means of Law.

As I discern them, Paleo-Progressives represent a non- violent, yet Radical, element within the body politic.

In the hope that there may yet be a non-violent Revolution, I humbly present an Amendment to the Constitution that fixes the Systemic flaw in the charter - one flaw that has plagued the American polis ever since the Framers drafted the Document in 1787.

That flaw was the loop-hole whereby Hamilton, Morris, & Co. were able to sidetrack the document, and set up the First Bank of The United States, a privately owned Joint-Stock Company, modeled on the Bank of England, whose building graces Wall Street to this day.

It was the Federal Reserve Bank of it's day - a Private Corporation overseeing the Creation of Credit, to the monumental benefit of a few, rich, privileged families who were the Joint-Stockholders.

Let us study, and remember the Methodology of the Non-Partisan League, and let us go forth and engage in non-violent Revolution...

&

" DRIVE THE MONEY-CHANGERS OUT OF THE TEMPLE!! "





Hey! Didn't Franklin Delano Roosevelt say that?





"...But he didn't Mean it."





I said that."





Mark Walter Evans,

Village Idiot,

Mensch





- March, 2007 -

"

Attached Files

• Adams.-.The.Legalized.Crime.of.Banking.and.a.Constitutional.Remedy.1958-1.pdf (454.0 KB )
• PatmanPrimerOnMoney.pdf (68.5 KB )
• Banking-and-Currency-and-the-Money-Trust-by-Minesota-Congressman-Charles-a-Lindbergh-Sr.pdf (579.0 KB )

[ubaru]

Bravo Iolchan!

Here's my favorite part:

All of these groups contain people with threads of Paleo-Progressive Consciousness. They should put aside whatever divisions divide them, and unite as a bloc.

It is my hope that All Paleo-Progressives will come out, and shake themselves, and realize who and what they are, and take the field. Once again, it is time for a Revolution in America. If the People lead, the leaders will follow.

That's when the real power of the people will come forward, when we lay down our differences, focus on our similarities, and unite in action.

Liz

[Iolchan]

More...

Alright you 90,000 redeemers, rebels and radicals out there,

A worldwide shift in revolutionary tactics is underway right now that bodes well for the future. The spirit of this fresh tactic, a fusion of Tahrir with the acampadas of Spain, is captured in this quote:

"The antiglobalization movement was the first step on the road. Back then our model was to attack the system like a pack of wolves. There was an alpha male, a wolf who led the pack, and those who followed behind. Now the model has evolved. Today we are one big swarm of people."

— Raimundo Viejo, Pompeu Fabra University
Barcelona, Spain

The beauty of this new formula, and what makes this novel tactic exciting, is its pragmatic simplicity: we talk to each other in various physical gatherings and virtual people's assemblies … we zero in on what our one demand will be, a demand that awakens the imagination and, if achieved, would propel us toward the radical democracy of the future … and then we go out and seize a square of singular symbolic significance and put our asses on the line to make it happen.

The time has come to deploy this emerging stratagem against the greatest corrupter of our democracy: Wall Street, the financial Gomorrah of America.

On September 17, we want to see 20,000 people flood into lower Manhattan, set up tents, kitchens, peaceful barricades and occupy Wall Street for a few months. Once there, we shall incessantly repeat one simple demand in a plurality of voices.

Tahrir succeeded in large part because the people of Egypt made a straightforward ultimatum – that Mubarak must go – over and over again until they won. Following this model, what is our equally uncomplicated demand?

The most exciting candidate that we've heard so far is one that gets at the core of why the American political establishment is currently unworthy of being called a democracy: we demand that Barack Obama ordain a Presidential Commission tasked with ending the influence money has over our representatives in Washington. It's time for DEMOCRACY NOT CORPORATOCRACY, we're doomed without it.

This demand seems to capture the current national mood because cleaning up corruption in Washington is something all Americans, right and left, yearn for and can stand behind. If we hang in there, 20,000-strong, week after week against every police and National Guard effort to expel us from Wall Street, it would be impossible for Obama to ignore us. Our government would be forced to choose publicly between the will of the people and the lucre of the corporations.

This could be the beginning of a whole new social dynamic in America, a step beyond the Tea Party movement, where, instead of being caught helpless by the current power structure, we the people start getting what we want whether it be the dismantling of half the 1,000 military bases America has around the world to the reinstatement of the Glass-Steagall Act or a three strikes and you're out law for corporate criminals. Beginning from one simple demand – a presidential commission to separate money from politics – we start setting the agenda for a new America.

The only problem with the Agenda listed above, is the limits of its Vision. Leave it to a magazine funded by one of the financial uncles, and corporate money sponsors of Obama to suggest that we demand of Obama that he establish yet another Presidential Commission.

I suggest that there are more Radical items that should be on the Agenda as the object of the Demands of #OccupyWallStreet. To wit: the dismantling of the Bond System, whereby "Money" is created by a corporate cartel, the Money Trust, and floated as an ever- expanding, upward-spiraling debt, to the detriment of the masses, and the profit of the few.

The System needs to be altered on a Systemic level; or else there will be no real "Change." Yes, we can all agree on the Slogan, "DEMOCRACY NOT CORPORATOCRACY," but what we need is Economic Democracy, the implementation of which which entails several Points, amongst which these are primary:

* The National Debt - indeed, All International Debt - must be repudiated, and liquidated. That is , We, the People must agree, in Unison, that 2012 be the Year of Jubilee. The so-called "National Debt," the gift of our wonderful money oligarchs; is, essentially, Fraud.

* We need debt-free Currency, issued by a sub-Treasury Central Bank-of-issue, that works in the interest of the People and not in the interest of the bond-holding Class; who are the owners of the CLASS-A stock of the Wall Street money-market Prime Banks, i.e., Morgan Guaranty Trust, Chase-Manhattan, Chemical/Manufacturers-Hannover, Citicorpse, etc...

* We need Land Reform, whereby the People of North America may be allowed to freely choose the option of living a rural agricultural life, in the vast interior of this great continent, rather than being stuffed into the urban { & coastal } high-rise apartment complexes that are mandated by UN-Agenda21.

Sincerely,

Mark Walter Evans
www.paleoprogressives.org

[Iolchan]

Writ in 2007:


A Manifesto for Paleo-Progressives

How does one define the term 'Paleo - Progressive' ?

- Paleo-Progressives are a substantial, although unsung, unrepresented, unorganized, and hitherto undeclared and scattered flock of politically aware liberals and radicals within the American body politic, throughout history, even until Now.

* It is an old, and pronounced tendency within what was formerly known as the Progressive Movement before the New Left came on the scene in 1962.

* Paleo-Progressivism was a potent tendency within the pre-Marxist, and non-Marxist-Leninist wing of what academics generally call the Old Left. It existed as a tendency long before the term "Progressive" was co-opted by the Bull Moose Party of Teddy Roosevelt in 1912.

Later, when the term Progressive was co-opted by the Stalinists and their fellow-travelers in the 1920s and 1930s, Paleo-Progressivism was the camp of those, who out of love for Freedom and Democracy, were "pre-mature anti-Stalinists." - [my phrase]

Paleo-Progressivism has deep roots in American history. Paleo-Progressives remember Jefferson's hope and vision of America as a peaceful, insular, enlightened, prosperous, happy, and educated nation of free-holders living in villages, towns and cities; of a cultivated continent of orchards, fields, and farms, of yeomen farm-families dwelling safely, at peace with the world and shining a beacon of freedom and hope to the rest of mankind.

Paleo-Progressives are for clean, efficient, ship-shape government. They are against graft and corruption on all levels. They are not ashamed to be called "petty-bourgeois Reformists" by Marxist-Leninists. Paleo-Progressives are Jeffersonian democrats with a small d.

As such, they are against Militarism, and American Imperialism abroad, since Jefferson declared his enmity towards standing armies.

In the present, Paleo-progressives want to end the war in Iraq, and passionately oppose the insane drive of {Strike:the BushLeague and the Neo-cons} {Instead, Read : the Obama Administration, Anglo-American, NATO Axis, & Israel} to open a Second Front in the War On [of] Terror, by nuking Iran.

In the present, every single Paleo-Progressive in America, and those of their number who have become exiles abroad because they have given up hope that America can ever be reformed, wants to end the War in Iraq, Now, and bring the boys and girls in uniform home, Now.

Paleo-Progressives accept the principle of the Class War, not out of doctrinaire, Marxist Cant, but because it is self-evident. Paleo-Progressives are egalitarians, and want there to be a level playing field. They loathe racism and sexism, ageism and class-ism - and every other tool of leverage that the ruling class utilizes to keep the People separate, and locked in ideological prison camps.

Paleo-Progressives in general are not Marxists, though some have certain "Old-Left" American Socialist Party tendencies. They remember Eugene Debs. They are quite able to square Lincoln's language in the Gettysburg Address, about government "of the People, by the People, and for the People," with the term Socialism. - In the Realm of Ideas, they are the same animal.

Paleo-Progressives are generally not Luddites. In general, they are not against technology. They are for Progress. That's inherent in their internal constitution. However, they are vehemently opposed to the abuse and misuse of science, and technology against the People by the government and the minions of the power elite.

Paleo-Progressives tend to be both Bohemian and Culturally Conservative, at the same time. They love their families, and are into family values.

Paleo-Progressives tend to be pacifists. They heartily reject the Marxist-Leninist notion that the end justifies the means. They love and honor all sentient beings, including plants.

Paleo-Progressives, often it seems, have not stopped to examine why they believe in Progress, as such; they just do. It's just born in them. Few of them have ever given the matter the introspection, consideration, and analysis that it deserves.

Most Paleo-Progressives have never read The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Growth and Origin, by J.B. Bury, 1932, Dover Books. Perhaps they should.

Perhaps, if they did, they might be able to examine their own unconscious assumptions, and evolve to the next stage of political consciousness.

Paleo-Progressives are realistic about the U.S. Federal Constitution. They recognize the fact that the Constitution is a flawed document; a brilliant but compromised document drafted by a mixed assembly of Yankee proto-Industrialist Hamiltonians and Southern slave-owners and tidewater planters.

Paleo-Progressives are just a little curious about what Patrick Henry actually said, for four to five hours a day, for twenty days running, in the Virginia House of Burgesses, when he was arguing against the ratification of the Federal Constitution. Apart from arguing that it would lead to an "Imperial Presidency," common knowledge is slim on this point. Problem is, these speeches are buried in the archives of the University of Virginia, in Charlottesville.

Historically, Paleo-Progressives read "An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution," by Charles Beard, and were aware of his thesis. Some read "The New Nation," by Merrill Jenson, and developed an appreciation for the Articles of Confederation; Paleo-Progressives are against "Yankee Imperialism."

Paleo-Progressives also love Freedom more than any form of "Government." In this respect, it may be said, they have certain Libertarian tendencies. PaleoProgressives appreciate Patrick Henry, and remember what he said about Liberty and Death. And Yes, we all know and agree: George W. Bush is a War-monger, and a serial killer.

It is because the BushLeague { & Obama-bots } are ideological Fascisti who are bent on taking away our precious heritage of Freedom, that We Declare Our Opposition to George W. Bush, {read Obama} and his {read, their} financial "base" on Wall Street. George W. Bush is {was} the first President ever, to declare in Public, that the Constitution is "Just a God-damned Scrap of Paper."

For this reason alone, Paleo-Progressives, in the Present, are not against the Constitution. They are realists; and realize sometimes W {& Obama} means what he says {they say}. Therefore, Paleo-Progressives are, to a man - to a woman, for the Constitution. They love and believe in the Bill of Rights, and are willing to make their stand on it.

They realize that, in the present situation, both documents are a hedge, a rallying cry, and a hopeful Point-in-Common across the Great Divide of the American political Spectrum, in stopping the general downward spiral to Fascism in America that is being engineered by the desperate faction of Wall Street capitalists who are using W {Read, Obama} as their current front-man and stooge.

George W. Bush {Or Obama} is not the Problem; they are Symptoms

In every generation of American history, the Paleo-Progressives have opposed every aggressive War, and every Imperialist foreign entanglement.

Historically, Paleo-Progressives bore the burden of the memory of the conclusion that Jefferson came to late in life, regarding the flaw in the Constitution:

- That it did not allow the Treasury to monetize paper, and issue non-interest-bearing bills of Credit, and further, that it did not allow the separate States to create credit monies within their own jurisdictions - bills and notes - as they had been permitted to do under the Articles of Confederation.

Thomas Jefferson, the elder, wrote:

"The issuing power of money should be taken from the banks and restored to Congress and the People, to whom it belongs. I sincerely believe the banking institutions are more dangerous to liberty than standing armies."

"Paleo-Conservatives," on the other hand, derive from the tradition of the Tertiam Quids, the Southern gentlemen, monetarists [Gold bugs] who had been friends of Jefferson and held on to his Hard Currency stance, of the 1790s. [See Thomas Jefferson to John Taylor, 1798; ME 10:65.] The Tertiam Quids of the Age of Jackson, who later became Confederates, represent the ideological forebears of the Old Right "-the Paleo-Conservatives" - who are hard-money advocates to this day. This is some of the etiology of the Old Right tradition in the American body politic. Thus we have forward-looking, Progressive Jeffersonians, and stand pat, Conservative Jeffersonians, to this day.

A highly enjoyable and readable study of a time when the Money Question was fiercely debated, is the book, The Age of Jackson, by Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., written when he was still a young man, sowing his political wild oats.

The Paleo-Progressive Current and tendency in American politics and economics is the Stream of Consciousness and Zeitgeist that followed after Jefferson, and com-pre-hended, and developed his Epiphany, acquired late in life, that the U.S. Treasury should be empowered, [with or without an Amendment to the Constitution] to emit Treasury Notes, or

Non-interest-bearing Bills of Credit.


Write that down. Memorize it. Comprehend it. Let it become a Mantra.

Historically, Paleo-Progressives have always had certain Jacksonian tendencies, though the educated amongst them realize that Jackson was the Ronald Reagan of his day; an irascable old war-horse, and Indian killer, who loved to nap and lounge around drinking mint juleps on the back porch of the White House.

Still, Paleo-Progressives retain a fondness for Andrew Jackson, the man who opened up the front door of the White House to the common people from the West, and who fought the Bankers in Philadelphia grouped around the Second Bank of the United States, and won. President Jackson said:

"The bold effort the present bank [the Second Bank of the United States] had made to control government, the distress it has wantonly produced ...are but premonitions of the fate that awaits the American people should they be deluded into a perpetuation of this institution or the establishment of another like it."

Also, Paleo-Ps remember Jackson because he loved to party. Paleo-Progressives have always loved a good party. (Small p).

The "Problem" in America is Systemic

Jackson fought the Second Bank of the United States, which was the central holding company of the North American plutocracy of his day; he pulled the plug, and nixed the renewal of its Charter. But he did not solve the problem. In point of fact, Andrew Jackson did not have a clue as to what the solution was.

It was Abraham Lincoln, who was forced, out of necessity, to monetize paper during the Civil War, who realized and fulfilled the solution that Jefferson had realized late in life as the Solution to the Money Question.

During the Civil War, beginning in 1861, Lincoln authorized the printing of four hundred and forty-nine million dollars worth of Fiat Paper Notes; in order to pay the salary of the Soldiers, the bills due for purchase of war materials, et cetera. They were known subsequently as the "Lincoln Greenbacks."

Further series of these notes ceased to be issued after 1863, when the Secretary of the Treasury, Salmon Chase, from the banking family of the same name, pushed through the National Bank Act of 1863. - Against the will of Lincoln, that Act was railroaded through Congress by the conservative {read, Wall Street} elements in the Republican Party.

Abraham Lincoln said simply that he could not fight two wars at the same time. He wrote and spoke to the effect that he fully intended to resume the practice of Creating Credit; non-interest-bearing notes, In the Name of the People, after the war was over; but then something happened at the Theatre one night and he was not able to accomplish that end.

For the rest of the Nineteenth Century, and on into the Twentieth, there remained a radical, left-wing, Greenback remnant within the folds of the Republican Party. This element was purged from the Republican Party in 1918, because it had been opposed to America entering the Great War.

Historically, in the late nineteenth century, the bulk of the Paleo-Progressive tendency in the United States, known as "The Western Progressives" united around the Issue of Currency Reform and joined the Greenback Party in the 1870s & 1880s. This evolved into the People's Party, the Populist Party - of the 1890s. Of which, Jack London, in his youth, was a member.

[A Necessary Foot-NOTE: this movement was a far cry from the holocaust revisionist, crypto-Nazi, so-called "Populist Party" of Willis Carto, in the 1990's, which was a shill, set up by the plutocrats to corral, contain, and discredit any genuine populist potential in the present.]

These parties were primarily Western [trans-Allegheny] in their origins and electoral base. They represented the current that had slowly evolved from Jefferson through Jackson, on into Lincoln. William Greider describes this movement in his book, Secrets of the Temple.

Greider wrote, in the chapter entitled, "Democratic Money":

"The central element of the Populist Plan, a democratized monetary system, was... an audacious redefinition of money - money was a contract with the future, not an obligation with the past. A free society could determine that contract itself, in a democratic manner, and fulfill its terms, independent of the demands imposed by the old wealth accumulated from past enterprises. In short, the national government could create money and invest it with a social purpose - promoting greater equality - because government was the ultimate guarantor of the future. The new money created by government, the Populists reasoned, would be free (save for the cost of printing and handling), yet valuable.

Where did its value come? From everyone - from the mutual consent given by all,
and so all should share its power."
- Secrets of the Temple.

- Just understand those words, if you would ! -

The common thread of this radical tradition was Money, and the fight over who would control the Issuance of It - the Congress, the Representatives of We the People - or - Private Corporations, Banks.

In the Nineteen-teens, beginning in North Dakota, an Agrarian Revolt began. It was fully rooted in this tradition, the trans-Allegheny grain belt tradition of the struggle of the People to regain their Sovereignty over the Issuance of Money, through the Congress, the Representatives of We, The People.

This movement, called the Non-Partisan League, achieved complete and stunning, if only regional, success in 1916 in North Dakota. They were able, in just one year of intensive organizing, to take over the State government of North Dakota, and to enact a radical five-point platform that included a People's Bank, the Bank of North Dakota, which issued low-interest loans to farmers and free-holders, at two per cent per annum.

Their Methodology was very simple:

(1) They had a five-point Platform, which they all agreed on.

(2) They ran citizen's candidates in every county, city, town and hamlet,
who were totally committed to this Platform,

(3) They all agreed, beforehand, that they would work to elect any politician
who would concur with all of the points of the Platform,

(4) ...And that they would work to remove every elected official who would oppose the Platform.

Oh, there's one more thing; to wit, Upon taking control of the reins of the North Dakota State government in 1916, the assembled, newly elected legislators enacted all five points of the Platform, in one session.

This was all done within the Republican Party, by the way, the more radical of the two parties (pre-1918) at the time. Ha!

When, in the course of time, the fervor and enthusiasm of this movement, the original Political Prairie Fire [Check out the book by Robert Morlan] spread over the border into Minnesota, the Movement took on the name the of Farmer-Labor Party, which was founded by a Committee which included Charles A. Lindbergh, Sr., the father of the aviator.

It was, quite consciously, an attempt to build that Union of Farmers and Workers that Lenin said was necessary to make any Revolution successful. It was not a movement that inclined towards the violent overthrow of the government, however. It was a pacifist movement.

In the 1920s and 1930s, many urban intellectuals, and Paleo-Progressives east of the Alleghenies actively allied with this Radical current in the West, in the hope of building a Third Party that could topple the strangle hold of the oligarchy in the citadels of finance in the east.

Such men of the Left generally coalesced in third-party formations such as the 1924 Progressive Party of Robert LaFollette, Sr., and the Farmer-Labor Association, in the American Mid-West. They were all big fans of Eugene Debs.

Paleo-Progressives were not, and are not "New Deal Democrats" - an appellation that has appropriately been co-opted and appropriated by the self-described "Hamiltonian" LaRouchies.

During the era of F.D.R., Paleo-Progressives were united in their perception of Franklin D. Roosevelt as a friendly, but disingenuous front-man for the interests of the bond-holding class, a man who had been groomed, and chosen by his teammates on Wall Street to save Capitalism during a period of extreme crisis.

Paleo-Progressives of that era also favored the construction of roads, dams and bridges, the improvement of the infrastructure, and putting the unemployed to work; but they did not agree with the programs that F.D.R. enacted - the multiplying of alphabet agencies that were, in reality, Delaware corporations; quasi-private fascist corporations.

Paleo-Progressives, during the 1930's wanted the Government to take over banking, the railroads, the hydro-electric plants, and the armaments industry, but they advocated that this be done by spending "New Money" - Lincoln Greenbacks - not by the expedient F.D.R. employed to further his programs - of floating endless issues of interest-bearing Treasury bonds, that increased the National Debt exponentially.

Paleo-Progressives, during the 1930s, wanted the government to function cleanly and efficiently in the interest of the People - All of the People - for the Common good. They wanted the Government of We, the People, to exercise Dominion over Credit. That is, to wrest it away from the Banks and holding companies that then owned - and currently do own, and run the Government.

During the period at the very beginning of the New Deal, one of the most penetrating, clear, and succinct on-going, weekly editorial analyses of just what was wrong with the New Deal, can be found by reading the weekly editorials of Walter W. Liggett, editor and publisher of the Mid-West American, of Rochester and Minneapolis, Minnesota, available on microfilm, from the Minnesota Historical Society.

Jerry Voorhis, the radical Congressman from Whittier California, who was Richard Nixon's first hit on his rise to power, was another articulate exponent of this same current of "Old Left" Paleo-Progressive populism in the 1930s and 1940s, even within the fold of the Democratic Party itself.

In the present time, unconscious Paleo-Progressives contain within their scattered legions many social and political sub-groups. They come with a wide spread of tendencies:

Some are classical, academic Liberals of the old Ivy League schools of the Eastern Seaboard.

Some are urban, intellectual Blacks; some are rural, freedom-marching, progressive Black Baptists.

Some are rural back-to-the-land types, the remnants of the Sixties - Some of these are Greens; some are self-described "Left/Populists" or "Socialists."

Some call themselves "Progressive Democrats;" some have "Libertarian/Socialist" tendencies...

Some are Chicano radicals who favor the building of alliances with the Zapatistas in Chiapas, et cetera...

Some are pro-Life, "Cultural Conservatives;" who remain, in economics, either Jeffersonian, or Socialist. Some of these are liberal, even evangelical Christians; some are Jewish.

Some are even so unconscious of what they really are, that they regard themselves as "Conservatives," of various tendencies...

All of these groups contain people with threads of Paleo-Progressive Consciousness.

They should put aside whatever divisions divide them, and unite as a bloc.

It is my hope that All Paleo-Progressives will come out, and shake themselves, and realize who and what they are, and take the field. Once again, it is time for a Revolution in America. If the People lead, the leaders will follow.

The Question is: - Will it be a violent Revolution that the Oligarchy can put down violently, exterminating many good people in the process =OR= will it be a non-violent, Gandhi type Revolution, with the eyes of the World watching, engaging in mass sit-ins and shut-downs of the Institutions at the center of political, and economic, and military power on Wall Street, and in Washington, D.C., until such Institutions are altered and changed forever, and re-structured to operate in a non-predatory manner - in the interest of We, The People?

If such a Movement is to be effective, it must work lawfully, and peacefully and by the means of Law.

As I discern them, Paleo-Progressives represent a non-violent, yet radical, element within the body politic.

In the hope that there may yet be a non-violent Revolution, I humbly present an Amendment to the Constitution that fixes the Systemic flaw in the charter - one flaw that has plagued the American polis ever since the Framers drafted the Document in 1787.

That flaw was the loop-hole whereby Hamilton, Morris, & Co. were able to sidetrack the document, and set up the First Bank of The United States, a privately owned Joint-Stock Company, modeled on the Bank of England.

It was the Federal Reserve Bank of it's day - a Private Corporation overseeing the Creation of Credit, to the monumental benefit of a few, rich, privileged families who were the Joint-Stockholders.

Let us study, and remember the Methodology of the Non-Partisan League, and let us go forth and engage in non-violent Revolution...

&

" DRIVE THE MONEY-CHANGERS OUT OF THE TEMPLE !! "


Hey! Didn't Franklin Delano Roosevelt say that?


"...But he didn't Mean it."


I said that.


Mark Walter Evans,

writ,

- March, 2007 -



Latest Version, 2011:

AMENDMENT XXVIII

Money and Credit – Congress Asserts Power To Coin Money, and Emit Bills of Credit

[SECTION 1.] The Congress hereby asserts the power, granted in this Constitution, to coin money, and to regulate the value thereof. - And further, to emit non-interest-bearing bills of credit directly through the Treasury Department on the Credit, and in the Name of the People.

[SECTION 2.] The U.S. Congress hereby authorizes the U.S. Treasury to issue a sufficient quantity of Fiat “dollars” to purchase back the capital stock of the Federal Reserve Bank from the private owners, by eminent domain.

[SECTION 3.] The Federal Reserve Bank shall henceforth cease to exist as a private and public institution. All of the books, documents and records of the Federal Reserve Bank, and of the U.S. Treasury Department shall be transferred to the U.S. Congress, and the U.S. Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve Bank shall be made Subject to the most minute Congressional and e-Public Examination. A New Institution, the “Common-Wealth Central Bank” of the United States of America, shall henceforth function as a Sub-Treasury Central Bank of issue.

[SECTION 4.] The U.S. Congress does also hereby authorize the U.S. Treasury to recall, by eminent domain, all outstanding U.S. Treasury Securities, constituting the “National Debt,” and to Convert them by Fiat, into a new species of dollar-denominated, and non-interest-bearing credit instrument, to be termed "National Credit Receipts." All U.S Securities owned by individual persons shall be redeemed, at face value, in credit, on the books of the Common-Wealth Central Bank. However; all outstanding U.S. Treasury Securities originally purchased from the Federal Open Market Committee by Banking Corporations at Treasury bond-auctions, shall be discounted to seven percent of their “value” and be accounted as balances on the Books, and by the Credit, of the Common-Wealth Central Bank of the United States of America.

[SECTION 5.] The U.S. Treasury, and the Common-Wealth Central Bank of the United States of America [as the fountainhead of Credit Creation in the nation] shall henceforth Issue as Money only non-interest-bearing, fiat Treasury Notes, and Mint Coins of pure Specie, stamped with their weight and fineness. The books, accounts and records of the Treasury shall continually be open to public scrutiny. The Congress, in order to promote the General Welfare, shall find creative – and equitable - ways to invest and spread the new National Wealth. There shall be no further issues of Treasury Securities, or Bonds.

[SECTION 6.] Each of the State Treasury departments, of each of the fifty States, are also hereby empowered, by the same creative principle [formerly given by charter to banks] to create Credit within their own jurisdictions, in the form of checks, signed by the State comptrollers, in accordance with appropriations made by the State legislatures, for the purpose of maintaining State institutions, infrastructure, and salaries.

[SECTION 7.] In accordance with the provisions of this Article, all banks and financial institutions in America shall receive new charters from the Treasury. The U.S. Treasury and the Sub-Treasury Common-Wealth Central Bank {and the State Treasuries} shall henceforth have the unique and sole power within the nation to create Credit – a function formerly granted by the government [ and thus erroneously delegated ] only to Banks. Henceforth private banks may charge interest, to service accounts.

[SECTION 8.] In Sum, this Article defines, and enhances the powers granted to Congress and the Treasury, under Article I, Section 8, Clause 5, of this Constitution. Furthermore, it amends and modifies Article I, Section 10, Clause 1, to empower State Treasuries to create [a limited amount of] non-inflationary Credit, in the form of check-book money in order to meet the pressing needs of the States.