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If only . . .
Is it really possible for "us" (the 99%) to take back control of the government from the
corporations (and I don't think it would be just from the corporations we'd need to
wrest it back)? If anyone has an idea as to how this might be done, please clue me in!
Meanwhile . . . I'm with Bucky Fuller, who wrote:
"You never change things by fighting the existing reality.
To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete."
Here's what came from someone(s?) at OWS:
We Envision:
[1] a truly free, democratic, and just society;
[2] where we, the people, come together and solve our problems by consensus;
[3] where people are encouraged to take personal and collective responsibility
and participate in decision making;"
To me, it's like we've been riding in this old, decrepit bus, breathing it's toxic fumes
as it's driven recklessly along, leaving death, destruction and suffering in its wake -
and it's not going anywhere we want to go! But with OWS, some of us stepped off
the bus and began trying another way to get someplace we actually want to go.
Then along comes Michael Moore with his list of tasks for the Occupy movement
(see 10 Things We Want A Proposal for Occupy Wall Street ) which says in effect:
Lets go work on the bus! Maybe we can get it to work the way we want it to!
No, I don't think that's going to happen. It's working the way They want it to.
Even if it were worth repairing, it's a totally obsolete design and will never get us
anywhere we want to go. And anyway, They're not about to let us tinker with it!
Trying to do things that aren't within our power just feeds a sense of powerlessness.
Let's focus on those things we can do - like work together (co-operate) in finding ways
to meet all our true needs in ways that are peaceful, just and ecologically sustainable.
The main thing i'm doing now, as much as i have gas money for, is holding a sign at an Occupy site.
Our goal, as i imagine you know, is to get control of the government out of the hands of the big corporations.
My idea of how to accomplish that is to, first, publicly fund candidate campaigns (and maybe match funds
for initiatives, so that the side with less funding gets the same amount of publicity as the side backed by people
with more money.) Once that's in place, legislators will be free to do what we elect them to do: represent us.
That will enable us to amend the Constitution to revoke corporate personhood. Once corporations can't successfully
whine that we're interfering with their First Amendment rights, we can tax the economic bottlenecks out of existence.
AND, when we've done all of that, we can finally get the US government's heel off the rest of the world's neck--
instead of spending our tax money to blow up children, we can have free pre-k through college education,
universal health care and adequate food and housing for everyone in the country.
All successful revolutions have taken two or three tries to really get off the ground. The only way there's any chance
of getting this planet out of its predicament is to try. They have the guns, but we have the numbers.
Quote:
Posted in reply to the post by CSummer:
Make no mistake: I am no proponent of fixing the old greed-economy bus. The people of the world--and the planet itself--need deep systemic change, not piecemeal reforms around the rusty shell.
But what sense does it make to look to Buckminster Fuller, who neither sought, nor through his work achieved, deep political-economic change? Here's the crux, IMO: To "build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete" is not something that the existing structure will just let happen. The upper tiers of the upper 1% seem willing to use all means at their disposal to perpetuate their grip on wealth & privilege. It is they who are fighting us and against the new emerging models of justice and solidarity, and peace with the earth environment.
Better we look to ourselves, and to the little-recognized fact that bold action can change the system of antecedent possibilities.
Neil
Quote:
Posted in reply to the post by CSummer:
Thank you, Neil. Another little-recognized fact is that we have - at any time - the option of coming together to create cooperative communities to explore how we can support each other in meeting our real needs without depending on (hence supporting) the existing power structures. This is what I see as the way we can begin to build the new model. True, it is on a small scale initially - and many have tried forming such communities; some even succeeded for a while.
What I believe has also not been recognized by those attempting to form such communities is that we don't so much live in a culture of powerlessness and scarcity consciousness as this culture lives within us. It takes some intensive work together - and a process of healing - to become people who have reclaimed the sense of personal power, wholeness and abundance that a peaceful, healthy, ecologically harmonious way of life requires.
I don't see any way it could be done on a large scale as long as the dominant economic and political systems are in place and functioning. It also seems to me that the new model needs to be decentralized and localized, so it is best created on a small scale in many places. Eventually, such communities could network together for trade and mutual support.
> The upper tiers of the upper 1% seem willing to use all means at their disposal to perpetuate their grip
> on wealth & privilege. It is they who are fighting us and against the new emerging models of justice
> and solidarity, and peace with the earth environment.
To me, it doesn't seem that they are fighting us so much as taking advantage of our willingness to continue giving up power and responsibility to the systems they control. Let them have their wealth and privilege. Let us come together and explore what is really in our power to do and create by learning to work - and to be - together in communities of mutual caring and support.
The existing systems are already obsolete; they are clearly not sustainable in an increasingly resource-limited world. The emerging technologies are more appropriate for distributed, decentralized implementation, which may also tend to make centralized power structures obsolete. For both of these reasons, our window of opportunity may be narrowing making it more urgent than ever that we move quickly to design and build alternative ways of living together on the earth.
CSummer
Quote:
Posted in reply to the post by neil:
True, it is on a small scale initially- small communities, large cities, counties, states- occupy USA...Quote:
Posted in reply to the post by CSummer:
Every person has great ideas about the changes that should be done...
I am waiting for a leader with a smart group of advisers to actually pin down these "changes" in writing and go from there. Would it not be time for that next step?*
edie