Next month sees the culmination of the carnival of rich liars, otherwise known as the American Presidential elections. Millions will turn up and make their mark in favour of tweedle-dee or teedle-dum and things will roll on as usual. The rich will bask in the sun, in a lush cherry orchard surrounded by a fine wine lake, while the rest of the public will grind out a living as best they can as the pampered parsites continue to plunder the public purse. It is a process that has gone on for hundreds of years and rich get richer and the poor get poorer, but still the system is accepted by those same poor. Though I do believe that this latest world wide savage attack on the living standards of the ordinary people, is causing more and more to wake up to the fact that they are being conned. More and more people are looking for an alternative way of structuring our society, away from the parasite millionaire elitism that dominates and bleeds us dry.
THERE WILL COME A TIME.
There will come a time when the hordes remember,
who bound our grand-parents to the yoke of oppression,
who sentenced our parents to deprivation,
who bid poverty sink its teeth into our heart,
who teach our children, greed is a noble art.
Who sent our sons through the gates of hell
to a litany of cambist brawls,
crammed coffers with blood-stained gold
while laughing in Ares' halls.
"Who does these terrible things to us?" they will ask,
and when they remember,
they'll bring an energy that is endless
to drive a fist that is fearless.
Then this merciless market-driven world will crumble
under an insurrection of integrity,
the poor will emerge from the dark husk of capitalism
to live in the light of social justice.
There will come a time when the hordes remember.
The following is from America but equally applies to any country, as the stench of putrid capitalism chokes the lungs of freedom across the planet. Let's hope that this time they take their occupation to the next step and occupy everything and taking control of their communities and their lives.
WHY:
WHEN: Starts at 5 PM Saturday, October 13th (the first anniversary of Occupy Chapel Hill) WHERE: Peace and Justice Plaza, Chapel Hill, NC
WHO:
Anyone who wants to change their world directly, instead of through the narrow choices and occasional elections of democracy
Anyone who doesn't trust another batch of politicians to fix the mess that the last batch of politicians started
Anyone let down by Obama's false hope
Anyone sick of choosing a "lesser" evil
Anyone who knows politicians just serve the rich
The November election is coming. It doesn't matter. The amount of issues Obama and Romney differ on is nothing compared to what they agree on: unparalleled military domination; a growing prison system, the largest in the world, whose racist policies maintain the white supremacy this country was founded on; earth destroying resource extraction; a capitalist economy that rewards ruthless competition without concern for human cost. Under Bush, the nascent Obama generation could imagine that a new personality in the White House could change the problems the last politician piloted us into. And a new politician realized the shifting calculus, promising us false hope and false change. But after the failure of that experiment, we can be sure that the problem isn't personal, it is systemic. No matter who comes along, voting will never get us out from under our rulers.
This country is obsessed with voting to an unhealthy degree. Most people don't even vote, but it seems to be the only way anyone can think of changing their world. But voting is not an expression of our power; it only demonstrates our powerlessness: it is an admission that we can only approach the resources and capabilities of our own society through the mediation of an elite, ruling class. When we let candidates prefabricate options for us, we relinquish control of our world and abdicate our agency in shaping it. Real power can never be delegated, nor lived through anyone else. Real power means individual and collective self-determination--our ability to decide for ourselves how we're going to live every day of our lives--not settling between two unsatisfying and irrelevant choices every four years.
On the one year anniversary of Occupy Chapel Hill, come demonstrate that people power will always be in conflict with with the interests of the ruling class, be they elected or not.
