I pledged allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands every day in school when I was a child as I know you did. I firmly believed in that pledge, because I was taught that in the American Dream everyone had an equal opportunity to be anyone and do anything in the freest fairest country in the world. I believed our politicians served the public and our government guaranteed our rights.
Today I have a different view of my country. I still believe in America, but I believe in it the way I would believe in a relative who had a drinking problem. I love this country with all my heart, I want it to overcome its problems more than anything, but I know the battle is uphill and time is running out.
In 2008, Wall Street, the White House and the Federal Reserve conspired to reorganize the economy around financial monopoly. After 30 years of eroding the New Deal protections against dangerous speculation, failed banks nearly brought the economy to its knees. We The People bailed out Wall Street to prevent a second Great Depression. We were forced to write a blank check worth a generation of growth with no strings attached. There was no major reform to re-erect the wall between investment and commercial banking. There have been no investigations, no charges, no trials to root out the corruption. The plutocracy picked the poor’s pockets and mugged the middle class. They smashed America’s piggy banks full of mortgage payments, college funds and retirement savings. They took our money to tally historic profits and CEO bonuses while laying off their employees.
We don’t argue against the merits of using trade to engender productivity, commerce and invention. We know Capitalism is the fire that fuels growth. But fire needs to be contained to be useful. We need to regulate finance to harness its creative power for the good of society, while preventing it from unleashing its destructive potential. A fire can keep your house warm and put hot meals on your table if you contain it in your fire place. That same fire will burn your house down if you let it spread to the walls. Those who argue that we should not regulate Wall Street are arguing that we should light our walls on fire to keep our house warm.
Under our unregulated radical capitalism, the plutocracy orchestrated inverse Marxism for themselves: a welfare state in which the top 2% own more than the bottom 90%; a control economy in which the richest hog all the profits while the laborers shoulder all the penalties.
From the Atlantic coast to the shores of Hawaii, an Iron Ceiling has descended across the country. Beneath that Ceiling lies the disappearing middle class and its endeavors to produce American culture. Above the Iron Ceiling a few hundred billionaires and a few dozen conglomerations dictate the direction of our society from the shadows. Above the Iron Ceiling, Wall Street makes our elected officials dance on strings of gold.
This degree of divide between the rich and the rest has not been seen since the Great Depression. One in five children face poverty, hunger and homelessness. Half of young adults are unemployed or underemployed while enslaved to Sallie Mae debts of tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars for an education that hasn’t opened any doors. In numbers not seen since the 1940s, the young are putting off leaving home, getting married and starting families. Middle aged folks are struggling to support their families. They are working longer and longer hours to pay the mortgage, feed the family and put the kids through school. Older Americans are delaying retirement. They are stuck in the race after crossing the finish line, taking menial jobs to stave off poverty in their golden years. Some have faced horrible decisions about whether to bankrupt their families to cover medical costs or accept an early grave.
Amid all this, the ratio of average rent to average income has tripled since the 1970s. The middle class has not had a raise in a quarter century. Homelessness has increased by a third since 2007. Meanwhile, millions of foreclosed homes gather dust while people shiver on the sidewalk.
Yet, our economy is still growing. Our Gross Domestic Product is as strong as ever. Since the 1980s, the top 1% have lit cigars to celebrate their income doubling, tripling, quadrupling, while the middle class has flat-lined. Since the Great Recession, the middle class is getting poorer while the rich, who caused the crash, are becoming stupendously wealthy.
This situation was entirely avoidable. The New Deal tamed the boom and bust cycle and enforced economic justice. In the last thirty years, the very rich have bought both parties and all three branches of government and used them to dismantle the New Deal. Their massive media companies saturate our discourse with pro-corporate propaganda. Many pundits are merely corporate marionettes who sling names and innuendo at anyone who questions the billionaires’ agenda.
There are over 25 lobbyists for every one member of Congress. By a rate of 10 to 1, those lobbyists represent large corporations over any other interest. They create a pervasive culture of bribery, favors and gifts. Corruption is the norm in this town. Lobbyists write their own legislation for their corporate clients and bribe our representatives to vote for it. Wall Street used K Street to sideline Main Street and take our democracy away from us.
Their control over our Congress is rapidly snowballing. The Citizens United ruling allows Super PACs to flood our campaigns with millions and millions of secret dollars. With campaigns so expensive, an honest politician who refused to be corrupted would drown under a tsunami of negative advertising from shadowy sources.
The First Amendment says Congress shall make no law prohibiting free speech. Free speech. Not expensive speech. Free speech is the dam that holds back the flood of tyranny. As long as We The People have an absolute right to express ourselves, we will always be a free people. But the corporate puppet masters seek to make speech too expensive for us, so that only they will have the right to speak. Corporate Big Brother tells us words are not speech but dollars are. If money is free speech, then logically, buying crack, paying a prostitute and hiring a hitman are all forms of protected speech. As a society, we have decided that paying for those things should be illegal. So obviously, it must be illegal to buy a politician or an election.
Since September, we have been sounding the alarm. We occupied Wall Street. And the corporations flexed their muscles. They have privatized municipal police departments around the country with huge corporate gifts and they sent the cops after us. We have seen the images of a veteran who served his country in Iraq terribly wounded while serving his country by protesting corruption. We have seen students pepper sprayed for the audacity of sitting together in a park. Nearly 6,000 people have been arrested for speaking in public. Nearly 300 have needed medical treatment after being beaten or gassed for the sin of peaceably assembling. Still, zero bankers have been arrested, charged or jailed for the illegal trading that blew up our economy.
By taking our message to the streets, the Occupiers have captured America’s imagination and seized the moment. They have flushed out the corporate puppets that seek to ridicule, undermine and intimidate anti-corruption protesters into silence. We are recreating our public sphere while the corporations seek to shut it down. A vibrant public sphere is essential to democracy. The Founders saw that the marketplace of ideas was the key to their early organization and ultimate success against the British crown. In the years before the Declaration of Independence, the 13 colonies were abuzz with underground newspapers debating political ideas, publishing houses cranking out pamphlets, protests on public squares which evolved into boycotts, coffeehouses serving up hours of caffeinated discussion. These sparks of public debate lit the fire of Revolution on which our nation was founded. Today, we are keeping our Founders’ vision alive by carrying on the ancient discussion of what makes a free and fair society.
The beauty of open discourse assessed under the bright light of reason is that good ideas gain steam and bad ideas fall to the wayside. In a healthy democracy, bad ideas are not dangerous because they inevitably self-destruct. If Occupy had bad ideas, everyone could safely ignore us. Regressive mayors, funded by corporations, wielding privatized and militarized police departments, have ordered a crackdown on the Occupation BECAUSE our ideas have merit. Our ideas that America’s economy should be democratic and work for our whole society are dangerous ideas BECAUSE they are good ideas.
Our ideas are a profound threat to the power structure that enriches the wealthy elite. The police raids against the Occupation announce that the billionaires running our country will use all their formidable influence to crush any notion of economic justice or government accountability. But they are terrified. They know that their position is morally untenable. They know that if the people awaken to the reality of the power dynamics in our institutions, they will fall. We can no longer tiptoe around the issue of class war. The 1% have openly declared total war on the middle class who are becoming poor and the poor who are becoming desperate.
We have come here today to draw a line in the sand. Big money has pushed our democracy to the edge of a cliff. Below lies an abyss of ceaseless corruption which can only lead to poverty, decline and tyranny. We will not let you push us any further. You picked this fight, but we will make you wage it on our terms and on our turf. We will use the power of nonviolence, as demonstrated by Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King, to monopolize the moral high ground the same way you have monopolized our economy. We will adapt and evolve. Kick us out of parks and we will Occupy foreclosed homes. We will be Bugs Bunny to Wall Street’s Elmer Fudd, Roadrunner to the corporate Wile E. Coyote.
We have come here today to stage an intervention in Congress’ addiction to Wall Street’s cash. To tell Congress: say no to corruption. Represent the needs and wants of your constituents. We need a new New Deal for a new era of economic suffering and we want jobs. We are here to tell Congress: restore the Glass-Steagall Act that prevented banks from gambling with people’s homes; Amend the Constitution to outlaw Citizens United and any law that gives corporations a free pass to expensive speech. Cap the outrageous costs of our for-profit healthcare and higher education industries. Congress: restore the level playing field for the middle class. Congress: tear down the Iron Ceiling that the 1% paved over the 99%. Congress: relight the torch of the American Dream.
Today, I pledge allegiance to the people of the United States of America and to the Republic which we built with our labor. I pledge to resist unjust laws. To boycott corrupting banks and corporations. To vote corrupt politicians out of office. I pledge to educate myself, my friends and my family about the role of creeping greed in America. To inform the public and expose corporate propaganda. I pledge to support the Occupation. I pledge that we will occupy Wall Street, occupy K Street, occupy Main Street and take control of the economy and the government back to the American people so together we can restore America to one nation, indivisible with liberty and justice for all.
