occupy phase II: occupy washington dc builds foundation for the future

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http://www.nationofchange.org/occupy-phase-ii-occupy-washington-dc-builds-foundation-future-1325781561

When we called for the oc­cu­pa­tion of Free­dom Plaza in early June, we said this oc­cu­pa­tion would be “the be­gin­ning.” We saw the oc­cu­pa­tion of Free­dom Plaza as a tac­tic, much like a lunch counter sit-in or Free­dom Ride dur­ing the civil rights move­ment. The Oc­cu­pa­tion was de­signed to ed­u­cate and mo­bi­lize peo­ple for a much big­ger and longer ef­fort to end a gov­ern­ment dom­i­nated by money and mil­i­tarism and shift power to the Amer­i­can peo­ple. A few weeks be­fore we began to oc­cupy Free­dom Plaza, Oc­cupy Wall Street erupted, and other oc­cu­pa­tions soon fol­lowed. Oc­cu­pa­tion of pub­lic space was an idea whose his­tor­i­cal time had come.

More than 1,200 Oc­cupy camps sprang up quickly across the na­tion and the world. The first months of this new move­ment pro­foundly shook the foun­da­tion of the 1% – al­most in­stantly cre­at­ing a new form of po­lit­i­cal power. This TIME “Per­son of the Year” protest move­ment, truly grown from the grass roots, handed the 99% some REAL po­lit­i­cal cap­i­tal for the first time in decades and in­stalled the Oc­cupy Move­ment as a force to be reck­oned with.

Shift­ing power to the Amer­i­can peo­ple re­quires much more than an oc­cu­pa­tion. The Oc­cupy Move­ment needs to build on four strong com­po­nents – (1) non-vi­o­lent protest and civil re­sis­tance, (2) non-par­tic­i­pa­tion in the ex­ist­ing cor­po­rate fi­nance-dom­i­nated econ­omy, (3) the de­vel­op­ment of con­crete plans and poli­cies to trans­form the cor­po­rate econ­omy into a peo­ple's econ­omy and (4) end­ing gov­ern­ment dom­i­nated by money by shift­ing po­lit­i­cal power to the Amer­i­can peo­ple. Oc­cupy Wash­ing­ton, DC says: no oli­garchy, no plu­toc­racy we want par­tic­i­pa­tory democ­racy. As we tran­si­tioned to win­ter we had many dis­cus­sions on Free­dom Plaza and among the web-com­mu­nity of Oc­cupy Wash­ing­ton, DC. We sur­veyed every­one on the Plaza to un­der­stand what their in­ter­ests were. These ideas and in­sights de­ter­mined our next steps, de­scribed here:

1. Con­tinue to hold Free­dom Plaza. We have achieved a great deal through the oc­cu­pa­tion of Free­dom Plaza. We’ve shown how per­sons from dif­fer­ent back­grounds, eco­nomic cir­cum­stances, races and po­lit­i­cal in­ter­ests can live and work to­gether; and form a com­mu­nity. The en­camp­ment on Penn­syl­va­nia Ave. be­tween the Con­gress and the Trea­sury/White House al­lowed us to reach thou­sands of peo­ple. Our signs, news­pa­per – the Oc­cu­pied Wash­ing­ton Post – and con­ver­sa­tions with many Amer­i­cans have spread the Oc­cupy mes­sage. We’ve car­ried out mul­ti­ple protest ac­tions in Con­gress, as well as at banks, the Cham­ber of Com­merce and other lo­ca­tions. We’ve held our own oc­cu­pied super com­mit­tee hear­ing and pub­lished a re­port to fix the econ­omy, the “99%'s Deficit Pro­posal.” This win­ter the num­ber of peo­ple at the en­camp­ment will shrink but it will be avail­able to ex­pand as needed for ac­tions like Wit­ness Against Tor­ture from Jan­u­ary 11 to 20, the Oc­cupy The Dream’s plans for the Fed­eral Re­serve on Jan­u­ary 16, MLK Day, Oc­cupy Con­gress sched­uled for Jan­u­ary 17 and Oc­cupy the Courts protest against the Cit­i­zen’s United de­ci­sion on Jan­u­ary 20. Free­dom Plaza will con­tinue to be a flag­ship for the Amer­i­can peo­ple to see that the oc­cupy move­ment con­tin­ues.