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OCCUPY EVERYTHING
Glen T. Martin
November 2011
The Occupy Wall
Street movement has spread around the world. It
has not only spread rapidly to cities and
universities all around the US, there have been
Occupy demonstrations and movements in Toronto,
Athens, Sydney, Amsterdam, Stuttgart, Tel Aviv,
Milan, and elsewhere. With the bailouts and
immunities from responsibility of the big banks
worldwide, with huge military budgets draining
most nations of the world, and with debt
restructuring being forced on nations around the
world by a global economic system that
transcends all nations, people everywhere are
becoming directly aware of the domination of the
world-system by the 1% at the expense of the
99%.
In these protests,
unemployed persons join with discharged veterans ,
heavily indebted students, and politically aware
citizens to occupy public places in protest of
this global system of domination and
exploitation. Police, like the politicians and
governments they serve, have been colonized to
do the bidding of the 1%, as is so painfully
clear from the systematic violence and brutality
they have shown in the repression of unarmed and
peaceful citizens within the Occupy movement.
If the new sense of
solidarity and political awareness of the Occupy
movement are to have a real effect on this
global system, it will have to become a
planetary political awareness and bind itself in
solidarity with all of humanity. Half the
world’s population lives on less than two US
dollars per day. One sixth the world’s people
lack access to clean water. One third lack basic
sanitation. Worldwide, the richest 1% have as
much wealth as the bottom 60% combined. These
figures are not new, but they are all getting
worse. Global poverty is growing. Global water
scarcity is growing. The richest 1% are getting
rapidly richer relative to the bottom 99% who
are getting rapidly poorer. We need to occupy
everything.
Traditionally, the
name given to societies within which there was a
working equality and general opportunity for all
was "democracy." It is democracy that is being
destroyed in the US and worldwide. When a tiny
elite has that much wealth, it brings immense
political power to them – power to colonize
governments, police forces, and social
institutions. Democracy, however, involves a set
of political and legal institutions that protect
civil rights, represent the interests of the
population, and embody laws regulating economic
activity so that many people, not just a few,
benefit economically. Not only do the US and
most countries lack true
democracy, but everything, from economics to
communications, has been globalized, everything
except democracy.
Whatever else the
Occupy Movement may eventually demand, this
movement involves most fundamentally a demand
for democracy. Economics has globalized, but not
a democratic means of regulating economics.
Every recession or depression for decades has
been worldwide in scope, and the suck-up of
wealth from perpetual wars, from the
exploitation of global resources, and from the
labor exploitation of poor people has also been
worldwide. The industrial base of the US has
been exported to the third world. How do the 99%
place controls on a global system of
corporations, banking, and militarized imperial
nations? An Occupy movement within any one
country clearly will not do it. The only real
alternative is to create a global social
democracy.
Effective democracy
must be constitutional. It must truly be
representative of the interests of the 99%, and
it must protect freedom and human rights
worldwide. A brilliantly designed Constitution
for the Federation of Earth was written by
hundreds of world citizens over a period of 23
years and completed in 1991. It is available in
many places on the worldwide web, and it is
supported by a worldwide organization (the World
Constitution and Parliament Association, WCPA)
that has translated it into 23 major languages
and published it in many venues.
The Earth
Constitution is the key to a transformed world
system predicated on peace (carefully disarming
the nations), economic and social justice (with
two articles on enforceable rights for all
citizens of the Earth Federation), and
ecological sustainability (preserving the fresh
water, forests, and agricultural lands needed by
the 99%). The entire central meaning of the
Occupy Wall Street movement is focused like a
laser beam within these carefully written thirty
pages.
Affirming the Earth
Federation Movement (EFM) does not mean giving
up local action or Occupy Everything
initiatives. Quite the reverse. The maxim "think
globally, act locally" still applies across the
board. However, our local struggles will be so
much more empowered if they are joined to a
meaningful and practical vision of how it could
be different, if we really see that it needs to
be different on a global level and not simply
within our own country, whatever country that
happens to be.
We are one world,
one humanity, one finite planet – and right now
our irrational world disorder is destroying all
of these. The only rational world system is one
of planetary social democracy: planetary freedom
for all, planetary justice for all, and
planetary environmental sustainability for all.
We need to embrace the Earth Federation Movement
and ratify the Constitution for the Federation
of Earth. If we are to survive much longer on
this planet, we need to create global democracy
and occupy everything.
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