Human Values in 2012

Eric Stewart is a member of but in this post he speaks only for himself, and not the General Assembly of Occupy New Port Richey.

In high school, I recall having a very inspirational English teacher. It was in the years after 2001, when the 9/11 terrorist attacks occured.

I graduated in 2003, so I became enthralled with the news stories occuring and the build up to war with Iraq. I was a young student at l and 17 years old. For three years, I had been in the Navy ROTC at our high school participating in physical fitness, inspection and drill.  But at home, reading information about the war, I couldn't align my values with what I thought I wanted to do as an option after high school. I could see the writing on the wall.  

The 9/11 terrorist attacks frightened a lot of people. People were allowing certain new behaviors to be introduced into the American society in order to allow "Protection."

When my English teacher warned me about the "Patriot Act," I had nearly shrugged it off. The fact that our Federal government wanted to know what every American was reading didn't seem to matter to a 17 year old's mind. We had just been attacked, surely this is something we can give up to provide "Protection".

Now at 27 years old, I see what was a sudden shift in legsilation became an avalanche of sliding loss of Liberty. I recognize my gut feeling to not get involved in the military was a sound one. No evidence was shown connecting Iraq and 9/11, no weapons of mass destruction were found. A total cost of $1.5 trillion piled up while no-bid contracts to military-industrial corporations fill up the shareholder profits for the merchants of death.

Now in 2012, the terrorists have destroyed zero homes in the U.S., yet the bankers have destroyed over 1.5 million homes and counting. Millions of Americans are thrown out into the woods to sleep at night.

What I had learned in high school was but a pin prick compared to the larger picture. The books at school were not thick enough to give any young student a true full grasp of what REAL American history was about. We are in living history right now.

A full five months in from the fateful day of September 17, 2011, when Occupy Wall Street started its protest in New York, the American people rose up against the Corporatocracy that has eroded their liberties and engulfed them in perpetual war.

We have used as a people civil disobedience and the internet as our tools for rapidly spreading new values to the American people.

People are again taking up the American Consitution and reading what their forefathers wrote. We are relearning philosophy and speaking of what it means to be a valuable human being in a commodity-driven world where you seem only as valuable for how much money you can make not for the intrinsic value that every human being is.

An American Renassiance has begun: a new birth of culture that's a direct opposite to the heirarchical, authoritarian, privately-owned and -operated oligarchy that currently runs our socio/economic/political systems. This culture is based upon open source.

The concept of partnership and cooperation rather than domination and authority is a direct form of partipatory democracy. With the invention of the internet, anyone and everyone can partipate with the socio/economic/political forces that once were isolated behind walls of buercracy.

We can create a new world, one that is based upon Open Source.  We sit and listen to one another at General Assembly and form bonds while sharing food and serving one another. Our mission is to re-affirm our values by standing up to the Wall Street greed with compassion and love.

Principles of Solidarity with Occupy Wall Street:

• Engaging in direct and transparent participatory democracy;
• Exercising personal and collective responsibility;
• Recognizing individuals’ inherent privilege and the influence it has on all interactions;
• Empowering one another against all forms of oppression;
• Redefining how labor is valued;
• The sanctity of individual privacy;
• The belief that education is human right; and
• Endeavoring to practice and support wide application of open source.

The oligarchy Empire  that we live within maintains control over most of the systems of communication. (six corporations own all you hear and see- Ruppert Murdoch owns about 40% of all the news around the world hows that for power?

Most Americans still remain asleep to what really is occuring around the nation. A new American spring will tell in time if a tipping point can be met before widespread global economic from Europes downturn creates another panic further eroding our liberties and our possible ability to right the Titanic that America has become. 

It is up to us to come out in numbers , to interact, to show solidarity and come in unity. All Americans need to re-affirm their values as to what they want their country to look like in 5 years. Is it Empire or Democratic Republic?  Oligarchy for the few or Democracy for the many?

• I invite you to check out a speech I did recently at Occupy New Port Richey: http://youtu.be/7dIJNnv72vo  - check out our website at www.occupynpr.org and come out to our General Assemblies every Sunday at 2pm- help the Renassiance occur quicker by sharing this blog far and wide!

Occupy Everything!

Values from Thomas Jefferson:

We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty or profusion and servitude. If we run into such debt, as that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our labors and our amusements, for our calling and our creeds...[we will] have no time to think, no means of calling our miss-managers to account but be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow-sufferers... And this is the tendency of all human governments. A departure from principle in one instance becomes a precedent for[ another]... till the bulk of society is reduced to be mere automatons of misery... And the fore-horse of this frightful team is public debt. Taxation follows that, and in its train wretchedness and oppression.

The system of banking [is] a blot left in all our Constitutions, which, if not covered, will end in their destruction... I sincerely believe that banking institutions are more dangerous than standing armies; and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity... is but swindling futurity on a large scale.

President Andrew Jackson farewell address:

"The paper system being founded on public confidence and having of itself no intrinsic value, it is liable to great and sudden fluctuations, thereby rendering property insecure and the wages of labor unsteady and uncertain. The corporations which create the paper money can not be relied upon to keep the circulating medium uniform in amount. In times of prosperity, when confidence is high, they are tempted by the prospect of gain or by the influence of those who hope to profit by it to extend their issues of paper beyond the bounds of discretion and the reasonable demands of business; and when these issues have been pushed on from day to day, until public confidence is at length shaken, then a reaction takes place, and they immediately withdraw the credits they have given, suddenly curtail their issues, and produce an unexpected and ruinous contraction of the circulating medium, which is felt by the whole community. The banks by this means save themselves, and the mischievous consequences of their imprudence or cupidity are visited upon the public. Nor does the evil stop here. These ebbs and flows in the currency and these indiscreet extensions of credit naturally engender a spirit of speculation injurious to the habits and character of the people. We have already seen its effects in the wild spirit of speculation in the public lands and various kinds of stock which within the last year or two seized upon such a multitude of our citizens and threatened to pervade all classes of society and to withdraw their attention from the sober pursuits of honest industry.

It is not by encouraging this spirit that we shall best preserve public virtue and promote the true interests of our country; but if your currency continues as exclusively paper as it now is, it will foster this eager desire to amass wealth without labor; it will multiply the number of dependents on bank accommodations and bank favors; the temptation to obtain money at any sacrifice will become stronger and stronger, and inevitably lead to corruption, which will find its way into your public councils and destroy at no distant day the purity of your Government."

Andrew Jackson, Farewell Address, 1837