OWS 2nd Anniversary: Get Together, One More Time ~ 99 To 1

Reblogged from EvolveSociety.org

By David DeGraw, EvolveSociety, Sept. 17, 2013

Despite all our rage, we are still just debt slaves in a mental cage.

It’s been two years since years of hard work, dedication and frustration finally erupted into mass protests that swept across the globe on an unprecedented scale, and briefly awakened the propagandized masses. Our unjust economic system and the corrupt forces on Wall Street and in Washington were exposed in grand fashion. For once, the people became too powerful to ignore. We finally crashed through the corporate gates of the colossus mainstream media. We penetrated the very leviathan that had divided, isolated and enslaved us. Those robotic, teleprompter reading, paid off propagandist talking heads had no choice, they finally had to acknowledge us. A contagious sense of empowerment, legitimate community and true freedom rose up from the ashes. An inspiring people-powered uprising had begun. Then, all too quickly, the burst of life, freedom and reality that momentarily flashed in and out of people’s living rooms and throughout cities everywhere, was extinguished by brutal police state force.

The famed 99% meme that the movement blazed into mainstream consciousness still lives on in the mass mind, like a festering infected thorn in the side of Goliath. As that mysterious and mystical being once said, “You can’t kill an idea.” As for the movement, it is presently a chasm of unfulfilled potential, temporarily infiltrated and infested with saboteurs, tamed by the forces of centralization and co-option, fractured by factionalism and ego-driven agendas. Yet, it still glimmers on the periphery, just over the horizon. Beneath the calm surface, there is a vast ecosystem of latent energy ready to erupt once again.

You can slow down decentralized movements, but as long as repressive conditions persist, you cannot stop them. By their nature, decentralized movements toward freedom ebb and flow like waves, shape-shifting and growing increasingly effective in achieving their goals, while weeding out and exposing saboteurs, egos and shortsighted agendas along the way. Decentralized movements are forces much bigger than anyone can wrap their hands around and control; like trying to grasp flowing water or control the mighty seas. These are lessons the Anonymous Gods have reminded us of. They are poetic lessons, while centralizing forces have been off on a fool’s errand, the autonomous actions that built this movement are once again self-organizing and organically evolving, imaginal cells ready to take flight and unleash another wave of action, a tsunami of freedom.

Exactly when it will wash ashore again, nobody knows. You can feel it building though; you can sense it, it’s in the air. All we need to do is align with it and find our role within it. We’ve had two more years to plan, gain wisdom, adapt and evolve, having learned significantly from the previous experience. The first time around, we planted the seeds of empowerment and transformation. Beyond that, however, we just charged in without an exit strategy, like Bush into Iraq. This time around, we have extensive plans and various exit strategies. Now, even our plans have plans. All we need is a spark, in the right place, at the right time, and the whole movement will be reignited.

The Downward Spiral Continues

The repressive conditions that inspired the movement in the first place, have become even more repressive. If you take a good look around, you will see “what’s goin’ down.” The downward spiral that the 99% have been on continues at quickened pace. The latest economic data shows that the income gap between the top 1% and the 99% has just hit an all-time high. Since 2009, the top 1% has taken in 95% of all income gains. To make matters even worse, the Too Big To Fail / Jail banks are bigger than ever. In fact, the five biggest banks are a stunning 30% bigger now than they were at the height of the crisis. They’re growing like radiated dinosaurs in the days after the meteor hit. Amazing what buying off politicians, getting away with trillions of dollars in fraud and a never-ending supply of free money from the Federal Reserve can do for ya. Go figure.

The closer you look, the worse it gets. Avert your tired bloodshot eyes from your televised prison. Expand your repetitiously contracted awareness and look at the horror that presently exists in this richest, most technologically advanced society humanity has ever known:

All-time record number of people living in poverty.
All-time record number of people on food stamps.
All-time record number of children going to bed hungry at night.
All-time record number of people bankrupted by medical bills.
All-time record student debt.
All-time record number of families foreclosed upon.
All-time record number of long-term unemployed people.
All-time record number of people in prison.

As America steadily burns, with a once proud middle class collapsing, these crimes against humanity continue to escalate, and the richer are getting insanely richer. US millionaire households now have $50 TRILLION in wealth, with an estimated $11 trillion of that wealth hidden in offshore accounts. The stock market is soaring to record heights, albeit artificially inflated to the QE degree. The Fed and Treasury have genetically modified the market, Monsanto style. Stocks are as bloated as our supersized fast-food ridden bellies, while the foundation and fields on which they grew turns ever more toxic. The market has been injected with more high frequency QE performance enhancing drugs than A-Rod. This Kubrickian nightmare even trotted out the mastermind of the last crash, Mr. Hank “Don’t call me Lex Luthor” Paulson, to wave his crooked pinky finger in our face and mock us by saying there will soon be another crash. Chee, thanks Hank. You don’t say? What do you neo-feudal lords have in store for us propagandized peasants next?

Tyranny & Injustice Everywhere

Alas, still standing out and shining bright in blinding lights up on the scoreboard is that big glaring goose egg, still no prosecutions of the Wall Street executives that caused this crisis and made-off with their insane ill-gotten gains. For yet another edifying example of how much of a banana republic we have become, check out this article from Salon titled, “The jerks got away with it! 5 years after economic collapse, they’re still smiling:”

“The Justice Department recently had to admit that they inflated their own statistics on financial fraud prosecutions, and they disgracefully tried to re-insert the revised stats into old speeches to cover their tracks. I guess fraud is contagious.”

Behold, the Orwellian newspeak of the “Justice Department.” With justice and leadership like this, no wonder Americans are still Twerking With the Stars. In this bread and circuses theater of the absurd, being bedazzled by a naked Hannah Montana Gone Wild makes perfect poetic sense. As our little angel gyrates and grinds on a wrecking ball, its yet another spectacular sign of these apocalyptic times. Living inside an Elizabethan tragic comedy, while knowing the joke is on you, is a mad, mad, maddening trip. I would make a tongue-in-cheek joke by referencing the ole Jim Morrison line, “I want to have my kicks before this whole shithouse goes up in flames,” but I’m already on the NSA watch list for being a freethinking non-violent peaceful loving kinda guy, who has a tendency to exercise First Amendment rights by calling out tyrannical tyrants and standing up in defense of family, friends, country, planet and those damn humans, generally speaking. Those greedy lizards don’t like that.

It’s not just us peaceful freethinking types that are watched and monitored. Every move everyone makes online is now stored in a Big Brother fascist fantasyland in the middle of Utah. It’s all saved for “selective screening,” just in case you ever try to do anything to threaten their supreme power. They’ve got all the dirt, and if you happen to be an honest person, they’ll have enough info on you to concoct and falsify a smear campaign.

Couldn’t help but chuckle when this headline flashed across my consciousness:

“Why doesn’t NSA spy on Wall Street?

The government claims NSA conducts surveillance to avert financial crises. Seems like they have the wrong suspects…. [Director of National Intelligence James] Clapper insisted: ‘It is not a secret that the Intelligence Community collects information about economic and financial matters, and terrorist financing. We collect this information for many important reasons: for one, it could provide the United States and our allies early warning of international financial crises which could negatively impact the global economy.’”

Hmm… smells like a recipe for insider trading. And where oh where was this “early warning” of a financial crisis five years ago? Great job of limiting the “negative impact” of that one. Also gotta love that Stasi “Security” Czar Clapper is talking about collecting information about “terrorist financing.” Terrorist financing? Isn’t that the Federal Reserve’s mandate? Could swear I saw that written in their secret unwritten bylaws. In collusion with Wall Street, the CIA is the biggest terrorist financing operation to ever exist. The “freedom protecting” NSA should look into that. If the NSA was truly concerned about protecting Americans, surely they would be watching the global banking cartel and their incestuous co-conspirators at the CIA. All too rare truth be told, the NSA doesn’t care about protecting freedom or the Constitution. Why would they? Clearly, they are fascists.

Whoa, wait, okay; hold on a minute here… Sorry to hit you with all these non-politically correct, naked emperor-esque harsh truths. This is all far too much for the propagandized mind to handle. Let’s just dismiss this and call all of it over-the-top rhetoric, if livin’ in denial makes you feel better. If denial is your gig, please forgive my indiscretions. I tend to get a little worked up when an unaccountable secret organization torches the Constitution on a daily basis, turns the world into a never-ending war zone, aids and abets the theft of trillions of dollars and sets our future on fire.

Alright, off on a tangent again. Trying to escape the reservation has its consequences, so I’ll pump the brakes now… Full stop.

Wait, no, no. Why should I stop?

Why do we let all of this happen?

It’s a splinter in my mind…

Aren’t the consequences of doing nothing much more severe than the consequences of escaping this mental plantation and exiting this ever-quickening one-way trip down an unsustainable and disastrous path? Our governmental, economic and legal systems are overrun with corruption. Poverty is spreading like malignant cancer. As our schools are crumbling, our jails are overflowing. Our healthcare system is a crime against humanity. Our food supply is dangerously unhealthy. The environment is toxic and getting more chaotic, as extreme weather and destructive storms are now the norm. We are in the midst of the Sixth Great Extinction. Syria is a tinderbox and the military industrial complex is raging out of control, making World War III now a possibility.

WHAT ARE WE DOING?

It’s Time to Evolve Society

There are presently effective commonsense solutions to these problems. The shortsighted, greed-addicted forces that have paid off both of the dominant political parties, the judicial system and the mainstream media are holding innovative and needed solutions back. The only thing we lack is the political will. People with opinions across the political spectrum know that we need to end this blatant corruption of our ruling systems. Anyone paying attention knows this. What we need now is a wave of actions and events to make commonsense common-ground solutions reach a critical mass.

The next wave of the decentralized people-powered uprising cannot begin soon enough. It’s such a shame that many of those once inspiring people who peacefully fought so valiantly for a few months back at the end of 2011, are now denying their self-evident potential. Why have they rolled over and scurried back to their dreary and monotonous existence? Who made them believe that this is how they should live? Who taught them to be so passive? Why have they chosen to toil in passive desperation and accept their sentencing to a lifetime of debt slavery?

As that ole spiritual song goes, “Noooooobody knows….”

We are all too propagandized, from cradle to grave. We are just rats in a cage.

Excuse my bitter mood. On the second anniversary of OWS, as much as it pains me to say it, the famed 99% are losing, losing badly, worse off than ever, with the future looking bleaker than ever. Chant it with me:

We Are The 99%.
We Are The 99%.
We are… loooosing.

How does that make you feel?

In that vein, I’ll leave you with more of Jim Morrison’s taunting words…

“You’re all a bunch of fucking slaves!
How long are you going to let them push you around?
What are you going to do about it?
What are you going to do about it?”

“They got the guns, but we got the numbers.”

99 to 1

“Get together, one more time…”

C’mon people, sanity and freedom are calling. It’s time to return to living. OWS was a warm up act. Let’s reignite the party and evolve society. We are in the process of building an organizing platform to align with the next decentralized Worldwide Wave of actions and create a community dedicated to providing solutions to the crisis we are confronted by. We haven’t “officially” launched the site yet, but if you made it this far, you deserve to be one of the first to join. Jump on here: EvolveSociety.org