“Fists of Freedom: An Olympic Story Not Taught in Schools”

Taken from: http://www.good.is/post/fists-of-freedom-an-olympic-story-not-taught-in-schools/

July 23, 2012

It’s been almost 44 years since Tommie Smith and John Carlos took the medal stand following the 200-meter dash at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City and created what must be considered the most enduring, riveting image in the history of either sports or protest. But while the image has stood the test of time, the struggle that led to that moment has been cast aside.

When mentioned at all in U.S. history textbooks, the famous photo appears with almost no context. For example, Pearson/Prentice Hall’s United States History places the photo opposite a short three-paragraph section, “Young Leaders Call for Black Power.” The photo’s caption says simply that “…U.S. athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos raised gloved fists in protest against discrimination.”

The media—and school curricula—fail to address the context that produced Smith and Carlos’ famous gesture of resistance: It was the product of what was called “The Revolt of the Black Athlete.” Amateur black athletes formed OPHR, the Olympic Project for Human Rights, to organize a black boycott of the 1968 Olympic Games. OPHR, its lead organizer, Dr. Harry Edwards, and its primary athletic spokespeople, Smith and the 400-meter sprinter Lee Evans, were deeply influenced by the black freedom struggle. Their goal was nothing less than to expose how the United States used black athletes to project a lie about race relations both at home and internationally.

OPHR had four central demands: restore Muhammad Ali’s heavyweight boxing title, remove Avery Brundage as head of the International Olympic Committee, hire more black coaches, and disinvite South Africa and Rhodesia from the Olympics. Ali’s belt had been taken by boxing’s powers-that-be earlier in the year for his resistance to the Vietnam draft. By standing with Ali, OPHR was expressing its opposition to the war.

By calling for the hiring of more black coaches as well as the ouster of Brundage, they were dragging out of the shadows a part of Olympic history those in power wanted to bury: Brundage was an anti-Semite and a white supremacist, best remembered today for sealing the deal on Hitler’s hosting the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. By demanding the exclusion of South Africa and Rhodesia, they aimed to convey their internationalism and solidarity with the black freedom struggles against apartheid in Africa.

The wind went out of the sails of a broader boycott for many reasons, partly because the IOC re-committed to banning apartheid countries from the Games. The more pressing reason the boycott failed was that athletes who had spent their whole lives preparing for their Olympic moment simply couldn’t bring themselves to give it up. tetThere also emerged accusations of a campaign of harassment and intimidation orchestrated by people supportive of Brundage. Despite all of these pressures, a handful of Olympians was still determined to make a stand. In communities across the globe, they were hardly alone.

The lead-up to the Olympics in Mexico City was electric with struggle. Already in 1968, the world had seen the Tet Offensive in Vietnam, demonstrating that the United States was nowhere near “winning the war”; the Prague Spring, during which Czech students challenged tanks from the Stalinist Soviet Union, demonstrating that dissent was crackling on both sides of the Iron Curtain; and the April 4 assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and the urban uprisings that followed—along with the exponential growth of the Black Panther Party in the United States—that revealed a black freedom struggle unassuaged by the civil rights reforms that had transformed the Jim Crow South. Then, on October 2, 10 days before the opening ceremonies of the 1968 Olympic Games, Mexican security forces massacred hundreds of students and workers in Mexico City’s Tlatelolco Square.

Although the harassment and intimidation of the OPHR athletes cannot be compared to this slaughter, the intention was the same—to stifle protest and make sure that the Olympics were “suitable” for visiting dignitaries, heads of state, and an international audience. It was not successful.

On the second day of the Games, Smith and Carlos took their stand. Smith set a world record, winning the 200-meter gold, and Carlos captured the bronze. Smith then took out the black gloves. The silver medalist, a runner from Australia named Peter Norman, attached an Olympic Project for Human Rights patch onto his chest to show his solidarity on the medal stand.

As the stars and stripes ran up the flagpole and the national anthem played, Smith and Carlos bowed their heads and raised their fists in what was described across the globe as a “Black Power salute,” creating a moment that would define the rest of their lives. But there was far more to their actions on the medal stand than just the gloves. The two men wore no shoes to protest black poverty, as well as beads and scarves to protest lynching.

Within hours, the IOC planted a rumor that Smith and Carlos had been stripped of their medals—although this was not in fact true—and expelled from the Olympic Village. Brundage wanted to send a message to every athlete that there would be punishment for any political demonstrations on the field of play.

But Brundage was not alone in his furious reaction. The Los Angeles Times accused Smith and Carlos of a “Nazi-like salute”. Time had a distorted version of the Olympic logo on its cover but instead of the motto “Faster, Higher, Stronger,” it blared “Angrier, Nastier, Uglier.” The Chicago Tribune called the act “an embarrassment visited upon the country,” an “act contemptuous of the United States,” and “an insult to their countrymen.” Smith and Carlos were “renegades” who would come home to be “greeted as heroes by fellow extremists,” lamented the paper. But the coup de grâce was by a young reporter for the Chicago American named Brent Musburger who called them “a pair of black-skinned storm troopers.”

But if Smith and Carlos were attacked from a multitude of directions, they also received many expressions of support, including from some unlikely sources. For example, the U.S. Olympic crew team, all white and entirely from Harvard, issued the following statement:

“We—as individuals—have been concerned about the place of the black man in American society in their struggle for equal rights. As members of the U.S. Olympic team, each of us has come to feel a moral commitment to support our black teammates in their efforts to dramatize the injustices and inequities which permeate our society.”

Smith and Carlos sacrificed privilege and glory, fame and fortune, for a larger cause—civil rights. As Carlos says, “A lot of the [black] athletes thought that winning [Olympic] medals would supersede or protect them from racism. But even if you won a medal, it ain’t going to save your momma. It ain’t going to save your sister or children. It might give you 15 minutes of fame, but what about the rest of your life?”

The story of Tommie Smith and John Carlos at the 1968 Olympics deserves more than a visual sound bite in a quickie textbook section on “Black Power.” As the Zinn Education Project points out in its “If We Knew Our History” series, this is one of many examples of the missing and distorted history in school, which turns the curriculum into a checklist of famous names and dates. When we introduce students to the story of Smith and Carlos’ defiant gesture, we can offer a rich context of activism, courage, and solidarity that breathes life into the study of history—and the long struggle for racial equality.

“Teen Girl Petitions Seventeen Magazine to Stop Airbrushing Models”

Taken from: http://shine.yahoo.com/beauty/teen-girl-petitions-seventeen-magazine-stop-airbrushing-models-130000558.html

May 2, 2012

Julia Bluhm, 14, is an eighth grader from rural Waterville, Maine. She loves ballet and attends class six days a week. She is also gaining national attention as an activist who is challenging the media to take responsibility for the way it warps girls’ self-esteem.

“I’ve always noticed how a lot of the images in magazines look photo-shopped,” Bluhm tells Yahoo! Shine. She wants all girls to feel comfortable in their own skin. “Girls shouldn’t compare themselves to pictures in magazines,” she says. “Because they are fake.”

Eleven days ago, she launched a petition to ask one of her favorite magazines, Seventeen, to feature one un-retouched photo shoot a month. “They have already done a lot to help girls improve their body image. TheirBody Peace feature is great. I thought that they could take it one step further with an unaltered photo spread.” This morning, she is leading a protest outside of Seventeen’s offices in Manhattan which will include a mock fashion shoot.”I’m a little nervous. But excited.”

Julia BluhmBluhm started blogging about girls and self-esteem a year ago when she joined SPARK, a non-profit organization for 13 to 22 year-olds that calls itself a “girl-fueled activist movement to demand an end to the sexualization of women and girls in media.” One of SPARKS’ recent accomplishments was to get a meeting to with top LEGO executives to discuss, among other issues, the LEGO Friends line of toys which they say are demeaning to girls. However, the petition is, as Bluhm puts it, “my first big action.”

Her petition on change.org reads:

“To girls today, the word ‘pretty’ means skinny and blemish-free. Why is that, when so few girls actually fit into such a narrow category? It’s because the media tells us that ‘pretty’ girls are impossibly thin with perfect skin.

Here’s what lots of girls don’t know. Those ‘pretty women’ that we see in magazines are fake. They’re often photo-shopped, airbrushed, edited to look thinner, and to appear like they have perfect skin. A girl you see in a magazine probably looks a lot different in real life….I’ve been fighting to stop magazines, toy companies, and other big businesses from creating products, photo spreads and ads that hurt girls and break our self-esteem….I’ve learned that we have the power to fight back.”

The American Medical Association (AMA) backs up Bluhm’s assertions. In June 2011, they issued a press release stating, “A large body of literature links exposure to media-propagated images ofunrealistic body image to eating disorders and other child and adolescent health problems.” Board member Barbara L. McAneny, MD, added, “We must stop exposing impressionable children and teenagers to advertisements portraying models with body types only attainable with the help of photo editing software.”

So far, in the United States, only Glamour magazine has responded to the AMA’s call to action. In its March 2012 issue, the popular women’s magazine told readers, “And while our policy has always been not to alter a woman’s body shape, we’ll also be asking photographers we hire not to manipulate body size in the photos we commission, even if a celebrity or model requests a digital diet (alas, it happens).”

Some stars are also refusing to “go under the brush.” Notably, Jessica Simpson appeared without makeup or retouching for a Marie Claire photo shoot in 2010 and more recently, actress Cate Blanchett revealed her natural 42-year-old face for the online magazine morentelligentlife.com.

As of today, May 2, Bluhm’s petition has nearly 24 thousand signatures. She is surprised how quickly it’s taken off. “I didn’t think it would get this big,” she laughs. Even though she hasn’t quite reached her goal of 25 thousand signatures, editors are already listening. Bluhm says Anne Shoket, the magazine’s Editor-in-Chief, has reached out and asked to see the petition. Fittingly, the current cover features Jennifer Lawrence, who plays Katniss Everdeen, the ultimate girl-power heroine, in the box office smash “The Hunger Games.”

Meanwhile, the eighth grader from Maine plans to enjoy her first trip to New York City. “I want to do some sight seeing with my mom who is here with me,” she says. “Maybe visit the Empire State Building.”

“Clashes break out as Greek strikers aim for nationwide shutdown”

Taken from: http://www.cnn.com/2011/10/19/business/greece-austerity-strikes/index.html?hpt=wo_c2

October 19, 2011

Protesters and police clashed violently in front of the Greek parliament building Wednesday, as tens of thousands of demonstrators gathered in Athens on the first day of a two-day general strike over austerity measures. At least six protesters and 15 police officers were injured amid the disturbances, police said, and at least 15 people were arrested.

Strikers in Greece aim to shut down wide sectors of the country, a day before lawmakers vote on a new round of tough cost-cutting measures. ”Don’t bow your head, it’s time for resistance and struggle,” marchers chanted in the capital as numbers swelled for the union-backed demonstration. The violence broke out around lunchtime in one corner of the square, beside Parliament House, as a group of protesters dressed mostly in black threw rocks and Molotov cocktails at police.

Officers fired tear gas and stun grenades, or “flash bangs,” in return, sending noisy detonations echoing round the square. Smoke filled the area by mid-afternoon as a fire burned in front of the finance ministry, forcing many peaceful demonstrators to move away. Police estimated that more than 70,000 people were protesting in Athens, and said they planned to put between 2,500 and 3,000 officers on the streets. Organisers estimated the turnout at 120,000 people. More than 100 security officers guarded parliament, enforcing a 50-yard empty space between the demonstrators and the building.

Initially, most of the protesters gathered peacefully in front of Parliament House waving union flags, red flags and banners. ”I’m here for my children and everyone else’s children. Those punks in there have destroyed everyone’s lives,” said former railway worker Diamandis Goufas, 62, pointing at parliament.

Greeks are angry at yet another round of planned austerity measures as Greece tries to bring down its stratospheric debt. Lawmakers are trying to cut government costs to reassure international backers it is doing enough to earn the bailout funds they have promised to pour into the country, with more austerity measures expected to pass Thursday. The new bill would lead to around 30,000 job losses and further cuts to wages and pensions for workers in the public sector. That has left at least some Greeks furious at the countries demanding that Greece bring down its spending. ”We are not lazy; it’s the Germans, they want to take our blood,” said Eleftherios Zarkados.

At least one student said Wednesday that Thursday would not mark the end of the battle between politicians and the public. ”We will continue to resist even if the measures pass,” said Sophia Titou, 21, a law student who works at an oil refinery. Many on the streets say they are angry that the well-off people they believe are benefiting from corruption and tax evasion are not being pursued, while public sector workers pay the price for Greece’s woes.

European Union leaders are scrambling to minimize the effect of Greece’s debt on their common currency, the euro. Over the weekend, finance ministers from the world’s largest economies pledged their commitment to take “all necessary actions” to stabilize markets. They aim to keep banks well capitalized so they can weather the effects of any defaults by Greece or other indebted countries like Portugal, Spain, Ireland or Italy.

But there appears to be a split between France and Germany — Europe’s two largest economies — on how to do it. Germany has stressed that individual European states should inject capital into domestic banks that lack sufficient buffers. But analysts say France is opposed to this idea because it could jeopardize the nation’s top-tier credit rating. European leaders are expected to hear concrete details about how the plan might work at a European Council meeting Sunday. European Union heads of state are widely expected to finalize the plan in early November at a meeting of the Group of 20 world economic powers.

“Hunger strikers down to hundreds in California prisons”

Taken from: http://www.cnn.com/2011/10/06/us/california-prisons/index.html?hpt=ju_c2

October 7, 2011

Hundreds of California prisoners remain on hunger strike in protest of what they describe as their harsh treatment, though state authorities and inmate-rights advocates differed over the numbers involved. The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation said in a press release Thursday that 811 inmates were involved in the protest, a sharp drop from the 4,252 hunger strikers on September 29.

Jay Donahue, a spokesman for Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity, admitted that the numbers have likely dropped. But he said that he does not trust that the numbers being presented accurately reflect those involved. ”Our sense is that there are still many hundreds striking, and that the (corrections department) is under-reporting the numbers,” Donahue said. “I’m inclined not to trust the CDCR.”

By Thursday, the action was into its 11th day. The corrections department considers an inmate on a hunger strike if they have missed nine straight meals.

Earlier this week, the Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity group estimated that as many as 12,000 inmates were skipping meals. Many were angry about a practice of keeping them in solitary confinement for too long, some as many as 20 years, according to group spokesman Isaac Ontiveros. ”What we are hoping for is for the CDCR to negotiate and to actually, fundamentally talk about these demands,” Donahue said Thursday. “I am hoping that they can do that before any serious medical problems arise. We never hope for it to get to that.”

The state corrections department reported Thursday that California State Prison-Corcoran, located about 50 miles south of Fresno, had more hunger strikers — 361 — than any other state facility. Next was the Salinas Valley State Prison between San Jose and San Luis Obispo,with 243 strikers. Three other state prisons — including Pelican Bay, Calipatria and Ironwood — also had participants.

Some 578 inmates at Pelican Bay State Prison, on California’s northern border with Oregon, have stopped their hunger strike and resumed eating, according to the corrections department. That includes 4 of the 11 there who have been identified as leaders in the movement. That being said, 141 at that facility are still on a hunger strike.

Based on a preliminary investigation of a riot Tuesday at Ironwood State Prison, the state claimed that an inmate was attacked because, in part, he would not participate in the hunger strike. The inmate was treated at an outside hospital, the corrections department said Thursday. The state claimed that it is conducting several investigations into reports that inmates have been threatened or mistreated by other inmates because they have refused to participate.

Earlier, prison officials said it would punish inmates who were not eating and leaders of the strike will be removed “from the general population and be placed in an Administrative Segregation Unit.”

The prisoners have made five demands, including a change in the prison policy that makes inmates go through an interrogation process in which they have to incriminate themselves — and identify other inmates who are involved in breaking rules — in order to get out of solitary confinement. They are demanding an end to group lockdowns and want more privileges for those in solitary confinement, such as winter clothes and nutritious meals.

Prison officials have said that placing prisoners in segregation units, or solitary confinement, makes the facilities more safe and helps guards deal with gang violence.

Donahue called the corrections department’s response to the strike “very disappointing.” “They continue to claim that they have addressed the demands of the prisoners and that they are reviewing the gang validation processes,” he said. “But they’ve said, fundamentally, that they’re not going to address long-term solitary … and they haven’t said anything about group punishment.”

Dozens of advocacy groups from around the world have joined the cause, according to a list on Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity’s website, and Donahue said the group is still getting supportive calls and e-mails daily. Among those is Amnesty International, which released a statement Tuesday “calling for urgent implementation … of policies to improve conditions” and criticizing what it characterized as California officials’ subjecting hunger strikers “to punitive measures.” “The need for reform is long overdue,” the human rights advocacy group said. “Amnesty International urges that the hunger strike be brought to an end through a clear commitment by the authorities to ensure humane conditions for all prisoners and a meaningful process … so that no prisoner is held long-term or indefinitely in extreme isolation.”

The strike, which started September 26, is the second such action by prisoners this year. Another occurred in July.

“Right now we are seeing nothing but crackdowns from the CDCR,” Ontiveros said earlier this week. “We are hoping that there will be some fruitful negotiations, but ironically they have threatened prisoners with more isolation.”

“Civil Rights Leader Shuttleworth Dies”

Taken from: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44788700/ns/us_news-life/#

October 5, 2011

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — The Rev. Fred L. Shuttlesworth, who was bombed, beaten and repeatedly arrested in the fight for civil rights and hailed by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. for his courage and tenacity, has died. He was 89.

Relatives and hospital officials said Shuttlesworth died Wednesday at a Birmingham hospital. A former truck driver who studied religion at night, Shuttlesworth became pastor of Bethel Baptist Church in Birmingham in 1953 and soon emerged as an outspoken leader in the struggle for racial equality. ”My church was a beehive,” Shuttlesworth once said. “I made the movement. I made the challenge. Birmingham was the citadel of segregation, and the people wanted to march. In his 1963 book “Why We Can’t Wait,” King called Shuttlesworth “one of the nation’s most courageous freedom fighters … a wiry, energetic and indomitable man.”

Mayor William Bell ordered city flags lowered to half-staff until after Shuttleworth’s funeral. Bell, who is black, said he would not be mayor if not for leaders like Shuttlesworth. ”Dr. Shuttlesworth means so much to this city and his legacy will continue for generations,” he said.

Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth right,  escorts Dwight Armstrong, 9, and his brother Floyd, 11, from the Graymont Elementary School in Birmingham, Ala, Sept. 9, 1963. State troopers, on order from the governor, opened the school but turned the African Americans away.

Shuttlesworth survived a 1956 bombing, an assault during a 1957 demonstration, chest injuries when Birmingham authorities turned fire hoses on demonstrators in 1963, and countless arrests. ”I went to jail 30 or 40 times, not for fighting or stealing or drugs,” Shuttlesworth told grade school students in 1997. “I went to jail for a good thing, trying to make a difference.” Alabama’s first black federal judge, U.W. Clemon, said Shuttlesworth flung himself at injustice well knowing he could be killed at any moment. “He was the first black man I knew who was totally unafraid of white folks,” said Clemon, who retired from the bench and is now an attorney in private practice. Shuttlesworth remained active in the movement in Alabama even after moving in 1961 to Cincinnati, where he was a pastor for most of the next 47 years. He moved back to Birmingham in February 2008 for rehabilitation after a mild stroke. That summer, the once-segregated city honored him with a four-day tribute and named its airport after him. His statue also stands outside the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute.

In November 2008, Shuttlesworth watched from a hospital bed as Sen. Barack Obama was elected the nation’s first African-American president. The year before, Obama had pushed Shuttlesworth’s wheelchair across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma during a commemoration of the Selma-to-Montgomery voting rights march — a moment Obama recalled Wednesday. In Washington, Obama released a statement lauding Shuttlesworth as a “testament to the strength of the human spirit” and said America owes him a “debt of gratitude” for his fight for equality.

“As one of the founders of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Reverend Shuttlesworth dedicated his life to advancing the cause of justice for all Americans,” Obama said. In the early 1960s, Shuttlesworth had invited King back to Birmingham. Televised scenes of police dogs and fire hoses being turned on black marchers, including children, in the spring of 1963 helped the rest of the nation grasp the depth of racial animosity in the Deep South. ”He marched into the jaws of death every day in Birmingham before we got there,” said Andrew Young, the former Atlanta mayor and U.N. ambassador who served as an aide to King.

Young said it was Shuttlesworth’s fearlessness that persuaded King to take the struggle to Birmingham. ”We shouldn’t have been strong enough to take on Birmingham … But God had a plan that was far better than our plan,” Young said. “Fred didn’t invite us to come to Birmingham. He told us we had to come.” Referring to the city’s notoriously racist safety commissioner, Shuttlesworth would tell followers, “We’re telling ol’ ‘Bull’ Connor right here tonight that we’re on the march and we’re not going to stop marching until we get our rights.” According to a May 1963 New York Times profile of Shuttlesworth, Connor responded to the word Shuttlesworth had been injured by the spray of fire hoses by saying: “I’m sorry I missed it. … I wish they’d carried him away in a hearse.” Fellow civil rights pioneer the Rev. Joseph Lowery said Shuttlesworth was determined. ”When God made Bull Connor, one of the real negative forces in this country, He was sure to make Fred Shuttlesworth.” Lowery said.

While King won international fame, Shuttlesworth was relatively little known outside Alabama. But he was a key figure in Spike Lee’s 1997 documentary, “4 Little Girls,” about the September 1963 Birmingham church bombing that killed four black children.

Shuttlesworth was born March 18, 1922, near Montgomery and grew up in Birmingham. As a child, he knew he would either be a minister or a doctor and by 1943, he decided to enter the ministry. He began his theological courses at night while working as a truck driver and cement worker by day. He was licensed to preach in 1944 and ordained in 1948. It was 1954 when King, then a pastor in Montgomery, came to Birmingham to give a speech and asked to stop by Bethel Baptist and meet Shuttlesworth. Then in late 1955 in Montgomery, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a city bus, prompting the boycott led by King that gave new impetus to the civil rights movement. In January 1956, King’s Montgomery home was bombed while he attended a rally. Eleven months later, on Christmas night 1956, 16 sticks of dynamite were detonated outside Shuttlesworth’s bedroom as he slept at the Bethel Baptist parsonage. No one was injured in either bombing, although shards of glass and wood pierced Shuttleworth’s coat and hat left hanging on a hook. The next day, Shuttlesworth led 250 people in a protest of segregation on buses in Birmingham.

Occupy Wall Street

Here is a movement that has been happening in New York City and in various other cities in the US. Whether you support it or not, realize that the list of grievances in its official statement are issues that cannot be ignored; if we want a better tomorrow, we have to fix the problems today.

Taken from: http://occupywallst.org/

On October 05, 2011, at 3:00 in the afternoon the residents of Liberty Square will gather to join their union brothers and sisters in solidarity and march. At 4:30 in the afternoon the 99% will march in solidarity with #occupywallstreet from Foley Square to the Financial District, where their pensions have disappeared to, where their health has disappeared to. Together we will protest this great injustice. We stand in solidarity with the honest workers of:

• AFL-CIO (AFSCME)
• United NY
• Strong Economy for All Coalition
• Working Families Party
• TWU Local 100
• SEIU 1199
• CWA 1109
• RWDSU
• Communications Workers of America
• CWA Local 1180
• United Auto Workers
• United Federation of Teachers
• Professional Staff Congress – CUNY
• National Nurses United
• Writers Guild East

And:

• VOCAL-NY
• Community Voices Heard
• Alliance for Quality Education
• New York Communities for Change
• Coalition for the Homeless
• Neighborhood Economic Development Advocacy Project (NEDAP)
• The Job Party
• NYC Coalition for Educational Justice
• The Mirabal Sisters Cultural and Community Center
• The New Deal for New York Campaign
• National People’s Action
• ALIGN
• Human Services Council
• Labor-Religion Coalition of New York State
• Citizen Action of NY
• MoveOn.org
• Common Cause NY
• New Bottom Line
• 350.org
• Tenants & Neighbors
• Democracy for NYC
• Resource Generation
• Tenants PAC
• Teachers Unite

Together we will voice our belief that the American dream will live again, that the American way is to help one another succeed. Our voice, our values, will be heard.

***

Official Statement from Occupy Wall Street –  voted on and approved by the general assembly of protesters at Liberty Square: Declaration of the Occupation of New York City

As we gather together in solidarity to express a feeling of mass injustice, we must not lose sight of what brought us together. We write so that all people who feel wronged by the corporate forces of the world can know that we are your allies.

As one people, united, we acknowledge the reality: that the future of the human race requires the cooperation of its members; that our system must protect our rights, and upon corruption of that system, it is up to the individuals to protect their own rights, and those of their neighbors; that a democratic government derives its just power from the people, but corporations do not seek consent to extract wealth from the people and the Earth; and that no true democracy is attainable when the process is determined by economic power. We come to you at a time when corporations, which place profit over people, self-interest over justice, and oppression over equality, run our governments. We have peaceably assembled here, as is our right, to let these facts be known.

They have taken our houses through an illegal foreclosure process, despite not having the original mortgage.

They have taken bailouts from taxpayers with impunity, and continue to give Executives exorbitant bonuses.

They have perpetuated inequality and discrimination in the workplace based on age, the color of one’s skin, sex, gender identity and sexual orientation.

They have poisoned the food supply through negligence, and undermined the farming system through monopolization.

They have profited off of the torture, confinement, and cruel treatment of countless nonhuman animals, and actively hide these practices.

They have continuously sought to strip employees of the right to negotiate for better pay and safer working conditions.

They have held students hostage with tens of thousands of dollars of debt on education, which is itself a human right.

They have consistently outsourced labor and used that outsourcing as leverage to cut workers’ healthcare and pay.

They have influenced the courts to achieve the same rights as people, with none of the culpability or responsibility.

They have spent millions of dollars on legal teams that look for ways to get them out of contracts in regards to health insurance.

They have sold our privacy as a commodity.

They have used the military and police force to prevent freedom of the press.

They have deliberately declined to recall faulty products endangering lives in pursuit of profit.

They determine economic policy, despite the catastrophic failures their policies have produced and continue to produce.

They have donated large sums of money to politicians supposed to be regulating them.

They continue to block alternate forms of energy to keep us dependent on oil.

They continue to block generic forms of medicine that could save people’s lives in order to protect investments that have already turned a substantive profit.

They have purposely covered up oil spills, accidents, faulty bookkeeping, and inactive ingredients in pursuit of profit.

They purposefully keep people misinformed and fearful through their control of the media.

They have accepted private contracts to murder prisoners even when presented with serious doubts about their guilt.

They have perpetuated colonialism at home and abroad.

They have participated in the torture and murder of innocent civilians overseas.

They continue to create weapons of mass destruction in order to receive government contracts.*

To the people of the world,

We, the New York City General Assembly occupying Wall Street in Liberty Square, urge you to assert your power.

Exercise your right to peaceably assemble; occupy public space; create a process to address the problems we face, and generate solutions accessible to everyone.

To all communities that take action and form groups in the spirit of direct democracy, we offer support, documentation, and all of the resources at our disposal.

Join us and make your voices heard!