In support of, and in reaction to, the thousands protesting since September 17 in New York City as Occupy Wall Street, some Quad Citians are organizing a local protest under the banner Occupy Quad Cities. As of press time for this edition, the location(s) and date(s) for Occupy Quad Cities have not been determined or announced.
In the spirit of solidarity with those who also recognize the status quo is unacceptable, I offer the following unsolicited advice, observations, and musings to all who feel a desire to take civic action and get involved in such a project here locally.
Determine what your desired outcomes - demands if you will - are and establish a method to measure those locally first. Change will not come from the top down. The single-party duopoly system wants you to believe that if you pit yourself against your neighbor and just beat the so-called other team, all your problems will be solved. The modern-day Tea Party movement was co-opted by the single-party system and mainstream media propagandized most into complacency when it comes to taking action locally. Don't make the same mistake and become a pawn of the so-called Left, like many in the Tea Party movement have become hapless pawns of the so-called Right.
"Constitutional rights" is an oxymoron. No one has constitutional rights. As human beings, we have unalienable rights that are protected, not granted, by the Constitution and those that were chartered to operate under its oath. Be clear on this distinction because it is a critical one. Unalienable rights include the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, as well as the right to protect ourselves and one's property against harm from others, including the government. These natural rights are given to us by our creator, are inherent in our humanity, and exist regardless of whether we even have a government or a constitution. In America, we are supposed to have constitutionally protected rights.
The word "democracy" does not appear once in any of the founding documents or any state constitution. In fact, Article IV of the Constitution reads: "The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government," referring to a republic, not a democracy. A republic is where the government is the servant and the people are the master. Nevertheless, as the news director for Iowa Public Radio recently told me, America is "governed as a socialist democracy." And that is precisely the source of society's ills - a democracy. The architects of the Constitution and its Bill of Rights eschewed a pure democracy. James Madison wrote in Federalist No. 10: "Democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths."
As you work toward establishing the General Assembly process that has been written about as the consensus-building method for the New York protesters, please keep in mind that if you focus your energies on what his happening in your own backyards, you do have the fourth branch of government at your service. It is called the grand jury and according to both the Iowa and Illinois state constitutions, the grand jury is there to serve the people and, among other things, is to investigate allegations of wrongdoing by publicly elected and sworn officers. Imagine if the Occupy Wall Streeters presented evidence to the New York County Grand Jury of the malfeasance conducted by the 1-percent-ers resulting in their indictments and trials? You can contact the local grand jury in your county by contacting the clerk of the court.
"I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. Already they have raised up a money aristocracy that has set the government at defiance. The issuing power [of money], should be taken from the banks and restored to the people to whom it properly belongs." - Thomas Jefferson
Ask yourself: What are you really trying to accomplish? Are you just blowing off steam and making signs to be on TV? Or are you interested in truly holding people accountable for perpetuating a system that gifts themselves from the treasury to grow both the warfare and welfare state? What can you do about it locally? Who is your real enemy? Consider that the banksters, Wall Street, and the "1 percent" could not get away with their crimes if it were not for the enabling Federal Reserve System. Consider that we would not have illegal, bankrupting wars, ruining the lives of millions, making our "homeland" less safe and secure, if it were not for the absurd ability of the Fed to print more ones and zeros to dole out to the military industrial complex. Ask yourself: How can we impact change in the Quad Cities related to the banking industry?
"If the American people only understood the rank injustice of our money and banking system - there would be a revolution before morning." - Andrew Jackson
Please think again if your designs are to have another set of congresscrats regulate you some relief. Remember the Wall Street Reform Act? How it was supposed to reform Wall Street? Well, consider that a provision of that act makes the Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC) exempt from Freedom of Information Act requests. One of the very regulatory bodies charged with protecting you is now able to operate in total secret to ensure we never know how it picked the latest crops of winners and losers.
"We are absolutely without a permanent money system. When one gets a complete grasp of the picture, the tragic absurdity of our hopeless position is almost incredible, but there it is. It [the banking problem] is the most important subject intelligent persons can investigate and reflect upon. It is so important that our present civilization may collapse unless it becomes widely understood and the defects are remedied very soon." - Robert H. Hemphill, credit manager for the Federal Reserve Bank in Atlanta
You and your Tea Party brethren are being sold down the river every day that goes by, by both parties. And unless those of us who are fed up with the status quo get beyond protests, get beyond petitions, and get beyond the ballot box in exacting accountability, beginning locally, nothing is ever going to change substantially in our lifetimes.
"Because legal tender irredeemable paper-ticket electronic money can be created without limit, there is no market-based self-correcting mechanism to limit financial leverage. Especially at a time when those who engage in leverage do not bear the full risk of loss, but are able pass the risk on to the public through the banking system, whose balance sheet and liabilities are de facto guaranteed by the public, financial collapse is a certainty." - testimony of Lawrence Parks, Foundation for the Advancement of Monetary Education, during a hearing on House Resolution 1098, Ron Paul's "Free Competition in Currency Act of 2011."
