OCCUPY WALL STREET: The Action Plan is ambitious and calls for the election of a National General Assembly to convene on July 4, 2012 in Philadelphia. This National General Assembly will consist of 870 Delegates elected from the 435 Congressional districts. Each Congressional district shall elect one woman and one man by direct ballot voting. These Delegates will attend the National General Assembly in July where a final Petition for the Redress of Grievances will be voted upon and delivered to all three branches of the federal government before the 2012 election. If the final Petition for the Redress of Grievances is not acted upon by the government, the Delegates shall organize a nationwide, grassroots, non-partisan effort to elect independent candidates in the 2014 midterm election. This election of independent candidates will seek to replace ALL of the existing members of the House of Representatives and ALL Senators up for election in 2014. MORE
GLENN GREENWALD: One point that I think becomes clear is that growing wealth and income inequality, by itself, would not spark massive protests if there were a perception that the top 1% (more accurately thought of as the top .1%) had acquired their gains honestly and legitimately. Americans in particular have been inculcated for decades with the belief that even substantial outcome inequality is acceptable (even desirable) provided that it is the by-product of fairly applied rules. What makes this inequality so infuriating (aside from the human suffering it is generating) is precisely that it is illegitimate: it is caused and bolstered by decisively unfair application of laws and rules, by undemocratic control of the political process by the nation’s oligarchs, and by a full-scale shield of immunity that allows them — and only them — to engage in the most egregious corruption and even criminality without any consequence (other than a further entrenching of their prerogatives and ill-gotten gains). Anyone who expressed difficulty seeing or understanding what motivates these protests revealed many things about themselves. None is flattering. MORE
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