KISS Theory

First off, the last month has returned some hope that all is not lost to the corporations in this country. Secondly, grievances relating to private campaign donations and citizens united are spot on. Thirdly, I hope in the end we figure out how to stay focused on these most important topics to increase the chance of real change taking place.

Everyone has issues that are more or less special to them, but expanding to such a long list only dilutes our message. Campaign finance reform is the "Berlin Wall" so to speak...we knock that down and the flood gates open for real progressive change.

Help everyone understand that without keeping our eye on one strong, central message, our chances of real victories in this fight weaken. KISS, everyone...Keep It Simple (or we are) Stupid.

More or less agreed. I think it needs to be items that we really represent 99% (as much as possible). Anything controversial and we will lose support and open ourselves to critics.

I'm not suggesting we be thin skinned. Critics can say what they want. It's more the idea of losing support since we are all agreed that critical changes are needed NOW and we need to keep that pressure going to achieve it!

And to be clear, its not so much about presenting ideas that have more of a consensus. It's that simplicity is the best way to gain traction. Think Steve Jobs/Apple...make our message "user friendly" and watch the crowds grow! Take the largest issues and pound them into the collective consciousness of our society.

We have to find a balance between simplicity and robustness. If we just have one or two demands, I don't believe it will make enough of a difference long-term. Yes, campaign refinance is a huge step in the direction of rooting out corruption in politics, however, you also need to anticipate corporations finding loopholes. Where there is greed, there will always be an open hand for money.

Honestly, the whole entire system needs to be reformed.

I don't disagree at all, the entire system is in dire need of complete reform. But there in lies the conflict in forming a comprehensive proposal that is still digestible to the majority of our nation's citizens. Robustness that leads to indolence achieves nothing in the end.

Single Payer Healthcare, Student Loans, Bringing Home Troops...all issues deserving of passionate attention and reform, but do they fit into a message of corporate greed and corruption that started this whole thing? Sure, they can be tied to what we're doing, but that's my point. Any connection must be explained to the average citizen, only damaging our chances of traction on the way to real change.

I state my opinions on the The99PercentDeclaration
If the paragraph below is not the correct goal, then it need to be revised.

"BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that IF the PETITION OF GRIEVANCES approved by the 870 Delegates of the NATIONAL GENERAL ASSEMBLY in consultation with the PEOPLE, is not acted upon by Congress, the President, and Supreme Court, to the satisfaction of the Delegates of the NATIONAL GENERAL ASSEMBLY, said Delegates shall organize a THIRD, COMPLETELY NON-PARTISAN, INDEPENDENT POLITICAL PARTY to run candidates for every available Congressional seat in the mid-term election of 2014 and again in 2016 until all vestiges of the existing corrupt corporatocracy have been removed by the ballot box."

If it is the consensus, then here are my thoughts...

KISS is imperative -
We -this working group will attempt to sell the concept of taking back our government. That requires building a consensus, we can not sell this 20 item Grievance list to more than a small percentage of the qualified voters.
Why do I use "qualified voters"? Because we are making the statement that if the current representation does not address our grievances, we will remove them via the ballot box. Ballot Box = qualified voters.

We have to address the core problems that caused this group to come together. The loss of "Government by and for the people."
As I see it they are:
Term Limitations ~ House, Senate and Supreme Court
Campaign Finance
Lobbying
Until these are addressed, nothing will change.
A well thought out plan to address these issues can be developed and "sold" to the "qualified voters".
I truly believe in this cause and am willing to work for a winnable outcome. But, I along with the majority of the "qualified voters" will need to be "sold" on the high percentage chance of success.
When the National General Assembly presents the Grievances and Remedies they also must present proof that they represent enough votes to carry out the consequence of inaction.
This will require verifiable signed petitions.
Can this be done? YES
We have the start with this working group. Now, we need to develop that consensus on Grievances AND Remedies.
At the same time we need to start building the grass roots effort to include enough voters to carry out our stated response to inaction on the part of our current elected officials.

With respect to all.
J Horne
South Carolina
99%er

I agree that too many demands make the movement more complex, and too few demands leave loopholes. This is where tracing the problems back to primary causes becomes important. We need a few pivotal demands that address the real causes.

In my opinion, the two primary causes behind all the problems (grievances) are,.

1) Capitalism

2) lack of Direct Democracy.

Capitalism is unsustainable and leads to corruption and planetary destruction.

Direct Democracy puts the power back into the hands of the people where it belongs and prevents corruption.

I believe once people understand what the real causes of the problems are, we will see some pertinent changes occur.

As I stated in another thread, we need to be focused on what about OWS has captured the country's attention and emotion, and that is that money is too influential in politics. Any person on the street, wherever you live in the country, could agree on that.
I LOVE the Berlin Wall analogy! Does everyone in this forum understand how hard and how long people have worked already for Campaign Finance Reform? Does everyone know the work of Doris "Granny D"Haddock? She was tireless and rational and eloquent and still could not move the mountain of wealth away from Capitol Hill.
Just achieving Campaign Finance Reform would be HUGE, never mind anything else!
If we cannot come up with a way to succeed in a concrete and measurable way, then were all just a bunch of Liberal Arts majors sitting around the coffee house, building air castles. I, for one, am ready to move forward from that era of my own life.
Peace,
Johanna

I agree entirely- Campaign finance reform is the linchpin, and from that the rest of what we generally want will follow. I think our entire platform needs to revolve around that, and not some of the other stuff we've been talking about- which are symptoms of the problems, not the cause.

I don't agree that capitalism is unsustainable. The problem is what our society is turning into is a perversion of capitalism and the free market.

One suggested PR tactic: we need to call ourselves the real defenders of the free market, and point out the market failures of our current system, and how the large corporations have been enabling and encouraging those failures. Economists would be good here.

A free market requires perfect competition and an equality of market power. While you can't get those in reality perfectly, you can get a reasonable balance of power. The 99% has lost too much market power and political power- that's the core of our problem.

This is a repost about capitalism from my Direct Democracy OF, BY, and FOR the people message, to hopefully show you that capitalism IS a major cause (along with Industrialism and Materialism). I'll preface this with a quote from Einstein,.. "We can't have infinite growth on a finite planet". Capitalism is based on continued growth is it not?
We are running out of planetary resources to support growth and the world's population is growing faster than ever. This can not continue much longer. The problems we are seeing now are just the tip of the ice berg.

From Wikipedia

Milton Friedman (July 31, 1912 – November 16, 2006) was an American economist, statistician, academic, and author who taught at the University of Chicago for more than three decades. He was a recipient of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. Among scholars, he is best known for his theoretical and empirical research, especially consumption analysis, monetary history and theory, and for his demonstration of the complexity of stabilization policy.[1]

Friedman was an economic advisor to conservative President Ronald Reagan. Over time, many governments practiced his restatement of a political philosophy that extolled the virtues of a free market economic system with little intervention by government.

Criticism of Friedman

In her book The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, journalist and author Naomi Klein critiqued Friedman's ideology and the principles that guided the economic restructuring that followed the military coups in countries such as Chile and Indonesia, drawing analogies between the way that Friedman proposed using the social "shock" of the coups to create an economic "blank slate" with Ewen Cameron's controversial medical experiments that used electroshock therapy to create a mental "blank slate" in patients with mental disorders.[68] Based on the extent to which the application of neoliberal policies has contributed to income disparities and inequality,[69] both Klein and Noam Chomsky have suggested that the primary role of neoliberalism was as an ideological cover for capital accumulation by multinational corporations.[70] Chilean economist Orlando Letelier asserted that Pinochet's dictatorship resorted to repression because of popular opposition to Chicago School policies in Chile.[71]

Now consider Dr. Karl Marx

Karl Heinrich Marx (5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, sociologist, economic historian, journalist, and revolutionary socialist who developed the socio-political theory of Marxism. His ideas have since played a significant role in the development of social science and the socialist political movement.

While Marx remained a relatively unknown figure in his own lifetime, his ideas and the ideology of Marxism began to exert a major influence on socialist movements shortly after his death... Marx is typically cited, with Émile Durkheim and Max Weber, as one of the three principal architects of modern social science.[9] Marx has been described as one of the most influential figures in human history, and in a 1999 BBC poll was voted the "thinker of the millennium" by people from around the world.[10][11]

Marx's theories about society, economics and politics, which are collectively known as Marxism, hold that all societies progress through the dialectic of class struggle. He was heavily critical of the current socio-economic form of society, capitalism, which he called the "dictatorship of the bourgeoisie", believing it to be run by the wealthy middle and upper classes purely for their own benefit, and predicted that, like previous socioeconomic systems, it would inevitably produce internal tensions which would lead to its self-destruction and replacement by a new system, socialism.[4] Under socialism, he argued that society would be governed by the working class in what he called the "dictatorship of the proletariat", the "workers state" or "workers' democracy".[5][6] He believed that socialism would, in its turn, eventually be replaced by a stateless, classless society called pure communism. Along with believing in the inevitability of socialism and communism, Marx actively fought for the former's implementation, arguing that both social theorists and underprivileged people should carry out organised revolutionary action to topple capitalism and bring about socio-economic change.[7][8]