A Time For Outrage

There's something happenin' but do you know what it is? Do you, Mr. Jones?

This video is pretty good, because a wide variety of people who are now engaged in the  occupation of the financial districts of Americas major cities speak about their ideas, their expectations and what they think that they are trying to accomplish. 

But, this is the face of America awakening, this is America responding to what has been going on in the rest of the world. While the mideast had an "Arab Spring" we are experiencing an American autumn. Too be fair though, the real roots started before the spring in America, in the snow of Madison, Wisconsin as Scott Walker tried to shove his anti labor, pro corporate agenda down the throats of the people who elected him.

On Sept.22, 2011, a slim pamphlet was released in America by a  94 year old French diplomat, Stephane Hessel.

The book, Indignez-Vous, had been the best selling non fiction work in France for almost 1 year. The book has been referred to as the inspiration for mass protest and demonstrations through out Europe since its publication. The title loosely translates to "Be Outraged".  It has been translated into over 30 languages. 

If you are interested, here is Stephane Hessels' facebook page.

You Must Stand Up!

In 1940, Hessel, then a soldier in the French army, was captured by German forces. He managed to escape from a prison camp in France and make his way south through Spain and Portugal to North Africa, then to London, where he joined Gen. Charles de Gaulle's resistance forces in March 1941.

Hessel returned to occupied France as a resistance fighter, but was soon captured by the Gestapo and only narrowly avoided execution in a Nazi concentration camp before escaping to rejoin the Allies.

He went on to be one of the authors with Eleanor Roosevelt of the UN Declaration of Human Rights.

He tells his story in the sitting room of his small Paris apartment. Now 94 years old, Hessel is trim and dapper in a coat and tie. His eyes twinkle with generosity, but that spark of resistance seems to have never left him.

"If you want to be a real human being — a real woman, a real man — you cannot tolerate things which put you to indignation, to outrage," he says. "You must stand up. I always say to people, 'Look around; look at what makes you unhappy, what makes you furious, and then engage yourself in some action.'"

In Time for Outrage, Hessel challenges young people to do just that. Injustice is widespread today, too, he says — though he admits that today's injustice isn't as clear-cut as it was in his day.

"To be conquered by a nation like the Nazis, obviously it was insufferable," he says. "Today we are not in front of problems that immediately appear as impossible to accept. But if we look a little carefully, these challenges are there."

The book was released in the USA last week with the title, A Time For Outrage. The fires lit by Hessel have been burning in Europe and the influence has made it to America. I believe that Hessel's cal for activism is a very big part of the motivation for the todays national outpouring of outrage in America. This slender volume is inspirational and so good natured in its justification of the natural indignation we all feel. Hessel has lived it his entire life and to see him today as a 94 year old youthful and lucid man of unwavering moral force is inspiration enough alone.

Hessel, who is Jewish, was a French diplomat at the U.N. when Israel was born in 1948. He says he remembers it as a glorious moment but believes things have gone very wrong since then.

"The Israeli government is not going the way [of] Jewish ideals," he says. "And the way they acted in Gaza with [Operation Cast Lead] is just impossible to tolerate for honest Jews."

Hessel says he's delighted over the recent people's revolutions in the Arab world, which started just three months after his book came out in France. He doesn't claim any credit but says it is a nice coincidence.

He says he's honored that his book is being published in America. Calling Franklin Delano Roosevelt the most important leader of the 20th century, Hessel says Roosevelt's New Deal and "Four Freedoms" speech set the standard for social and economic justice in the modern world.

Luck, Love, Happiness And Poetry

Hessel is passionate about justice, but he credits his own long life and good health to something very different; luck, love, happiness and poetry. He says he knows many of Shakespeare's sonnets by heart.

"This one I ... used when I just had been arrested by the Gestapo," he says. "I was afraid that I would not survive, and so I put a little paper in my pocket that my wife should find."

He recites the first lines of Shakespeare's "Sonnet 71":

"No longer mourn for me when I am dead/ Than you shall hear the surly sullen bell/ Give warning to the world that I am fled/ From this vile world, with vilest worms to dwell."

A time for outrage? A time to become one of the indignants? A time for action? Why not now, because if not now, it's never, and forever is a long, long time.....

Here is the official Declaration of the New York Occupation of Wall Street:

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 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, who are responsible for 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 or provide relief in order to protect investments that have already turned a substantial 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!

*These grievances are not all-inclusive.