A Clear Message: Occupy DC's Declaration of Frustration

This past Wednesday, November 30, 2011, the protestors of the Occupy D.C. movement reached a consensus and published a Declaration that represents their specific beliefs and issues.

This document first introduces the Occupy DC movement, a “diverse” community that is troubled by the increasing disenfranchisement of the 99 percent. Then, the document outlines the specific set of grievances that the people of this movement have. These include, but are not limited to:

• exploitation by the 1 percent (those who have “40 percent of the nation’s wealth”);
• the need for campaign finance reform;
• polarization of our two political parties;
• continuous discrimination on race, religion, sexual discrimination, etc.;
• unwise, short-term decisions of financial institutions and corporations;
• failure by governmental authorities to protect peoples’ rights;

as well as the fact that all of these have led to the worsening of the quality of life of the 99 percent and therefore the American people as a whole. At the end, the General Assembly urges the people of America “to collaborate and share available resources” and “join your voice[s] with ours.”

This document is very important to the movement for multiple reasons. First, the document is clear evidence that the movement does have a purposeful message. Second, it articulates the grievances that are most important to Americans, since it was documented through a democratic process. Finally, the issues it discusses are real and, now that they are on paper, cannot be easily pushed aside or ignored.

One of the complaints about the Occupy movement in general is that it doesn’t have a clear message. Allen Weiss, a professor of marketing at USC Marshall School of Business, said that “Occupy Wall Street never had a really clear message – mostly energy.” [link] However, the Occupy DC movement now has a document with specific complaints, and calls us to action and to “re-conceive ways to build a just, democratic, and sustainable world.”

Also, if nothing else, the process of drafting the document was indeed democratic. According to the movement’s website, the Declaration was drafted using “a range of over 200 submissions to a box made available to the public.” The Declaration Committee, which was “open to the public and consist[ed] of several dozen people,” then met numerous times over the course of more than a month to draft the document from these submissions. The General Assembly looked over the Declaration three times before reaching a final consensus. The Occupy movement has also been criticized for being hypocritical by not being a ‘democratic’ and unified movement, though it criticizes society of being the same. The Daily Show, though comedic, even had a segment that exposed divisions and hierarchy within the Occupy Wall St. movement. However, the Occupy DC branch of this movement has figure out how to work together to come up with a cohesive document. This process, as one can see, is what democracy at its core is all about. This Occupy DC Declaration was drafted, as famously stated by President Abraham Lincoln in his Gettysburg address, “of the people, by the people, for the people.”

This document, by clearly addressing its qualms, has also brought to light specific issues facing our society today. One of the most important of these is corporate influence in government. Now, I am not saying that the idea of corporations is an inherent evil: however, when they use their power and influence to make as much profit as possible to the detriment of others and society at large, then we have a problem. There are numerous examples of former lobbyists and company executives who are elected to Congress or who now hold political offices. Just one example is Michael R. Taylor, who is currently the Deputy Commissioner for Foods at the Food and Drug Administration. Before working at the FDA, Taylor was the vice president for public policy at Monsanto, a multinational agricultural corporation. [link] We realistically cannot expect that none of the government officials like Taylor will be unbiased or completely removed from the interests of their former companies, especially if these companies have funded their campaigns or helped them in other ways. And, unlike Supreme Court justices, politicians do not recuse themselves. This “purchase of political power” is just one of the issues that the Occupy DC movement’s Declaration has now put on the table, and in written form.

Read the full Declaration here.