Saturday, October 22, 2011
Demands of Occupy Wall Street And Disinformation
Demands Of Occupy Wall Street And Disinformation
October 21st, 2011
Tonight on the McLaughlin Group on PBS a list of demands was posted on their broadcast and claimed to be from Occupy Wall Street.
-$20 an hour minimum wage,
-amnesty for all student loans, credit card debt and home mortgages,
-free medical care for all, there might have been a couple of others but I can't remember.
There is a certain amount of disinformation here, also some of these may be proposed demands that never went anywhere. The media certainly is trying to discredit the Occupy Wall Street. The real demands that are being proposed by the Demands committee are quite reasonable things that the social democracies of Europe already provide. What is being proposed is that the USA catch up with the rest of the developed world.
Unfortunately these are simply reforms that won't change the system.
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This is my proposal.
Real change would involve demands for:
A) Worker participation in management at all companies.
B) Collective bargaining at all workplaces larger than family operations.
C) Community participation in industry relocation decisions.
D) Replacement of all banks with Co-ops
E) Elimination of Wall Street replacing it with an Enterprise Investment Bureau
F) Public funding of Elections
G) All parties eligible for public funding based on voter registration.
H) Limit electoral cycle to 3 months.
I) Free prime time access on media for Electoral debates as part of public service
J) Free Public Transportation
K) Free Medical Care
L) Free Education
M) Basic housing and food allowance
These demands should break the back of corporate power and private influence in elections. It should be the starting point for a people's democracy that includes the workplace. It is my firm belief that without economic democracy there is no hope of real political democracy. Citizens of a democracy cannot have extreme discrepancies of wealth or education for the democracy to be effective.
Then I went to a site called Red State. They had a list of what they called OWS demands.
This is a right wing site and they are trying to discredit OWS.
OWS Extremist List of Demands, posting for laughs
Posted by williamjameson (Diary)
Friday, October 7th at 10:27PM EDT
http://occupywallst.org/forum/proposed-list-of-demands-for-occupy-wall-st-moveme/
Demand one: Restoration of the living wage. This demand can only be met by ending "Freetrade" by re-imposing trade tariffs on all imported goods entering the American market to level the playing field for domestic family farming and domestic manufacturing as most nations that are dumping cheap products onto the American market have radical wage and environmental regulation advantages. Another policy that must be instituted is raise the minimum wage to twenty dollars an hr.
Demand two: Institute a universal single payer healthcare system. To do this all private insurers must be banned from the healthcare market as their only effect on the health of patients is to take money away from doctors, nurses and hospitals preventing them from doing their jobs and hand that money to wall st. investors.
Demand three: Guaranteed living wage income regardless of employment.
Demand four: Free college education.
Demand five: Begin a fast track process to bring the fossil fuel economy to an end while at the same bringing the alternative energy economy up to energy demand.
Demand six: One trillion dollars in infrastructure (Water, Sewer, Rail, Roads and Bridges and Electrical Grid) spending now.
Demand seven: One trillion dollars in ecological restoration planting forests, reestablishing wetlands and the natural flow of river systems and decommissioning of all of America's nuclear power plants.
Demand eight: Racial and gender equal rights amendment.
Demand nine: Open borders migration. anyone can travel anywhere to work and live.
Demand ten: Bring American elections up to international standards of a paper ballot precinct counted and recounted in front of an independent and party observers system.
Demand eleven: Immediate across the board debt forgiveness for all. Debt forgiveness of sovereign debt, commercial loans, home mortgages, home equity loans, credit card debt, student loans and personal loans now! All debt must be stricken from the "Books." World Bank Loans to all Nations, Bank to Bank Debt and all Bonds and Margin Call Debt in the stock market including all Derivatives or Credit Default Swaps, all 65 trillion dollars of them must also be stricken from the "Books." And I don't mean debt that is in default, I mean all debt on the entire planet period.
Demand twelve: Outlaw all credit reporting agencies.
Demand thirteen: Allow all workers to sign a ballot at any time during a union organizing campaign or at any time that represents their yeah or nay to having a union represent them in collective bargaining or to form a union.
These demands will create so many jobs it will be completely impossible to fill them without an open borders policy.
http://www.redstate.com/williamjameson/2011/10/07/ows-extremist-list-of-demands-posting-for-laughs/
This is from the Demands Working Group site of the Occupy Wall Street group and this is the posting for Oct. 21, 2011.
The Demands Working Group of Occupy Wall Street unanimously endorsed and is circulating for discussion the following PROPOSED demand, which will be submitted to the General Assembly of OWS:
"Jobs for ALL A Massive Public Works and Public Service Program
We demand a massive public works and public service program with direct government employment at prevailing (union) wages, paid for by taxing the rich and corporations, by immediately ending all of America's wars, and by ending all aid to authoritarian regimes to create 25 million new jobs to:
-Expand education: cut class sizes and provide free university for all;
-Expand healthcare and provide free healthcare for all (single payer system);
-Build housing, guarantee decent housing for all;
-Expand mass transit, provided for free;
-Rebuild the infrastructurebridges, flood control, roads;
-Research and implement clean energy alternatives; and
-Clean up the environment.
These jobs are to be open to all, regardless of documentation/immigration status or criminal record."
http://pcp.gc.cuny.edu/occupywallstreet-demands-working-group-panel-teach-in/
The real demands are reasonable, they can be met without destroying capitalism. But if we want to create a better world, we have to get more ambitious and go for the gold and demand real social democracy.
--
Palash Biswas
Pl Read:
http://nandigramunited-banga.blogspot.com/
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