Once upon a time, We the People, entrusted you with a sacred task. We gave you the powers to build institutions of democracy, to legislate laws to protect and nurture democracy, fund enterprises that would enable all to build and live in a society where the bounties of our labors and the gifts of the earth could be shared with equity and responsibility by all. On trust, we elected those who would speak for us and in good faith we believed in what you told us. We the People did imbue you with some of the powers vested in us apriori and in our naivety allowed you to drink from that cup of power. And drink you did. You drank until there was no end to your addiction. You hid that from us behind elaborate smokescreens and we let that happen. Shame on us!!
Our temples of law you made into temples of inequity. Our fields of grain and fruit you turned into wastelands of poison. Our rivers and lakes you turned into drains and cesspools. Our money that was an honest representation of the value of our labors you turned into shackles of debt. Our forums of democracy you turned into brothels where the highest bidders could have the loudest voice. Our homes became objects of speculation. Our places of learning became places of indoctrination. You took our language and turned it into a parody of itself. You made night mean day and black mean white. You turned the poor into the unworthy and the weak into the unwanted. You took our faith and contorted it into a call for war. You took our love and turned it into a market for selfishness. You took our time and banished us to a schedule. You took our labor and banished us to unemployment. You took our children and sold them to irrelevancy. You took our aged and left them in purgatory. There are no more crimes left for you to commit.
You stand today in front of us and sneer. You condescend to ask us “What do you want?” “What is your plan?” “What exactly are you protesting against?”
Here is our reply – “What we want you cannot give. By Occupying Wall Street all over this planet we are taking back the trust and powers we once gave you. Your time is up.”
You committed your crime by banishing one little word from our world. We did not notice. Shame on us again. But now we know. You banished the question “why?” And in doing so you managed smartly to banish history in the smokescreen of progress, success and acquisition. ’ Why’ is the word that links our history to our future. By letting you erase the word and twist its meaning we lost our history and with that our way to our future.
In reclaiming our history we will reclaim our future. In that, you are irrelevant as long as you remain wedded to the addiction of power. To rejoin humanity you will have to Occupy Wall Street by leaving it behind.
