Political movements are fickle things;
individuals within it are akin to water in a river. Sometimes they
diverge, sometimes they converge, sometimes they become
life-sustaining groundwater, sometimes they become a destructive
flood. However, one thing remains constant: they are all on a journey
to the same place, the sea. Unlike water though, people have choices.
Water does not decide where it goes, it just follows the path of
least resistance. Unfortunately, this same effect happens with people
sometimes, especially in situations where their free will has be
subjugated by those that wish to limit individual freedoms, and seek
to ensure that the status quo is preserved for their own gains, and
seek to actively convert others to this philosophy of
self-fulfillment, regardless of the welfare of others. This is the
paradigm that has dominated for the last century; its effects can be
seen everywhere from Wall Street to Wal-mart, from Woodrow Wilson's
fateful signature on the Federal Reserve Act to the World Wars that
followed. We have seen the ills of the current system, and its
cancerous effects on ordinary people, it tells them that greed is
good, that those blessed with less are lower than them, and that they
must consume more in order to be effective human beings. However, as
the current financial paradigm crumbles, exposing the malaise that it
has hidden for so long, the people that are its foundation are seeing
the true nature of this beast, and are refusing to bear it further
along. To these people, I bring you the following message: Because we
see the system for what it is, we also bear the burden to change it.
In order to change a system, one must
fully break free of the shackles of that system; one must be
transformed from a brick in its monolithic walls to the builder that
creates the roads to the future with the bricks from the
self-inflicted implosion of the institutions of the past. Now, one
may ask “How is it possible for a brick to be transformed into a
builder? One is just a functional object, while the other capable of
utilizing other bricks to create new things.” In order to
understand this, one must realize that the inherent dualism in the
fact that the builder is still in fact a brick, and that a builder's
job is only to enlighten other bricks to the fact that they
themselves are builders, and that they may choose where to place
themselves in the road that leads to the future.
To bring this full circle, back from
the realm of analogy to the reality we exist in, I would like to
inform you all that there exists an unlikely opportunity within the
99% Movement today. It exists in an unlikely place, a place dominated
both by physical bricks and mortar and by the proverbial bricks
above, that form a bastion of greed and self-interest that matches
few others. I am referring to the City and Occupy of Dallas. The
city, in breaking from the failings of the other occupied cities, has
given the 99% Occupiers here the legitimate opportunity to show that
we are not just voices of dissent, bricks under too much strain, but
are capable of creating answers, the chance to become builders, and
that is exactly what we intend to. We, the 99% of Dallas, intend to
start to build the road to the future. We will begin to focus on
transforming bricks into builders by developing a professional
activist training center, right on the grounds of Dallas City Hall,
as to empower other 99%ers, to hone themselves into effective voices
of change, to emphasize that when given the opportunity, that Mankind
can rise to the occasion, just as our forebearers.
Occupy Dallas currently has 56 days in
which to demonstrate our ability to create solutions, so 99%ers in
other cities, send us your best and brightest, so that they can
become the most effective activists they can be, in preparation for
taking the message to the pulpit of power, Washington, DC to let our
collective voices ring against the walls of the buildings that have
failed us in their most sacred oath, a government for, of, and by the
people.
