Time to Stand Up to a Government That Does Not Represent Our Views
If the Government Represented the Peoples Wishes the Country Would be on the Right Track
The Government is Too Corrupt to Do It, So Americans Need to Demand It.
Elections no longer work. Lobbying no longer works. Email and telephone campaigns no longer work. Symbolic protests no longer work. Americans need to get organized and mobilized to demand what we want.
The occupation begins on October 6, 2011 when thousands of Americans enter Freedom Plaza in Washington, DC and refuse to leave. The October 2011 Movement, made up of organizers, dozens of organizations and thousands of participants is calling the occupation Stop the Machine: Create a New World and urging people to sign a statement saying they will join us in Washington, DC at Freedom Plaza on October 6 or shortly thereafter to participate in an occupation that demands an end to corporatism and militarism.
The new world we seek is already supported by super-majorities of the American people. A large majority of Americans consistently support the following agenda:
– Tax the rich and corporations
– End the wars, bring the troops home, cut military spending
– Protect the social safety net, strengthen Social Security and improved Medicare for all
– End corporate welfare for oil companies and other big business interests
– Transition to a clean energy economy, reverse environmental degradation
– Protect worker rights including collective bargaining, create jobs and raise wages
– Get money out of politics
The government, dominated by elite economic interests, is going in the opposite direction from what the people want. The American people’s agenda is our agenda.
October2011.org is occupying Freedom Plaza to shift power from concentrated corporate power to the people. October2011.org’s agenda is an evidence-based one, not based on polling. However, polling shows the American people support transformative change. These polling results show the people know how to save the country but the government is too corrupt to do what is necessary.
These solutions are part of transformative we begin to describe in “Fifteen Core Issues the Country Must Face.” Each of these 15 issues will have a detailed policy description linked to it once participants discuss them on the October2011.org website. You can join the discussion and help develop the agenda by signing up with the October2011.org movement.
Tax the rich and corporations
How government funds itself adequately to meet the needs of the people of the United States is one of the key budget questions not being adequately addressed in Washington. Americans know there are significant disparities of wealth, between small numbers of extremely wealthy Americans and the rest of us – the 99% who do not have extreme wealth. The 400 wealthiest Americans have wealth equal to 150 million Americans. This richest 400, whose average income was $270.5 million, paid a tax rate of 18%; yet someone who earns $60,000 finds themselves in the 25% tax bracket. It was not always this way; in 1955 the top 400 paid 51.2% of their total income in tax. In the past there was many more tax brackets, with top incomes taxed as high as 91% in the late 1950s.
The American people support taxing wealthy Americans more than they are currently taxed. A 2011 ABC/Washington Post survey <
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