The 21st Century Declaration of Independence By Carl Gibson, Reader Supported News

Subject: Re: The 21st Century Declaration of Independence By Carl Gibson,
Reader Supported News


Miriam,
Now What, you ask? Well, a bunch of us hike into the hills, carrying our
weapons and our drums and fifes. Then we call Fox News and declare that
this government no longer represents the will of the American People. Next
we go door to door looking for volunteers to join our Freedom Army.
Finally, the entire bunch of us, about 24 in total, head for the nearest
Long John Silver to gorge ourselves on super fat, super sized food and talk
about which of us should be the new president when "the people finally rise
up".
Then, somewhere in the depths of the White House, the Prince of Peace
declares, "These Terrorists have renounced their loyalty to the American
Flag, Mother and Apple Pie. They are no longer Citizens. Revoke their
passports! Cut off their credit cards! Declare Long John Silver's to have
been captured, and is being held by the Terrorists. Send the Drone!!!
And in his diary, the Prince of Peace, Top Spokesperson for the Great
Corporate Empire, wrote, "It is another day of peace on the Potomac."

Carl Jarvis


----- Original Message -----
From: "Miriam Vieni" <miriamvieni@optonline.net>
To: <ceverett@dslextreme.com>; "'Blind Democracy Discussion List'"
<blind-democracy@octothorp.org>
Sent: Thursday, July 04, 2013 3:51 PM
Subject: RE: The 21st Century Declaration of Independence By Carl Gibson,
Reader Supported News


Ok. I agree. So now what?
Miriam

-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounces@octothorp.org
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounces@octothorp.org] On Behalf Of Claude Everett
Sent: Thursday, July 04, 2013 4:57 PM
To: 'Blind Democracy Discussion List'
Subject: The 21st Century Declaration of Independence By Carl Gibson, Reader
Supported News

The 21st Century Declaration of Independence By Carl Gibson, Reader
Supported News

04 July 13



A living document, to be amended, revised, and published by July 4th, 2013


e, the human race, are riding along the wave of revolution against greed,
injustice, hatred, and oppression that has swept across the globe over the
past two years. Countries around the world have begun to cast off the
shackles that a few have put on the majority of humanity. In the United
States, citizens of all walks of life have tried to stop this tyrannical
oligarchy from continuing their class war on humanity as a whole. Despite
our best efforts, we have been treated with disdain and brutality by the
government of the United States and those associated with it.

Our reason for writing this document is a struggle against the moneyed
corporate, military, and political powers not unlike the struggle faced by
Thomas Jefferson when rebelling against the crown in 1776. The tyranny we
face today, however, is global. The people of Iceland, Spain, the UK,
Greece, Tunisia, Egypt, Turkey, Brazil, Portugal, Bulgaria and others are
all rising up against corporate-owned governments that work in the interests
of the few rather than for the good of all.

In the course of human events, it is often necessary for the people to
dissolve the political and economic bands which have endeavored to enslave
them, and gather as one to devise a new, just political system that works
for all those who must live within it. A decent respect to the opinions of
mankind requires that we should declare our mygrievances for all who are
affected by the monumental decisions that are to be made as one people.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all persons are created equal,
that they along with nature are endowed with unalienable rights from the
very beginning of their existence, of which are life, liberty and the
pursuit of happiness. To secure these rights for all, regardless of race,
class, gender, ethnic background, abilities and limitations, sexual
orientation or political ideology, the people must form a government that is
capable of holding their nation's political and economic powers accountable.
A just government's authority is only legitimate with the consent of the
governed. And whenever any form of government becomes too corrupt to truly
represent the people whom it has been elected to govern, it is the right of
the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government if
they so choose. A truly representative government must lay its foundation on
just principles, and only wield its authority in ways in which it will be
most likely to improve upon the safety and happiness of all people.

That being said, an established government should not be changed for light
and transient causes. Human history has shown that while all political and
economic systems will inevitably come with imperfections and have aspects
that are not agreed upon by a full consensus of the people, to hastily
abolish a political system to which a great majority of the people are
accustomed is unwieldy and likely to create more problems than it would
solve. But when a long train of human rights violations, violations of the
natural world, and outright redistribution of wealth and resources from the
poor and impoverished to the wealthy and privileged power elite are
regularly forced upon the people, it is the people's right to throw off such
government and firmly establish new sets of rules to check abuses by
political and financial powers. The people have, for too long, politely
tolerated such abuses and are now called together out of necessity to right
the wrongs that beset us. The history of the present Congress, Executive
Branch, and Supreme Court is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations,
all of which project an absolute Tyranny over all fifty United States. To
prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

.They have ignored and breached long-established fundamental rights bestowed
upon the people in the U.S. Constitution, most notably our First Amendment
rights to Free Speech, Free Assembly, and a Free Press.

.They have established habitual breaches of our Fourth Amendment rights
against unreasonable search and seizure, as evidenced in the National
Security Agency's warrantless monitoring of all citizens' emails, calls,
texts and social media.


.They have intentionally disenfranchised people of color through wage theft
and discrimination in the workplace, attacks on voting rights, and
excessive, unprovoked brutality at the hands of law enforcement, as seen in
the stop-and-frisk policy of the New York Police Department and frequent
abuses of power by various other law enforcement agencies.


.They have deemed 9 of themselves "Supreme" and used this arbitrary label to
strip disenfranchised Americans of their right to vote, enabling states
wishing to further disenfranchise those groups with unfair and
discriminatory laws to do so.


.The country's highest court has ruled in favor of the U.S. Chamber of
Commerce - the chief lobbying firm for multinational corporations - moreso
than at any other point since the 1940s. This has resulted in the steady
chipping away of workers' rights and domination of our food supply,
conducted by judges with ties to the corporate world.


.They have breached our fundamental rights to a speedy and fair trial by
jury, as evidenced in the case of Private First Class Bradley Manning,
Edward Snowden, and other political activists and whistleblowers.


.They have shown utter contempt for the right of Habeus Corpus, as evidenced
in the indefinite detention language included in the passage of the 2012 and
2013 National Defense Authorization Acts, the existence of the Guantanamo
Bay prison facility, CIA-sanctioned "black sites" where unlawful torture of
political prisoners is conducted in foreign jurisdictions, among other
facilities known and unknown to the people.


.They have allowed the unprecedented concentration of wealth into the hands
of a minute fraction of the population, despite longer working hours imposed
on workers, stagnant wages, and record profits enjoyed by those who own at
the expense of those who create.


.They have recklessly plundered funds for Social Security, repeatedly
attempted to undermine necessary health care programs, and attacked the
Constitutionally authorized U.S. Postal Service, which the people have spent
their whole lives supporting, under the false guise of financial prudence.
Meanwhile, they exempt the lavish tax subsidies and tax breaks lobbied for
by their campaign contributors.


.They have halted all passage of laws through unprecedented partisan
obstruction, slowing necessary governmental functions to a standstill in
their failure to compromise on even the most basic legislative tasks. The
few laws they do allow to pass intended to do good for the public or hold
criminal enterprises accountable, have been riddled with loopholes and
exemptions at the behest of corporate lobbyists, allowing evildoers to
escape unscathed.


.They have refused to pass laws that aimed to protect large swaths of
natural resources and a stable climate, which are essential to the survival
of the planet and the continuation of the human species.


.They have ensured that successful political campaigns must be funded by
millions of dollars from wealthy corporations averse to being held
accountable for wrongdoing. This process has compromised their positions as
representatives of the people who elected them to serve, and converted them
into puppet representatives of their corporate masters.


.They have allowed excessively unfair gerrymandering of districts to favor
their own partisan ideology, which makes their political ouster impossible
in spite of widespread discontent among the people of the district.


.They have used their vast surveillance infrastructure to treat nonviolent
dissenters as terrorism suspects while letting actual terrorism suspects run
free.


.They have trod upon the sovereignty of indigenous people both domestically
and internationally, pillaged their resources for profit, and neglected to
provide them with even the most basic of services while simultaneously
refusing to share the benefits of the wealth they've generated on those
oppressed people's behalf.


.They have made a mockery of the judicial system, corrupting it to the point
where justices work openly for the benefit of a privileged few in the
corporate and financial halls of power.


.They have turned cabinet, executive, and judicial appointments into
political payoffs for privileged friends and campaign donors, establishing a
precedent of allowing only the most corrupt to serve on the judicial bench
or at the top of regulatory agencies.


.They have erected a sweeping surveillance structure, a vast prison system,
and an oppressive police state, whose key purpose has become to excessively
monitor and violently suppress political dissent, as well as imprison
nonviolent political activists, financed by tax dollars of taxpayers who
have not consented to the authority of such agencies.


.They have acceded to the moneyed interests of the military-industrial
complex, creating war not out of the necessity to protect the continued
existence of the nation, but to fund the insatiable greed of the for-profit
arms industry.


.They have breached the Constitution's requirements for war, allowing war to
be outsourced to privately-owned and operated mercenary agencies and
conducted under a veil of secrecy, conducting extrajudicial assassinations
of citizens whom they have deemed enemies of the state without affording
them their right to a trial under the necessary and lawful presumption of
innocence until proven guilty.


.They have allowed the military to be unaccountable to civil powers and to
operate independently of oversight or regulation.


.They have allowed unaccountable private corporations to assume powers
previously only afforded to accountable public institutions, such as
prisons, schools, and law enforcement.


.They have allowed the monopolization of our food supply by a select few
corporate conglomerates, without requiring due care for the health of the
people affected by the foods they produce, and they have gone so far as to
exempt them from laws and regulations that apply to other businesses and
institutions.


.They have prolonged and exacerbated the enslavement of the people by debt,
which has currently become the norm for attaining an education required for
a career, or for receiving treatment for even the most basic of ailments,
injuries and sicknesses.


.They have allowed banks to create fraudulent mortgage agreements for
millions of homeowners, and to forcibly and violently evict those families
from their homes while escaping all governmental accountability and
oversight all for the sake of unchecked and untaxed profit.


.They have allowed control of our nation's currency to fall into the hands
of a select few private central bankers, who are unaccountable to all rules
and regulations that normally apply to other government agencies.


.They have corrupted regulatory agencies through prolonging and encouraging
a revolving door culture between corporate suites and government, allowing
executives of corporations to serve as official regulators of the same
corporations from which they came.


.They have refused implementation of contemporary replacements for outdated
and unsustainable sources of energy, transportation, and other public
infrastructure, putting the health and safety of the people and the planet
at tremendous risk.


.They have allowed for the dangerous monopolization of our media by
corporate entities, corrupting democracy by suppressing information
necessary for the education of the people.


.They have enabled the corporate takeover of our healthcare system, allowing
the pain, injury, sickness and suffering of the people to be commodities
from which corporations can profit without effective regulatory oversight.


.They have repeatedly interfered with women's rights to have access to birth
control as well as safe reproductive health options. Further, they have
continued to stand in the way of true equality for all women whether through
gainful employment opportunities, financial parity with male counterparts,
family and maternity medical leave accessibility, or justice for themselves
and their children at the family court level.


.They have refused the right of workers to collectively organize and bargain
for fairer wages, working conditions and hours, while simultaneously
crushing their efforts to form unions aimed at accomplishing those goals.


.They have enabled the oppression of undocumented workers by legislating
reckless free-trade agreements that exempt corporate entities from necessary
regulations, creating an environment where those entities exploit the labor
of their workers while simultaneously rendering workers incapable of
speaking out for fear of deportation.


.They have established the rule of money, patriarchy, ableism and white male
supremacy, in spite of a population that is becoming increasingly more
diverse, and ignored the demands of the people for a government more
representative of the poor and middle class, women, people of color, and
persons with disabilities.
In the face of continued and constant oppression, we have lobbied peacefully
through all necessary channels, whether through writing, calling, emailing,
circulating and delivering petitions, or nonviolent street demonstrations.
And despite our best efforts to be heard through all aforementioned
channels, our cries for justice have only been met with the boot and the
handcuff, and have not reached the eyes and ears of our elected officials.
For these reasons, we deem our elected officials to be tyrants, no longer
fit to govern.

We have, for a time, been attempting to make our voices heard through all
available channels. When the corporate-owned media largely ignored our
efforts, we established our own media to amplify our efforts to be heard. We
have repeatedly visited our halls of government and met face-to-face with
those elected to represent us. We have made films and documentaries seen by
millions, written countless articles for publication in mainstream and
alternative media sources, and exhausted all available means to make our
demands heard loud and clear by those in power.

These calls for justice have fallen on deaf ears beholden not to the needs
and wishes of their constituents, but to the orders of their campaign
contributors. For these reasons, we deem it necessary to abolish this
current government through the constitutionally-granted mechanism outlined
in Article V of the U.S. Constitution and to address our grievances by
forming a new sovereignty which we will, through our own unmolested will and
consent, grant legitimacy.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the United States of America, in
General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for
the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the
good People of these fifty United States and its Territories, solemnly
publish and declare, That these United States are, and of right are absolved
from all governance by the 113th Congress, the Supreme Court, and the
administration of Barack Obama, and that all political connection between
them and the states ought to be totally dissolved.

As citizens of these United States, We acknowledge the fact that a
two-thirds numerical threshold is required in Congress to call for an
Article V Convention under Article V of the U.S. Constitution. In our
capacity as oppressed and exploited citizens, we demand that Congress call
an Article V Convention to order, with the explicit purpose of addressing
the aforementioned charges and establishing true and final accountability to
Us, the People. Barring such action, we regard the current government to be
illegitimate, choose to live our lives free of coercion from it, and
advocate for its dissolution. We call on our fellow citizens to do the same.
For the support of this Declaration we mutually pledge to each other our
Lives, our Fortunes and our Honor.


----------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Carl Gibson, 26, is co-founder of US Uncut, a nationwide creative
direct-action movement that mobilized tens of thousands of activists against
corporate tax avoidance and budget cuts in the months leading up to the
Occupy Wall Street movement. Carl and other US Uncut activists are featured
in the documentary "We're Not Broke," which premiered at the 2012 Sundance
Film Festival. He currently lives in Madison, Wisconsin. You can contact him
at carl@rsnorg.orgThis e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You
need JavaScript enabled to view it , and follow him on twitter at @uncutCG.

Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission
to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader
Supported News.



Regards,
Claude Everett
"A corporation is "an ingenious device for obtaining profit without
individual responsibility."
Ambrose Bierce

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