Occupy Portland / Occupy Wall Street / Occupy Together: A proposal for the next phase

From 2011-11-17 (Occupy Portland - N17)

Found by David Finn, originally posted by Rob Solomon on 11-17-11...

OK, Occupy Wall Street protesters, you have the world listening, it's time to stop wandering around and act with a plan. Since you can't seem to figure out one, I’ll help you out.

You want to make real changes, then do it the right way. Hold a real meeting without any protesting or threat of violence and invite all the legislators in your district to attend. Present them with a concrete plan. Tell them if they want our vote then support our cause. Ask them who is willing to stand up and carry the banner for the 99%.

Politicians want to get elected and tell them this is what we want for our vote:

1) It's time to create laws that financial institutions are accountable to their customers before one penny is paid out to executives salaries. They should be paid a bonus only after showing growth and profit for their investors (that’s us folks) and NOT guaranteed a penny otherwise.

2) No more bank bail outs - period. 

3) We need to reinstate the Glass-Steagall Act that separated insurance companies, investment banking, and commercial banks.While this was in effect not one bank went under in America. This will put us the consumer back as the main concern, and force them to monitor their own business for risk when using our money. No more passing bad paper off to someone else, then taking the money and running.

4) Put the bite back in the SEC and monitor them. The SEC had information about Goldman Sachs, Bernie Madoff, AIG, and others well before they tanked, and did nothing. The people who were suppose to protect us just turned their backs. 

5) We need to take back our elections from being controlled by lobbyist and the money of wall street. We need to create new federal legislation that would allow a reversal of the Supreme Court decision declaring that corporations have the same first amendment rights of individuals. This has allowed corporate domination of our elections. John Q. Public has no way of going up against the bank rolls of corporations to present fair and balanced information on legislative issues.

If you think it’s about Republicans vs. Democrats, you’ve been sucked in by the biased media you’ve chosen to listen to and watch. This is about the total decay of Americas financial stability perpetrated by a system that’s run amuck. Wall Street is corrupt and unaccountable. Want to blame the Clinton Administration and the Banking Reform Act or the Bush Administration and the total failure to monitor the SEC?  Go ahead. Sure I’d like to round up everyone involved in the corruption of the mortgage markets and put them in jail, but that’s not going to happen.  

So, Occupy Wall Street people, if you want to make change and create an economy that’s accountable to the people, it's time to get rid of your camps and refocus on new and responsible legislation for the financial institutions of America.