Part 5 (1/2)

We could invest in universal health coverage, which offers people the security to risk launching new businesses and helps make shorter eeks

We could save et, oversized prison populations, and the drug war And we'd have enough e corporations-paid taxes at the rates they paid during the Clinton ades, we need the Aovernment to work for all of us, not just for corporations

Powerful ive back the power that has allowed the people's overnment to work for ordinary Aht-hour day, woregation

Enlightened politicians may cooperate with these movements, but they cannot lead theenda and insist that govern Pibel wrote this article for ”New Livelihoods,” the Fall 2011 issue of YES! Magazine Sarah is executive editor and Doug is azine

Photo by Scott Eisen

BOSTON, October 5, 2011

PART III

WE HAVE THE POWER

Through the Occupy Wall Streetneays toback our political self-respect Instead of petitioning the powerful for change, we'redirection fron individual to be part of powerful collective action

But do marches and occupations really make a difference? And hoe take the next steps to build power for the 99?

Thomas Linzey and Jeff Reifman in chapter 13 tell stories of co hydrofracking-that are using local law to end corporate ”personhood” and determine their own futures

Ralph Nader in chapter 14 reanized, persistent street action, and through the willingness of people in all walks of life to ”speak out and stand tall”

Rebecca Solnit ties the Occupy Wall Streetand the uprisings in Europe in chapter 15, showing that ordinary people are often strengthened and transformed by such upheavals

Sarah van Gelder wraps up this section with chapter 16, a list of 10 Ways to Support the Occupy Wall Street Movement Whether or not you choose to sleep outside with your local occupiers, there are et involved

CHAPTER 13

HOW TO PUT THE RIGHTS OF PEOPLE AND NATURE OVER CORPORATE RIGHTS

THOMAS LINZEY AND JEFF REIFMAN

The history of populist uprisings like Occupy Wall Street is far fro poas the populist farressively dismantled by everyone from the two major political parties to the banks and railroad corporations of its day

Most revolts are snuffed out well before their efforts affect the political scene-not because their ideas and issues aren't relevant, but because the major institutional players within the systey for their own In the eyes of the Deroups, this revolt istroops back into those groups' own ineffective organizing Yet, if those institutional groups had actually been effective all of these years, why the need for a revolt at all?

It's when these revolts beco institutions that they lose their steam and become mere footnotes in an endless list of revolts that burned out early The pundits and ”experts” are already trying to put this revolt in its place A recent New York Times editorial declared that it ”isn't the job of these protesters to write legislation” That, the editorial argued, hat the national politicians need to do The Ti

If the Occupy movement is to succeed over ti efforts that have begun to dismantle the body of law that perpetually subordinates people, community, and nature to wealthy corporate h's city council stripped corporations seeking to drill for natural gas of their corporate person-hood rights, protections of the commerce and contracts clauses of the US and Pennsylvania Constitutions, and the right to pre-empt community ordinances with federal or state law

In March 2011, for the first tihts for nature to its Constitution, a judge stopped destructive corporate developht by ordinary residents on behalf of the Vilcabaton residents will vote on Proposition One which 1) grants neighborhoods cohts and protections to the Spokane River and aquifer, 3) grants constitutional protections to ehts superior to corporate rights

These co cohts of people and nature above the rights of corporations It's not another exercise in putting out good-sounding state authority designed to overn to serve as a colonized lackey for corporations

Instead of diluting theroups who aren't going anywhere, the Occupy folks then their effort by de away froanizations and the institutional advocacy they proainst the type of consolidated wealth that influences decisions about every aspect of our lives today) and towards a new for the terms of our de-occupation, we can and must rewrite the very rules under which our systeroups have failed by working within legal and regulatory systems purposefully structured to subordinate communities to corporate power Transformative ht to regulate the slave trade; they sought freedoists didn't seek concessions but deht for all woin to use lawal structure of rights that empowers community majorities over corporate minorities, rather than the other way around

It's taken a century's worth of al doctrines to create an environment so skewed in the favor of corporations and their decision islatures but also our courts can be wielded against us Our country's wealth inequality did not arise overnight, but eed slowly as the corporate minority eviscerated almost every memory of a true democratic system

They've built a system that not only allows those with thepower, but one in which our hts have now been bestowed onto corporate ”persons,” thus insulating the in coh and Spokane since the early 2000s is a revolution that takes those constitutional rights back and ain Residents of over a hundred rural Aovernhts for nature, to strip corporations of certain claihts above the claihts” of corporations In the process, they've stopped everything fro and corporate water withdrawals

These coun to understand that the specific issues that affect theovernuarantees that corporate riculture, and resource extraction

Occupy Wall Street roups of New Yorkers seizing the city and its boroughs and using thestructures with their dehts within the city, recognizing the rights of neighborhoods, and restoring labor rights within the workplace

Occupy Seattle and Portland must actually occupy their municipalities via citizen initiatives and other processes to begin to change the lahich their cities operate by elies

Thisthat our current systelehold over 99 of us, won't change just because one bill is introduced into congress, or proe-focused on toppling the corporate doy to transportation to finance-in in our cities and towns, then drive upwards against state and federal fra authority by the 1 In each of the cities where we live, we need to start working together to define the rights we need and then use our municipal structures to obtain them

As winter nears, the Occupy anizer Saul Alinsky's observation in Rules for Radicals, ”A tactic that drags on too long beco” There may only be a briefto convert street-levelmovements in each of our local communities

Thomas Linzey is the executive director of the Coal Defense Fund Jeff Reifman is co-founder of Envision Seattle, a freelance writer, and an organizer This chapter first appeared on YesMagazineorg on October 14, 2011