WG/Strategies/SOP/4

A Proposed Statement of Purpose for Occupy Boston

Our government has become a financial oligarchy, where the laws are written by those they are meant to constrain in support of their continued exploitation of everyone and everything. We are here to dismantle this oligarchy and the systems that enabled it to emerge.

Banks are merely the epitome of our the misogynistic, Whiteness-exalting, alienating and dehumanizing parody of capitalism. This culture prioritizes selfishness over sufficiency, greed over contentment, domination over cooperation, obfuscation over communication, obsoletience over lasting value and exploitation over labor. It rewards those who conform, assimilate and participate in these ongoing oppressions with control over women's bodies, access to laborers without viable alternatives, and the absolute certainty that this society values them more than others. It punishes those who fail to assimilate and support the status quo, whether by choice or circumstance, with poverty, desperation, exploitation, violence and repression.

This system is unsustainable. No group of people can systematically dominate another for any period of time without a movement growing to restore dignity and opportunity to those so dominated. Even those favored by this system live in anxiety and guilt, in constant fear of failure and the certain knowledge that they do not deserve and have not solely earned what they have. Every success in this world is accompanied by a multitude of failures; the only way to not fail is to not try. Humanity's interests can best be served not with a lottery but a laboratory, not with a glorification of the lucky but a recognition of the experimental nature of life and the possibility of failure. By instead creating a culture with a deep and enforced fear of failure, we purposefully limit the possibilities of achievement and arbitrarily, capriciously inflict entirely unnecessary pain.
This is unconscionable.

Occupy Boston believes that in order to dismantle this set of oligarchs and ensure that they are not simply replaced by a new cadre of exploitative, destructive and cruel wealth-hoarders, we must turn this culture on its head. We must have a culture and a system for the distribution of goods and services that encourages, values and rewards cooperation, sharing of knowledge, experimentation, constructive creation, sufficiency and self-autonomy. Our society must replace alienation and hopelessness with empowerment and dignity for every person, regardless of wealth or poverty. We must unflinchingly face the places where our chosen system fails, and mitigate those failures.

Justice, fairness and the future of the human species demands it. We are the 99% and we demand it.

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Based on: SOP4 at wikispaces