99% Spring Comes To Carson City; Part Of Nationwide Week-Long Effort To Train 100k Progressive Activists
More than 50 Carson City and nearby residents are planning to gather on Monday, April 9, to take part in an unprecedented week-long nationwide progressive mobilization, called 99% Spring, to take back the country for the 99%. Reno area residents will also be meeting on Saturday and Sunday, April 14 and 15.
At the meetings, existing and new activists will connect with others in their community and be trained in non-violent direct action to plan and implement grassroots actions to fight for the livelihoods of the 99%. The event in Carson City is being hosted by Occupy Carson City who formed in October 2011 in solidarity with the Occupy movement which is now worldwide. The local group participates in public demonstrations, government meetings, global boycotts and petitions, political party meetings to suggest ideas, and community group actions such as union actions to fight for jobs and economic protections.
Today's 99% Spring training will build off major progressive actions last year including the protests in Wisconsin for worker rights, global Occupy actions, and the Move Your Money campaign.
“During the week of April 9, we will join with more than 100,000 others nationwide to stand-up for the 99%,” said Janette Dean of Occupy Carson City, one of the event organizers. “Opportunity for all is steadily being taken away by a 1% elite of multi-national corporate heads and financially-powerful families with little or no allegiance to the societies or peoples that enable their existence and growth. Their increasing influence over our government as well as their non-humanistic ambition for even more concentrated wealth, more disempowerment of 'We the People' and more 'profits before people' actions are destroying our democratic society and public institutions. Some may ask, 'But is a corporation expected to act humanisticly?' We say, 'If a corporation wants the people to keep allowing their existence, then they certainly do or we must curtail their existence and socially harmful behavior with anti-trust laws and disincentive or punitive taxes, for instance. As the famous political philosopher Rousseau wrote in the 18th century, government is a voluntary social contract. The people give their consent to it when the rewards are beneficial."
"That is why people are now rightfully re-considering the rewards of our current government and questioning those who have power within it," Dean continued. "As of 2007, 1% of the U.S. population had 43% of the wealth, the next 4% had 29%, the next 15% had 21%, and the last 80% had 7%; the figures were actually similar in 1983 as well, but the distribution has only worsened since the very beginning of our latest financial crisis in 2007. Our capitalist system is, and has been, way out of balance favoring a powerful corporate elite for some time, and since our new government leaders are unable to enact the change we want quickly enough, the 99% have only one choice left which is to rise up and act together to more effectively fight government corruption, protect our planet, and join others around the world in defending our human rights and economic livelihoods. History is calling us. Thomas Jefferson's hope still calls us. The vast majority of Americans, including myself, want a modern capitalist democracy with a properly regulated free market and some social ownership (socialism) of our most important institutions to work. That is why we have to reform what we have as soon as possible."
Thomas Jefferson wisely feared corporate power and stated, "I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial by strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country."
WHO: Progressive activists
WHAT: An unprecedented nationwide mobilization to train 100k people
WHERE: 709 E. Robinson St., Carson City, NV
WHEN: Monday, April 9 from 6-9pm
MORE INFORMATION: www.the99spring.com and www.occupycarsoncity.org
GRAPHIC: Wealth Distribution in the U.S. by Michael DeGusta, TheUnderstatement.com - March 2011 with data from the UCSC Sociology Department
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