Late News From The Front

I’m an active member in the subgroup of a subgroup of the NYC General Assembly of OccupyWallSt. Each Occupy city has a General Assembly (GA) once a night round six or seven, where everyone there at that time votes things up or down. Our group is addressing the convention clause. We’ve all been e-mailing and decided to create a working document. Almost impossible to follow on a cold reading, but if you want to see it: http://piratenpad.de/4zz0uxb4tQ


The following are today’s e-mails/replies after getting back from political activity at De La Guerra Plaza, most beautiful Santa Barbara....

First reply is to someone asking if I was at the Harvard conference:

"Yes Ben, was lucky enough to have attended. More content from more attendees and hope to make a comprehensive documentary piece soon. I came away with the impression that the Tea Party Patriots on the one hand and progressives on the other, both perceive something is terribly wrong about current affairs but would articulate it differently. Both sides want to express our ultimate right as Americans--that of Alter and Abolish. Convoking and convening a federal convention is in essence a three-part national discussion which in and of itself alters and abolishes the status quo. I have complete faith in We The People, that we have the talent to carry off a convention, which with time and ratified amendments, will set humanity on a course different than the one we are currently on."

The next e-mail I responded to was from another newcomer, talking about the ERA:
http://www.equalrightsamendment.org/era.htm

My reply:

"Anne, thanks for the link. One thought that has occurred to me is that although the ten year struggle to get the ERA ratified did not succeed then, I believe America would be ready for such an amendment today, and the Article V Convention would be the best way to revive the issue. I imagine that if someone like yourself ran to hold office of delegate, that you might platform your campaign on such an amendment."

The next e-mail asked: “What exactly is the proposal for starting a convention? And what would the concept be and goals of any amendment?”

To which I replied:

"The proposal, based on what we're talking about, would be that this group formulates the salespitch to the NYCGA of why we should redirect all focus to calling for a federal convention; it dawns on NYCGA that in fact it is the right thing to do, and they put the call out to all other occupy cities to begin calling for the Article V Convention. Congress and media will pick it up and the call would be issued shortly thereafter. Once issued the concept and goal of most Americans would be an amendment which prohibits proprietary source code in voting machines, and removes corporate funds from public elections."

Late Notes

Guess it’s happened, finally gone mad. All I can do is talk convention. If aliens came to Earth, beamed me up, they’d spit me back out not wanting to hear any more. Fourteen months till the end of a 5,200 cycle and the beginning of a new one? A lot can happen in fourteen months. Great time to be alive :) I'm feeling like we'll pull it off. Time will tell.

I really can’t believe what’s happened. Tonight I did a local access cable show where I squared off with a local political person. I told him, the Tea Party Patriots and OWS are two ends of the American political spectrum both expressing the same thing: a dissatisfation with the status quo. The one side sees the problem as an overreaching government, the other as a corporate government.

Well, as it turns out, if you live in America and you’re upset with the status quo (for whatever reason), you tell your state rep you want a convention. Then if a enough people in the state say they want a convention, the state legislature casts an application for a convention to the Congress (Congress: the legislative branch--the first branch, representing the people, who government on these shores exists to serve). That’s the way it’s supposed to work here in America.

Will things change? I don’t know--all I know is that for the narrative of humanity to be romantic there has to be at least one madman running around talking convention. Requirement met, now just a matter of making sure key people take the torch, carry it forward.

In case you didn't see them, two videos: one I made, one I paid to get a copy of in case it was important (probably most important to me--I have proof I tried).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-7ikbvu0Y8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=VuO6Q0R5vVE

News From The Front

I’m here at a Denny’s in one of the nicest places, hoping my compatriot has the hacking savvy to break into my own forum on my own website. What happened is, back in 2009 I had joined a group pushing for a convention and wound up with a domain and forum. Someone from the group, who I talked with over the phone, and who helped set it up, is now nowhere to be found and the passwords are messed up.

This last month was intense. Is OWS going to morph into a convention? That would be great. I’m on the subgroup of a subgroup of the general assembly. Their thread is to discuss the convention clause.

Tea Party Patriots or OccupyWallSt or something else, 80-90% of us are ready for change, to exercise the ultimate right--Alter and Abolish. We want to change the status quo, and a convention on authority of the Constitution is designed to do just that. If we want to leave where we are now, and Article V is the vehicle to get us out of here, why would we not lay down whatever else we were working on and begin working for the Constitution? The state applications on record have satisfied the call, it’s now just a matter of us wanting it enough.

A convention is dangerous to the status quo because discussion is opened up, and delegates backed by corporations will be exposed for who they are by what they say--nothing significant--because the whole show is about how to shift power and they currently control it all. A convention is unicameral, not bi-cameral, and all proposals are voted 2/3 up or down.

How much altering and abolishing would the country do? The ratification process will tell us. What proposals will achieve seventy-five percent approval? Already 90%+ desire removing private money from public elections, so we know we can count on electoral reform coming out of a convention.

However you characterize the status quo, based on information you’ve processed in amount of time lived, the overwhelming majority want to leave where we currently are--where multinational corporations write their own legislation with unlimited funding of elections.