On Sun, Sep 25, 2011 at 12:20 PM, SA <s11131978 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> http://nycga.cc/2011/09/24/principles-of-solidarity-working-draft/
>
>> Through a direct democratic process, we have come together as individuals
>> and crafted these principles of solidarity, which are points of unity that
>> include but are not limited to:
>>
>> * Engaging in direct and transparent participatory democracy;
>> * Exercising personal and collective responsibility;
>> * Recognizing individuals' inherent privilege and the influence it
>> has on all interactions;
>> * Empowering one another against all forms of oppression;
>> * Redefining how labor is valued;
>> * The sanctity of individual privacy;
>> * The belief that education is human right; and
>> * Endeavoring to practice and support wide application of open source.
>>
>
> I don't get it. Why the Unitarian-therapeutic tone, the prefatory
> hand-wringing and throat-clearing, the randomly appended issues? (Open
> source?!)
>
> This is a real question: In a protest against Wall Street, is there some
> aversion to saying something about Wall Street? Why not a manifesto that
> says
>
> 1. Here are some things we don't like about Wall Street.
>
> 2. Here are some things we don't like about current society. (In 30 words
> or less - e.g., it's insufficiently free, democratic, and equal. That's all
> you need.)
>
> 3. Here's why this gathering can help to change (1) and (2). Join us.
>
>
> Orwell:
>
>> The first thing that must strike any outside observer is that
>> Socialism, in its developed form is a theory confined entirely to the
>> middle classes. The typical Socialist is not, as tremulous old ladies
>> imagine, a ferocious-looking working man with greasy overalls and a
>> raucous
>> voice. He is either a youthful snob-Bolshevik who in five years' time will
>> quite probably have made a wealthy marriage and been converted to Roman
>> Catholicism; or, still more typically, a prim little man with a white-
>> collar job, usually a secret teetotaller and often with vegetarian
>> leanings, with a history of Nonconformity behind him, and, above all, with
>> a social position which he has no intention of forfeiting. This last type
>> is surprisingly common in Socialist parties of every shade; it has perhaps
>> been taken over en bloc from. the old Liberal Party. In addition to this
>> there is the horrible--the really disquieting--prevalence of cranks
>> wherever Socialists are gathered together. One sometimes gets the
>> impression that the mere words 'Socialism' and 'Communism' draw towards
>> them with magnetic force every fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer,
>> sex-maniac, Quaker, 'Nature Cure' quack, pacifist, and feminist in
>> England.
>> One day this summer I was riding through Letchworth when the bus stopped
>> and two dreadful-looking old men got on to it. They were both about sixty,
>> both very short, pink, and chubby, and both hatless. One of them was
>> obscenely bald, the other had long grey hair bobbed in the Lloyd George
>> style. They were dressed in pistachio-coloured shirts and khaki shorts
>> into
>> which their huge bottoms were crammed so tightly that you could study
>> every
>> dimple. Their appearance created a mild stir of horror on top of the bus.
>> The man next to me, a commercial traveller I should say, glanced at me, at
>> them, and back again at me, and murmured 'Socialists', as who should say,
>> 'Red Indians'. He was probably right--the I.L.P. were holding their
>> summer school at Letchworth. But the point is that to him, as an ordinary
>> man, a crank meant a Socialist and a Socialist meant a crank. Any
>> Socialist, he probably felt, could be counted on to have something
>> eccentric about him. And some such notion seems to exist even among
>> Socialists themselves. For instance, I have here a prospectus from another
>> summer school which states its terms per week and then asks me to say
>> 'whether my diet is ordinary or vegetarian'. They take it for granted, you
>> see, that it is necessary to ask this question. This kind of thing is by
>> itself sufficient to alienate plenty of decent people. And their instinct
>> is perfectly sound, for the food-crank is by definition a person willing
>> to
>> cut himself off from human society in hopes of adding five years on to the
>> life of his carcase; that is, a person but of touch with common humanity.
>
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