This morning I came across a really good article about the Occupy movement and what demands to make and if they should be made at all.
As many of you know, I have been asking this. I'm afraid I am starting to sound like a broken record. It's never been the why for me. It's been the how -- and to a lesser extent, the what. In New York it appears there is a forming consensus developing: BobR and I went to the Occupy DC site on Friday night after the days events/marches/assemblies were over. We saw a small team of people in a circle discussing issues and decided to take a listen. They were debating and voting on the issue whether of not to take it up with the General Assembly on a vote about garbage removal. I'm not going to judge Occupy DC site for a few moments we witnessed, but it does seem to be the case here as in NYC that small groups discuss and vote on whether or not to take the issue to the larger General Assemblies where things are either endorsed or rejected.

Perhaps there is a shift in the way things are getting done from the early weeks of this movement. It appears that Wall Street is becoming the center of operations and smaller sites are taking their cues from them. All good moves in my opinion. I still believe that movements of social change need leaders.

That said, it appears that members of the Occupy LA movement have found a way to possibly create wonderful change on a local basis. Rose Gudiel - a homeowner in LA - was on the verge of losing her house after the death of her brothers and salary reduction due to state furloughs. She fought back, and things were looking terribly bleak. This is what change can look like. It can happen nationally and globally and - at the same time - locally.

This movement can lend support to local groups that have long been doing work to help those that need help in this nation. I truly would like to see more of this action. It's sad that this is what has to happen for people like Rose to find security in insecure times. It is uplifting to see people reach out to help. Martin Luther King Jr wrote in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail: "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."

I am of the belief that each city's Occupy version should develop strategies that will serve the best interests of there location. I hope that they can all come together to come up with a way to present a larger platform, and then implement it. That won't happen until there is an acknowledgment that leadership must happen. It's when there is no strong leadership, things fall apart. I don't want to see that happen.

This is going to take a long time, I acknowledge that. I hope Occupy is ready for it as well. Like the civil rights movement of the 50-and 60's, too many people are depending on things to change. The work was never really finished, it was always meant to continue. I was reminded of this while watching the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial dedication ceremony yesterday. I was reminded by Bernice King, Martin Luther King III, Ralph Abernathy, John Lewis, Reverend Lowery and Jesse Jackson. I was reminded by Reverend Sharpton, Diane Carroll and Cicely Tyson. I was reminded by a young lady named Amandla Stenberg There are reminders everywhere. Learning from history is not enough; using that knowledge to change the future is needed. Progress takes time, patience, and love in the face of obstruction, fear, and hate.

... nearly 50 years after the March on Washington, our work, Dr. King's work, is not yet complete. We gather here at a moment of great challenge and great change. In the first decade of this new century, we have been tested by war and by tragedy; by an economic crisis and its aftermath that has left millions out of work, and poverty on the rise, and millions more just struggling to get by. Indeed, even before this crisis struck, we had endured a decade of rising inequality and stagnant wages. In too many troubled neighborhoods across the country, the conditions of our poorest citizens appear little changed from what existed 50 years ago -- neighborhoods with underfunded schools and broken-down slums, inadequate health care, constant violence, neighborhoods in which too many young people grow up with little hope and few prospects for the future.

Our work is not done. And so on this day, in which we celebrate a man and a movement that did so much for this country, let us draw strength from those earlier struggles. First and foremost, let us remember that change has never been quick. Change has never been simple, or without controversy. Change depends on persistence. Change requires determination. It took a full decade before the moral guidance of Brown v. Board of Education was translated into the enforcement measures of the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act, but those 10 long years did not lead Dr. King to give up. He kept on pushing, he kept on speaking, he kept on marching until change finally came.
President Barack Obama, October 16 2011, speaking at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial dedication ceremony.

I am going to paraphrase something Dr. King said in that Letter from a Birmingham jail: Strike thru mine. That letter was written April 16, 1963. The struggle never stopped, it has only been re-ignited.


and
Raine