Institutional Transformation Comes From Authentic Grassroots Movements

You wouldn't know it if you get your news from the Sunday talking heads shows-- or even from mainstream media in general-- but there's something profound happening in America right now, something each one of us, as Van Jones predicted is sooner or later going to have to choose sides on. Call it the 99% Movement or #OccupyWallStreet, it's probably coming to a town near you... or, eventually, to a TV station you watch. This weekend it came to Minneapolis, where the AFL-CIO's Next Up Young Worker Summit had convened.

The world in which we live isn’t working for the vast majority of people. The top 1 percent controls the economy, makes profits at the expense of working people, and dominates the political debate. Wall Street symbolizes this simple truth: a small group of people have the lives and livelihoods of working Americans in their hands.

In the last two weeks, young people have sparked a movement on Wall Street, just as they did through the Arab Spring and in Wisconsin against Scott Walker. Participants at the AFL-CIO Next Up Young Worker Summit left Occupy Wall Street to join with young people in the labor movement to talk about how best to take back our economy for the middle class.

Today, more than 800 Next Up participants from around the country stand with those on Wall Street who are making their voices heard. The future of our country depends on young people demanding the future we believe in. And we believe that Wall Street should pay for the damage they’ve done to our economy, our jobs, and our communities-- foreclosing on homes, making massive profits with no oversight, and not sharing in building a future for the next generation.

We stand together in calling for a country that doesn’t just work for the top 1 percent. We stand together to call for a sustainable future that doesn’t begin with massive tax breaks for the wealthy and end with austerity measures and a jobs crisis.

We are one.

Let me quote from David Korten's latest book, Agenda For A New Economy, again: "[T]he leadership for institutional transformation rarely comes from those who depend on existing institutions as their power base. It invariably comes from authentic grassroots movements." And that scares the shit out of the Establishment, including, obviously, the corporate media. That media has been more than happy to not just cover but to participate in the inauthentic movement they dubbed "grassroots," the Tea Party, which was fully funded and full controlled by a small handful of right-wing plutocrats to give their own selfish agenda a populist appearance. OccupyWallStreet is the real thing, the way the French, the Americans and the Russian revolutions were. Watch out!