Why the presidential candidates?

The national Occupy Wall Street movement generally agrees that the role of a mass social movement is to build community power by working outside the electoral process independent of both political parties, so why are we focusing on the presidential candidates by occupying their campaign offices?

The presidential candidates – including President Barack Obama – are essentially representatives of the corporate agenda, not the people, because both political parties and their leadership are beholden to the same network of corporate campaign contributors, elite, wealthy donors, war profiteers, and army of big money lobbyists and special interest groups.  Our electoral system naturally reflects this reality and the resulting public policy outcomes of each election cycle predictably serve the interests of big banks and multinational corporations before the interests of everyday people, hardworking families, and the environment.  The left/right, liberal/conservative, Democrat/Republican dichotomy is a distraction from the real social conflict undergirding American society:  the 99 percent versus the 1 percent.

This dynamic is underscored by the global financial meltdown and economic collapse in 2008.  Around the world, the most powerful financial and industrial institutions were bailed out while the rest of us were sold out and left to fend for ourselves.  The resulting revenue crisis was seized on by the same international crime syndicate that caused the mess in the first place – and they used their connections to both liberal and conservative governments across the planet to rush through sweeping and bipartisan “austerity” measures that cut social spending, de-regulated and privatized environmental protections and vital public services, and hollowed out government by selling it to the highest bidder.  As anyone following the Super Committee deficit debate understands, that same bipartisan corporate austerity program has now reached our shores as well. 

We Won’t Pay For Their Crisis - It’s Time to Make Wall Street Pay!  

By occupying the campaign offices of presidential candidates from both political parties, we will confront entrenched, elite interests and some of the most powerful people in the world, exposing the charade and scam that corporate power has made of our economic, electoral, and political systems for all to see.   We will also use this campaign as an opportunity to build our community power so we can take back what they stole from us, and put forth our own vision of the more just and democratic society we want to see – a society that puts communities before corporations and people before profits.

Join us in Des Moines December 26-January 3 as we demand a fair and just economy that works for everyone, an electoral system where people matter more than money, and new forms of decentralized political power that put people first.