Opinions

The winds of change are blowing across the globe. What triggers such change, and when it will strike, is something that no one can predict.

Last Jan. 18, a courageous young woman in Egypt took a dangerous step. Asmaa Mahfouz was 25 years old, part of the April 6 Youth Movement, with thousands of young people engaging online in debate on the future of their country.

In 1967, a year before his assessination, Martin Luther King gave a speech called “Beyond Vietnam” in which he proclaimed: “I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today, my own government.”

I was honored to be invited to speak at Occupy Wall Street on Thursday night. Since amplification is (disgracefully) banned, and everything I said had to be repeated by hundreds of people so others could hear (a.k.a. “the human microphone”), what I actually said at Liberty Plaza had to be very short. With that in mind, here is the longer, uncut version of the speech.

What follows is a statement agreed by the Occupy the London Stock Exchange General Assembly based on the discussions carried out by small groups. “At today’s assembly of over 500 people on the steps of St Paul’s, #occupylsx collectively agreed the initial statement below. Please note, like all forms of direct democracy, the statement will always be a work in progress”.

The day started with the heartening news from Japan that Tokyo had just joined the ‘global day of mobilization’ adding its strength and uniqueness to over 1000 cities in 85 countries, working to mediate a fundamental change in the world economic and democratic systems. Around 4 PM, we walked toward Sol with a group of friendsto participate in a Radio show on the “Movement 15M”.

FRIENDS:

“Our call for change unites us.
We want a new society that gives people priority over economic and political interests.
We want to demonstrate that society has not gone to sleep, and that we will keep fighting for what we deserve by peaceful means.
We want all this, and we want it now.” (Sol, May 2011).

New York–Daily protests and an ongoing park occupation in the financial district of New York City are gaining growing national attention as an expression of anger against Wall Street greed–and now the brutality of police against demonstrators, after the NYPD savagely attacked a march rom the encampment to Union Square on September 24.

New York, October 3, 2011– The stakes went up for the Occupy Wall Street protest movement this weekend after police escalated their repression with the arrest of over 700 peaceful protesters during a march across the Brooklyn Bridge on October 1.

There are people who claim that humanity, since its origins, can only be interpreted in terms of war: we have always killed each other. We kill each other to steal; we kill each other to occupy a particular space, a cave or a piece of fertile land. We also kill each other to be the leader, out of envy, due to jealousy or sadism.

Over the past year, the world has watched with great interest as the Arab Spring has dissolved decades of repression. Citizens weary of injustice have stood up and demanded control of their destinies. I wish that oppressed people everywhere in Africa could benefit from the dramatic changes we are witnessing in North Africa.