The South Dakota Peace and Justice Center has publicly declared its support for the Occupy Wall Street movement. SDPJC thus joins 59% of American adults, 67% of New York City voters, 58% of New York State voters, 46% of New Jersey voters, 43% of American voters, and 100% of Michael Moore, Al Gore, and Suze Orman.
SDPJC explains why all of us should support the Occupation:
The Board of Directors of South Dakota Peace and Justice, at a meeting following the group's annual conference on October 7 &ndash 8, 2011 in Rapid City, voted unanimously to support the principles of the "Occupy Wall Street" movement. The issues raised in these "people's assemblies", now taking place in over a thousand cities worldwide, speak to the concerns of our organization's usual constituency, the poor, the oppressed, the unjustly imprisoned, the victims of racism and those opposed to unjust war and the destruction of our planet.
As the movement has taken hold it has come to represent a broad consensus, regardless of any labels one might use, left/right, Democrat /Republican, young/old, gay/straight, as well as white and people of color. Since this is a truly democratic movement which has arisen organically at the grassroots, with only horizontal organization, there is no official spokesperson. However there are several overwhelmingly consistent themes that are regularly expressed.
We must aggressively deal with the twenty or so systematically dangerous, too-big-to-fail financial institutions, which are all ticking time bombs that would slip us into a global depression should any one of them falter. There should be accountability for past and present fraud that will send CEO's to prison for the horrendous damage they have done to our country and to our citizens because of simple corporate greed. This is demanded even in the current political environment, where the financial sector is, by far, the biggest campaign contributor to both major parties. The mortgage foreclosure crisis must be addressed in a way that saves homes on Main Street, and not to enrich the robber barons on Wall Street. And finally the people want the jobs necessary to follow their dreams and take care of their families. To achieve these things the ninety-nine percenters have "occupied". Their actions are in keeping with the finest democratic traditions of our country and we at South Dakota Peace and Justice stand in solidarity with them.
Jim Petersen, Chairman, South Dakota Peace and Justice, Rapid City [press release, 2011.10.30]
If you believe in grassroots democracy and corporate accountability, you might be an Occupier, too!
Related: KEVN reports a bigger crowd of Occupants in Rapid City this past Saturday. But KEVN gets the headline wrong: the October 29th peaceable assembly was the third Occupy Wall Street protest. I reported on the second Occupy Rapid City protest on October 22.
Update 07:29 MDT: Rapid City neighbor Greg Olson lists his reasons for supporting the Occupation.