"Get into action on our own campaigns to win change"

There are two ways of campaigning to win change.

One way to campaign is to consciously redirect our everyday activities toward building individual/local self-determination. The result is that elites now in control of our public institutions will instead start to grovel at our feet, waiting for their orders, to serve us. In effect, we the people become the boss.

The other way to campaign is to join organized protests, which seek to scare our elite bosses into slightly changing the terms of our enslavement. The terms inevitably include our continued enslavement, except we win extra cookies for a while. The reason the wins will not sustain themselves, is because extra cookies are not enough of a stake in the system for us to feel like we're the boss, to feel like we have something to protect, that we have something to keep.

Cookies are not worth keeping. Material, property, dough, munny, not worth keeping. Self-determination IS WORTH KEEPING. We're going for the self-determination. This means "dear leaders" listed in the article above will re-design their campaign to, instead of lead protests, cater to the people's latent desire to take control into their own hands, be their own boss. To take, and keep, ownership/control of their personal chunks of industrial production and public policy, including what is produced, and why. The design and implementation of the society will be ours, thus the society as a whole will be by/for THE PEOPLE. Drag it out of the liberal closet. We're going to have our self-determination.

Bye bye Occupy.

Peaceful and Persistent resistance ! NO VIOLENCE! Please, nothing will turn the rest of America against this movement more than violence and the destruction of property!

Non Violent resistance?? I was told to try something like that in school... I didn't like it.. The common trem is getting your ass kicked! >^^<

This is an undefined request. What are they asking the 99% to do? Are we to occupy the streets? Are they asking people to stand in the street and confront, nonviolently, heavily armed bullies?

As many signers here are union representatives where is their call for owner ship of corporations by the workers and the removal of the 1% from their corporation?

Is this a request for us to be shot in the head with gas projectiles, rubber coated steel bullets and pepper sprayed in the face to maintain union wages and benefits?

If we are to get what those that occupy ask for we must purge our public government buildings of the murderous, torturing filth that are the paid whores of the 1%

Got plan for that?

I am not cynical, so I signed for this. I was active in the Movement (as we called it back in the 60s-70s) and hope my disabilities don't keep me from participating. What I'm looking for is whether this is stalking horse for getting people to line up behind Obama and the usual bunch of pretendgressives who are destroying our country. If so, I'm out--but I'll keep an open mind, and it will be clear soon enough.

Meantime, keep Occupying and be nonviolent. All Power To The People

This ain't it -- these is the co-opters, the shills and some good people who have been hoodwinked by same. The good ones in this will come to reject this and join the real OWS movement, the rest will continue to kiss the corporate ass.

100,000? Pitiful. The fact that this assemblage of progs (some good and a few dubious) can only imagine motivating 100,000 Americans for this says it all.
500,000 Egyptians filled Tahrir Square alone. NYC and DC should be packed by 1 to 2 MILLION Americans for as long as it takes to get concessions to articulated lists of demands. The guts and logistics for that is what it's going to take, folks. People willing to risk taking their lumps from, or possibly getting killed by government goons for the greater good.

In a nation of over 305,000,000 people, sustaining 2 or 3 million protesters in mass assemblies to petition the government over grievances affecting many tens of millions of Americans should not be as difficult as it apparently is. That says something about the submissive, beaten down and corporately compromised character of contemporary American people.

Our neo-lib/neo-con rulers and their political & mass media puppets know this and will not hesitate to thrust more and more predatory disaster capitalism down our throats until either enough Americans figure out the scale of resistance needed and act on it--or we fully submit to Orwellian totalitarian capitalism featuring tens of thousands of unmanned aerial drones cruising silently over Amurka's spreading slums and criminalized squalor.

In the UK their neo-liberal government is figuring out how to circumvent laws against the use of nerve gas in warfare to deploy new types of neuro-active gas against civilian uprisings. How long before this is emulated in Amurka? How long before those drones just funded in the FAA spending bill are armed and killing Amurkans inside Amurka sans due process? Only our Constitutional scholar McPresident knows for sure.

A more effective tactic might be for them to organize 100,000 experienced organizers to fan out, in teams, to the top 10 or 20,000 zipcode areas to join, or convene Local Assemblies to be permanent fixtures on the political landscape. Everything else will arise from THERE; an on-going discussion about how "we the people" want to organize ourselves as a society, what's permissable, what can't be tolerated, what needs changing, what needs to be confronted immediately, etc...Also delegates can be voted up for a State-wide General Assembly, and delegates voted up for a national General Assembly, ALL to become OUR shadow gov't, to assume the reins when the collapse comes.

Look at the signers of this "Co-Opt the Movement for Democrats and Obama:"

Mary Kay Henry quote: "President Obama is the only candidate for president who shares our vision of America as a land of opportunity for everyone."

Van Jones: Urged the Occupy Movement to "mature" and "move on to the electoral phase." Van Jones has previously said Rebuild the Dream's first task was to elect Democrats.

There seem to be some decent organizations signing onto this group's attempt to co-opt the movement. People in those organizations may or may not realize the real goals of these people until they break into groups, and the leaders introduce the phrase: "lesser of two evils."

Co-opt, neuter, and re-direct to Democratic party politics. That's the plan. It won't be long before some of those who signed up are knocking on doors for Obama.

from the article:

~ Tell the story of our economy: how we got here, who’s responsible, what a different future could look like, and what we can do about it. ~

Is there some reason you don't tell what your version of the future looks like right here, and now?

I am much more likely to support you if I know what your goals are, and find them logical...

I hate to rain on any one's parade but...

There are some hidden agenda items that the 99.9999% know too little about:

http://www.theforbiddenknowledge.com/hardtruth/nwo_elf_tyranny.htm

(Though the link above is to a right wing group, much of the info is sound and time should be spent familiarizing yourself with it. Psychotronic capabilities are widely deployed and even incorporated into drones that can track our every activist move.)

All I had to do was look through the list to see that these groups are all apologists for the Democratic Party. Whenever one sees MoveOn.org and Progressive Democrats of America one knows what's happening. It's an attempt to get people out of Occupy and into the Democratic Party. Don't fall for it!

ENOUGH of this "American Dream" already! It is a nightmare. Chuck it! And if you want to "Moveon" move on from THIS nightmare! A New world is waiting to be born where the bourgeoise ideal is replaced by real concern for ones fellow creatures and all that lives.

I read through all the comments up to now, and am reassured that as usual, most of us have learned to view CommonDreams with a critical eye. This piece we are discussing is a familiar case of "sound good without offering any substance"--classic CD stuff around election time. Later, we'll get the likes of Hayden, Solomon, and Davis admonishing us about the urgency of voting for the current offering to fall out of the donkey's backside.

Soon enough, the agenda behind the flowery rhetoric will be made plain. Screw Obama and the bloody caravan he rode in with. Occupy Real Hope and Change!

Damn,

There's about 5 organizations in that list i've had respect for.

It's more than ironic that the very same people here who demand that OWS not be funneled into a single or narrow strategic goal or action plan, criticize this call because it fails to specify a goal or action.

All this calls for is the training of 100,000 Americans in non-violent direct action and discussion about the history and failings of our economic system and possible future directions for an economy that works for all. There's very little here that could be construed as objectionable or problematic, and there's certainly no need for NV training for political operatives or Obamabots, so that's a red herring.

Apparently, the anarchist contingent, in their typically adolescent fashion, will attack any easy target just to feel they have a purpose in life. Lashing out indiscriminately is not, however, a strategy for constructive change. But strategy, planning, and broad-based coordinated action are all four-letter words to those who have nothing to offer the movement but their contempt of everyone and everything else..

Interesting that there is no major nonviolence group is represented among the signers here. If non-violent action is what is truly sought, I would think it vital to include leading advocates and practitioners of non-violence. Given some of the groups involved, I wonder whether the real aim is to promote one of the duopoly parties that has gotten us into this mess, or true people's actions. Some of the groups involved are notorious for trying to divert people from true change work to work for an establishment political party.