Today we come together to celebrate the freedoms we have under the constitution of the United States. Freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, the right to petition the government for a redress of grievances and the right to be secure within our persons and papers.
We hold these truth’s to be self evident. All men are endowed by their creator with inalienable rights. Be that creator a god as some believe or the combination of chemical processes governed by the laws of physics that over the process of 4 billion years evolved into us makes no difference we have those rights from birth.
But we only retain those rights, they only have meaning when we are free to exercise them. When the police come and steal our political speech in the form of our signs and banners they deprive us of our birthright. When they fence us off the courthouse lawn to deny us our right to assemble there they cut the heart out of those rights and that is why we are here today. I am updating the language a bit and using the word person rather then man as I prefer to include all persons in the umbrella of humanity and all persons are harmed when any of us are denied our basic rights.
A person only has those rights that they can defend. We come here to show the folks in power that we will defend our rights. We will Occupy this space as we are free women and men that have the right to peaceably assemble. We post our signs because as free people we have the right to voice our political concerns. We will not allow the petty tyranny of a local ordinance to deter us. We will not allow armed thugs to disregard those freedoms. We are committed to nonviolence so when the police come they can arrest us but we will return. We will be in the courts suing those officers and officials but most of all we will be here on the steps of the courthouse some of us beaten but none of us bowed and we will prevail.
The consent of the governed. We are the 99% is the credo of our movement. We are the governed and we never consented to this. We reject the crony capitalism and the for sale to the highest bidder government that it has produced. We reject the imperialism that has led to death and destruction around the globe. We reject the prison industrial complex and the torture and dehumanization that it runs on and the destruction it brings to our communities.
5425 occupiers have been arrested while no bankers have been prosecuted. The people that destroyed our way of life got 17 trillion dollars to rebuild and we get jail cells.
We reject the buyer beware capitalism that allows the 1% to steal from the middle class and we reject the criminalization of being poor. The way we do this is to stand together on the steps of the courthouse and demand that the rights of all people be respected.
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