by E. J. Sieyes

There was a time when we trusted both our government and the press. A time when everyone liked Ike, and we believed Walter Cronkite and Edward R. Murrow. A time when over half the nation’s population was under 21 and in the innocence of youth many of us saw where change was needed. We lived it. We were the catalyst for change. We ended a war. We drove off a corrupt president. We began the march for social equity and sexual freedom. But not everyone was a do-er. We had dead weight, straphangers, the poser who would go to an action only for the chance to smoke some dope and get laid. Their contribution to the mass was hardly worth the drag they placed on the movement.

Today the need for change confronts us again. Our nation is in crisis. Our major political parties have sold out to political greed and big money, and have bankrupted the nation in the process. Too many politicians are corrupt, using the trust of their office to accumulate wealth. They trade favor for personal gain and the benefit of their party. They have subverted the intent of the NVRA, as politicians register people in multiple states and electoral districts, enabling a senator to be elected by extra voters bussed in from a neighboring state and tallying more votes than people registered in districts under their control.

The Preamble to our Declaration of Independence states that government exists by the consent of those governed. When our elections are rigged, when politicians make decisions for the benefit of their party rather than for the people, when corrupt public officials abuse the trust of their office to line the pockets of themselves and their political benefactors, the people no longer are in control of their government. We no longer consent to the status quo of a corrupt political regime. It’s time for grassroots democracy to take back control of our government.

Today, as our nation is in crisis we once again need change. We saw the birth of this change two years ago in Zuccotti Park as we protested Wall Street greed and its companion political corruption. As before we had those who acted and those who sat back in their warm apartment, safe in their Azimovian universe, contemplating a utopian world, freely telling everyone else how we all should live. Our nation, our people desperately need change. Are you going to sit back in comfort, eating quiche and sipping chardonnay, or are you going to help us change the World?