What The Occupy Wall Street Protesters Want!

Last week we looked at the question all of main stream media seemed to be asking - "What Do The Occupy Wall Street Protesters Want?"

Clearly, "Occupy," "The Other 98 Percent," and "The 99 Percent" activists want a fair and balanced playing field that the federal government's system of oversight and regulation provided to American society, before conservatives dismantled it in their fervor for deregulation and elimination of taxes payed by billion dollar corporations and the richest 1 percent of Americans.

We observed that an obvious way to recreate that fair and balanced American field of play would be to reverse the deregulation of Pres. Roosevelt's New Deal protections for the American financial system and middle class Americans, and to reverse the unbalanced and unfair tax cuts given to the richest Americans and multinational multibillion dollar corporations who have used their tax cuts to offshore tens of millions of American jobs.

Earlier today, Mother Jones published an article titled, "Occupy Protesters' One Demand: A New New Deal:"

"What is our one demand?"

That question, put forth by one of the original and most iconic posters advertising the occupation of Zuccotti Park, still hasn't been answered. Many veteran occupiers believe that making specific demands would be counterproductive, while others are working hard to craft concrete proposals they think everyone can agree on.

One of the latter is Daniel Lerner, a middle-aged physicist and active member of Occupy Wall Street's Demands Working Group, which on Sunday voted to push for a New Deal-style program...

... "We are talking about direct public employment, where you are working for the government—everything from wielding a shovel to educating engineers," says Lerner, who drew inspiration from the Depression-era Civil Work and Works Progress Administrations.

The 35 members of the Demands Group will vote Tuesday afternoon on how to build support for the plan before taking it up with the General Assembly, the open-ended group that serves as the protest's governing body.

Communicating through a Yahoo Groups site to draft a list of demands, the Demands Working Group did publish a list draft Tuesday afternoon on their Google sites website. Along with the draft list of demands the Working Group also calls for a National Convention to convene next July:

WE, THE NINETY-NINE PERCENT OF THE PEOPLE of the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, in order to form a more perfect Union, by, for and of the PEOPLE, shall elect and convene a NATIONAL GENERAL ASSEMBLY beginning on July 4, 2012 in the City Of Philadelphia.

The plan is to elect delegates by direct vote, one male and one female per each of the 435 Congressional Districts. The office would be open to any United States citizen over the age of 18. The 870 delegates would then compose a petition of grievances that would be non-partisan.

In their list, however, they close with an explicit warning to the established political parties that the Occupy movement could evolve into a third party movement: "BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that IF the PETITION OF GRIEVANCES approved by the 870 Delegates of the NATIONAL GENERAL ASSEMBLY in consultation with the PEOPLE, is not acted upon by Congress, the President, and Supreme Court, to the satisfaction of the Delegates of the NATIONAL GENERAL ASSEMBLY, said Delegates shall organize a THIRD, COMPLETELY NON-PARTISAN, INDEPENDENT POLITICAL PARTY to run candidates for every available Congressional seat in the mid-term election of 2014 and again in 2016..."

The draft working list of suggested “demands” calls for private contributions to politicians seeking or holding federal office to be replaced by public financing for campaigns, and a constitutional amendment to reverse the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision that corporations have the same rights as people to give campaign money to political candidates.

The list calls for reinstatement of FDR's Glass-Steagall Act to stabilize America's banking and investment systems and increased corporate taxes by eliminating tax loopholes. The suggested “demands” also calls for a single-payer national health care, immediate passage of the DREAM Act, a jobs plan, a deficit reduction plan and recalling military personnel at all non-essential bases around the world.