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The task of our time is to insist that we can afford to build a decent society—while at the same time, respect the real limits to what the earth can take.
Nation columnist and Shock Doctrine author Naomi Klein visited Occupy Wall Street on October 6 and addressed the crowd. Since sound amplification is banned, she made a shortened version of her speech over the “human microphone,” with every few words repeated by hundreds of people. The full text of her speech, which also appeared in the second edition of the Occupied Wall Street Journal, is below. —The Editors
I love you.
And I didn’t just say that so that hundreds of you would shout “I love you” back, though that is obviously a bonus feature of the human microphone. Say unto others what you would have them say unto you, only way louder.
Yesterday, one of the speakers at the labor rally said, “We found each other.” That sentiment captures the beauty of what is being created here. A wide-open space (as well as an idea so big it can’t be contained by any space) for all the people who want a better world to find each other. We are so grateful.
If there is one thing I know, it is that the 1 percent loves a crisis. When people are panicked and desperate and no one seems to know what to do, that is the ideal time to push through their wish list of pro-corporate policies: privatizing education and Social Security, slashing public services, getting rid of the last constraints on corporate power. Amid the economic crisis, this is happening the world over.
There is only one thing that can block this tactic, and fortunately it’s a very big thing: the 99 percent. And that 99 percent is taking to the streets from Madison to Madrid to say, “No. We will not pay for your crisis.”
That slogan began in Italy in 2008. It ricocheted to Greece and France and Ireland, and finally it has made its way to the square mile where the crisis began.
“Why are they protesting?” ask the baffled pundits on TV. Meanwhile, the rest of the world asks, “What took you so long? We’ve been wondering when you were going to show up.” And most of all, “Welcome.”
Many people have drawn parallels between Occupy Wall Street and the so-called anti-globalization protests that came to world attention in Seattle in 1999. That was the last time a global, youth-led, decentralized movement took direct aim at corporate power. And I am proud to have been part of what we called “the movement of movements.”
But there are important differences too. For instance, we chose summits as our targets: the World Trade Organization, the International Monetary Fund, the G-8. Summits are transient by their nature; they only last a week. That made us transient too. We’d appear, grab world headlines, then disappear. And in the frenzy of hyper-patriotism and militarism that followed the 9/11 attacks, it was easy to sweep us away completely, at least in North America.
Occupy Wall Street, on the other hand, has chosen a fixed target. And you have put no end date on your presence here. This is wise. Only when you stay put can you grow roots. This is crucial. It is a fact of the information age that too many movements spring up like beautiful flowers but quickly die off. It’s because they don’t have roots. And they don’t have long-term plans for how they are going to sustain themselves. So when storms come, they get washed away.