November 6, 2011
The Arab Spring comes to the US and Canada
I fully understand the 99% movements in the US and Canada and even predict their success. I was/still am a participant in the Egyptian Revolution in its three phases: (1) a revolution-in-the making (2003-2011), (2) from-protesting-to-a-revolution at Tahrir Square (January 25 - April 4, 2011) and (3) building a New Egypt (at present).
The 1% counter revolutionary rich and powerful in both the US and Canada are as stupid as the oppressive regime of Mubarak: they don’t get it. One question they ask themselves is who are the leaders of these movements? But they don’t understand that they are witnessing a new type of revolution where everyone is a leader. Another question they ask themselves is; what do these people want? The answer of course depends on when you ask the question.
The 99% simply demand (1) elected governments that work for the wellbeing of the 99%, not the 1% and (2) an end to the monopoly of the 1% in politics, media and the economy.
American Senator Mike Gravel – who I met recently in Toronto - articulates these demands well and provides a road map for their implementation.
He explains, “There are only two places where Occupy Wall Street (OWS) can change things and legally realize its goals: The Government - Which can make changes but won’t, regardless how hard you protest, because the wealthy corporate elites control our representative government and change threatens their interests. OR The People - Who want to change things but can’t because the Constitutional Framers in 1787 failed to provide the people with procedures to change the
Constitution and to make laws, even though the Founders repeatedly declared that future generations should be able to alter their Constitution to meet their needs.”
The result, Gravel says, is that “All the people can do, under our present structure of representative government, is give their power away on Election Day and then for the next two, four or six years is write their local government officials, the Congress and the President pleading with them to address the public interest. When that doesn’t work, which is generally the case, all the people can do is protest and suffer the evermore repressive force of the police.”
Gravel concludes, “THE GOVERNMENT IS NOT THE SOLUTION –– When people protest, they are essentially begging their political leaders who are controlled by corporate elites to address the public interest. Regardless how much they protest, those who control government will do no more than what they are already doing. Government leaders will never choose to empower the people because it dilutes their own power.
THE PEOPLE ARE THE SOLUTION –– The Founders repeatedly declared that the people are the sovereigns of the polity with the power to alter their constitutions to meet the needs of future generations. Therefore, citizens’ movements need to stop begging government officials and turn the energy and resources of their protest movements into an actionable electoral campaign to enact meta-legislation that will empower them to actually make laws –– lawmaking is the central power of government –– and thereby enact the agendas they are protesting for into laws.”
WHAT IS META-LEGISLATION? –– It is a fundamental law to empower people with the authority and procedures to properly implement their sovereign powers to make laws. THE NATIONAL CITIZENS INITIATIVE FOR DEMOCRACY (NCI4D) is meta-legislation. It does not address any issue other than empowerment. It defines the authority and provides the procedures that empower citizens to be able to address issues legislatively like their elected representative legislators.
The NCI4D is a legislative package that contains two proposed laws: a Citizens Amendment to the Constitution that confirms the authority empowering citizens as lawmakers; and a federal statute, the Citizens Legislative Procedures Act, that provides procedures for citizens to deliberately enact laws in every government jurisdiction of the United States and creates an agency, the Citizens Trust, to administer those procedures on behalf of the people. When enacted directly by the people in a national election, the National Citizens Initiative for Democracy will complete the unfinished work of the Constitutional Framers who failed to provide procedures in the Constitution to permit citizens to change and improve their government without recourse to violence.
HOW DO CITIZENS ENACT THE NATIONAL CITIZENS INITIATIVE FOR DEMOCRACY INTO LAW? –– By having Philadelphia II, a nonprofit corporation, conduct a national election –– since the government would not conduct such an election –– using modern communications technology to ask voters if they want to be empowered to make laws like their elected representatives and in a manner similar to the initiative lawmaking process that exists in 24 American states (but considerably improved). If the voters respond with an affirmative vote equal to the majority that voted in the previous presidential elections (more than 60 million votes) the National Citizens Initiative for Democracy will become the law of the land.
IS THIS PRIVATE ELECTORAL PROCESS LEGAL? –– It’s as legal as Article VII of the Constitution which authorized the conventions of nine states to vote to create our government in 1787. Additionally, the Preamble of the Constitution is very clear on the subject in articulating that: “WE, THE PEOPLE, DO ORDAIN.” Meaning we, the people, are the creators of the government. Therefore, it makes no sense for the people who created the government to have to ask the government for permission to make changes in the structure of government. Direct legislative action by the people is legal historically because it rests on “first principles” that James Madison referred to when asked at the Constitutional Convention how they could create a new government. He answered that the “people just do it” –– they exercise their “first principles.”
Please go to HTTP://NI4D.US to learn more about the National Citizen Initiative for Democracy
