by Grant Marcus
SHOULD THE OCCUPY MOVEMENT MAKE ITS NEXT PRIORITY A CLASS ACTION SUIT AGAINST THE NSA?
We of Occupy805, and Occupy movements around the country, have put our bodies on the line, while carrying out our movement in a lawful and peaceful protest.
And we have risked everything, our lives, our jobs, future job opportunities, our reputations, and the lives of our families to stop government fraud, linked to corporate corruption and its abuse of its victims, the 99%, the American people.
We have gone to bat against the banks, for their corruption, fee hikes, and foreclosures. We served as catalysts for millions to leave big banks and move their money into community banks and credit unions. “Move your money” was because of the Occupy Movement. Because of us.
We have gone to bat for students, and we have brought to the forefront the student loan crisis, and how the banks get money for .75% interest, and then charge students 3.4%. Banks are no more than middlemen and leaches making huge sums of money off those who can least afford it, and who cannot find work in a downturned economy. And this is often subsequent to large corporations exporting jobs overseas. And we have exposed the process.
We have gone to bat for the environment, and exposed Halliburton, its deep water oil drilling off our coast, its faulty cement sealing on fracked wells, and its secret toxic chemicals it has fracked into our water table, allowed by an “exception” rule–not to mention its war for fraud, recklessly executing 13 soldiers with faulty wiring, absconding with Iraq’s oil during the war, and stealing $8Billion it conveniently “lost,” or money which was said to be for the purpose of rebuilding Iraq after our needless war of aggression.
We have gone to bat for worker’s rights, the right to a living wage, a safe work place, and the right to negotiate a contract. We showed up to support equality at the Martin Luther King event, and for immigration rights. We were there for energy alternatives to big oil and insisted we address climate change. We have gone to bat for the right to know what is in our food, and exposed Monsanto, its GMOs, and their harmful effects on our crop staples. We have brought to light how Monsanto products have toxic chemicals in the seed, and have been rejected around the globe, and how they have been forced to settle cases for poisoning people abroad. We have brought up Monsanto’s link to one of the biggest war contractors, when it bought out, or merged with Dow Chemical. Meanwhile, Snowden has now directly linked H(e)lliburton and Mon(satan) to the NSA, as they are both “corporate clients” of a privatized national security. An NSA that allows hundreds of corporations top clearance, and has a workforce of 896,000 employees. (See James Bamford and his research he has done into Homeland Security) So the Question is, whose national security is it, anyway? Ours or Monsatans? Ours, or Helli-burtons? The People’s or the corporations?
We must keep in mind that it was Dick Cheney, CEO of Helliburton, who was responsible for reorganizing the NSA and insuring that it would become 70% privatized, and thus beholding not to law, but to the corporations it served. And it was Dick Cheney who got Helliburton’s “Exception Rule” passed for gas fracking, and got Halliburton off the hook for polluting the Gulf, and now none of us have the right to know what is being dumped into our drinking water, nor how long the entire Gulf will stay polluted. Or if we will ever end our forever war on terror, for which Halliburton has gotten no-bid contracts for supplying food, construction, and oil drilling. Meanwhile, it is Cheney who gets his own documentary TV show. So much for justice in corporate America.
Any nurse, or doctor will tell you that our bodies are 80% water, and if our water is contaminated, and our food is contaminated, which also contains water, it means we, the people are contaminated. In other words, we are what we eat—Monsatan–And we are what we drink–Helliburton.
It is so wrong that two companies have so much power over human life, and over all life on the planet.
We have exposed ALEK and the salacious relationship corporations have with our representatives. And we have kept the Supreme Court’s horrendous decision of corporate personhood in the news, coining the phrase, “Corporations aren’t people, and money isn’t free speech,” because we know elections and ballot measures will be sold to the highest bidder until we reverse the Court’s decision. And meanwhile, and coincidently we are sabotaged and vilified by the corporate embedded press, from television to newspapers. We have suffered billyclub beatings, tear gas canisters, pepper spray, plastic bullets, water hosing, horse trampling and the like. Our property has been illegally confiscated, while we have been corralled, detained, tortured, given extended prison sentences, and treated like chattel. And this is solely because we have been targets of the NSA, who work not for us, but their corporate “clients,” the very same corporations which we rallied to expose. What is so dangerous is that all these corporations have top clearance and privy to all our personal information. Snowden’s whistleblowing makes it clear, the NSA is as corrupt as our government. It is a sold-out agency, and now private companies, using the NSA as a front, can violate our freedoms, attack us, destroy us, know everything about us, and what we do every moment of our lives. Tell me, is this what a true democracy should look like?
We have done so much for a movement for the people. And we have suffered so much in going to bat for the American people. Now we must step up to the plate and bat for ourselves—which is really batting for all of America, and making sure Snowden’s revelations were not in vane. And in doing so, we must hold the NSA accountable for its abuse of power, its violations of the 4th Amendment and the Constitution, and hence violations against the People of the United States. Because our national security should be for the general welfare of its people, not solely based on war and resources for corporate profit.
I’m addressing the potential of this ACTION, which could be our biggest, and if we prevail and hit a home run, it could positively effect our free freedoms for ALL Americans for a long time to come. The only way to insure this happening is to bring a class action suit against the NSA, which has clearly abused its powers, and has betrayed every American. The NSA must be brought to justice and exposed to all Americans, so we may preserve, if not restore our basic freedoms and our Bill of Rights. In the process, we must insure that the NSA be de-privatized, so it no longer operates on behalf of corporations, and be able to abscond with billions of pieces of information that includes our personal effects: phonecalls, emails, banking accounts, credit card purchases, and medical records of EVERY American. How dare the NSA know more about you than your own mother or father, your partner, or best friend? How could they do something so anti-American?
The Occupy Movement should come together with other Occupy groups and get a legal team together. But I know what you may be thinking, why should Occupy take this task on themselves? Because it is the Occupy Movement that has been targeted and abused. And it is the Occupy Movement who can show, and prove, through the Freedom of Information Act, how the NSA’s insidious relationship with corporations has directly lead to our abuse. And the new revelations of Edward Snowden, specifically shows the NSA’s intent
in its actions against us, and how OUR group has been targeted so much more than so many other active organizations. And we can show how the FISA Court has given a blank check to the NSA without probable cause, violating our 4th Amendment Rights. The NSA no longer protects national security, or the People’s security, or even American values. It protects the corporations who own it, and it responds reflexively to their demands, and operates by no other reasoning or purpose. This is what Snowden saw and why he defected.
It was on DemocracyNow!, that I learned, through Freedom of Information Act they obtained, that the Occupy Movement was specifically targeted by the NSA. Our 4th amendment rights were viiolated as a group–not as individuals–by the secret fascist rubber-stamping of the FISA Court, a mere puppet of the NSA. The FISA Court operated in total secrecy for the purpose of abusing power, violating the 4th Amendment which reads:
“The right of the People to be secure in their persons, houses papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath, affirmation, and particularly describing the people to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
The blanket surveillance of a group because they legally practice free speech and and non-violent dissent is not probable cause. If you have followed the whistleblowing of Snowden, the record of the FISA Court, and the corporate takeover of the NSA, you will realize that the NSA followed not one iota of the 4th Amendment. The FISA Court was only there for political show, serving as a buffer against further dissent, and this is why its illegal decisions were carried out in secret; and furthermore, why the Occupy Movement was made the target of the NSA.
Many of you may also be thinking: I’ve done enough. I’ve been in enough trouble already. I can’t take any more abuse. I say this: You will continue to be abused, regardless, because that’s how the corrupt system, in place, will work. Helliburton and Monsatanstein aren’t just going to go away and leave those exposing them alone. They aren’t the kind of powers that lets by-gones be by-gones and walk away. No. Via top clearance and behind the scenes, they are well-insullated and collecting our data right now, and our lives will be in jeopardy, because of their power, and the grave possibility of eliminating us one by one is a reality. When a system is corrupt, corrupt things are sure to happen.
Consider the consequences of moving on and doing nothing:
The travesty of power remains in tack, which means, as an Occupyer, through the NSA, and corporate top clearance, you are the enemy and being watched right now, 24/7. For example, I have four corporate strikes against me: resisting the Vietnam War, being a counter-recruiter against the Iraq war, actively opposing nuclear power with civil disobedience, and now, as an Occupyer, I have been watched by our corporatized Gastapo for a very long time. They are reading what I am writing to you now before I have sent it; and all of us will continue to be monitored 24/7 if we stand by and do nothing about it. (It’s why I’ve pushed “save” after every paragraph). It is why my computer crashed at home and why my home has been invaded. The federal NSA is working with a Homeland division right in the Ventura County Police Department, and local police departments across the country (also unconstitutionall) knows exactly where every occupyer is at all times.. Through our phone conversations, and JPS tracking, they know exactly where we are, and who we are visiting, and how long we will be gone from our home or our apartments. Gathering data for their corporate clients, and not for the People, the NSA is working for Helliburton and Monsatan, the very corporations we have protested. Who will stop the NSA and its 1984 mentality if we will not? If they are in the police department, who will stop them from coming into our homes, poisoning our food, chemically fracking our water we left cooling in the frig on a hot day?
Who will prevent them from flying a drone over our property, or giving us cancer? Or how about insidiously sneaking a virus into our computer software? (CIA agent and war vet Ass. Todd Gorell of T.O., wants to make Ventura County the drone capitol of America) The drones are coming, and so who do you think will get priority for their use? Call me paranoid, but with the preponderance of the evidence, it’s for good reason. Because if these agencies work for Halliburton, and can fabricate wars for oil, foreclose on our homes by fraud, and commit acts of torture, not seen since Nazi Germany, and not on just our enemies, but our own people, while our politicians, including Obomya are powerless to stop them, killing a few Occupyers is just a drop in the proverbial bucket of intelligencia. In short, we will not be able to prevent their harassment, if not our own murders, without confronting the beast, the NSA directly. And the only way to do that is with a class action suit that exposes ALL their shenanigans, and a future threat to ourselves.
I am probably risking everything by saying this to you. I only do so because I am tired of being a stranger living in a strange country that is no longer America. We are no longer a nation of people, by people, and for people, we have been turned into a nation of corrupt Tory corporations, for the good of money and power, wars and kings, and these kings or CEOs will stop at nothing, they will violate any law, human, civil, and internation al, laws that go all the way back to the Magna Carta, in order to retain their corporate power. And they will usurp any agency they can get a hold of, corrupt it, so they can deploy that power against anyone who stands in their way. We have a corporacracy and not a democracy. It is why corporations are considered people, and the people are powerless to do anything about it. And it is why the NSA has been taken over, and Snowden is a wanted man instead of a hero. And it is why the corporate press manipulate us into believing just that—for the sake of their sponsors.
And if we refuse to take our courage from men like Daniel Ellsburg, Julian Assange, Bradley Manning, and now, Edward Snowden, if we refuse to follow the courageous footsteps of women like Media Benjamin, and Senator Elizabeth Warren, we will lose America, not just for ourselves, but for everyone, and for generations, and for good. For America is at the crossroads: Do we want a government that follows its constitution that is of and by and for the people, or do we want a government of corporatist politicians, bought and sold to the highest bidders of endless wars, pollution, and toxic food through Monsatan and Helliburton–while the rich get richer and the rest of us live in austerer austerity. This is our choice, and doing nothing will only get us closer to the Lake of Fire, or a country that is only a shadow of itself..
Heroes haven’t been soldiers on the battlefield who mercilessly kill helpless children or unarmed reporters. Our greatest heroes have been those who stood up and insisted on our democracy. James Maddison once said, “Government is power. And power will always be abused.” The Occupy Movement has been abused for standing up to power’s abuse. The revelations of Snowden’s whistle-blowing shows clearly this abuse, and how it has effected the Occupy Movement directly. And much like Edward Snowden’s tremendous courage to insist on democracy, above cushy jobs and six figure salaries,and privileged security forever, we must follow his footsteps and show our government that they cannot abuse their power and abuse every American. We must challenge the violations and irreparable harm that has come not only to us, but to the 99% we represent and to our democracy as a whole, and by the NSA, and our government. We must challenge it, because the NSA will not forget us or leave us alone. They will persist.
And we must challenge it, more importantly, because it is the right thing to do for our democracy, and for our nation. We the People are our only national security. We must take the courage that Snowden took, if we are to right the course of our nation’s history, and return our strange land to American democracy once again. We have gone to bat for others. Will we now step to the plate for ourselves and our country?
(Sorry about the baseball analogy, but it is the season).-grant
Occupy Ventura 