To start, some words of wisdom that have all but been forgotten. (After the speech I write my own thoughts, play the video and scroll down to save a bit of reading!)
Charlie Chaplin's speech from 'The Great Dictator' is right here in video form and below it is typed so you can read along. Below the typed speech is my piece.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MO-J2UgDvdI&feature=related
I'm sorry but I don't want to be an Emperor, that's not my business. I don't want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone if possible, Jew, gentile, black man, white. We all want to help one another, human beings are like that. We all want to live by each other's happiness, not by each other's misery. We don't want to hate and despise one another. In this world there is room for everyone and the earth is rich and can provide for everyone.
The way of life can be free and beautiful. But we have lost the way.
Greed has poisoned men's souls, has barricaded the world with hate;
has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed.
We have developed speed but we have shut ourselves in:
machinery that gives abundance has left us in want.
Our knowledge has made us cynical,
our cleverness hard and unkind.
We think too much and feel too little:
More than machinery we need humanity;
More than cleverness we need kindness and gentleness.
Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost.
The aeroplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in men, cries out for universal brotherhood for the unity of us all. Even now my voice is reaching millions throughout the world, millions of despairing men, women and little children, victims of a system that makes men torture and imprison innocent people. To those who can hear me I say "Do not despair".
The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed, the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress: the hate of men will pass and dictators die and the power they took from the people, will return to the people and so long as men die [now] liberty will never perish. . .
Soldiers: don't give yourselves to brutes, men who despise you and enslave you, who regiment your lives, tell you what to do, what to think and what to feel, who drill you, diet you, treat you as cattle, as cannon fodder.
Don't give yourselves to these unnatural men, machine men, with machine minds and machine hearts. You are not machines. You are not cattle. You are men. You have the love of humanity in your hearts. You don't hate, only the unloved hate. Only the unloved and the unnatural. Soldiers: don't fight for slavery, fight for liberty.
In the seventeenth chapter of Saint Luke it is written:
"The kingdom of God is within man"
Not one man, nor a group of men, but in all men; in you, the people.
You the people have the power, the power to create machines, the power to create happiness. You the people have the power to make life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure. Then in the name of democracy let's use that power, let us all unite. Let us fight for a new world, a decent world that will give men a chance to work, that will give you the future and old age and security. By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power, but they lie. They do not fulfil their promise, they never will. Dictators free themselves but they enslave the people. Now let us fight to fulfil that promise. Let us fight to free the world, to do away with national barriers, do away with greed, with hate and intolerance. Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all men's happiness.
Soldiers! In the name of democracy, let us all unite!
Now me.
The line 'greed has poisoned men's souls' rings loud in my ears with Occupy Wall Street spreading like wildfire by our brave brothers and sisters in (as of today) 82 countries worldwide. This speech really makes you understand just how much you fail to understand every single day; when you complain about your boyfriend or girlfriend or lack of free time or amount of school work and then are reminded of real life by words as beautifully arranged as those above are.
32 days, as of this moment, the Occupy movement has been taking place. That isn't very long when you consider the Arab countries that have been revolting against their current governing system for several months. They have been oppressed for their right to have a voice and every shocking new video of someone being beaten in the street makes us squirm in our comfortable arm chairs and say 'wow, so uncivilized.' But then you watch some of the videos on youtube and other sharing sites of the severe police brutality at Wall Street Movements and you understand once again something you didn't understand before; that we are no better. Our government's condemn those Arab countries for not respecting their citizens and in the next breath fail to protect their own citizens and outright refuse to punish the police committing the crimes.
In case you were wondering why you should care about what is happening, here is a short, and by no means an exclusive, list of how corporate and government greed and oppression affects us all, and when I say all, I mean the 99%:
They have taken our houses through an illegal foreclosure process, despite not having the original mortgage.
They have taken bailouts from taxpayers with impunity, and continue to give Executives exorbitant bonuses.
They have perpetuated inequality and discrimination in the workplace based on age, the color of one’s skin, sex, gender identity and sexual orientation.
They have poisoned the food supply through negligence, and undermined the farming system through monopolization.
They have profited off of the torture, confinement, and cruel treatment of countless nonhuman animals, and actively hide these practices.
They have continuously sought to strip employees of the right to negotiate for better pay and safer working conditions.
They have held students hostage with tens of thousands of dollars of debt on education, which is itself a human right.
They have consistently outsourced labor and used that outsourcing as leverage to cut workers’ healthcare and pay.
They have influenced the courts to achieve the same rights as people, with none of the culpability or responsibility.
They have spent millions of dollars on legal teams that look for ways to get them out of contracts in regards to health insurance.
They have sold our privacy as a commodity.
They have used the military and police force to prevent freedom of the press.
They have deliberately declined to recall faulty products endangering lives in pursuit of profit.
They determine economic policy, despite the catastrophic failures their policies have produced and continue to produce.
They have donated large sums of money to politicians supposed to be regulating them.
They continue to block alternate forms of energy to keep us dependent on oil.
They continue to block generic forms of medicine that could save people’s lives in order to protect investments that have already turned a substantive profit.
They have purposely covered up oil spills, accidents, faulty bookkeeping, and inactive ingredients in pursuit of profit.
They purposefully keep people misinformed and fearful through their control of the media.
They have accepted private contracts to murder prisoners even when presented with serious doubts about their guilt.
They have perpetuated colonialism at home and abroad.
They have participated in the torture and murder of innocent civilians overseas.
They continue to create weapons of mass destruction in order to receive government contracts.
It is time for it to end.
If you can relate to even one of those lines above, even in just a hearsay manner, then the responsibility of this movement is on you. It's time for humanity to be just that, human. We need gentleness and compassion, bleeding hearts and eyes that see. No more corporate and government machines of greed and oppression and forced complacency, it is time for 'We The People.'
People are being beaten and arrested with no cause given, no rights being read, no bail posted, no release date set, no court date set, no official charges being laid. This is government oppression at it's finest and it is a campaign of fear in order to keep us, the 99%, down. To every person who is afraid to have a voice, afraid of being one in solidarity with his/her brothers and sisters resisting the greed and oppression, afraid of tear gas and arrests and rubber bullets by the police and government lapdogs, fearful for their livelihood if they resist, fearful of wrongful prosecution by a near-tyrannic system that we call our governments, to everyone who is afraid I say this, and I encourage you to memorize it and recite it when you finally decide that ENOUGH IS ENOUGH and now is the time for change and action:
People should not be afraid of their Governments, Governments should be afraid of their people.
I leave you all with this insightful video on the American Hypocrisy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=RGRXCgMdz9A
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