“It is a perversion of terms to say that a charter gives rights. It operates by a contrary effect — that of taking rights away. Rights are inherently in all the inhabitants; but charters, by annulling those rights, in the majority, leave the right, by exclusion, in the hands of a few...
There never did, there never will, and there never can, exist a Parliament, or any description of men, or any generation of men, in any country, possessed of the right or the power of binding and controlling posterity to the "end of time," or of commanding for ever how the world shall be governed, or who shall govern it; and therefore all such clauses, acts or declarations by which the makers of them attempt to do what they have neither the right nor the power to do, nor the power to execute, are in themselves null and void.
Every age and generation must be as free to act for itself in all cases as the age and generations which preceded it. The vanity and presumption of governing beyond the grave is the most ridiculous and insolent of all tyrannies.”
“The Rights of A Man; Being an Answer to Mr. Burke's Attack on the French Revolution”
Thomas Paine (1737-1809), Founding Father and Father of the American Revolution
The Day of Rage is a series of organized non-violent civil disobedience acts planned to take place on Constitution Day, September 17, 2011. The primary location of the event will be in the financial capital of the United States, Wall Street. However, parallel Day of Rage activities are scheduled to be held in other parts of the country. At the time of writing, Austin, Seattle, San Francisco, Nevada and Los Angeles are among the cities expected to be part of the event.
In addition, similar events are also expected in several other financial/commercial centers around the globe, namely,
The U.S. Day of Rage is geared towards achieving three objectives:
A free and fair election that is untainted by corruption and influence from special-interest groups.
Restoring the United States government to “citizens' control” by overturning the Supreme Court’s decision in the 2009 case between Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, where the Supreme Court ruled "that corporations may spend freely to support or oppose candidates for president and Congress."
Campaign contributions may only be made by citizens and should not exceed a total sum of $1 to any single individual or political organization.
Day of Rage events scheduled in other parts of the world will have their own localized versions of these objectives, although it will be centered on the same universal theme of non-violent protests and assemblies seeking a repudiation of corrupt governments and electoral processes.
The organization of the expansive event is a collaborative and voluntary effort involving numerous individuals and organizations from all over the country. Strong emphasis has been placed on the usage of social-networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter as a medium of communication. Dissemination of the event’s objective, plans, schedules and activities are made through the official site, usdayofrage.org. In an interesting twist, the site is registered under the moniker of ‘Publius Adams’, an obvious homage to the pseudonym used in the Federalist papers by John Adams, among others.
However, the primary architects behind the planned Day of Rage event are Stephen Lerner and Wade Rathke, two of the most respected activists in the country.
Lerner is a former director of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and is credited as the principal organizer of SEIU’s famed Justice for Janitors campaign. Rathke, an author, publisher and a veteran political activist since his student days in Massachusetts in the 60s, is the co-founder of both the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) and Service Employees International Union (SEIU).
The Days of Rage, in the words of Wade Rathke, is "a week of civil disobedience, direct action all over the city." The manner of the ‘disobedience’ remains under wraps, but there is an advisory in the official site as well as numerous flyers for attendees to bring their own tents, which gives us a clue on what to expect.
In the case between the Metropolitan Council, Inc. v. Howard Safir, Commissioner of the New York City Police Department; Henry Stern, Commissioner of the New York City Parks Department; and the City of New York (June 12, 2009; 99 F. Supp. 2d 438; 2000 U.S. District), District Judge Kimba M. Wood ruled,
“… the Court concludes that absent a preliminary injunction, plaintiff will suffer irreparable harm from City actions that are clearly likely to violate the First Amendment… The Court orders defendants not to interfere with this vigil, nor with individuals' participation in it, on account of participants assuming a prone position and/or sleeping…”
In other words, we can expect plenty of tents being erected along the sidewalks of lower Manhattan to house sleeping participants of the Days of Rage.
The term Days of Rage was first used by the leaders of the Weatherman¹ faction² of the Students for a Democratic Society in 1969. The philosophical growth of post-World War II students, combined and enhanced by the myriad socioeconomic, political, and ethical discourses on the issues affecting the nation at the time saw to the escalation of student movement activities in the early 1960s.
The sense of disenfranchisement, the growing concept of a new liberal societal standard and the perception that the government is ignoring the basic ideals of the constitution, all were collectively fueling the simmering sense of discontent in these movements. Matters were brought to a head when charges were filed against the “Chicago Eight” (Rennie Davis, David Dellinger, John Froines, Tom Hayden, Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, Bobby Seale and Lee Weiner) for their role in the controversial protest that took place during the 1968 Democratic National Convention.
The resulting Days of Rage demonstration, held under the banner of “Bring the war home”, took place in a four-block area around Chicago’s Gold Coast neighborhood. It was considered by many to be a failure, and a textbook case of poor planning by an inexperienced leadership. In what ultimately proved to be nothing more than organized vandalism, with some highly publicized altercations and images of helmet-wearing mini-mobs thrown in, the demonstration also turned the tide of public opinion against them and consigned student activism to the fringes of the far left.
In early 2011, the term returned to the mainstream consciousness once again in the wake of the successful student-led overthrow of the Egyptian and Tunisian leadership, and in view of the upcoming September 17 event, promises to remain for the foreseeable future.
¹ the term Weatherman was derived from a line from Bob Dylan’s ‘Subterranean Homesick Blues’ ² The Weatherman faction of the SDS would later evolve into the radical Weather Underground Organization (WUO)
Criticisms on the event, mainly from the right-wing crowd, have been fast and furious. Many among them are convinced that the event is aimed at overthrowing the government, and the perpetrators should be considered as traitors and as such, charged for treason.
Never mind the fact that the majority of them are the very same people who scream blue murder at the mere thought of someone tampering with the Second Amendment; the very same people who argue that citizens have the right to bear arms in the event they need to overthrow a ‘tyrannical government’.
Some have gone a step further by creating a convoluted, intricate and highly elaborate fictionalized account of how all this is part of a greater worldwide socialist conspiracy, hell-bent on usurping the rule of the law and (gasps!) redistributing the wealth of the nation to its people.
A number of these conspiracy crackpots also contend that Stephen Lerner is acting with the full backing of President Obama, citing his four visits to the White House as proof; conveniently ignoring the fact that at no time did he meet Obama during these visits, or that these visits were made in his capacity as an official of SEIU, or that there have been 1.6 million other visitors to the White House, or more tellingly, that the Obama administration is the first to provide visitors records online.
Of course, no left wing conspiracy is complete without the mention of the Cloward-Piven Strategy, regardless of its merits, or the fact if it has anything to do with anything in the first place.
March 19, 2011: Excerpts from former SEIU official, Stephen Lerner, speaking in a closed session forum at Pace University
Partial Transcript:
“So the question would be, what would happen if we could organize homeowners in mass to do a mortgage strike to say, if we get half a million people to agree, it would literally cause a new financial crisis. The four things we could do that could really upset Wall Street.
One is, if city and state and other government entities demanded to renegotiate their debt - because they are paying too much interest, and you might say, why would the banks ever do it? Because cities and counties could say, we won't do business in the future with you if you don't renegotiate the debt now; meaning, without a third of the banks' profit dealing with cities and states. So we could leverage the power we have of government to say we won't do business with you, JP Morgan Chase, anymore, unless you do two things: you reduce the price of our interest and your interest is raised down, and second, you rewrite the mortgages for everybody in the community so they can save their homes. We can make them do that.
The second thing is, there is a whole question in Europe now about (… illegible…) students rates and the question of a debt strike. What would happen if student said, we're not gonna pay? It's a trillion dollars, think about Republicans screaming about debt, a trillion dollars in student debt.
There is a third thing we can think about. What if public union employees instead of just being on the defensive, put on the collective bargaining table when they negotiate, they say we demand as a condition of negotiation, that the government renegotiate? We believe in good financial management. It’s crazy that you're paying too much interest to your buddy the bankers. It’s a strike issue. We will strike - unless you force the banks to relieve the debts of the city.
I'm not gonna go through the details except to say there's extraordinary things we could do, and if you add on top of that, if we really thought about moving to the kind of disruption in Madison, but moving that to Wall Street and moving that to other cities around the country where we basically said, you stole seventeen trillion dollars, you've impoverished us, and we are going to make it impossible for you to operate.”
On September 1st, 2011, the Occupy Wall Street’s Arts Committee did a mock run of the Day of Rage event to gauge the response of law enforcement officials. Nine of the participants were arrested, but no charges were filed, and they were released within 24 hours of their arrest.