OWS Teach-In with Douglas Rushkoff

My name is Douglas Rushkoff
I am humbled and honored to be amplified by your voices.

You are not fighting against people, but against a machine.
It was put in place over 500 years ago.
By a wealthy elite - trying to repress a booming peer to peer economy.
Those people are all dead, but their program lives on.

They invented an operating system called central currency.
People who used to trade directly,
were now forced to borrow money from the king's bank.
At interest.

The elite also invented software for that operating system.
It was called the chartered monopoly. Today we call it the corporation.

It is a program designed to extract value.
It has legal monopoly over its industries.
We are legally prohibited from creating and exchanging value
unless we do it through the corporation.
We cannot work unless we have a "job."

We outsource our work, we outsource our savings, we outsource our borrowing, we outsource our investing - all instead of sourcing one another.

This 13th Century, printing-press era operating system
is incompatible with a 21st Century economy.
It is broken and dying. But it is still occupying our reality.

Too many are mistaking this operating system - for the way things are.
They see the Occupy Movement as the impediment.
No.
We are not asking for wealth to be redistributed.
We are asking for the redistribution to STOP.

The Long Extraction is Over.

The peer to peer society is back.
We are ready to create and exchange value as people.

They say that the Occupy Movement has no leadership.
They are wrong.
You are the leaders

The rest of us are your followers.
What you do here - shows what we can do out there.

You are the classroom - we are the students

You are the experiment - we are the results.

You are the proposition - we are the resolution.

If you can sleep under tarps
the rest of us can tell your story to our children at bedtime

If you can resist the cops.
The rest of us can resist the market and the mall

If you can live on shared food
The rest of us can buy and grow local crops

If you can live with no money
The rest of us can start using alternative currencies

If you can stand firm in the streets
The rest of us can stand firm in our foreclosed homes
and stand with our neighbors in theirs.

If you can occupy Zucotti Park
The rest of us can occupy reality.

And by that same logic:
As the nights get colder,
as the Mayor grows less tolerant,
or as the police get more violent,

Remember that you have already won.

Whatever happens in this square,
the day you leave is not the day you have lost
it is not the day you have surrendered.

It is the day you have spread out.
It is the day you have declared a bigger battlefield.
It is the day you teachers and we students become the same.

It is the day we Occupy the World.

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• ows
• Teach-In
• rushkoff
• occupy
• nyc
• wallstreet
• 2011

[zezt]

@hfoshgsdgoud ohhh for fucks sake. they dont ALLOW them!! whereve you bin?

[stonem001]

great stuff

[clovislupin]

That human microphone thing is just embarrassing to watch; I basically agree with these people but I cringe watching this foolishness. Do you guys know that having lots of people trying to saying to say the same thing at once just creates a cacaphony that is impossible to understand?

[hfoshgsdgoud]

@ideasaretoys there are things called microphones...and Rushkoff can afford one for sure

[justgivemethetruth]

The more I think about this "OWS Teach In" the more it seems unproductive. Rushkoff is a member of the 1% - Princeton graduate, an academic who has done little but publish books with wild ideas which will never be implemented, but are interesting to read for entertainment. OWS is inherently unstable and can fall towards any number of destructive directions, being overcome with uneducated people is one, but mistaking fun or entertainment for a solution is another.

[justgivemethetruth]

@ideasaretoys

Seems like calling people morons is part of the problem. The repetitive yelling is a pretense of a low-tech solution that makes everyone feel like they are doing something, but just yelling out Rushkoff's commercial for brand recognition and chanting about how the corporations are evil is not scripture, it is opinion, and this mode of communication does not allow for any back and forth or discussion, the result is herding people into wasting time attacking a straw enemy.

[ideasaretoys]

@hfoshgsdgoud it's so everyone there can hear the speaker you moron

[justgivemethetruth]

To me this is just like a Rushkoff commercial for the Rushkoff corporation, and that is OK because he means well is not showing any major signs of corruption or evil, unlike most of our major corporations ... but that does not make what he says right.

[justgivemethetruth]

@justgivemethetruth

I think we need to start from a framework of human rights. If the proper and correct rights are granted to everyone as they should have been from our Constitution, everything else falls out from that. A living wage, health care, education, connection to society, a job, a place to live, and don't forget we all have responsibilities too ... and we would not be in a lot of these problems if our people were proactive and understood their responsibilities to this country.

[justgivemethetruth]

Oh for God sake ... central currency is not the problem. No matter how you frame it is not hardware and software, it is people and their values ... and who they serve and are answerable to. The same money, the same corporations could work if they were managed by human beings instead of crazy corrupt madman. I read two of your books and there are many good ideas, but to say you know the problem and the answer by decree is just wrong and stupid.