Occupy Reality - Transcript
Sunday, November 13, 2011 at 8:52AM People have been asking for a transcript of the little speech I gave at Occupy Wall Street on Wenesday November 9. It amounts to a one-page summary of my book Life Inc. (In other words, if you wonder how any of this could be true, read the book for the full story and documentation. I won't argue it out here.)
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.
Reader Comments (18)
That might be the best 'occupy' movement speech given by anyone since the start of the movement. Certainly the best one I've heard. Well done :)
Very moving speech that succeeds best at telling the truth about how we got here so as to be understood.
which is why the ending doesn't quite come off: entrapped linguistically in the same martial language of the
Old War you lay out so well. We don't occupy: we live. This isn't a battlefield: the cops & corporation rulers want it to be; need it to be. Indeed it is the only language they have mastered. "The ability to define is the ability to destroy, it's taught to every little girl, it's taught to every boy" 'Wilhelm Reich in Hell' - Robert Anton Wilson
Yeah, I meant "battlefield" a bit differently - more the battlefield of mind, or the collective battlefield of illusion. If anything, I was hoping to undermine the war mentality, but I totally see how there is a better way to express that conflict. I've never seen this thing as "protest" and I was continuing that line of thought. But without the greater context of what I've been arguing these past weeks, it does come off as more warlike, indeed.
You intuitively understand in a way that musicians and poets do, that there have to be places for the response. This is a poem, and I dig it immensely.
I learned the power of shaping perceptions & defining a debate's parameters from you. I can't express my gratitude for your work and for making life on this barbaric planet less bleak. I could have quoted you but I didn't want to sound sarcastic: Having spoken in front of an audience in more sedate times it's not my favorite thing. I had the honor of opening the first evening of MAPS' weekend conference to mark the 50th anniversary of LSD. At the time a UC Santa Cruz undergrad, my knees were still knocking despite popping 2 or 4 Xanax, which didn't help my elocution either.
Through the '90s I worked for Robert Anton Wilson as his lecture agent...and in May 1996 organized a talk in L.A. The ulterior motive was paying a visit to Timothy Leary in the middle of his "Mother of all Parties"... what a joyous time! I shall not forget the tearful reunion between those two old rogues. And the next night Tim insisted on attending the talk at Santa Monica's old Phoenix bookstore. Having seen many Bob Anton lectures by then, this was the best. He was brilliant. The presence of Tim in the front row sipping on a big gulp that contained wine mixed with morphine no doubt inspired. I took a photo of them that I'd love to share with you & your readers Doug. and KPFK taped it though I've yet to locate the copy from the Pacifica Archives (which I picture as looking like the warehouse at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark) ...
much love & respect,
Matthew
@matthewbrenner
re: Twitter - This morning I tried 4 times to post "transcript of Douglass @rushkoff 's speech at #OWS 'Occupy Reality' ... a real banger and as smooth as mashed potatoes" w/out success... ea time getting the message: "Your account may not be allowed to perform this action..." Finally I removed #OWS and it went right up. Later on I tried again w the hashtag #OWS and was successful. However it's worth thinking about: why indeed aren't there 200 different twitter alternatives? 500 facebook? A google googles ...
Thanks a lot for this one, Doug. I intend to bring this into the GA of Occupy Amsterdam this evening.
I stumbled upon this post by mistake, looking for a conservative movement called "Occupy Reality" - which by the way, you and your movement do not.
Yes, this is linguistically beautiful speech, but so misled, empty and confused in its motive. I can understand and relate to SOME of what "Occupy Wall Street" is representing ( and that is a very small some, indeed) - but i just wish it wasn't taken so far. It seems to be a bunch of lazy bums who feel they are entitled to free everything.
The only thing that comes free in this world is God's grace...
Becky,
You seem to think, like too many, that #Occupy is about handouts and wanting something for free. It's just the opposite--we're tired of inhumane institutions taking our very lives while subsisting on collusion with the State--our own tax dollars, used against us. I hope you'll investigate more about who we are and what we're building, perhaps by visiting your local occupation, rather than relying on what you read and see in a corporate-owned media that's determined to misrepresent and sensationalize us to maximize their ad revenue.
Doug,
Thank you for this. I'll make sure #OccupyDC sees it.
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Well done. Live without money is really hard but if people can really live without money they are really happy! freelance writer
Don't be too hard on Doug for using martial metaphors; life IS a struggle, and he's in good company with his choice of words: Gandhi said, "Passive resistance is an all-sided sword...Without drawing a drop of blood it produces far-reaching results. It never rusts and cannot be stolen.” He also said: "Non-violence is a weapon of the strong. With the weak, it might easily be hypocrisy." And an admirer of Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., said this: "Nonviolence is a powerful and just weapon, which cuts without wounding and ennobles the man who wields it. It is a sword that heals."
It's less foreign in Eastern thought to view one's opponent not as an enemy, but as providing the force against which one tests oneself. There may come a time when we "live" in our public spaces again; for now, we're forced to occupy them. HOW we do that changes the way we talk about it, not the other way around. Political correctness is the lowest form of communication, and using "wishful thinking" words as statements of reality is the kind of weakness Gandhi warns against.
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That's a really great speech. Is it available in video form?
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To me it sound like you want to go back to the 13th century printing press. Life would by like Zucotti park everywhere. This laptop that I'm typing this with and the Internet it is being posted on wouldn't exist. The Corporations you so despise have brought us the tools of your protest. The media you so despise would be replaced with singers traveling from town to town telling the recent events of the day. Corporations brought all of us the things that make it possible for you to be heard in Zucotti park. I'm offended by the phrase 99% as if all of us are against the 1%. If your protests were about corruption by the Bernie Madoffs of the world I would be more likely to be with you. But what I read here and hear elsewhere is that you want to eliminate them. I don't want to return the the 13th century printing press, Sorry.
Just finished Life Inc. then found this. Really like what you are saying. Last 3 page of the book, classic. PS love the idea that we fill our names as "Author". Thanks.
The point about having to use the king's currency is valid as we have legal tender laws which compel us to accept Federal Reserve notes in payment of debts since 1913. All paper currencies have ultimately failed and ours is on the way to oblivion as well.
The book to read is G. Edward Griffin's book The Creature From Jekyll Island which reviews the history of central banking in America and the efforts of Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson to put an end to the central banks of their day. It tells the tale of the secret origin of the Federal Reserve Act.
There is a wonderful chart on www.chrismartenson.com website which shows that the real cost of living remained flat for many decades during the Nineteenth Century when the country was on a gold standard with no central bank in operation.
Ron Paul arouses passion in his supporters in his efforts to audit and the end the Fed and we have an opportunity to succeed if only enough of us learn of his wisdom and his endeavor to restore limited Constitutional government in our time.
Learn about him. Google Ron Paul super brochure.
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