Sunday, October 16, 2011

Occupy

The corner of Wall Street and Broadway, showin...Image via WikipediaCongregate. Do not disrupt. This is about getting together, peacefully, amicably, almost in a celebratory way.

This is not about disrupting traffic. This is not about preventing people from going to work. This is not about seeking confrontations with the police.

It has to stay completely nonviolent. It has to become super, duper organized. It has to be sophisticated.

Occupy one public space in each city, each town where people camp out around the clock. If the space's capacity is 1,000 people, stay at 1,000 people. Get people to participate in rotation. So one person might clock in for one 24 hour period to be replaced by another person who signed up to be there.

The occupation can not end until the fundamental fabric of the democracy has been impacted. The goal is one person, one vote democracy. The insane people running the banks on Wall Street threw the bus into the ditch and gave the world the Great Recession. Now they want to go back to their same old ways. That is not an option.

We want a new architecture for global finance. And so the occupation has to continue. It has to grow. It has to grow on all continents. It has to grow from one city to many cities. It has to go to every town, every city. Maybe you are a small town, and your public space will only hold 50 people, and that is okay.

The thing is, we are all connected. The occupation in one town is connected to the occupation in every other town. Each city is connected to every other. This is a global movement, a national movement.

It has to stay nonviolent. It has to stay intelligent. It has to be about the conversation. The mass, public action is about the conversation. For every person camped out at a park, there are 1,000 people and more participating online. That online "occupation" is as real as it gets. These are real people with real opinions, with real challenges, real political weight.

This movement is about roping in more and more people into the conversation.

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Imran Khan


I got to see Imran Khan in person Friday evening. He showed up at the Columbia Journalism School. This dude is to Pakistan what Amitabh Bachchan is to India. You don't find personalities like Amitabh and Imran in countries like England and America. You don't find this one person that dominates the imagination of an entire country, and big ones too.
Amitabh BachchanImage via Wikipedia
Happy Birthday Amitabh

This guy Imran is the next Prime Minister of Pakistan and I think he is going to be a good one, and I speak as a fairly political person. I was Barack Obama's first full time volunteer in New York City.

I asked him. App to cricket ke samrat rah chucke log hai. You have been the emperor of cricket. Ab aap rajniti mein hain. Now you are in politics. Rajniti mein samrat hone ka arth hota hai Prime Minister banna. To be emperor in politics means to be Prime Minister. To aap Prime Minister kab ban rahe hain? So when are you going to become Prime Minister?

"Agle election ke baad, Insa-allah!" he said. After the next election, God willing.