Written by Charles   

A frequent criticism and effort to debunk the Occupy movement was phrased as "They don't know what they want..." This criticism was enabled by the spontaneity of the movement and its action oriented direction rather than a thoughtful, scholarly deliberation of what was needed. And the criticism was unwarranted. The Occupy participates knew what they wanted; it was just expressed in 1000s of voices and in 1000s of ways. But the fact remains, there is a need for an Occupy manifesto, a concise statement of why changes are needed and what changes are needed. Such a document needs to be placed before Occupiers for their consideration, for discussion, for editing, for throwing out the window and starting again but in any case the process needs to be started. With that objective in mind I have written down a basic manifesto that I believe reflects the feelings expressed by the Occupy movement and a list of actions needed, in my judgment, to redress and remedy the system problems that caused the pain that motivated the Occupy movement.
The "system" that caused the economic implosion that resulted in formation of Occupy is sophisticated, complex, has many "players" and has a very long history; a history filled with events such as we have just seen, citizen uprisings similar to Occupy and filled with the same stand offs between the people, the 99%, and the benefactors / "movers and shakers", the 1%, who are invested in the status quo. There are as many view points of this complex system as there are viewers. But there is a tap root and it has been identified and debated before. The tap root is the monetary system itself. It has been debated over the years in many terms; gold v silver, specie v paper currency, central banks v distributed banks. The debates have been very emotional and the issues involve truly enormous robes of power and wealth. The bottom line is the economic well being and living standard of average people, the 99%, v the power, wealth and privileges of a select few, the 1%. Neither side has always won but the 1% has always fought hard and relentlessly to hold their positions of power, wealth and privilege. The most common error on the average person side is failure to understand the enormity of the issue to the select few. For an average person, the 99%, the issue is about an improvement in their quality of life, important but not earth shaking. To the 1% it is an issue of a total change in status, in power and source of wealth. It is more of a "life or death" struggle for the 1%. The struggle is important to the 99% but it is orders of magnitude more important to the 1% and that fact needs to be fully understood.
But times change. This is not the bank collapses and bank runs of 1907 that precipitated the creation of the Federal Reserve nor the stock market crash of 1929 that preceded the Great Depression of the '30s. The big change is communications, both speed and the massiveness of content, and education. The 99% has a much better grasp in this era of the issues than they had in '29 and '07. The improvements in communications is a tool that can and will be wielded by both the 99% and the 1%. The improved education and grasp of the issues by the 99% is the unique advantage of Occupy this time around.
Occupy has two additional advantages too. First, the iconic member identification name, 99% and 1%, is a very powerful tool in and of itself. It is a strong rallying cry and will give pause to many and make them think about which group is "their" group. Another advantage lies in the domain of professional economists and honest politicians. It is the BRIC nations, often referenced in the media, having robust economies during this period and all employing alternative monetary systems, not the conventional privately operated, central bank model. Brazil, Russia, India and China are showing the world what can be done by departing from the Bank of England monetary system model.

The manifesto will be posted under the title "Occupy Wall Street: A Manifesto." The actions called for in the document are a total change in the nations monetary system. Many background thoughts have been posted in a document under the title "The Notion of Money". Another document entitled "The Occupy Manifesto: A Discussion" will be posted explaining details and significance of the actions listed in the manifesto.
Charles Layne