**Call to action, Originally posted here**
Occupy Wallstreet stands in solidarity with the calls for a day without the 99%
On May 1st, 2012, we are creating a new kind of holiday – A People’s Holiday – One that’s not just yet another flavor of consumerism, but is explicitly about imagining a world beyond consumerism.
Because our struggles are one.
We are all united: the system that declares unionized workers are bad for business is the same system that decides human beings are a commodity that can be “illegal”. It’s also the same system that causes students to graduate college with so much debt that they must chain themselves to a career in something they despise, rather than pursue their passions. It’s the same system that measures the value of people by what they consume, and that measures the value of artists by how much they sell. It’s the same system that believes you can put a price on a sustainable planet.
It’s a system of people.
It’s a system of us.
This system exists because we participate in it. So the first thing we need to do, to remove the power the system holds over us, is to change ourselves: to withdraw our participation.
We can withdraw, for one day, and begin to enact a new world, together: one of a return to old values, to mutual aid, to community, to hope and aspiration and faith — not in any leaders, but in each other, and ourselves.
(Im)migrants, Students, Workers, The Unemployed, The Underemployed, Mothers, Fathers, Sons, Daughters, Sisters, Brothers, Neighbors, New Yorkers, Comrades, Friends: We are all suffering while the 1% prosper, and if we do not personally feel the strain, we surely have loved ones who do. Whether we are looking for work, facing decreasing hours, braving dangerous working conditions for a paycheck that barely provides the means to survive, returning day after day to the boring jobs that drain our souls and prevent us from seeing our loved ones, collecting debt like a hobby because education, housing, and the cost of life are impossible to afford: it has become clear that the systems of the 1% were not created to support us and are incapable of doing so. Yet these very systems rely on our labor, our skills, and our compliance to function.
The 1% needs us to continue reaping their profits, but WE DON’T NEED THE 1%.
This May Day, Occupy Wall Street, in coalition with numerous other organizations and occupations, calls for a Day Without The 99%: No Work, No School, No Shopping, No Housework, No Compliance. Let’s take the streets, reclaim our communities, and support each other. NOT the 1%.
If you can’t strike call in sick. If you can’t call in sick hold a slow down. We know how to shut it down because we’re the ones that prop it up. If we continue to stand by while the 1% descimates our economy and destabalizes our lives, we will be powerless to challenge the forces that oppress us.
On May 1st, let us stand together to reclaim our jobs, our communities, our lives. Withdraw your consent and strike!
If you throw one stone, it’s a punishable offense. If a thousand stones are thrown, it’s political action
