A Declaration of Revolution

When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for the people of a nation to seize political and economic power from a privileged minority, and to employ that power for the common benefit of the people of that nation and of all humanity, a decent respect to the opinions of humanity requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the seizure.

We know through scientific study that our political and economic institutions are the common property of all humanity, to be exercised not for the benefit of a privileged few but for the common benefit of all. Our rights and freedoms are not merely noble-sounding abstractions; they must ever be physically built and maintained through the labor of each and every human being. Their benefits, therefore, deservedly accrue to each and every human being. The just powers of not only the government but also the administration of the means by which we secure our sustenance and material prosperity derive from the consent and participation of the people. Whenever the institutions of a society become destructive to those ends it is the right of the people to alter or abolish those institutions and create new institutions to secure not only their liberty and happiness but their sustenance and material prosperity. The institutions of a society, embodying the experience of millions of people over centuries, should not be overturned lightly. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to seize power and create institutions of political and economic governance to secure their own liberty and material prosperity. The history of the Capitalist Class in the United States and the world at large is a history of grievances and usurpations, all having not only the direct object of tyranny and slavery over the masses of humanity. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.

The Capitalist Class and its captive government have created a financial crisis that is impoverishing not only the United States but the entire world.

They have stolen the savings, pensions, and homes of millions, even those who have done nothing contrary to the Capitalist Class's own rules.

They have demanded the labor of future generations only to cure the ills caused by their incompetence, ineptitude and greed.

They have thrown tens of millions of people out of work, and forced hundreds of millions more to work harder and longer only to receive less; not because there is no work to be done but because the work to be done does not accrue to the privilege, power and status of the Capitalist Class.

They have poisoned our air, our land and our water, incontrovertibly the property of all humanity.

They not only threaten the very survival of hundreds of millions of people by the scientifically incontrovertible danger of global warming caused by human industrialism, but dither and prevaricate while a catastrophe may yet be averted or mitigated.

They have kept secret or demanded outrageous ransom for scientific and technical advances, advances that rest on the cultural, intellectual and scientific progress of a hundred generations, incontrovertibly the property of all humanity.

They have pursued wars of aggression, killing thousands of their own citizens and millions of innocent civilians in the countries they have illegally and immorally occupied, devastating city, town and countryside, and usurping their economic and political self-sufficiency and independence.

They have compromised or destroyed outright the political liberties guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States. No longer are the people "secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures."

No longer do the people enjoy freedom of speech. The Capitalist Class controls all speech, lying and concealing the truth to propagate its own privilege, and imprisoning or impoverishing those whose only crime is to speak the truth.

No longer may we peaceably assemble, nor demand a redress of our grievances, but that we must endure the violence and oppression of the police and the hostility of the courts.

They have fomented discrimination and division: racism, sexism, homophobia, discrimination on religion, language and culture, all to weaken the people and turn them against each other instead of their common foe.

They have waged a brutal war of occupation against their own citizens, especially African-American and Hispanic citizens, imprisoning more people, and more people of color, than any other society.

They still seek to deny the most basic human right, the right to control one's own body, to women; they seek no less to enslave half the human race to their reproductive organs.

They have abandoned the physical and economic infrastructure of the nation and the world, allowing to decay its roads, bridges, tunnels, transportation, electric power, water and sewage treatment.

In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms: Our peaceful protests have been answered by brutality, our elections by subversion and corruption.

As a single individual, I do not have the authority or power to go beyond enumerating these grievances; I can only encourage the citizens of the United States and the people of the world to take possession of what is theirs, by natural, scientific and Constitutional right.