Occupied Stories is a platform for first-person news from within the occupy movement. It creates a space to amplify the voices on the streets and witnesses to news events so that we can learn about what is happening across the occupy movement directly from the people who are living it. Visit the site to share your story and read what’s happening in other cities. www.occupiedstories.com
AZ Nurse Amanda Trujillo was not only disrespected for her routine patient education and advocacy, she was also fired and her license has been in limbo for a year now. Her education led a patient to seek information regarding hospice, at a potential cost to her employer (Banner Health) of hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue. The Board of Nursing considering Banner’s complaint against Amanda includes at least three members who work for Banner Health.
In response to this corruption and the attack on Nurses’ ability to advocate and educate patients free of retaliation, we have put up a Change.org petition to boycott Arizona until we see some BON changes – please check it out & help us spread the word, next Hearing is 3/19 and AZBON reauthorization is still in the Legislature – we’re running out of time on this unusually opportune time for positive change.
and/or
Thanks,
Greg Mercer, MSN
Thanks, and I hope all is well with you!
The Occupation does not need Demands.
The strength of this movement is it’s passion. It appeals to the deep seeded feeling that somewhere on our collective journey humanity took a wrong turn, and now is the time to correct our mistake. No one knows exactly which way to go, but we all agree it has to be different than the way we’re heading. To find a future that benefits all of us we must talk, debate, and reason with one another. Our knowledge, like our power, is much greater collectively than individually. Our future needs a forum, a hearth for citizens to gather around and share ideas. Occupy Wall St is that forum.
What cannot happen is a goal or date that, once met, will dissolve the movement. Even if we achieve everything we could hope for, OWS should remain as a reminder and warning of what can happen when we let politicians, lobbyists, and TV personalities do the talking for us. Creating a list of demands will be the beginning of the end. Demands can be marginalized, appeased, and brushed aside. Demands can be twisted and used to demonize and divide us. What can’t be marginalized or misconstrued is a citizenry in the streets demanding our government act in our best interest and that when it does not we will hold those in power accountable instead of looking the other way for the sake of convenience or lack of a viable alternative.
Occupy Wall Street needs to become a place of great discussion and learning, a think tank of the people, by the people, and for the people. From this can grow limitless ideas and movements to tackle the many individual problems facing our country and our world, movements that can set specific goals and demands then disband when they are achieved. In this way we can achieve tangible results without forfeiting our reasons to assemble. Occupy Wall St can be a driving force for an American re-catalyzation, a paradigm shift in our world view.
This movement is not about taxes, healthcare, inequality, the economy, education, corporate power or the police state, though these are all part of it. This movement is about we the people and the society we choose to create. Too long have we passively accepted what has been given to us as the cultural ‘norm’. We know that the ‘norm’ is a distortion, a world where our financial and environmental misconduct have no consequences, production and product are unrelated, and politics is a spectator sport. In silence we’ve allowed these injustices to fester and grow into the great societal sins of our age, believing the propaganda that we are too small and too weak to change the system. This, as the worldwide Occupation has shown, is false. There are billions of people ready to fight for change if we raise our voice above the din.