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99 Percent Declaration
Website logo and Washington State Route 99 road sign
Created	October 7, 2011
Ratified	October 15, 2011
Location	the99declaration.org
Author(s)	Occupy Wall Street Demands Working Group
Purpose	To convene a national general assembly to petition for the redress of twenty suggested grievances and amend the United States Constitution

The 99 Percent Declaration is a political document including a list of suggested grievances on which Occupy Wall Street organizers have been trying to get Occupy movement protesters to vote. It calls for a United States General Assembly on July 4, 2012 in Philadelphia to support public works programs, tax hikes on the wealthiest, debt forgiveness, ways to get money out of politics, and amendment of the U.S. Constitution. The Declaration says the Assembly would operate like the Committees of Correspondence of the Founding Fathers of the United States who met in Philadelphia.

Background

On October 15, 2011, a The Working Group on the 99% Declaration published the Declaration of demands, goals, and solutions. However, according to Huffington Post blogger Tyler Kingkade, an email sent to him by a person involved in the NYCGA or the Demands Working Group said that New York City General Assembly official statements are agreed upon by consensus-based general assemblies, while another protester indicated that not all participants agree with issuing demands. The email added, "This matter was not submitted or agreed upon by the NYC general assembly, and therefore by-passed the process all OWS plans have been made through."

David Haack introduced a proposal outlining demands during the early planning stages of the Occupy Wall Street protests, but they were was struck down in late August. He discovered a "goals" working group and hoped that common ground could be found. Shawn Redding and others formed the working group in early October to establish specific actions they would use to formally ask federal, as well as local government to adopt. Due to the nature of the movement, that has been difficult in New York and other locations.

On October 31, 2011 the 99% Working Group on the 99% Declaration disappeared from the New York City General Assembly website. The group was deleted by "Stan Ford" a/k/a "TheStormKrow." Later that evening a member of the group began making disparaging remarks about the site administration team and the movement overall. The server logs show the group was deleted unilaterally by "Stan Ford". The Official NYC GA website, "Site News" stated that administrators of groups have the ability to delete their own group at any time and "This story gets especially intriguing, though, when the other group admin decided to blame the movement". According to political commentator, Taylor Marsh: "he one thing I’ve seen at OWS, the “working group” isn’t mentioned by name." She goes on to mention postings from OWS and "hat seems to indicate the issuers of the Declaration are not directly tied to OWS.

The Position of the Founder of the #OWS Working Group on the 99% Declaration

My name is Michael Pollok and I am the person who wrote the first drafts of the 99% Declaration now found at www.the99declaration.org. Most of what is in this article is false. I am a criminal defense attorney who became involved in #OWS when I began representing a number of students who were arrested on the Brooklyn Bridge. After meeting with these students, giving a talk at their college and discussing what issues mattered to them, I wrote the 99% Declaration.

On October 15, 2011 I appeared before the New York City General Assembly and addressed the General Assembly for over five minutes. During that time, I described the formation of the Working Group on the 99% Declaration and our purpose which is to organize an election of 870 delegates to a National General Assembly to draft a petition for a redress of grievances. This petition shall be served on all three branches of the United States government. I received a warm reception and held a two hour meeting following the General Assembly. Interestingly, all of the speakers before the NYCGA on October 15, 2011 appear in the minutes but my five minute statement does not appear. My ENTIRE appearance and all mentions of me and the Working Group on the 99% Declaration were excised from the minutes by the facilitators because one or more of them disagreed with our point of view.

I wish to emphasize that I carefully followed all of the procedures to start an #OWS Working Group and appeared before the General Assembly on October 15, 2011 at 7:45pm to announce the formation of the Working Group and its first meeting in Liberty Park that night. Since that announcement to the General Assembly on October 15th, the working group has moved to Facebook http://www.facebook.com/www.the99declaration.org and currently has over 2300 members working on the document and the effort to organize an election of delegates to a National General Assembly. The 99% Declaration webpage www.the99declaration.org, has had more than 173,000 hits since October 18th. The 99% declaration has been edited several times by using polls on the Facebook page and a yahoo site so anyone can propose edits and substantive changes to be approved by majority vote.

From the very inception of the new NYCGA webpage the Working Group on the 99% Declaration appeared and grew. In fact, we were one of the first groups to appear on the new NYCGA website. Our group on that page was NOT set up by me or anyone else connected to the 99% Declaration Working Group. Instead it was started by Drew of the Internet Working Group and the admins "Stan Ford" and Brad l/n/u were the admins who exercised sole control. I NEVER had any admin control over that group so the statements in this article are simply false and designed to coverup for the oligarchic tactics used by the NYCGA. I did criticize the NYCGA because this working group was taken down unilaterally by one person: "Stan Ford" who had nothing to do with the 99% Working Group.

I have requested assistance form the #OWS mediation group to have the 99% Declaration Working Group restored to the NYCGA official site but my requests have been ignored. It is clearer to me than ever, that the NYCGA operates like the very oligarchies they claim to challenge. -Michael Pollok, Esq. 11-3-11, 9:38 p.m.

Further reading

• Berg, A.G. and Ostry, J.D. (September 2011) "Equality and Efficiency" Finance and Development (Washington, D.C.: International Monetary Fund)
• Udall, T. (November 1, 2011) "A Constitutional Amendment to Reform Campaign Finance" 112th Congress, 1st Session (Washington, D.C.: United States Senate)
• Lefcourt, D. (October 21, 2011) "The Essence of the Occupy Movement, 'Redress of Grievances'" Op-ed news
• Benn, J. (October 2, 2011) "Occupy protestors make demands in The99Declaration" Rocky Mountain Collegian
• Moore, T. (October 25, 2011) "The Populist's Dilemma" Cornell Sun

References

1. "The 99 Percent Declaration" the99declaration.org
2. ^ Kingkade, T. (October 18, 2011) "Occupy Wall Street Protesters Propose A National Convention, Release Potential Demands" Huffington Post. Retrieved 20 October 2011
3. ^ Duda, C. (October 19, 2011) "Occupy Wall Street Protesters Call for National General Assembly, Put Forward Possible Demands" Juvenile Justice Information Exchange
4. ^ Walsh, J. (October 20, 2011) "Do we know what OWS wants yet?" Salon
5. Kennedy, A.L. (October 22, 2011) "Protesters Plan to Occupy Williamsburg" Williamsburg Yorktown Daily
6. ^ Haack, D. (October 24, 2011) "How the Occupy movement won me over" The Guardian
7. Dunn, M. (October 19, 2011) "‘Occupy’ May Hold National Assembly In Philadelphia" CBS Philadelphia
8. Elisabeth Jacobs, “Not So Demanding: Why Occupy Wall Street Need Not Make Demands (Yet)”, The Brookings Institute, November 3, 2011
9. "Protesters Debate What Demands, if Any, to Make". The New York Times. Retrieved 11-3-11. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)
10. "The NYCGA-True Hollywood Story: The 99Declaration Group, an Exposé". New York City General Assembly Official Website. Retrieved 11-3-11. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)
11. ""The 99 Percent Declaration" from "An OWS Working Group"". TaylorMarsh.com. Retrieved 11-3-11. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)

External links

• Website (also www.the99declaration.org)
• Facebook
• Video describing the making of the document
• CBS Philadelphia tag
• Equality Trust

• 2011 in politics
• Human rights in the United States
• Human rights instruments
• Politics of New York
• Politics of Pennsylvania
• Political plans in the United States