We must honor the hard-working men and women everywhere every day. In America, our government no longer values its people. We must stand up for each other against the elites and oligarchs who have bought and sold our legislators, and who are often the authors and architects of our legislation.

"The most powerful corporation becomes helpless when its workers stop working, when its customers refuse to buy its products. The strike, the boycott, the refusal to serve, the ability to paralyze the functioning of a complex social structure -- these remain potent weapons against the most fearsome state or corporate power." 

- Howard Zinn

It is time to stop begging and start demanding.

Online petitions that disappear after signed, incessantly phoning your legislators with no response and no results, even voting every cycle is an example of Americans begging for the cold, leftover table scraps of the elites that we've become so accustomed to.

When you stop buying and consuming, you exercise real power. When you can affect the bottom line of a corporation, or the personal wealth of a gluttonous capitalist like Jeff Bezos, you are hitting the enemy where they live: in their wallets. that is when they  start to pay attention.

When you take to the streets, you create fear, uncertainty and doubt for the puppetmasters and their marionettes.

Those who insist that direct citizen action "doesn't work" must be reminded of our past history. No politician has ever "given" us anything without a fight. Nothing we have achieved as citizens would ever have been successful without those who fought on the streets. Tell them to look up the Civil Rights Movement, the Labor Movement, and the Suffragette Movement for starters.

There is only one reason to take action and one demand necessary. The 2018 midterms broke the bank, costing a record-setting $5.7 billion. How much will be required for the 2020 general election?

It is time for direct citizen action to:

Get the money out of our election and legislative process:

• All elections are funded by the general public, not by corporations or by Wall Street banks.

• We demand an immediate end to our present system of election financing. This means an immediate end to dark money donations from corporations, Wall Street, lobbyists, bundlers and billionaires who then extort our politicians for special favors. We demand an end to Political Action Committees (PACS) and SuperPACS.

• We demand an end to corporate "bundling" where union representatives strong-arm employees to financially back specific candidates. 

• All individual donations are the for the same amount of money whether your last name is Smith or Rockefeller. Candidates themselves may not donate to their own campaign above and beyond this limit. 

We recognize that none of the following can be addressed until the money is out, but here is a broad (but not complete) list of what must be addressed:

• A nationwide uniform system of voting must be established.

• An end to war-for-profit as a business model. 

• An honest government that provides a climate for good jobs, a living wage, health care for all as a right, free public education, and and end to crippling student debt. Social Security and other "earned benefit" (not "entitlement") programs are off limits to cuts, and must be brought into line with cost-of-living realities. 

• A decent living wage. We were talking about $15 as the wage floor prior to 2016. That number's efficacy has come and gone. No good. A new calculation is required, and it must be delivered in a timely fashion. Waiting four years while it is "phased in" is unacceptable.

• An end to the police brutality spreading across the nation and directed at people of color. More importantly, police who abuse their power must be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. We also call for an immediate end to the militarization of our police forces across the nation.

• An economy that serves everyone, not just the top one or two percent. 

• A government that respects the lives, customs and beliefs of Native Americans, and honors treaties signed with them. These treaties are legal and binding, and they do not expire.