Many in the Occupy Wall Street Movement are upset about corporate personhood.
We in the peace movement are also upset about the same thing, but we also see the relationship of corporations in relationship to our country's never ending occupations of countries around the globe.
Maybe we can get together to pass resolutions across this country that call for our leaders to "Bring Our War Dollars Home."
These occupations are easy money for many of our corporations which stay in the black because of military contracts here and away.
Why do we need such resolutions when these are local government who some think need to keep their noses out of national matters?
Here's why:
We are experiencing an economic collapse locally as well as nationally, exhausting financial resources at all levels.
Local taxpayers have learned that our military budget doubled in the last decade to an amount equal to the military budgets of the rest of the world combined.
More than 50 percent of our federal taxes (or more than 1 trillion dollars annually) goes to military expenditures.
The number of people living in our city at an income below the poverty level is now double our state's average, while children across North Carolina are going to bed hungry, including one out of every six residents of our regions who receive emergency food aid each year.
Our financial resources for education, jobs, medical care, housing and other essential public services and infrastructure repair have been diverted from a constructive economy to destructive wars and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.
The prospects for employment and higher education for our young people are diminishing at a rapid pace, causing them to be targets for military service recruitment, from which they will fight, and some will die or become severely wounded.
The death toll and number of wounded, including those with traumatic brain injuries, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and other mental illnesses have reached unacceptable levels.
Lastly, preparations for and the waging of war and the degradation that remains in the aftermath of war inflicts grievous harm upon the natural environment and diminishes earth's ability to maintain a sustainable environment on which the survival of all life on earth depends.
If our resolution, which raises the points above, is passed, just as the U.S. Council of Mayors, and more recently the Durham City Council passed, we will go on to other counties and municipalities in our state, calling on our national government and President Obama to end these occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan, bringing or war dollars home to meet vital human needs, including those of returning veterans, while promoting peaceful job creation, supporting educational programs, aiding state and local governments in their efforts to develop a new economy based upon renewable energy, and reducing the federal debt while meeting the needs of the people our city and the USA.
Will you join us in this city by city, county by county, district by district, state by state, grassroots effort to put a stop to occupations and corporate greed in this country and elsewhere around the globe?
I hope your answer is yes!