Rocky Anderson and the Justice Party

when this story first surfaced yesterday, i read it and shrugged... today, i took a closer look...

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here's what the justice party says it's all about...

The Justice Party seeks governing authority at the local, state, Congressional and national levels, beginning in the 2012 election cycle. The Justice Party is being created as a new 21st -century political vehicle to allow all citizens to work together to bring innovative results-oriented, justice-based solutions to the political debate as soon as possible.

Rocky Anderson, the former Mayor of Salt Lake City, Utah, delivered an address explaining why the Justice Party is needed at this critical juncture in U.S. history to rapidly achieve economic, social, and environmental justice.

and more...

Courageous Americans are joining together to create the Justice Party. Our intention is for the Justice Party to serve as a major new political party that will shape American politics in the public interest for decades to come. We seek governing authority at the local, state, Congressional, and national levels, starting in 2012 Election. We believe in the following core principles, namely:

• We are patriots. We believe in the greatness of America’s national ideals. We believe America has an indispensable purpose in the World: to demonstrate, by example, the power of peace, freedom, equal opportunity, and justice for all;
  
• We are dedicated to bringing integrity to the intentions of founding documents of our nation: including the Declaration of Independence, The U.S. Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. We are dedicated to advancing justice, peace, and freedom. America was founded in freedom—freedom to speak, to worship, to choose whatever path to happiness suits us best—but that freedom comes an equal responsibility to country, community, family, and the World.
  
• We believe that justice-based values are what enable a free and just society to regain its strength. These values are: pragmatism tied to principle, honest and integrity, hard work and personal initiative, self-sacrifice and self-discipline, fairness and compassion, competitive striving and fair play, and a desire to serve the nation and advance justice in solidarity with the rest of the World.
  
• We believe that we should measure the nation’s progress by whether every citizen has a fair shot. We believe that all citizens should have the opportunity to advance on the basis of talent and merit, and by the degree to which we promote the common success of all of our citizens. Additionally, we believe that we should measure the nation’s progress towards addressing complex global challenges, including disease, illiteracy, climate change, poverty, and strategic insecurities as central priorities towards advancing America’s moral leadership.
  
• We believe that we should measure a citizen’s worth by contribution to country and community, not by wealth or power—that those whom America has benefited most should contribute in proportion to their good fortune—and that serving others should be esteemed more highly than serving self.

i have to confess... even the mere hint of a viable alternative to our present completely corrupted, dysfunctional two-party system captures my attention...

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The Occupy protesters are acting like citizens, believing they have the power to change things

thoughtful perspective from william greider writing in the nation...

In Occupy Wall Street, we are witnessing a rare event—the birth of a social movement. Ordinary people are engaging in sustained grassroots protest against the political order and against citizens’ exclusion from the decision-making that governs their lives. They seek to rearrange the distribution of power, and they are doing so by injecting a creative, often playful vitality that has been missing in our decayed democracy. The protesters have slipped around the soul-deadening, high-gloss marketing of mass-communication culture. Instead, they insist that politics starts with citizens talking to one another and listening—agreeing and disagreeing with mutual respect. The open-door, non hierarchical membership commits people to engage in what historian Lawrence Goodwyn calls “democratic conversation.”

The Occupy protesters are acting like citizens, believing they have the power to change things. Their ambition reflects a core mystery of American democracy—the fact that humble people can acquire power when they convince themselves they can. Warmhearted and broad-minded, these citizens audaciously claim to speak for the 99 percent—and despite initial ridicule and dismissal of them by much of the press, polls show they have strong public support. The Occupiers have even managed to make uptight reporters write about corporate greed.

[...]

But will it last? Skeptics are entitled to their doubts, but for important reasons I am confident this movement will endure. First, because it is very unlikely the establishment will respond substantively to OWS’s grievances—and that will only make the protesters more determined. OWS has brilliantly focused its many complaints on the very sector—the megabankers and financiers—on whom the politicians are dependent. In different ways, Republicans and Democrats are aligned with the greedheads and are thus unwilling to punish their crimes or cut them down to size.

[...]

In any case, this movement is not about electoral politics—not yet, anyway. It is about saving the country, an objective bigger than politics and politicians. Its vision is nothing less than halting the degradation and fostering the rebirth of the nation’s original democratic promise. It is the nature of authentic movements to seek large and majestic goals that seem impossible to pedestrian politicians—and, at first, to most citizens. Standing up requires both uncommon courage and severe provocation.

[...]

[R]adical reform will originate only from ordinary citizens—not policy experts and their Wall Street supporters, who led the nation into ruin. The movement can inspire the people to become creative citizens again. Are we up to it? Let us find out. Let the democratic conversations begin.

i'm more than happy to bask in greider's optimism... i sincerely hope it's justified...

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