Greetings and salutations, I come from Menlo Park, California and am a member of the Unitarian Universalists of Palo Alto (UUCPA). I am also an ardent member of the Occupy movement, and have been since its inception in the Bay Area. Through it, I have seen that the justice sought by occupiers in this country and those that struggle against totalitarianism, austerity, and environmental degradation are one and the same. There is no righteous creed, just many voices coming together to a universal conclusion- that people should be free to live and prosper, that nature should be respected as our keeper and what sustains s, and that governments that murder their own people and trample of their natural rights need not exist forever.

In the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson wrote that

“But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.” (paragraph 2)

This is known as the “right to revolution” and is a fundamental concept behind how the United States came to be, and the idea espoused by organizations such as the United Nations that self-determination and “by virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development.” (UN Covenant on Civil and Political Rights; Part 1, Article 1, section 1)

The right to revolution is the means by which self-determination is achieved- when despotism rules over a people their right to choose their government is never at doubt. It is inherent in the dignity of all of humankind. There is to be no ambiguity that as Theodore Parker said, and Martin Luther King Jr. famously echoed, that the arc of the moral universe bends towards justice. People do not accept slavery and servitude, they fight it every day through their actions. The people, nature itself, and the governments constructed among it may jostle and appear to slide into darkness- but let it be known that humankind recognizes its value and refuses to let the cause of justice slip out of its fingers.

So let us create a heaven on Earth. Let us call all people in the world into a covenant not of religious creed, but of a conclusion and agreement that justice is the goal of all people- no matter what they believe. And let us bend the curve of the moral universe towards justice with our own hands and our own personal willpower. Because injustice is not permanent. It is the ultimate obstacle that we all must face, and in time will conquer.

March 30th, 2012

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