Like new-born hearts, beating and radiating from many locations and in all directions, these people now gathering in city after city are the first brave souls to stand up. That is how this revolution begins. No violence. No retribution. Just a decision to walk off the field of a soul-numbing consumer society, and move to a new one, as proud citizens, ready to once again shape the laws and customs of this great land.

Below Gideon’s contribution, one by Lawrence Lessig on the same theme.

1. Excerpted from Gideon Rosenblatt:

“Many have drawn superficial comparisons to the Tea Party, calling the Occupy Movement the “Tea Party of the Left.” I disagree strongly with this kind of framing, because it obscures more than it reveals about what is actually going on here, both in what this movement represents and how it is actually organizing itself.

With that said, however, I do believe there are two similarities worth noting.

The first similarity between the Tea Party and the Occupy Movement is that both provide an easy-to-understand frame to explain why so many people in this country are struggling so badly right now. For the Tea Party, that frame is big government as the problem. For the Occupy Movement, that frame is the concentration of wealth and its corruptive influence on business and government.

There are also real cultural differences between Tea Partiers and Occupiers that make it extremely unlikely they will ever join forces, and on the surface, their frames couldn’t appear to be more different. Dig a little deeper though, and it’s entirely possible that the Occupy frame could actually subsume the Tea Party frame. All that needs to happen is for Tea Partiers to make the connection between the concentration of wealth and its take over of America’s democratic institutions. Again, these two forces are unlikely to ever join forces, but if this link is made, the already strong anti-elitist and anti-corporate element of the Tea Party’s grassroots will suddenly have a new target for their anti-government rhetoric.

The second way in which the Occupy Movement is similar to the Tea Party is that it is a source of inspiration for others with similar views. Again, it’s still early in the Occupy Movement, but in my view, it already seems to be giving others the courage to stick their necks out. That might mean actually joining in on the demonstrations or supporting them in other ways, or even just having the courage to send stories about the Occupy Movement to your social networks.

Whatever form it takes, I believe this group of brave people holding the center is what makes it feel safer for the rest of us to begin asking hard questions – and that… that, is the real purpose of these protests.

Like new-born hearts, beating and radiating from many locations and in all directions, these people now gathering in city after city are the first brave souls to stand up. That is how this revolution begins. No violence. No retribution. Just a decision to walk off the field of a soul-numbing consumer society, and move to a new one, as proud citizens, ready to once again shape the laws and customs of this great land.

So here is to the ninety-nine percenters – the ones who have already taken their courageous first stands, and the ones now about to stand up. God bless you all.”

2. Excerpted from Lawrence Lessig:

“We should practice “non-contradiction,” not because we have no differences with the Right. We do. We on the Left, we Liberals, or as some prefer, we Progressives, have fundamental differences with people on the Right. Our vision of that “shining city on the hill” is different from theirs. Our hopes for “We, the People,” are more aspirational. More egalitarian. More ideal.

But even though our substantive views are different, we should recognize that we have not yet convinced a majority of America of at least some of our fundamental views. And that in a democracy, no faction has the right to hold a nation hostage to its extreme views, whether right or not. We should fight in the political system to win support for our Liberal views. But we should reject the idea that protest, or violence, or blackmail are legitimate political techniques for advancing views that have not yet prevailed in a democratic system.

Instead, we should use the energy and anger of this extraordinary movement to find the common ground that would justify this revolution for all Americans, and not just us. And when we find that common ground, we should scream it, and yell it, and chant it, again, and again, and again.

For there is a common ground between the anger of the Left and the anger of the Right: That common ground is a political system that does not work. A government that is not responsive, or — in the words of the Framers, the favorite source of insight for our brothers on the Right — a government that is not, as Federalist 52 puts it, “dependent upon the People alone.”

Because this government is not dependent upon “the People alone.” This government is dependent upon the Funders of campaigns. 1% of America funds almost 99% of the cost of political campaigns in America. Is it therefore any surprise that the government is responsive first to the needs of that 1%, and not to the 99%?

This government, we must chant, is corrupt. We can say that clearly and loudly from the Left. They can say that clearly and loudly from the Right. And we then must teach America that this corruption is the core problem — it is the root problem — that we as Americans must be fighting.

There could be no better place to name that root than on Wall Street, New York. For no place in America better symbolizes the sickness that is our government than Wall Street, New York. For it is there that the largest amount of campaign cash of any industry in America was collected; and it was there that that campaign cash was used to buy the policies that created “too big to fail”; and it was there that that campaign cash was used to buy the get-out-of-jail free card, which Obama and the Congress have now given to Wall Street in the form of a promise of no real regulatory change, and an assurance of “forgiveness.”

“Forgiveness” — not of the mortgages that are now underwater. The foreclosures against them continue. “Forgiveness” — not even of the sins now confessed by Wall Street bankers, for our President has instructed us, no crimes were committed. “Forgiveness” — just enough to allow candidates once again to race to Wall Street to beg for the funds they need to finance their campaigns. The dinner parties continue. The afternoons at the golf course are the same. It’s not personal. It’s just business. It is the business of government corrupted.

There is no liberal, or libertarian, or conservative who should defend these policies. There is no liberal, or libertarian, or conservative who should defend this corruption. The single problem we all should be able to agree about is a political system that has lost is moral foundation: For no American went to war to defend a democracy “dependent upon the Funders alone.” No mother sacrificed her son or daughter to the cause of a system that effectively allows the law to be sold to the highest bidder.

We are Americans, all of us, whether citizens or not. We are Americans, all of us, because we all believe in the ideal of a government responsive to “the People alone.” And we all, as Americans, regardless of the diversity of our views, need to stand on this common ground and shout as loudly as we can: End this corruption now. Get the money out of government. Or at least get the special interest money out of government. And put back in its place a government dependent upon, and responsive too, the people. Alone.”