Occupy Planet Earth: The Great Rising Up

First they ignore you.
Then they laugh at you
Then they fight you.
Then you win.
– Mahatma Gandhi

It’s time. One might even say it’s past time. One might even say it’s long over­due past time. But actu­ally, the time is per­fect. The time is ripe. The time is now.

Something’s hap­pen­ing and it’s hap­pen­ing every­where at the same time. The peo­ple of Planet Earth are ris­ing up. They’re ris­ing up in over 1,500 cities in 82 coun­tries so far. And the ris­ing up has just begun. Some­thing is def­i­nitely afoot.

Peo­ple who are attuned to such things have known this was com­ing. The ancient Mayan cal­en­dar pre­dicted a Great Shift, begin­ning on Dec. 21, 2012. We are barely a year away. Peo­ple are hear­ing the call and the shift­ing has begun.

Human­ity is ris­ing up and throw­ing off the shack­les of oppres­sion, worn for mil­len­nia, across the ages, across the con­ti­nents, across all cul­tures, races and reli­gions. As in the words of Howard Beale, the enig­matic tele­vi­sion anchor­man por­trayed by Peter Finch in the 1976 movie, Net­work, “we’re mad as hell and we’re not going to take it anymore!”

Peter Finch won a posthu­mous Acad­emy Award for his role in the movie, which gar­nered a total of four Oscars in 1977. Here is an excerpt from one of the most famous scenes in the movie. It could have been writ­ten about what’s hap­pen­ing in the world today. Speak­ing is Finch’s char­ac­ter, Howard Beale:

“I don’t have to tell you things are bad. Every­body knows things are bad. It’s a depres­sion. Everybody’s out of work or scared of los­ing their job. The dol­lar buys a nickel’s worth, banks are going bust, shop­keep­ers keep a gun under the counter. Punks are run­ning wild in the street and there’s nobody any­where who seems to know what to do, and there’s no end to it.
We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat, and we sit watch­ing our TV’s while some local news­caster tells us that today we had 15 homi­cides and 63 vio­lent crimes, as if that’s the way it’s sup­posed to be. We know things are bad — worse than bad. They’re crazy. It’s like every­thing every­where is going crazy, so we don’t go out any­more. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we are liv­ing in is get­ting smaller, and all we say is, ‘Please, at least leave us alone in our liv­ing rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radi­als and I won’t say any­thing. Just leave us alone.’

Well, I’m not gonna leave you alone. I want you to get mad! I don’t want you to protest. I don’t want you to riot — I don’t want you to write to your con­gress­man because I wouldn’t know what to tell you to write. I don’t know what to do about the depres­sion and the infla­tion and the Rus­sians and the crime in the street. All I know is that first you’ve got to get mad.

You’ve got to say, ‘I’m a HUMAN BEING, God­damn it! My life has VALUE!’ So I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the win­dow. Open it, and stick your head out, and yell, ‘I’M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I’M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!’ I want you to get up right now, sit up, go to your win­dows, open them and stick your head out and yell, ‘I’m as mad as hell and I’m not going to take this any­more!’ Things have got to change. But first, you’ve gotta get mad!… You’ve got to say, ‘I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this any­more!’ Then we’ll fig­ure out what to do about the depres­sion and the infla­tion and the oil cri­sis. But first get up out of your chairs, open the win­dow, stick your head out, and yell, and say it: ‘I’M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I’M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!’”

Human­ity is mad as hell and we’re not going to take it anymore!

We are wit­ness­ing the birth of a new par­a­digm for mankind, one that is a game-changer for the entire planet. What is unfold­ing before our very eyes, ears, hearts and minds, is the awak­en­ing of our col­lec­tive con­scious­ness. We are becom­ing aware, at a level as never before, of the one truth that con­nects us all.

Will this move­ment suc­ceed when so many oth­ers that have come before it have failed? Only time will tell. But there has never been the kind of global par­tic­i­pa­tion in a sin­gle move­ment like what we’re see­ing today. With 99 per­cent of human­ity united in a sin­gle cause, can change be far behind?

The key word here is unity, for unity is the name of the game. This change is not about fur­ther divid­ing us between rich and poor, have and have nots. The change that is afoot is one that acknowl­edges a larger truth than the one under which we’ve lived through­out his­tory. We are awak­en­ing to the truth of who we are as humans. The time is ripe for this awakening.

We are not sep­a­rate. We rec­og­nize our true nature as that of one­ness. We will no longer allow a sys­tem that divides and con­quers. We will no longer sup­port those sys­tems which keep us in bondage, either phys­i­cally or spir­i­tu­ally. Greed, cor­po­rate or oth­er­wise, is not accept­able. Pil­lag­ing the planet is not accept­able. Big­otry, racism, sex traf­fick­ing, gen­i­tal muti­la­tion and other forms of inhu­mane treat­ment are not accept­able. Hunger and lack of clean drink­ing water are not acceptable.

We are all in this together and we know it. Through tech­nol­ogy that con­nects us in real time all the time, the world has grown small enough for us to see one another in real time. When we saw the Egyp­tians throw off the oppres­sive Mubarak regime in Tarir Square last spring it was a win for human­ity. That win ignited the hearts and minds of oppressed peo­ple through­out the Mid­dle East, send­ing peo­ple to the streets through­out the Arab world, and the Arab Spring was born.

There are those who crit­i­cize the Occupy move­ment for not hav­ing a clearly stated agenda with spe­cific out­comes, or any kind of vis­i­ble lead­er­ship. But those who took to the streets of Berlin on the evening of Nov. 9, 1989, and began tear­ing down the Berlin Wall had no clear lead­er­ship either. There came a moment in time when a crit­i­cal mass of peo­ple were all aligned in the same con­scious­ness and the actions that unfolded in Berlin gave courage to thou­sands across East­ern Europe, who began tear­ing down the walls of tyranny within their own countries.

This move­ment is not about “them.” It’s about “us.” For “we” are all “them.” None of us wins unless all of us wins. It’s that sim­ple. It’s that com­plex. There are those who already know this and they’re the ones in the streets.

But we can’t stop here. The 99 per­cent is incom­plete. We must win the hearts and minds of the 1 per­cent who don’t yet get the mes­sage so 100 per­cent of human­ity crosses the line together.

It will hap­pen. Of this you can be sure. It’s only a mat­ter of time.

What is aris­ing in you in response to the Occupy Wall Street move­ment? Have you taken to the streets? What is your experience?

I’d love to hear your thoughts about this topic. Please feel free to leave a com­ment in the space below or drop me a line at judith@judithrich.com.

Bless­ings on the path.

Tagged as: Howard Beale, mad as hell, Network, Occupy, Occupy movement, Occupy Wall Street, Peter Finch, Rising up