Category Archives: Occupy Elgin

OCCUPY ELGIN, OCT 22, 2016 MAKE THE CLIMATE AN ELECTION ISSUE!

Occupy Elgin will  gather from 1:00 PM till 2:00 PM at the corner of Kimball Street and Grove Avenue in Elgin on Saturday, October 22nd, 2016.  Our message will be a call to make the Climate Crisis an Election Issue.

Below is the text of the flyer we will distribute. Click on the links for documentation and background.
Humans now face the most serious threat we have ever faced.  Climate Change could destroy civilization as we know it. Hurricanes, floods, droughts, and wildfires will increase in intensity and frequency.Species we depend on will go extinct.  Famine , wars, and human migration will increase as people flee for their lives. Just surviving will get quite expensive.
The US Defense Department says that Climate Change is a top threat to national security, a bigger threat than terrorism.
It may already be too late to stop a climate catastrophe.  But if we act immediately and drastically, we could possibly avoid the worst outcomes.
Yet climate is barely mentioned in this campaign season, at the presidential level or even in races for Congress and the Senate.  The candidates, the major political parties, and the media refer to it only briefly and casually.
That’s because the fossil fuel industry and the banks and hedge funds invested in them are  making billions of dollars extracting fossil fuels from the earth.  They don’t want to stop raking in those profits yet. read more

Stop Military Strikes on Libya!

Below is the text of a flyer we will distribute at Occupy Elgin on Saturday, August 13th, 2016 from 1 PM till 2 PM.

There is no military response to terrorism. “ President Obama has said that several times himself. And yet he has recently launched military strikes in Libya in an effort to crush ISIS there.

ISIS is indeed an evil force, terrorizing and abusing the people in the territories it controls in the Middle East. More recently it has organized or inspired evil acts of terrorism within the US and Europe. But some of our allies, especially Saudi Arabia do equally barbaric things. For example, they behead people regularly. Yet we support them wholeheartedly. Our policy is hypocritical. Our own drone wars have killed at least two thousand people including hundreds of innocent civilians and many children over the past ten years. read more

Occupy Elgin for Saturday, April 16th, 2016

Occupy Elgin will meet on Saturday, April 16th at the intersection of Kimball Street and Grove Avenue in Elgin from 1:00 PM till 2:00 PM.    Please join us!

We will hold signs calling for an end to the budget impasse in Springfield.  Below is the text of the flyer we will distribute.

End Illinois Budget Impasse!

The budget impasse in Springfield is causing great suffering throughout Illinois. Services to people with disabilities, people with mental health needs, the elderly, students, and the hungry are being severely cut because Illinois has no money available to pay for these services. . The governor refuses to negotiate with the legislature unless they accept his agenda stripping workers of their collective bargaining rights. read more

Occupy Elgin for Saturday, March 26th, 2016 Choose Love! Oppose Racism!

Occupy Elgin will gather on Saturday, March 26th, 2016 at the corner of Kimball Street and Grove Avenue in Elgin from 1:00 PM till 2:00 PM.  Please join us.  We will hold signs and distribute a flyer with the following text.

Choose Love!   Oppose Racism!

Life has become harder for many Americans in recent decades.  Unscrupulous politicians seize upon our frustration and give us someone to blame.  People of a different race or religion become easy targets, along with refugees  and migrants.

But the forces that make life difficult for White Americans are the very same forces that are driving  refugees to our borders and pushing African-Americans into second-class citizenship. They are the same forces that want to keep us focused on the threat of terrorism and afraid of our Muslim neighbors.  These forces are the multinational corporations and the wealthiest one-percent.  It serves their purposes to keep us divided against one another. That keeps us from noticing that the economic system has been rigged against all of us. read more

Occupy Elgin for December 26th, 2015: Muslims Are Welcome Here!

Occupy Elgin will meet at the intersection of Kimball Street and Grove Avenue at 1:00 PM in Elgin on Saturday, December 26, 2015. For the second  Saturday in a row, we will focus on welcoming Syrian and Muslim refugees to the United States. Below is the text of the flyer we will distribute: Muslims Are Welcome Here! Since the terrorist attacks in Paris and in San Bernardino, there has been a wave of violent words and actions against Muslim-Americans, including beatings, rock-throwing incidents, arson against mosques, etc. Some presidential candidates have exploited the understandable fears of Americans and have indulged in vicious demagoguery. Terrorism and mass killings are evil without question, no matter who commits them, Muslim or Christian, white American or Middle Eastern immigrant. To judge or persecute all Muslims because of the actions of a fraction of one-percent of Muslims is as irrational as to persecute all Christians because of the evil acts of a few Christians. There are 1.6 billion Muslims in the world. They make up a majority of the population in 49 countries spread across the globe. Twelve million Muslims live in the US. Their religion, their Koran, and their culture does NOT promote killing any more than our Bible promotes killing. Fundamentalist Islam is problematic, and so is Fundamentalist Christianity, Fundamentalist Judaism, and Fundamentalist Hinduism. To portray all Muslims as extremists is not only incorrect. It is damaging to the millions of peaceful Muslim-American citizens and damaging to the fabric of our society. To spread this bigotry is irresponsible and dangerous. (Statistics from Pew Research & Wikipedia.) In the late 1930s and during WW II, the US rejected hundreds of thousands of visa applications from Jewish refugees fleeing Hitler. Many of those who were rejected subsequently died in the Holocaust. Anti-Semitism was behind that rejection. These facts are a moral stain on our history. There are clear parallels to the current refugee crisis. If we reject Muslim refugees now, we show that we have learned nothing from past mistakes.

http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2015/11/19/9760060/refugees-history-holocaust read more