Introduction to a book a have been working off and on since early 2012.

Does anything matter anymore? Tens of thousands gather together to say they are fed up with the treatment of the people by the government and we barely even hear about it except to create disinformation about what is going on. Why should we continue to try and gather for a redress of grievances if "our" government clearly does not want to let that happen? We now know that the FBI worked with DHS and other government agencies and local municipalities to organize a crackdown on local occupy movement groups around the country. Why? The only reason would be that the government knows the occupy movement is correct, that we have attained levels of corruption that surpass the oppressive regime we fought against over 200 years ago. No taxation without representation was the call then and today we again face that same thing. "We the people" were upset with all our taxes being taken away from us and given to the royal family. Today we have new leaders, the 1% as occupy likes to call them, but they rule us today the same as the British royal family ruled us then.

If next to nothing has changed over this time then we need to examine why. The truth is things have changed but then they went back. We must look at both how and why this happened. In 1776 we as a people decided enough was enough. We looked beyond left right divided and realized the truth, that every man woman and child were treated as less then slaves of the royal family. We were no more then cattle to them. Today, despite all the efforts of the founding fathers, we are right back to being cattle. What went wrong? Many things happened starting with making too many deals. The declaration of independence, written in June of 1776 by Thomas Jefferson, paints a very different version of what the founding fathers imagined then the constitution and the bill of rights when they were written from 1787 to 1789. During those years something happened, part of finding out what happened is looking at who signed those two documents, and who didn't. We all look at Jefferson as a founding father yet he never signed the constitution as it went against nearly everything he stood for. While the Declaration of Independence states that "all men are created equal" the constitution counted 5 slaves as 3 people for districting and limited voting rights to only landowners until the 1830's. "Life liberty and the pursuit of happiness" the Declaration of Independence. "Inalienable rights" the Declaration. Just about everything we think this country stands for comes from the Declaration of Independence, a Document that has nothing to do with the system of government we now have. So we can see that within those few years we had already lost much of what we think this country was founded on.

Jefferson and many of the other founding fathers wanted a federal government that only oversaw the interactions of the different states. This can be seen in the articles of confederation, the system of government we had in this country from 1774 until 1789. The first true president of this country was Peyton Randolph in 1774. George Washington called the president of the continental congress "the most important office in this country." After Peyton Randolph there were another 14 Presidents of the continental congress until we got rid of the articles of confederation and replaced them with the constitution. So why then do the history books not talk about this early government? Why are they hidden away from us? What do they not want us to know? The most important thing to know is that war is not cheap. Even the guerrilla war waged by the minutemen cost quite a bit and since it was a war against taxes there was no easy way to fund it. Much of the funding came from France who were at odds with the British but still wealthy citizens of the Americas needed to be brought on board so many changes were made to keep them happy. While the Declaration held that there should be a small government of the people based on Jeffersonian Republicanism, the constitution pushed for a larger government based of Alexander Hamilton's federalist papers. A government where we would replace the British crown with a new ruling class, the richest of those who lived in the "new world."

We have to admit that without the funding of these richest early Americans the war might not have gone on very long, but to give up on the system of government set forth in the articles of confederation was to give up on the very thing these revolutionary soldiers were fighting for. Truth, Liberty, and Freedom were to be replaced by Lies, Injustice, and Slavery. Were it not for early Republicans who fought for the Bill of Rights this country would have failed from the start. However much of those rights were assumed to be quite easy to interpret, yet have proved to be open to much changes of intent. Let’s look at the 2nd Amendment. The promise of an armed militia was to keep our own government honest. "A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." What is important to see here is the term "free state," that a militia, not an army, is required for freedom. How did the revolutionary militia differ from an army? The militias were true direct democracy in action. Leaders were elected by those who served in them and decisions were put to a vote. There was no requirement to serve, no prison time for deserters, and as such those who fought and died for their country had to feel as if they were a part of the unit, not a servant to their officers. Today's armed forces would fall to pieces if there was no requirement to serve once enlistment papers were signed. Would an openly run, democratic military be facing a suicide every day? Not likely as soldiers would not be forced to do things they do not agree with. Today's armed service men and women are forced into killing innocent civilians and trained to not feel guilty if they do kill someone just because of an itchy trigger finger. If soldiers were able to vote out commanding officers whose orders they disagreed with then most CO's would be gone. Those who joined the militias were made a part of the governing of this countries defense and they were armed with the best technology of the era.

Today gun ownership is relegated to sport weapons. If there was ever an armed revolt it would be put down by the very military that has sworn an oath to protect the rights it would suppress. Say that today, Texas decided to leave the union. That they would no longer be a part of the United States because it had grown in corruption to the point of citizens interests no longer being represented and had formed a new local government that did not recognize U.S. rule. The military would be called in and they would disarm or kill everyone who stood for "no taxation without representation" The very militias the second amendment protects are now listed as terrorist organizations by the FBI. However for a peoples militia to protect the values of this country it would have to have weapons of equal power to the governments military. I'm sure there are few who would argue that we should arm the people with stinger missiles but with bans on assault weapons being proposed we are seeing the one thing the people had left to protect themselves being taken from them.

The loss of the second amendment was gradual, just like the other losses we have suffered. They have swung back and forth many times but eventually we have lost everything this country was founded on. One great example is the civil war. In modern times we look at the civil war as being fought to end slavery but there are two main things to look at. One, was forcing the end of slavery before it naturally was unable to compete and failed on its own the cause of over 100 years of bigotry and racism? And two, did the loss of the States rights to govern themselves hurt us more than freeing the slaves helped? Today we are the leading the global race to lock our population up in a for profit prison system. A disproportionate ratio of the prison population is Black and the leading cause of incarceration is drug related. States efforts to regulate and decriminalize drug use are fought on the federal level and the very loss of States rights that were fought over during the civil war now keeps tens of thousands as slaves of the prison industrial complex.

From the cattle and railroad barons of the old west to the factory owners in the late 1800's things continued to get worse until we had the biggest income divide this country had ever seen. The pendulum finally swung back to the working class and the labor movement was born but from the beginning there was a divide in the labor movement. On one side you had the mainstream trade unions today represented mainly by the AFL-CIO and on the other side you had the radial industrial unions survived in the U.S. by only the IWW but elsewhere in the world many anarcho-syndicalist and socialist unions still thrive. Unfortunately first the tactics used were demonized by the Taft Hartley act then the very activists and organizers who were still active were vilified by McCarthyism until those battles won by the radicals are the few concessions still seen today. The fight for the 8 hour work day directly led to the haymarket massacre and the execution of 7 Anarchist union leaders for nothing beyond political ideology. Today we are seeing the return of many of the tactics used by radical unions in the early 20th century. 500,000 gathered in the Wisconsin capital chanting general strike during 2010 and the first general strike in over 60 years took place in Oakland California in October 2011. The IWW is the strongest it has been in decades and worldwide radical unions old and new are gaining support.

In the following chapters we will look in detail at both what has gone on in the past as well as what is going on now, how we are still fighting the same battles that the founding fathers waged and how we can learn from the mistakes of the past. We will look at the pendulum of the left right political spectrum that has been used to keep us enslaved and why we must break that system now and move beyond this false ideological divide and unite the working class to take back this country. In particular we will look at the two largest populist movements on the century, the Tea Party and the Occupy Movement, how they differ and how they are the same.