This document was accepted by the NYC General Assembly on September 29, 2011, with minor updates made on October 1, 2011. It is the first official, collective statement of the protesters in Zuccotti Park.

As we gather together in solidarity to express a feeling of mass injustice, we must not lose sight of what brought us together. We write so that all people who feel wronged by the corporate forces of the world can know that we are your allies.

I feel as though I’ve been wrenched from the light of the world and exiled to the heart of darkness.

My friends, I just want to let you all know that we’ll not be able to stay as connected as we’ve been during the last seven weeks of my ongoing indefinite hunger strike against Harper’s cruel new crime law, the Safe Streets and Communities Act (Bill C10). I owe Ottawa Hydro and they disconnected my hydro service earlier today.  (For those unfamiliar with the term “hydro”, it’s what you’d call “electricity”.)

So far, being connected and communicating with you all via Facebook, Twitter, email and my blog had been a pillar of my coping strategy. Now I’ll have no internet access. I’ll not be able to update my blog as regularly as I should. And, needless to say, my apartment will be in the dark most of the time. (Well, what are candles for, right!) I can’t say when the service will be restored. I don’t have the more than $250 I owe them.

I just received an invite from an activist friend to attend the Ottawa launch of Judy Rebick new book on the Occupy movement and solidarity-building, Occupy This! The book excites the activist in me already, even before I’ve read it. Excites me because of… the author.

Rebick is a Canadian journalist, political activist, and feminist. She’s the Eakin Fellow at the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada. She is the founding publisher of Canada’s irreverent web magazine rabble.ca, author of Transforming Power, and a regular on CBC Radio Q’s media panel.

The launch takes place Wednesday, April 18, at 7pm, at the Ottawa Friends Meeting House. 91A Fourth Avenue (just east of Bank St)