MoveOn responds to petition to stop

Several days ago I signed a petition to request that MoveOn.org stop trying to co-opt the Occupy movement.

I believe that many members of MoveOn support the movement and they are, after all, part of the 99%  -- however -- they should not be allowed to take over the movement, exert themselves as spokespersons or use it to promote the re-election of Barack Obama. MoveOn's job is to report the news and create petitions to fight the injustices that exist.

Below is a message from MoveOn.org in response to the petition “MoveOn, please stop.” 

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Hi there,

I received the petition you signed regarding MoveOn's stance toward Occupy Wall Street and wanted to respond. We've been in lots of conversations lately about this, and we take your concerns very seriously -- so I wanted to take a minute to share our thinking. We have and will continue to give a lot of thought to the best way to stand in solidarity with this growing movement while being clear that we are not Occupy Wall Street, and have no desire to direct, control, or speak for it.

MoveOn is a grassroots organization with five million members. In the past few weeks, our members overwhelmingly expressed support for Occupy Wall Street and encouraged us to do whatever we can to help Occupy continue to grow, spread, and succeed. That's been our mandate: to help our members help wherever they can. 

Many individual MoveOn members have chosen to join their local occupation. Others have gone down to their local occupations and provided material support. In cities like Chicago, Sacramento, and Columbus MoveOn members have started petitions calling for an end to arrests and evictions of Occupy protestors from city parks. And many MoveOn members are just grateful for the work Occupy Wall Street has done to draw attention to a system that's not working for 99% of Americans.

Because we've gotten lots of questions about what MoveOn is, where our funding comes from, what we stand for, and what our relationship to Occupy Wall Street is -- and because there are a number of straight-up falsehoods floating around -- we collected the answers to those questions in one place. From that page, you can also let us know if you have other questions that we should answer.  I encourage you to check it out here:

www.moveon.org/owsfaq.html/

Thanks for letting us know what you think, and for your work to build Occupy Wall Street.

--Justin Ruben

Executive Director

MoveOn.org

I'm Just Sayin!