Washington Square #OWS General Assembly (NYC)

Judith Butler

Washington Square Park

6 pm 10/23/2011

I’ve come here to lend my support

and offer my solidarity

for this unprecedented display

of popular and democratic will

before us

So what are the demands

that all these people are making?

Either they say

there are no demands

and that leaves your critics confused

Or they say

that demands for social equality

that demands for economic justice

are impossible demands

and impossible demands are just not practical

But we disagree

If hope is an impossible demand

than we demand the impossible

If the right to shelter, food and employment

are impossible demands

than we demand the impossible

If it is impossible to demand

that those who profit

from the recession

redistribute their wealth 

and cease their greed

than yes 

we demand the impossible

Of course the list of our demands is long

these are demands

for which there can be

no arbitration

We object to the monopolization of wealth

We object to making working populations disposable

We object to the privatization of education

We believe that education

must be a public good and a public value

We oppose the expanding numbers of the poor

We rage against the banks

that push people from their homes

And the lack of health care 

for unfathomable numbers

We object to economic racism

and call for its end

It matters

that as bodies

we arrive together in public

As bodies we suffer

we require food

and shelter

and as bodies we require one another

in dependency 

and desire

So this is

a politics of the public body

the requirements of the body

its movements and its voice

We would not be here 

if electoral politics

were representing 

the will of the people

We sit and stand and move

as the popular will

the one that

electoral politics

has forgotten and abandoned

but we are here

time and again

persisting

enacting the phrase

We the People