A declaration of the people on planet earth

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for the people of the earth to renounce any respect, allegiance or trust in those persons, groups and institutions which dominate, oppress, and exploit them, and to re-assert their rights which their citizenship on planet earth entitles them, a decent respect for the opinions of all humankind requires that they should declare the reasons for their action.

We hold these propositions as basic truths: That all humans are created equal; that they, as humans, possess certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, and the necessities of human existence; that, to secure these rights, governments are created, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any government or institution becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety, happiness, and well-being.

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience has shown that humankind is more disposed to suffer, while oppressions are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and oppressions, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them to mere objects in the lust for ever-greater riches and profits, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government and institutions, and to provide new social-economic forms for their future well-being.

Such has been the patient sufferance of the peoples of the earth; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their systems of government. The history of the powerful corporations and the persons who own and control them is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having as a goal the creation of ever-greater wealth power and domination over the peoples of the earth. To prove this, let the facts be submitted to a candid world.

  1. They have made greed and personal advancement superior to all other values. 
  2. They have placed the pursuit of profit and the accumulation of personal wealth about all other 
      human endeavors. 
  3. They have exalted wealth and power above all considerations of social and ecological well-being 
  4. They have made a virtue of systematic theft on a global scale. 
  5. They have created great ills and injuries, but they endlessly attempt to blame these ills upon t
      who suffer most from them. 
  6. They have shown no remorse or guilt in destroying whole cultures and societies. 
  7. They have made a mockery of the concept of truth and speaking truth, replacing it with the 
      standard of gain and advantage. 
  8. They have filled our minds and our daily lives with lies, myths and misinformation through their 
      ownership and manipulation of the media. 
  9. They have poisoned our languages, reducing them to mere instruments of propaganda, control 
      and the advertisement of commodities. 
10. They have used our differences to divide and conquer. They have led us to believe that those 
      who are not like us are against us. 
11. They are destroying our planet at an accelerating rate. Our air is poisoned, our seas are polluted, 
      and our soils are toxic. 
12. They have destroyed good farmland and covered it with asphalt and called it development. 
13. They have made the whole earth unstable and insecure in the name of national security. 
14. They have made what should be free and available to all, expensive and for only the few. 
15. They wish us to believe that only by the purchase of their cheap but expensive commodities is t
      he good life possible. 
16. They assume that only they and their apologists know the truth, and any criticism of them or 
      their doctrines is bias or ignorance. 
17. They are continuously destroying all forms of diversity and are producing a massive and 
      deadening uniformity. 
18. They have replaced true spirituality with institutionalized religions. 
19. They have aided and abetted tyrants and despots on all continents. 
20. They have overthrown legally constituted governments and have assasinated and deposed heads 
      of state. 
21. They have subverted our economic systems; transforming them fro  the production of useful 
      goods & services to wasteful and destructive financial manipulations. 
22. Their wealth is built upon the poverty of others, but they wish us to believe that their obscene 
      wealth will benefit those with little or nothing. 
23. Their arrogance has led them to believe that they are competent to rule, and that by natural right 
      they should rule. 
24. They believe that they possess a natural superiority and intelligence which is proven by the fact 
      that they are rich and powerful. 
25. They create for themselves exclusive places to live and enjoy that are safe, beautiful and 
      healthy while others live in dangerous toxicity. 
26. They wish us to believe that skin color is a trustworthy indicator of character and ability 
27. They wish us to believe that the rich are motivated to work only by being rewarded with great 
      amounts of money, but the poor must be stimulated to work by receiving less and less. 
28. They wish us to believe that the present system based on greed and gain is the best of all 
      possible worlds. 
29. They are destroying our future and our children´s future. 

In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms; our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A ruling class, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define tyrants, is unfit to be the ruler of free people.

We, therefore, representing the people of the earth, solemnly publish and declare that we are absolved from any allegiance, trust or respect toward those persons, groups, and institutions whose actions are destructive of all peoples on earth and the earth itself,

There is no logical or ethical principle which leads us to any other conclusion but that our task is to end the corporate domination of our lives and the destruction of the earth.

We chart no particular course in this declaration. However, the first step in any course of action requires full awareness of our situation and free and open debate of the issues before us. We pledge to each other that first step, and to take from it the remaining steps that are necessary to bring about a decent human existence for all the peoples of the earth.                                        July 4th, 1998.