The world is on fire. The tragic death of a young Tunisian, Mohamed Bouazizi, sparked a fire that has spread to dispossessed and oppressed populations throughout the world—engulfing Egypt, Greece, Spain, Iceland and Syria, in short order. It has rekindled the forgotten dream of another world: a world that puts people before profits and in which democracy is a reality, not just a fashionable euphemism for a broken political system controlled by the top one percent at the expense of the other 99 percent. This fire has now spread to the United States in the Occupy Wall Street movement and its sister “occupation” movements in cities across the world.

The top one percent—ensconced in their Wall Street boardrooms and corporate offices—do not like the heat of this fire. It threatens to destroy the pillars of the global system of political control and economic exploitation that they have painstakingly constructed on the perverse logic that is “Of the one percent, by the one percent, for the one percent.” Today, we face a new form of tyranny in this “Rule of the Wall Street One Percent,” who execute their undemocratic political projects not by the royal edict of the medieval king or queen, but rather through complex market machinations and limitless political contributions. Despite the democratic veneer of this system, the result is the same as the monarchies of old: subjugation of the 99 percent to the will of the one percent.

Thus, WE, the 99 percent, have a simple demand and rallying cry: We want our country back from the top one percent! As the Occupy St. Louis general assembly said in its recent mission statement, “We do this for the unemployed, the elderly, the foreclosed, the indebted college student, for the future of the children and for our fellow working citizens who have been unjustly denied their equal human and financial rights by a system run by, and for, the richest one percet.” As students, we have to seriously ask ourselves, “What jobs will be available when we get out of school? Will we be able to get one? Will it enable us to build a strong, sustainable community, or will it just give us a paycheck to collect while the world burns down around us? Is it even possible anymore to create our own jobs, our own new world, without being beholden to corporate powers or their government benefactors that insist that they’re the only ones that can get us of this mess?” We know for certain that another world is possible, but we need your help to make it a reality.

The fire that began with the Arab Spring continues to burn in the heart of every city occupation throughout the world tonight. We must feed these revolutionary fires until we get our countries back from the top one percent. Help us make an “American Autumn.” Join us in the ongoing occupation in Kiener Plaza in downtown St. Louis, and especially be there Friday, Oct.14, at 3:30 p.m. for a large rally. Please contact us for more details.

*Bouazizi was the young Tunisian man who self-immolated himself in protest against the desperate conditions and dim prospects faced by Tunisians under the twin dictatorship of Ben Ali and his neoliberal economic regime.