insights from NYC ...and history --meeting at Californos on 27th @7
Dave
Digest as you see fit:
Emails forwarded below have insightful look into the OccupyWallSt daily reality of Liberty Park in NYC (and links to subsequently follow or google to Occupy stuff happening in Boston, Little Rock, DC…).
Lessons to be learned.
Dave
PS One of the forwards below is an article from Chris Hedges. He recently spoke at the Plaza Library about his book Death of the Liberal Class.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Hedges
· 2.8 Death of the Liberal Class (2010)
· 2.9 The World As It Is (2011)
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Consider…
Chris Hedges’ article below also references a NYC visitor from Spain offering her lessons of what happened in Spain. Similar lessons can be drawn from how the recent and inspirational Egyptian revolution is running into serious problems. Similar lessons can be drawn from what happened in Poland.
Structure is a norm of human existence. Flare-ups can have varying levels of victories, but they must be gelled into healthy activism that can achieve some permanence
[Doubt that? Consider which groups, anarchies, revolutions… in this planet’s history have stood the test of time and formed itself into a larger collective able to serve/maintain an ongoing society.].
Article forwarded below interestingly reveals structures forming in OccupyWallSt. There will be the need for larger and more permanent structures (like how Occupy has gone international, since globalization is one of the culprits). NYC is showing some signs of being cumbersome and testing fellow occupiers’ patience.
I agree with some points in the article below, but see flaws. You can have a French Revolution, but radical “off with their heads” will only be a blip in time (and new “powers that be” always present themselves). Read or re-read A Tale of Two Cities: …foresees that many of the revolutionaries, including Defarge, Barsad and The Vengeance (a lieutenant of Madame Defarge) will be sent to the guillotine themselves. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Tale_of_Two_Cities).
Being a guy fortunate enough to escape the communism that destroyed Romania (to the point that country needs maybe another couple generations to fix/escape/evolve past those abuses), I have seen the consequences of when well meaning ideals enter the stage where revolutionaries/idealists get into the nitty gritty of governance. George Orwell warns us in his famous novel Animal Farm: It starts off idealistically with “All pigs are equal.” But it devolves into “All pigs are equal, but some pigs are more equal than others.”
Since we already have that now, could what comes be any worse? Nonetheless, be wary what you replace our broken system with. We have local KC groups that have proven to be able to cannibalize their own. When inexperienced leaders get a title (and the illusion of more power than they’ve ever earned in their private/professional lives), it can corrode the mind when they start to believe that they are the “some pigs are more equal than others.”
As bad as things can often be in our US of A, people in Poland and Romania know a thing or two and have voted with their feet to make Chicago the largest concentration of those people outside of their birth nations.
Whether it’s French Revolutionaries (both real ones and characters in A Tale of Two Cities), Orwell’s power-maddened talking pigs, or good and greedy individuals in the mud trying to make sense of post-Solidarnosc Poland, like all successful movements, it will take organization and responsible leadership to sustain progress.
I suspect it will take the creation of non-profit[s] or merging of several existing non-profits or groups (beating “them” at their own game), heavy duty networking/partnering, or maybe a (99%?) third Party to sustainably coalesce dreams into reality.
If you’ve seen Ken Burns’ latest documentary series Prohibition, there are lessons therein for how those groups/leaders sustained nearly a century of activism to get Prohibition passed
(which, on a related note, reveals the caution of the Law of Unintended Consequences, like how Prohibition could not possibly have more swung the doors wide-open for the development and meteoric rise of the super-criminal class –with those “more equal than others” leaders like Al Capone going from obscurity to popularity and “hero” providing soup kitchens during the Depression to having deep tentacles of corruption and then to the pendulum later swinging again and eventually not having a friend).
It took much less time (13 years?) of hidden and then organized activism to overturn Prohibition. http://www.google.com/search?q=Ken+Burn%27s+Prohibition&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a
That activism itself (on both sides) had issues, including leaders and members turning on each other (just as has happened with groups here in KC). Seems foolish that when you’re supposed to be facing a mutual threat/opponent, that you may have to defend yourself from a “friendly” that turns out to not be so friendly. The principle that power can corrupt has the potential to rot the mind and perspective of even the most sane of individuals (and especially for untested/emerging/wannabe leaders). This movement will need leaders that can patiently trust/support/check/balance one another.
Keep that history in mind (and the often multi-year process to fully and sustainably move a reform through a society) for how issues, press, non-profits, unions, multinational corporations, interstate corporations, States, Fedgov… interact for any legislative change or Constitution Amendments you may hope for.
Realistically, it’s a long fight that you’ll likely have to commit to decades (if not life-long advocacy) of reforms and vigilance. That’s why it’ll take responsible structures and patient leaders (and likely paid leaders) to sustain it for the long haul and to keep hope alive (like union movement and organizing didn’t spring up overnight and had its own internal corruption/power issues to contend with).
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Consider the example that Unitarians were doing civil rights work long before it was referred to as “civil rights” and over a century before the Civil Rights Movement. They were secretly teaching slaves how to read back when there were laws that you could be executed for doing that (knowledge is power; opens eyes in short term and generationally; is the ladder out of a hole). MLK commented on how the first white person to be killed in the Civil Rights Movement was the Unitarian minister Rev. Reed.
Will we see full and true Civil Rights in our lifetime? There are still “miles to go before we sleep.”
Though there will obviously always be the real desire for tangible results you’d like to see in the short term, is Occupy willing to organize and to muster that kind of century+ consistency and generation to generation long term and tag-team dedication towards justice?
MLK says that the arc of the universe is long, but that it bends towards justice. In a twitter world that can easily be distracted by the next headline or incapacity to be able to process anything longer than 140 character twitters or deeper than facebook status updates, please consider committing yourself and also encouraging your friends to muster the sort of multi-year patience and stick-to-it-tiveness that will be needed for Occupy to produce lasting change.
Can we put down the remote and show up to repeatedly support Occupy? Can we make voting, civic engagement, and involvement in community events a higher priority among the 101 fun things or daily to-dos that can distract a citizenry? Can we look around ourselves at an Occupy event and realize some of those individuals will let you down or drop out of sight when the going gets rough …but forgive and support them anyway?
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Consider investigating New Zealand’s new democracy when they rewrote their Constitution in 1996 to allow for proportional representation (and very radical reform of their corrupted campaign finance): The elections since 1930 have been dominated by two political parties, National and Labour.[69] Since 1996, a form of proportional representation called Mixed Member Proportional (MMP) has been used.
I believe they outlawed campaign donations and moved to equal access campaign funding through taxes? That reduced politicians’ vulnerability to financial influences and allowed ordinary citizens to stand up on equal footing and run for office against poor performing individuals.
I believe we still have a local author in KC who studied New Zealand’s reforms. [Several on these listservs know his name, and he may still be on the HOAP or DFHA listservs.]
Maybe invite him to OccupyKC events?
Would be an extraordinary amount of work to get multi-state and multi-year work to amend the Constitution, but the Prohibitionists did it (and so did the anti-prohibitionists). Constitution is already “owned” by corporate interests. Will any Occupy “victory” will be anything more than short term (that’s later continually chipped away by the 400+ registered lobbyists per elected official –with each of those lobbyists having millions to spread around annually) if Occupy doesn’t entail Constitutional reforms?
Who do you think has amassed so much influence with the Federal Election Commission (and perversion of America’s devolving system of campaign finance that has been solidly skewed towards the deepest pocket and highest bidder)?
Note that the 400+ lobbyists per elected official is far short of total representation of the influence game. Each of those lobbyists have staff and teams of people per each registered lobbyist. Further, each of those lobbyists have clients/corporations that also have teams acting in unison. A more realistic number would be thousands of organized influence peddlers per elected official. Our reps are so hopelessly outnumbered. Can Occupy stop them from continuing to subdivide and sell away our “d”emocracy?
Have you seen the photo with the Supreme Court justices having corporate logos on their robes (just like race car drivers have corporate sponsors)? Similar photos with politicians with photo-shopped corporate logos on lapels?
Maybe there should be a law requiring all politicians to wear race car driver suits to honestly reveal which donors and PACs have financed/bought/sponsored them? People in my former Congressional District in Chicago loved all the pork that Rep. Dan Rostenkowski brought home (until he ended up in jail after enough decades for his Teflon suit to wear out). Maybe there should be a law requiring that campaign websites have links to their campaign finance fundraising disclosure reports? Links to disclosures (however minimal they may be) from PACs and SuperPacs that are clearly on the biased side of a campaign or issue associated with that candidate?
Such individuals know how to game the system, and with the help of the lobbyists who hand deliver favorable legislation, they are already many moves ahead. It will take a national amendment to prevent current and future Legislators or Justices from preventing the will of the 90-99% of people from being continually subordinated to corporate/lobby/special interests.
Our Democracy needs more sunshine
(not the ever-increasingly expert and hidden shadows of special interest finances, especially when the majority of Americans can no longer bother themselves to turn away from daily distractions to make an informed decision, get involved, or to actually show up and vote).
Good news is that KC Move to Amend has already dedicated a decade or more of that time and service. Consider helping http://kcmovetoamend.org/.
They are meeting at Californos on Thur, Oct 27.
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Remember the 99%. There are many stories/sorrows/hopes therein.
Long ago, a front page KCStar article showed a photo of a rural Missourian by his screen porch door saying he wouldn’t have voted for Gov Blunt if he knew he’d cut over 80K children off the Medicaid rolls. The “machine” deceived him and convinced him that the cuts would be against some other person (“those inner city people”). I can’t quite feel sorry that the man was a victim of his own bigotry and was blinded from how his benefits and his own children would be equally affected. Nonetheless, if you want to “occupy,” you’ll also have to get the message to the nitwits that are easily manipulated and distracted by the machinery of politics (like Palin’s Constitution-wrapped fancy touring bus --as she no-scruples asks those hapless people for yet more donations to her PAC >>so she can take her family on trips, pay her parents thousands to stuff envelopes, buy more outfits…).
Another 99% to respect:
one of Jah Kings’ statement between songs on the second Sunday of OccupyKC, “Love the police. They are your friends. Whether they know it or not, they are part of the 99%.” Later that day while my wife and I were getting smoothies, a police officer came in and was next in line. I struck up a conversation and asked what he thought (with smoothie maker now listening in). Officer said he realized he wasn’t in the 1% and that he agreed with most of what he was learning about Occupy.
To that end, MLK and Gandhi knew what they were talking about when they advocated non-violence and peace. It would be a stunning shame if anyone associated with Occupy doomed themselves to repeat history and devolve like mistakes of Seattle over a decade ago. [I like how (naturally with human foibles) OccupyBoston and OccupyNYC have tried to responsibly deal with people/apples in their midst that have can spoil the whole barrel.]
Consider having such conversations with friends, neighbors, strangers in line. There won’t be any progress if you only speak with “safe” people who are already the choir. Have faith that the odds are pretty high that you can help them to see that they are part of the 99% (even if it takes five tries to gently or bluntly get through their fog --and that they may have to vote against party lines for an independent who will stay true to reforms).
Last night Michael Moore on Piers Morgan Tonight (CNN) made the point how 1% have taken 9 slices of pie and left the 99% to fight over the last slice.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MB2_0G8CKDY
Such a skewed society will need your long term vigilance/dedication to try to rebalance towards fairness and social justice.
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Consider Colbert humorously showing us the folly and hypocrisy of how campaign finance knows how to wiggle out of the feeble attempts to reform it (with both Parties manipulating and equally being hogs at that feeding trough). His Sep 29 episode (and series of segments over the years) shows how Rove’s CrossRoads SuperPac has to reveal its donors, but Rove’s Crossroads GPS SuperPac (a 501c4?) doesn’t have to reveal its donors. Not surprisingly, biggest donor of Crossroads SuperPac is Crossroads GPS. Colbert exposes this legal form of laundering money (and is simply just another corporate redesign construct that directly subverts our democracy). http://www.google.com/search?q=colbert+and+rove+super+pac&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a
Unless OccupyAmerica addresses campaign finances, lobbyists, K-street, corporate speech… their 6-7 figure salaries/parties/junkets/dinners/fundraisers will continue to drown out the little person long after he/she has gone home from the parks. With K-street having over 400 lobbyists per elected official, these days, the law of the land seems to be how much “democracy”/representation/justice can you afford to buy.
Your voice will have to be louder (and consistently longer) to try to get elected officials to remember the millions that elected them (rather than the millions of dollars from the handfuls of lobbyists and corporate agents that buy them dinners, drinks, gifts, “research” trips, jobs/patronage for their friends and family thru participating corporations/PACs/non-profits/Super-PACs/501c4s, lucrative “guaranteed to be a millionaire” jobs for when they’re out of office and will need the laws and favoritism they’ll be asked to grant and thereby violate the public’s trust…).
The money in American politics has poisoned the well. If Occupy gets lost in messages, squabbling over priorities… and if it leaves the parks without certainty that the “water” now truly is getting filtered (regardless of whatever other issues Occupy may attempt to address), any potential gains will just get overturned or later chipped away (since lobbyist system has well paid staff that has expertly learned how to chip away at such things).
Occupy will be in the parks with winter right around the corner, while the lobbyists will continue to be having dinner with your elected officials in the finest of restaurants, “research” trips in resorts, SuperPacs to advocate and indirectly fund campaigns...
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Be aware that during the first years of legislatures of our infant nation, Jefferson and Adams were exchanging letters discussing the difficulties of organizing America and warning about the powers of corporations. Eisenhower similarly feared/warned about the power of corporations (which were international business interests long before America became a nation and before our current globalization issues).
They’ve had millennia (2.5 centuries just in America alone) to amass power/structure/lessons-learned/techniques/systems/international networks/favorable laws.
Be a student of history if you don’t want to be doomed to repeat it (and rolled under by it).
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FYI, if you’re interested in going, Park Police in DC recently extended OccupyDC’s permit for another 4 months. http://october2011.org/blogs/davidswanson/freedom-plaza-now-ours
From: Democracy for the Heart of America [mailto:df...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Michael Caddell
Sent: Tuesday, October 11, 2011 10:09 AM
To: bluebarnnewscentral
Subject: [DFHA] An Incredible Victory From Occupied DC - Stop the Machine!
Need A Fun Life-Changing Vacation?
Click here, … and please pass this along to others.
Read this excerpt: "In fact, we intend to make it possible for anyone to visit D.C. with free accommodations. Just bring a sleeping bag and agree to work with us to pressure Congress, the White House, K Street, the Pentagon, and all the lobbyists and profiteers for peace and justice. We have free food, we have free drink, we have free trainings and seminars, we have tents, we have peace keepers, we have a big victory under out belts, and we welcome all peace makers for they shall inherit Freedom Plaza. We own it. It is ours.” ...
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Consider inviting people to get involved (and especially people who are not “the choir”). The googlegroups in the email addresses above are options open to the public for you to send/receive what you have to share. If you prefer, HOAP is receive-only and is intentionally limited/combined number of emails to respect your inbox.
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Some quotes to ponder:
Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure — these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.
Steve Jobs, Stanford Commencement Address, 2005
During a time of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act. –George Orwell
There are some who live in the dream world. There are those who only live in reality. Then there are those that make the dreams become reality. - C. S. Lewis
Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak. Courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen. -- Sir Winston Churchill
Justice will only be achieved when those who have not been injured by crime are as indignant as those who have. -- King Solomon
Whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong. There are always difficulties arising that tempt you to believe your critics are right. To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires some of the same courage that a soldier needs. Peace has its victories, but it takes brave men and women to win them. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
A decision is an action you must take when you have information so incomplete that the answer does not suggest itself. -Arthur Radford
Decide which is the line of conduct that presents the fewest drawbacks and then follow it out as being the best one, because one never finds anything perfectly pure and unmixed, or exempt from danger. -Niccolo Machiavelli
Move out of your comfort zone. You can only grow if you are willing to feel awkward and uncomfortable when you try something new. -Brian Tracy
Honest differences of views and honest debate are not disunity. They are the vital process of policy making among free men. -Herbert Hoover
Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of liberty. ~ Thomas Jefferson
"A mind is like a parachute -- if it doesn't open, it doesn't work."
"Together we can change the world, one mind at a time." -Tommy
Imagination is more powerful than knowledge because knowledge is limited, and with imagination you can embrace the world. - Einstein
In times of change, the Patriot is a scarce man; brave, hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds, however, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a Patriot. - Mark Twain
Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it. - Mark Twain
Risk more than others think is safe. Care more than others think is wise. Dream more than others think is practical. Expect more than others think is possible. --West Point Cadet Maxim
Peace.
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The article below has interesting insights about human behavior and about OccupyWallSt in NYC, though I don’t think the elites are nowhere near in as much trouble as Chris Hedges’ believes them to be (especially since most of those “elites” are corporations with eternal life --that have never had a shortage of new directors willing to assume leadership, that can change dissolve/merge/transform whenever a scandal necessitates that they do a three-card-monte game with the public or with weakened regulators…).
Mary Lindsey of Move to Amend (speaking at the second weekend of Occupy KC) suggested that her prior Frankenstein-monster metaphor would be more accurate to refer to them as vampires: They’re eternal, shape shifting, suck your life away, and they don’t like sunshine.
FW: Why the elites are in trouble
From: bkje...@sbcglobal.net [mailto:bkje...@sbcglobal.net]
Sent: Tuesday, October 11, 2011 6:58 AM
To: Ben Kjelshus
Subject: Fw: Why the elites are in trouble
Published on Monday, October 10, 2011 by _TruthDig.com_
(http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/why_the_elites_are_in_trouble_20111009/)
Why the Elites Are in Trouble
by _Chris Hedges_ (http://www.commondreams.org/chris-hedges)
Ketchup, a petite 22-year-old from Chicago with wavy red hair and glasses
with bright red frames, arrived in Zuccotti Park in New York on Sept. 17.
She had a tent, a rolling suitcase, 40 dollars’ worth of food, the graphic
version of Howard Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States” and a
sleeping bag. She had no return ticket, no idea what she was undertaking,
and no acquaintances among the stragglers who joined her that afternoon to
begin the Wall Street occupation. She decided to go to New York after
reading the Canadian magazine Adbusters, which called for the occupation, although
she noted that when she got to the park Adbusters had no discernable
presence.
The lords of finance in the looming towers surrounding the park, who toy
with money and lives, who make the political class, the press and the
judiciary jump at their demands, who destroy the ecosystem for profit and drain
the U.S. Treasury to gamble and speculate, took little notice of Ketchup or
any of the other scruffy activists on the street below them. The elites
consider everyone outside their sphere marginal or invisible. And what
significance could an artist who paid her bills by working as a waitress have for
the powerful? What could she and the others in Zuccotti Park do to them?
What threat can the weak pose to the strong? Those who worship money believe
their buckets of cash, like the $4.6 million JPMorgan Chase gave a few
days ago to the New York City Police Foundation, can buy them perpetual power
and security. Masters all, kneeling before the idols of the marketplace,
blinded by their self-importance, impervious to human suffering, bloated from
unchecked greed and privilege, they were about to be taught a lesson in the
folly of hubris.
Even now, three weeks later, elites, and their mouthpieces in the press,
continue to puzzle over what people like Ketchup want. Where is the list of
demands? Why don’t they present us with specific goals? Why can’t they
articulate an agenda?
The goal to people like Ketchup is very, very clear. It can be articulated
in one word—REBELLION. These protesters have not come to work within the
system. They are not pleading with Congress for electoral reform. They know
electoral politics is a farce and have found another way to be heard and
exercise power. They have no faith, nor should they, in the political system
or the two major political parties. They know the press will not amplify
their voices, and so they created a press of their own. They know the economy
serves the oligarchs, so they formed their own communal system. This
movement is an effort to take our country back.
This is a goal the power elite cannot comprehend. They cannot envision a
day when they will not be in charge of our lives. The elites believe, and
seek to make us believe, that globalization and unfettered capitalism are
natural law, some kind of permanent and eternal dynamic that can never be
altered. What the elites fail to realize is that rebellion will not stop until
the corporate state is extinguished. It will not stop until there is an end
to the corporate abuse of the poor, the working class, the elderly, the
sick, children, those being slaughtered in our imperial wars and tortured in
our black sites. It will not stop until foreclosures and bank repossessions
stop. It will not stop until students no longer have to go into debt to be
educated, and families no longer have to plunge into bankruptcy to pay
medical bills. It will not stop until the corporate destruction of the
ecosystem stops, and our relationships with each other and the planet are
radically reconfigured. And that is why the elites, and the rotted and degenerate
system of corporate power they sustain, are in trouble. That is why they
keep asking what the demands are. They don’t understand what is happening.
They are deaf, dumb and blind. _(photo: hunter.gatherer)_
(http://www.flickr.com/photos/huntergather/6221835125/)
“The world can’t continue on its current path and survive,” Ketchup told
me. “That idea is selfish and blind. It’s not sustainable. People all over
the globe are suffering needlessly at our hands.”
The occupation of Wall Street has formed an alternative community that
defies the profit-driven hierarchical structures of corporate capitalism. If
the police shut down the encampment in New York tonight, the power elite
will still lose, for this vision and structure have been imprinted into the
thousands of people who have passed through park, renamed Liberty Plaza by
the protesters. The greatest gift the occupation has given us is a blueprint
for how to fight back. And this blueprint is being transferred to cities
and parks across the country.
“We get to the park,” Ketchup says of the first day. “There’s madness
for a little while. There were a lot of people. They were using megaphones at
first. Nobody could hear. Then someone says we should get into circles and
talk about what needed to happen, what we thought we could accomplish. And
so that’s what we did. There was a note-taker in each circle. I don’t
know what happened with those notes, probably nothing, but it was a good
start. One person at a time, airing your ideas. There was one person saying that
he wasn’t very hopeful about what we could accomplish here, that he wasn’
t very optimistic. And then my response was that, well, we have to be
optimistic, because if anybody’s going to get anything done, it’s going be us
here. People said different things about what our priorities should be.
People were talking about the one-demand idea. Someone called for AIG
executives to be prosecuted. There was someone who had come from Spain to be there,
saying that she was here to help us avoid the mistakes that were made in
Spain. It was a wide spectrum. Some had come because of their own personal
suffering or what they saw in the world.”
“After the circles broke I felt disheartened because it was sort of
chaotic,” she said. “I didn’t have anybody there, so it was a little
depressing. I didn’t know what was going to happen.”
“Over the past few months, people had been meeting in New York City
general assembly,” she said. “One of them is named Brooke. She’s a professor of
social ecology. She did my facilitation training. There’s her and a lot of
other people, students, school teachers, different people who were involved
with that … so they organized a general assembly.”
“It’s funny that the cops won’t let us use megaphones, because it’s to
make our lives harder, but we actually end up making a much louder sound
[with the _“people’s mic”]_
(http://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/new_york_city/entry/peoples_microphone_or_peoples_mike_using_voices_for_amplified_sound/)
and I imagine it’s much more annoying to the people around us,” she
said. “I had been in the back, unable to hear. I walked to different parts of
the circle. I saw this man talking in short phrases and people were
repeating them. I don’t know whose idea it was, but that started on the first
night. The first general assembly was a little chaotic because people had no
idea … a general assembly, what is this for? At first it was kind of
grandstanding about what were our demands. Ending corporate personhood is one that
has come up again and again as a favorite and. … What ended up happening
was, they said, OK, we’re going to break into work groups.
“People were worried we were going to get kicked out of the park at 10
p.m. This was a major concern. There were tons of cops. I’ve heard that it’s
costing the city a ton of money to have constant surveillance on a bunch of
peaceful protesters who aren’t hurting anyone. With the people’s mic,
everything we do is completely transparent. We know there are undercover cops
in the crowd. I think I was talking to one last night, but it’s like, what
are you trying to accomplish? We don’t have any secrets.”
“The undercover cops are the only ones who ask, ‘Who’s the leader?’ ”
she said. “Presumably, if they know who our leaders are they can take them
out. The fact is we have no leader. There’s no leader, so there’s nothing
they can do.
“There was a woman [in the medics unit]. This guy was pretending to be a
reporter. The first question he asks is, ‘Who’s the leader?’ She goes, ‘I’
m the leader.’ And he says, ‘Oh yeah, what are you in charge of?’ She
says, ‘I’m in a charge of everything.’ He says, ‘Oh yeah? What’s your title?’
She says ‘God.’ ”
“So it’s 9:30 p.m. and people are worried that they’re going to try and
rush us out of the camp,” she said, referring back to the first day. “At
9:30 they break into work groups. I joined the group on contingency plans.
The job of the bedding group was to find cardboard for people to sleep on.
The contingency group had to decide what to do if they kick us out. The big
decision we made was to announce to the group that if we were dispersed we
were going to meet back at 10 a.m. the next day in the park. Another group
was arts and culture. What was really cool was that we assumed we were going
to be there more than one night. There was a food group. They were going
dumpster diving. The direct action committee plans for direct, visible
action like marches. There was a security team. It’s security against the cops.
The cops are the only people we think that might hurt us. The security team
keeps people awake in shifts. They always have people awake.”
The work groups make logistical decisions, and the general assembly makes
large policy decisions.
“Work groups make their own decisions,” Ketchup said. “For example,
someone donated a laptop. And because I’ve been taking minutes I keep running
around and asking, ‘Does someone have a laptop I could borrow?’ The media
team, upon receiving that laptop, designated it to me for my use on behalf of
the Internet committee. The computer isn’t mine. When I go back to
Chicago, I’m not going to take it. Right now I don’t even know where it is.
Someone else is using it. But so, after hearing this, people thought it had been
gifted to me personally. People were upset by that. So a member of the
Internet work group went in front of the group and said, ‘This is a need of
the committee. It’s been put into Ketchup’s care.’ They explained that to
the group, but didn’t ask for consensus on it, because the committees are
empowered. Some people might still think that choice was inappropriate. In the
future, it might be handled differently.”
Working groups blossomed in the following days. The media working group
was joined by a welcome working group for new arrivals, a sanitation working
group (some members of which go around the park on skateboards as they
carry brooms), a legal working group with lawyers, an events working group, an
education working group, medics, a facilitation working group (which trains
new facilitators for the general assembly meetings), a public relations
working group, and an outreach working group for like-minded communities as
well as the general public. There is an Internet working group and an open
source technology working group. The nearby McDonald’s is the principal
bathroom for the park after Burger King banned protesters from its facilities.
Caucuses also grew up in the encampment, including a “Speak Easy caucus.”
“That’s a caucus I started,” Ketchup said. “It is for a broad spectrum
of individuals from female-bodied people who identify as women to
male-bodied people who are not traditionally masculine. That’s called the ‘Speak Easy
’ caucus. I was just talking to a woman named Sharon who’s interested in
starting a caucus for people of color.
“A caucus gives people a safe space to talk to each other without people
from the culture of their oppressors present. It gives them greater power
together, so that if the larger group is taking an action that the caucus
felt was specifically against their interests, then the caucus can block that
action. Consensus can potentially still be reached after a caucus blocks
something, but a block, or a ‘paramount objection,’ is really serious. You’
re saying that you are willing to walk out.”
“We’ve done a couple of things so far,” she said. “So, you know the live
stream? The comments are moderated on the live stream. There are
moderators who remove racist comments, comments that say ‘I hate cops’ or ‘Kill
cops.’ They remove irrelevant comments that have nothing to do with the
movement. There is this woman who is incredibly hardworking and intelligent. She
has been the driving force of the finance committee. Her hair is half-blond
and half-black. People were referring to her as “blond-black hottie.”
These comments weren’t moderated, and at one point whoever was running the
camera took the camera off her face and did a body scan. So, that was one of
the first things the caucus talked about. We decided as a caucus that I
would go to the moderators and tell them this is a serious problem. If you’re
moderating other offensive comments then you need to moderate these kinds of
offensive comments.”
The heart of the protest is the two daily meetings, held in the morning
and the evening. The assemblies, which usually last about two hours, start
with a review of process, which is open to change and improvement, so people
are clear about how the assembly works. Those who would like to speak raise
their hand and get on “stack.”
“There’s a stack keeper,” Ketchup said. “The stack keeper writes down
your name or some signifier for you. A lot of white men are the people
raising their hands. So, anyone who is not apparently a white man gets to jump
stack. The stack keeper will make note of the fact that the person who put
their hand up was not a white man and will arrange the list so that it’s not
dominated by white men. People don’t get called up in the same order as
they raise their hand.”
While someone is speaking, their words amplified by the people’s mic, the
crowd responds through hand signals.
“Putting your fingers up like this,” she said, holding her hands up and
wiggling her fingers, “means you like what you’re hearing, or you’re in
agreement. Like this,” she said, holding her hands level and wiggling her
fingers, “means you don’t like it so much. Fingers down, you don’t like it at
all; you’re not in agreement. Then there’s this triangle you make with
your hand that says ‘point of process.’ So, if you think that something is
not being respected within the process that we’ve agreed to follow then you
can bring that up.”
“You wait till you’re called,” she said. “These rules get abused all the
time, but they are important. We start with agenda items, which are
proposals or group discussions. Then working group report-backs, so you know what
every working group is doing. Then we have general announcements. The
agenda items have been brought to the facilitators by the working groups
because you need the whole group to pay attention. Like last night, Legal brought
up a discussion on bail: ‘Can we agree that the money from the general
funds can be allotted if someone needs bail?’ And the group had to come to
consensus on that. [It decided yes.] There’s two co-facilitators, a stack
keeper, a timekeeper, a vibes-person making sure that people are feeling OK,
that people’s voices aren’t getting stomped on, and then if someone’s being
really disruptive, the vibes-person deals with them. There’s a note-taker—
I end up doing that a lot because I type very, very quickly. We try to keep
the facilitation team one man, one woman, or one female-bodied person, one
male-bodied person. When you facilitate multiple times it’s rough on your
brain. You end up having a lot of criticism thrown your way. You need to
keep the facilitators rotating as much as possible. It needs to be a huge,
huge priority to have a strong facilitation group.”
“People have been yelled out of the park,” she said. “Someone had a sign
the other day that said ‘Kill the Jew Bankers.’ They got screamed out of
the park. Someone else had a sign with the N-word on it. That person’s sign
was ripped up, but that person is apparently still in the park.
“We’re trying to make this a space that everyone can join. This is
something the caucuses are trying to really work on. We are having workshops to
get people to understand their privilege.”
But perhaps the most important rule adopted by the protesters is
nonviolence and nonaggression against the police, no matter how brutal the police
become.
“The cops, I think, _maced those women_
(http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2011/10/05/2011-10-05_occupy_wall_street_protests_unions_join_epic_march_i
n_downtown_manhattan.html%20) in the face and expected the men and women
around them to start a riot,” Ketchup said. “They want a riot. They can
deal with a riot. They cannot deal with nonviolent protesters with cameras.”
I tell Ketchup I will bring her my winter sleeping bag. It is getting
cold. She will need it. I leave her in a light drizzle and walk down Broadway.
I pass the barricades, uniformed officers on motorcycles, the rows of paddy
wagons and lines of patrol cars that block the streets into the financial
district and surround the park. These bankers, I think, have no idea what
they are up against.
Copyright © 2011 Truthdig, L.L.C.
(http://www.commondreams.org/chris-hedges)
Chris Hedges writes a regular column for _Truthdig.com_
(http://www.truthdig.com/) . Hedges graduated from Harvard Divinity School and was for nearly
two decades a foreign correspondent for The New York Times. He is the
author of many books, including: _War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning_
(http://www.amazon.com/dp/1400034639?tag=commondreams-20/ref=nosim) , _What Every
Person Should Know About War_
(http://www.amazon.com/dp/0743255127?tag=commondreams-20/ref=nosim) , and _American Fascists: The Christian Right and the
War on America._
(http://www.amazon.com/dp/0743284437?tag=commondreams-20/ref=nosim) His most recent book is _Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy
and the Triumph of Spectacle_
(http://www.amazon.com/dp/1568584377?tag=commondreams-20/ref=nosim) .