Re: [Community_forum] steve iskovitz reports, visit to europe, back to OWS

[cc2...@verizon.net]

 Terrra et al

 

Wow, this is great, thanks for passing it on . It is worth a lot of thought. As you say, hundreds bringing in multitudes--- food for thought.

A great perspective..

Thanks !!!

 

Joe C from OB

 

 

On 05/17/12, Terra Friedrichs<ter...@compuserve.com> wrote:

 

a dear friend of mine finally checks in... one of the best protest writers of our time...
note inspiring occupy words... a few hundred bring tens of thousands...leveraging "a concept"
terra

-------- Original Message --------

Subject:	Re: contacts t-z
Date:	Thu, 17 May 2012 17:18:55 -0400
From:	Steve Iskovitz <stev...@gmail.com>
To:	Steve Iskovitz <stev...@gmail.com>

My friend C.C. sent me a message yesterday: "Write!" Okay.

I've just returned from Europe, where things are strangely sane. People asked me questions about this and that in America. I'd try to explain, but would often have to fall back to a more overall explanation, "See, the thing is, it's crazy there." They'd look at me like they didn't really understand, or maybe they thought I was joking, and I'd add, trying to sound as serious as I could, without sounding excited, or crazy myself, "No, really, it's crazy."

But how to really make them understand? Or maybe I shouldn't try. Maybe they're better off not knowing. They seem to think the USA is far away and its problems won't affect them too much. Maybe they're right? Spain has (officially) 24% unemployment, yet people seemed happier there, and I saw hardly any homeless or spare-changers. 

I asked the guy from Morocco if people were poor there. Yes, he answered casually, as though he didn't really understand what I meant. "So, I mean... do people have...you know, food to eat and a place to live?" "Yes," he answered, shrugging his shoulders and looking at me somewhat quizzically, as though it was a stupid question! If you have a job, he said, you help out friends or family who don't. It sounded simple enough.

The girl from Korea queried me about the obesity problem in America. She was trying to understand why people allow it to happen, why they don't simply change their habits to prevent it. Unsatisfied with my answers, she finally asked of them, "Do they mind" being obese? "Do they mind?" What a dumb question, I thought, too dumb a question to even be able to answer. Until I realized, no, it's too good a question to be able to answer.

The guy from Kazakhstan asked what I thought of US foreign policy. I told him the war in Afghanistan is one of the few wars I know of which has no actual goals. Furthermore, our main ally there supports our enemy. Mike Mullen, a top commander of US forces, said so before retiring. As the guy listened attentively, I felt a bit surprised by my own simplicity and clarity. "It's no secret," I said, a little too loudly. "HE said it. It was on tv!"

I got back to the States last week and went immediately to Occupy Wall Street. The movement is in a state of disarray. Some of the smaller working groups still function, but the group as a whole barely does. They still manage to pull off some events, which is important, I suppose it's the most important thing. They got was it 30,000, or 50,000, to turn out for May Day? Someone asked if they were all OWS people and I had to laugh. No, those were almost all union people. They bring the numbers. There are only a few hundred OWS people. Depending on how you define it, somewhere between 50 and 300, in my humble estimation. But without that small group, their name, and their concept, the other tens of thousands would not have shown up.

That is the most important point, and also the point I have trouble understanding, because it suggests a larger question, which is, "What is Occupy Wall Street?" How can such a small group form the nucleus for such a large group? 30 to 50 thousand in one city on one day? How many hundreds of thousands, or millions even, identify with OWS? Who say they support it in theory, whose eyes light up at its mere mention? Yet how small the actual group! And furthermore, how disorganized, how dysfunctional (currently) they are!

If so many mostly union people are willing and able to come out for such a march, why don't they do it on their own? Why do they need to wait for Occupy Wall Street to organize it? How does such a small group have so much leverage?

It's these questions, these contradictions, that causes me to stare off into space in social situations, or to ponder on long walks, though I have no answers.

OWS is a really rough life these days. Some of them stay in squats. Some of the squats might be okay, but some are surely crazy. The problem, since last fall, is that one of OWS's greatest strengths-- its inclusiveness-- is also its greatest weakness. It's very hard to kick someone out of the group, and so living space must be shared with problematic people.

My own story: I couldn't stay in any of the squats because they're full, so I stayed outside a church in lower Manhattan, not far from Zuccotti Park, actually, which allows us so sleep on what is essentially a large porch. Of the 20 or so people who sleep there, maybe half are OWS (whatever exactly that means), the rest are other homeless people. One such person who I would describe as paranoid schizophrenic with episodes of psychosis. One morning I woke up and, in order to help orient and focus myself, pulled out my pocket  notebook and wrote a little "to-do" list in it, then put it back in my  pocket. The man in question decided I'd been writing about him and was "out to get" him, and grabbed the notebook from my back pocket. I was sitting down and he was standing over me, so my position was quite disadvantageous, but I grabbed the other end of the notebook and made a lot of noise until he eventual backed off. The worst part of the story is that the two guys sleeping on either side of me didn't even wake up, and the awake people at the other end did not respond.

This is the level of disorganization I'm talking about, that a psychotic person could attack someone else and no-one in the community might even respond. In a sleeping space designated to OWS. This is how disorganized they are, yet THE NATION STILL LOOKS TO US FOR ANSWERS ! Other Occupy's ask us how to do things, try to copy us. I want to say to them, "Don't copy us! Use your own common sense!" Yet in a way they're right, and there is something about us worth imitating. This is the contradiction I just can't wrap my head around.

I read not one, but two recent interviews with Noam Chomsky-- one with Amy Goodman and one with Laura Flanders. Both of them asked him about the Occupy movement, and he praised it as an important and impressive movement. He's  right, of course, but I had to laugh at that moment. Understand that I'm not materialistic, and the weather's warm in the City now. I don't mind sleeping outside, and could do it all spring and summer, with a little support. All I would need is a place to store my stuff during the day, a shower now and then, and a little safety. Of the tens or hundreds of thousands of supporters here in the City, it shouldn't take too much to provide the few of us this. Yet it doesn't happen, and it seems it can't happen.

Perhaps the answer is: Fractured as we are, maybe the country at large is even more fractured. Here with family in suburban New Jersey, I scope out today's New York Times. American Special Ops tactics and equipment, honed and developed in the last stupid wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, are now being used in the jungles of Honduras to kill--whoops-- some innocent people. (I think of the Korean girl: Do Americans "mind" that their tax dollars pay for this, she might also have asked?) If all you have is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail. If all you have is Special Ops....Our largest banks are now gambling casinos. (Do we "mind?") It happens all the time, but you only hear about it when they lose. JPMorgan Chase just lost 2 billion-- correction, 3 billion-- in a bad bet.

As for me, I don''t feel enough support at the moment to stay down in Manhattan, maybe I'm too old for this? So I'm out of NYC for a bit. Strength to those who are toughing it out, on the streets or in the squats, and in Union Square in the daytime. Any supporters around the City who are willing and able: maybe stop by and ask if you can help. If you find someone you're comfortable with, maybe help them out with laundry or a shower, a pizza or something. And before you judge them for being nutty or ragged, remember that half the country is looking to them--yeah, them!-- for answers.

Good luck, too, to everyone in Chicago protesting against crazy NATO.

---

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