Fire Ray Kelly!!

So I spent Saturday afternoon protesting in front of an event where Fordham Law School was honoring Ray Kelly, the commissioner of the NY city police department.  He over sees a police department that has been rampant in its excessive use of force on every thing from peaceful Occupy protests, to the long term daily life  of everyone living in minority communities through the city.  The event was organized by Muslim groups,  students at Fordham, and buttressed by the Occupy movement, following a string of anti Muslim policies came about (spying on muslim student groups, and anti Muslim training video, etc.).  There are also countless other policies causing harm to individuals and their communities such as Stop and frisk (where a police officer can approach anyone and stop them and pat them down for illegal substances, firearms, whatever), and even murder (see below).



Kelly oversees what I call the NYMD (New York Military Department).  A thriving military detachment run by Kelly and Mayor Bloomberg, seemingly at their will and for their purposes.  Maybe in time some of the issues will be covered, but I won't bury this post in details.  I will tell one story though that illuminated a lot for me.  On December 17th at Duarte square there was an action.  I was standing on the sidewalk, the police on the sidewalk kept telling us to get back.  The police in the street had told us to get on the sidewalk (mind you being in the street is illegal, sidewalk not).  It is also worth saying that I watched a younger guy get beaten by three cops on November 15th, the night of the eviction from liberty square, for pacively standing one step in the smallest of side streets.

So here I was, push pull.  I end up on the curb balancing precariously on my toes, while pointing out the hypocrisy of the officer in front of me.  So she shoves me, benchpress style, right off the curb onto my backside in the street.  I'm amazed.  My mom is there protesting.  She's appalled.  The emotions of it all, the complete disinterest of officers and others around.  The closeness of it all.  It was a truly memorable moment for me, and one that effected me tremendously.  BUT!!!!!  That was not the learning lesson.  The learning lesson came when I spoke to my African-American friends from the Bronx, Brooklyn, Newark, wherever.  And to a person they all said: "So!?  Welcome to our world.  That stuff happens everyday to us, and has for our whole lives.  Just another day of being black in America.  Police brutality."

This to me was the most amazing. That there was absolutely no sympathy.  None was deserved.  We live in a Police state.  A place where the police block off a sidewalk so wealthy people can have free entrance to their fundraiser, but a protester has to get a permit to protest about having to get permits to protest.  Freedom of speech?  What?  A homeless man is pushed off every sidewalk, and a park full of protestors is forcefully cleared under shamefully erroneous pretenses (I never saw a rat or roach at liberty square, but I see them in the subway everyday).  There is only one phrase that comes to mind when I think of the NYPD: abuse of power.  That is the cornerstone of current day policing tactics.  Above the law and around the law, so long as you get the "perp."  Abhorrent.  And Ray Kelly is the one that over sees it all, in the biggest city in the country.  So Saturday, I chanted:


Hey Hey, Ho Ho,
Ray-cist Kelly has got to go!!

Back Up Back Up,
We Want Freedom Freedom
These dirty spying cops
We don't need 'em need 'em!!

Kelly spies,
Bloomberg lies.

Hey Kelly?!
How many kids did you surveil today?
Hey Kelly?!
How many kids did you frisk today?
Hey Kelly?!
How many kids did you kill today?  (yes, Ramarly Graham, an unarmed 18 year old kid, was shot and killed by NYPD in his own bathroom.)  

Occupying

So I feel like it is time for this blog to actually get used again.  But the Africa stuff has been going so slowly that I think it is time to just jump in and do some writing about life, its peculiarities, and revolution.  During the last five months I have been Occupying.  Frankly, this post is not where I really want to get into the whole of the last five months.  Rather I'm thinking I'll pick up as life is today, and fill in the holes as it all goes.

I'll pick up where I sit right now.  I am in Brooklyn, Bedford-Stuyvesant.  I just had an incredibly interesting evening chatting with a slightly staggered African American gentleman I met at the liquor store.  He was talking to the shop keeper about love, how it existed and why he had it for all people.  This is of course a conversation I had no trouble running headlong into!!  Got my cheap bottle of rum and took the conversation outside - stop and frisk, race relations, whatever.  I love the neighborhood.  I'm not really living there per say.  My girlfriend does.  I'm still wholly about occupation it seems, and I occupy three different places at any given day of the week.  Bed-Stuy Brooklyn, Glenwood Queens, or the West Village in Manhattan.  The park is gone, no more sleeping there for me.  Now its about surviving in whatever way we can on our own.

I've just started a job.  This is where I've decided I really needed to start writing here again.  I am working for a relatively obscure political party that focuses on progressive issues and campaigns topush legislation through on these issues (raising the minimum wage, campaign finance reform, over turning corporate personhood, anti-fracking, etc).  The shock and awe of life back in the "real world" has been amazing.  But not how you'd think it would be.  One of the beauties of Occupy has been its horizontal structure.  Everyone has an equal voice.  Conversation is dignified and egalitarian (for the most part).  People wait their turn, use non verbal communication to engage in the conversation while still not being intrusive.  On the whole, everyone is equal.

Now though, I work in the "real world", where corporate structures and hierarchical forms of doing things reign.  It is truly eye opening.  To think that this was the way that things seemed normal to me 6 months ago.   To have a boss, a chain of command, a pecking order, egos fixated on seniority, and a staff of "arms lengths" type.  I feel like I'm in a reverse culture shock like when I came back to the US for the first time after living in Prague for two years.  It's like everything that seemed so innately normal has suddenly been flipped upside down.  That world seems so ridiculous now.  To think that we have these structures in society that completely and purposely segregate us.  Completely make some voices so much more important than others.  We sit there and act as if this is about merit, about hard work; but there are so many factors - history, education, socio-economics, etc - that dictate these relationships in a way that occupy has completely flipped on its head.  I mean, why is it that everyone does not have an equal voice in a corporate structure?  Why is it that I - even as a white male - feel even more emboldened to speak i this setting?  I don't so much at Occupy, where I feel less emboldened to speak as I try to "step back" at times, in an effort for every gender, ethnicity, race, creed, socio-economic and education level to have more of a voice.  In the context of this conversation though, and having more voices involved and heard, I feel like more people should be speaking, more voices heard.   

At Occupy, everyone in theory (and even in attempt I feel), is on the same footing: the millionaire and the homeless, the black and the white, the male and the female, the employer and the employee.  Now granted, it does not always work smoothly.  People still feel innately ostracized at times, but at least at Occupy it is more about history and the effects of growing up in our current society, rather than the current day's fixed institutionalized structures and social patterns that reinforce those same old power dynamics so daily.

This is the work world we live in, fully hierarchical, wholly marginalizing, completely disheartening.  I miss Occupy already.  Not that I am gone, but at even the first taste of that "real world", I am still yearning for that other life.  A new occupation.  What an amazing culture shock.  I wish everyone could feel the empowerment of actually having a voice, only to have it suppressed again.

Progress

So it is slow coming, and not much to say right now.  But we are up to $255 of the $390 needed to send to Yapo to get us registered with the federal government of Sierra Leone for the grant that he thinks we have a good shot at.  I am also trying to get him all of the paper work and planning that I've done for it over the last year.  Redo what I can, etc... by the end of the day!!  Wooo... But you know what.  It's important, it has to be done.  I put too much into this, as did the other people that supported me on the journey.  Nevermind, that the people of Sierra Leone have been putting their whole lives into it.  We can't let either them or you down!  Trying....      :)

Human Priorities

As many of you may know by now, I have committed myself to Occupy Wall St. and am staying randomly in NYC and working heavily within the movement and the Think Tank working group.  I am looking for work down here and applying to Phd programs so that I can become sustainable and move forward with things both personally and within the movement.  Over the last year given un/underemployment I have not been able to save much money to continue this work in Sierra Leone I had been working on.  Anything that I did have is now going directly to surviving down here in the city given the utter chaos of what I am living in.

and we are complaining about our education system...

I had been trying to get to Sierra Leone in the spring to set up a project, but that has now probably changed for the time being.  I write you this because I got an email from my partner Yapo in Sierra Leone today who may have a very solid lead on a development grant.  We only need to establish a few things with the company itself to be eligible for this grant:  bank account, registration with a few agencies, etc.  A total of $390 is needed to allow for the opportunity of $5-10,000 (you can read the email below).

Basically, we need to get contributions  at any level that could help us toward reaching this number.  I have thrown myself into Occupy 110%.  I have made choices that have put me in a position of hardship and forced sacrifices upon myself that I must live with.  In many ways these decisions have ostracized my friends and the people who have helped me get to where I am in life - I am very sorry that this has happened and accept responsibility and the consequences for that.  But when I woke up this morning to this email, I realized that the people I met in Sierra Leone, struggling daily on every level of existence, would not, and did not, deserve to be asked to understand what I am doing here, what it could eventually mean for them, or the passion that I have for it, and didn't deserve to be asked to wait any longer for things to get better for them.  Thus, I am asking if anyone is interested in helping them.  I can be contacted through the contact page on this website, or donations can be submitted on the upper right of this page.  Please read the below email.  Thank you, and I truly wish you all the absolute best.

...and jobs...

Hi Tim,

I just want to inform you that I got a consultative meeting with the Rural and Private Sector Boss here in Makeni last Saturday with regards aibia. They are presently working on a project to develop the capacity of local organizations here in Makeni.

Their priority is to provide grants up to $5,000 - 10,000 to Local CBO's (Community Based Organizations) depending on the objectives of the project.

I have the opportunity to win this but faced with few problems as to the criteria to qualify for this.

These include the following;

- Registration with SLANGO (Sierra Leone Association of Non Governmental Organizations)

- Opening of a Bank Account

- Presentation of an Electronic and Original/Scan Copies of Certificates of Registration and Constitution and

- Registration with the Development Ministry.

I have tried my best to do a lot but can’t do all without your contribution....

After enquiries we are left to the expenditure of One Million Seven hundred and fifty thousand Leones (Le1, 750,000) which is approximately three hundred and ninety dollars ($390).The cost of Opening the account included.

You need to help with some Finance.

Note: The deadline for submission of all relevant documents is 23rd December, 2011.

Yapo

What am I up to...

So I am spending my days working with people with "disabilities".  Trying to find them employment in a world and system that has ostracized them and that really has created no place for them.  It is truly sad to see.  People that just want to be accepted, loved.  That just want to feel "normal", to feel like they fit in and have a place.  Yet here they are in a society designed to work entirely against the assets they've brought to their table.  They are a true minority in the greatest sense of the word and world.  African Americans may be discriminated against where they go, women in the workplace, homosexuals in marriage, but imagine if you were discriminated against within the very socio-biological ways of society?  The way you talked, walked, looked.  The way you picked things up, the accessibility of places, people, how you physically did things.  Imagine if you couldn't hear your mothers voice, couldn't see the bus approaching to pick you up, couldn't walk in to a job interview and truly be heard, couldn't comfortably perform simple professional norms like shaking someone's hand? 

Society is set up for people that physically and mentally work in a certain way.  If you don't function in that way, you will never truly find a place.  I recognize it more and more within myself every day, and I'm simply dyslexic.  My brain processes things differently.  The conclusions I draw seem different, I don't organize information in the same way, and I see the outcomes daily as I become more aware of it.  But imagine if I had a completely different genetic makeup?  Imagine if my brain didn't just process or sort information differently, but actually worked entirely differently?  And that way of working was deemed by standard measures - such as IQ tests and such - to actually not be working?  It is a true travesty of our society that people that function differently on so may levels have no place in society, that they are not encouraged to be a part of global or national life as they are.  They are encouraged to conform, to try to become like "us".  Medicated, trained, whatever.  Where is their own personal voice?  Muted.  People that think differently are really the only people with the true capacity to think "outside the box", to work from an original canvas as they are not hindered by the mainstream.  They are different, and I truly wonder why we try to make them the same.  We need to hear them, listen to the ideas, try to hear the variance, the possible new directions.  What better way to change our society to be more inclusive than through dialog with and via the eyes of those that are actually ostracized? 

So this is what I do, I try to jam round pegs into square holes.  In my spare time I am still working on ideas with Africa.  I am saving some money for another trip and project supplies.  Things have been downsized a bit.  I am at this point simply trying to find a small fairly straight-forward and simple project that can be delivered in the next year during my spare time.  I am of course also still trying to find people to work with that will keep me going and help with the process.  No small issue...

Right now I am thinking that the internet incubator/cafe will be the easiest thing to deliver upon.  An office space for non-profits that would be funded by an internet cafe.  The proceeds cover the rent and computer upkeep while providing organizations with the space and infrastructure to do their work.  It wouldn't cost more than $10,000 to get everything set up and running and would require little oversight.

I've got some stuff I may do to help bring out the minority vote in Dutchess county where I am living right now as well.  Kind of a complicated road, but one that could be quite fulfilling.  I'm also looking into PhD programs again.  Doing a much more thorough analysis of the anthropology programs this time.  Narrowing down the ones that would be just right for my interests and theoretical vantage points.  This is the type of arena I belong in, but it is funny that the reason I am not there is because I am a round peg, I think very differently, and it caused me issues both in getting accepted and during my time in academia.

We'll see though, there is a lot of ways to get to the places I want to be.  It will take some time and a little bit of doing.  But if I can get something done in Africa, and survive my current job, it could all open a wealth of doors for the future.  Time is always an asset, and always a challenge....  

Forever and a day....

So it actually sees like it has been about that long since the last time I posted, and it has been a tough road to get here.  I ended up taking that job, but went through a lot of unpleasantries before and throughout the transition process.  I've moved, had some family issues, got a car, took the job, spent some time living in the woods, lost a few friends, and on the whole have caved in to some of the realities of the life that one seems to have to live to exist in America.  I must say that I have found a decent amount of difficulty living here in the area that I am - I just plainly do not fit in.  It is tough to spend pretty much a third of your life (almost the whole of the adult part) abroad, living in different cultures, seeing different ways of life.  Simply changing as a person.  I seem now to be half American and half alien. 

There are so many things done well and exemplary here in America, but also so many things that I do differently from people here.  My priorities are quite different as well.  I don't just want to get a job and settle into a life here.  I want to make a difference, I want the life I settle in to too mean something outside my little sphere.  I want to make people in the far reaching corners of the world's lives more fulfilling, give them more options.  Yes, there are of course people here interested in this type of stuff, but the contextualization of it all is so different.  And I will say this as well; living in America is taking away some of my principles, waning on my idealistic motives.  You can't survive living the life of an idealist here.  People on the whole will truly respect your passion, the things you want to do in life, the changes you want to make and people you want to help, but American society is so individualized and focused on the local self that there really is little place for the idealist.  Yes, NGO's, non-profits, etc, but I'm in one now and it is so systemically neutered that there is no way to truly bring about change, and certainly not on a large scale.

American culture is to me very limited, very closed.  I suppose this is culture anywhere though, it sees through its own eyes, colored by its own past, its own social context.  But American culture places American ideals, ways of life, and standards of living as the preeminent ones in the world.  An arrogance that only seems to be found in other current or former world powers.  If we are the best, why change?  Maybe tweak things, but why truly change?  The way I live my life, the goals I aspire to, they run against American cultural streams, and change itself runs against every cultural stream.

When you tell people you want to change a world they feel comfortable with, they can easily become cross with you, especially if you are unapologetic about your views/reasons and assertive - two things I tend to be.  Not that we are all the same in America, and that everyone is included in this, but a social system is just that, a system with main streams and separate outliers.  I am an outlier.  The last several months have shown this to me in even more vibrant colors than ever before.

So now I just put my head down, do my job, and hope/work towards another day when I can do what I believe we all should be doing; working towards true systemic change.  The world is neutering me, but I will not allow it to be permanent.  I will not allow it to take away my dreams or my goals.