Sustainable Occupy

This is a project that the think tank will be undertaking and that I will be a big part of.

Sustainable Occupy Research Project Concept Draft

The Occupy Wall St. Think Tank will be undertaking an in-depth research and solution oriented study aimed at compiling, assessing, and creating sustainable models for the Occupy movement to work with moving forward. In its initial stages Occupy was an amazing systemic critique and protest of the current socio-economic climate via both dialog and message and through a prefigurative social apparatus diagramming another way of organizing social interaction. However, upon losing Liberty park the movement was forced into transition and to undergo change on many levels. Throughout the initial stages of the occupation, numerous individuals came to the park and were afforded the ability to sustain their lives through the community there while working towards the movement’s and their own activist goals. Since the eviction of the park, many people have been forced to scramble independently for their own livelihoods, leaving their capacity to engage within the Occupy movement more tenuous. There are a tremendous number of people that have “fallen off the edges” as they had to get jobs, moved back out of the city, or simply have not been able to handle the lack of cohesion and/or transitional nature of the movement’s current situation. We need to not only find a way to bring these people back, but to generate a sustainable pathway forward for the people willing to become full time activists. This would allow the movement itself to stably maintain and promote itself and also be more coherent and welcoming to new individuals and groups.

Obviously, the need for a public space and a nostalgia for the consistent visible protest has been evident through the numerous, yet often ill conceived, attempts at reoccupation since the original eviction. I think most people within the movement are interested in consistency, a stable work space, as well as a location from which to expand the movement as it moves forward. How this is to be done though is the key question. Yes, there has been talk of this from the very beginning of the occupation. There are countless groups and individuals that have spent a great deal of time trying to find spaces/buildings, create revenue, get donations, feed and house individuals, etc. But they are not still working directly on this to my knowledge. The movement turned to more single day actions, organizing individuals, and focusing on singular issues since the turn of the year. We are planning good direct actions, yet to me, there is not enough work on outreach/base building and on creating a sustainable future. I am certain that this is not due to lack of will, but lack of time and stability for those deeply involved in the movement.

What we are proposing right now is to bring together a group of people to create a researc project that will lead to an exhaustible investigation and understanding of the context, factors, and history of the options available to move forward with The outcome would then be possible comprehensive suggestions at ways forward for both the movement and everyone invovled. What the think tank hopes to achieve in methodology and practice is a synthesis of Occupy styled horizontality and open mindedness, and social science research methodology. But this will be solution driven as opposed to simply research. We will be creating sustainable ways forward for the movement and its individuals. What these will be we do not yet know, nor is this about testing hypothesis or existing models through research. It is about finding several possible solutions amidst the sea of ideas, opinions, and solutions that people have previously come to the table with and/or exist in the world (from Brazil’s landless movement, to coops in park slope). We plan to bring together one large network of individuals and ideas and focus them on answer the very specific question: How does Occupy create a sustainable way forward that allows it to meet its activist’s basic needs, allows for the expansion and dissemination of its ideas and messages, and establishes exemplary and prefigurative models of social engagement while stably existing throughout the transitional process of change as society transforms to a more idealic social composition (or while simultaneously providing a relatively stable transitional process for itself as society transforms to a more idealic social composition, or…). This question would be the first thing to be addressed by the research unit. What does it mean to move forward and what is the question we need to answer.

For illustration purposes only, I will sketch a possible scenario, but I would advise anyone reading this to look beyond the illustration and to the questions that they are trying to address: We live in a capitalist world were certain parameters are necessary for stable involvement WITHIN the system. Housing, food, interaction and communication, all require things to obtain them – relationships, money, jobs, etc. We need to find an alternative way to structure our lives, while at the same time engaging with the old way enough to transition to something new. Inhabiting the gray areas. The research needs to be open, allowing every possible option on the table, and to methodically dismiss and add things through our principled research.

Sample concept:
Imagine if ten years from now Occupy controlled an old hotel structure in Brooklyn that it had fixed up, and was housing several hundred individuals, office and meeting spaces, and allowed itself the ability to sustain and feed both the facility and its people. That the location was a local hub in a national and global network of prefigurative Occupy principled entities that supported both the facility and the larger network through multiple ways such as revenue generation and also showed the general public a different way of producing goods and interacting with the economy. This network would be made up of many different hubs and entities bringing in revenue streams ranging from fundraising to guild-like entities to hybrid styled non-profit companies to perhaps something new. The housing situation would be cooperative and communal in some way shape or form and allocated and maintained by horizontal principles. The entire facility would function as a launching point for the movement’s ideas, work, messaging, etc.

Sample revenue generating entity:
Perhaps “Choccupy” is a full part of this network and sells chocolates and deserts (sale or donation) to the general public in a non-profit cooperative structure. It works from either the hotel structure’s industrial kitchen or from another production facility within the network. It produces chocolates and then sells them vendor and retail style throughout the city. It also maintains locations and relationships throughout the country for recipe sharing and localized production and distribution. All materials and ingredients are ethically sourced, as local as possible, and using principled methods akin to Occupy’s values such as GMO free, non-expropriative labor practices, economically and socially just, etc. Revenue would come in either through sales or donations, and would be used to maintain itself, its facilities, and occupiers. It would be run, managed, and controlled by a cooperative styled entity made up of a number of individuals working horizontally, with all proceeds going directly back into the entity/facility and the movement and its goals. It also could be an affiliate endeavor, meaning it gives a certain amount or percentage of its proceeds to Occupy (or however it is that this arrangement is set up).

The goal would be to construct a prospective structure of autonomous affiliate entities (and locales) that met certain requirements to be a part of the network. They would work together, be horizontal, local, and work for the movement. These revenue generating entities would allow for individuals to work and to collectively show prefigurative ways of life. These entities could come in many shapes or forms based on the research and local initiative: services, retail, cofftea shops, production, agriculture, whatever. Anyway that individuals, businesses, or new entities felt they could structure society and socio-economic interaction amongst themselves, for sale for barter, for donation… Whatever could fit in the mind – a localized conglomerate cooperative fair/trade model with a horizontal leadership structure. How knows!

Sample housing entity:
Could be set up cooperatively as seen to best fit by the research and Occupy principles. There would obviously be a million questions about access, and decision making – tough questions that would get into gray areas about the movement’s inclusivity – but that would be the purpose of the research study, to thoroughly research and find multiple options that could work. The principle goal could be to find a way that say 200 people could live together in a multiple occupancy structure and wake up in the morning and get to work together. Communally spending time on maintaining the housing situation, on revenue generation, and on broadening and working for the movement. All equally shouldered by individual’s both living and not living there. How this would be done and structured would all be part of the research outcome. Just as how the space would be obtained. Squating perhaps is the first thing to come to mind, but is that viable? Wouldn’t the NYPD shut it down straight away? So a lengthy research into legal issues and structures would be order for ways to allow stability on a legal level.

While those are just a few sample concepts to stir the imagination, whatever structures and entities emerge, the purpose of them would be to provide stable spaces from which Occupy would organize and structure its messages and actions. This would allow more consistent and concerted targeting of specific issues and actions with a more transparent, inclusive, and cohesive structural point of origin. In my opinion it is only from a stable foundation that we can have the security to go to work each day and be as productive as possible in working towards changing the world – both as a prefigurative message of protest and as an information generating and disseminating awareness machine.

On the whole: there are countless issues to address and research here, many of which wouldn’t be known until the research showed them. The economics of anything of this sort would be incredibly complex. Where do you get a building from? Donation, lease, friendly lease and if so, how do you cover the costs of getting it, maintaining it? How do you start up those business like entities? They require start up funds, management expertise, planning, etc. Horizontal housing structures? We’ve tried that… how can it work? How has it worked? How is it that we could consense on the parameters of our principles? How big is that gray area that our collective principles will allow us to work within?

What we are talking about is planning to institute an entirely new socio-economic structure within the current one, under the watchful eye of capital and governmental forces bent on stopping us, within a horizontal consensus structure and movement, with little money, little time, and in our spare time. It is a HUGE undertaking that will take years and decades to see through. But this to me, is exactly what Occupy is about. This type of project would create structural alternatives for transition allowing Occupy to straddle mainstream socio-economic society and an alternative new pathway while maintaining the same activist and awareness raising work we are currently doing To find a legal way to maintain a space while creating a structure of interaction that was work-like and sustainable in a way that the general public could both respect and even desire. We could be laying the ground work for an alternative way forward while providing a stable place to do outreach, create media, do research, live, eat, etc.

And while yes, it seems daunting, sooooo much work has already been done. So many experiments and so much research has already been done both outside and inside Occupy. We just have to bring it together and find one or several practical usages and ways forward that we can contextually implement. This will again, not be easy. Most people would probably be quite reticent to give up their current lives and the “necessities” of it: individualism, ipods, cars, whatever. The process will have multiple levels and ways to allow individuals to partake in the transition (the project).

I would say this transition will take generations and require an entire new social construct. But it will be one that will have to happen through hard work on creating evolution on a revolutionary level as opposed to a singular revolt that could be seen to put something upon people as opposed to allowing them to come to it themselves. Mindsets takes generations to change collectively. We are on the right track.

Manny!!

So I've got a job!  Yes, I am going to be molding youth!  I met Saturday evening with a mother and daughter and will be working starting next Monday as a Nanny (now pushed up to tomorrow!).  It is a short term gig, 6 weeks total, but full time and for good pay.  It will really be a great way to get myself back on my feet and buy some time while I work to see what else can pan out.

It is funny too with everything.  It all comes crashing in together.  I was waiting on the Nanny idea before I got too far into the other stuff, but when I didn't hear back right away I had to make an "all eggs in one basket call" and apply for the painting position.  Wouldn't you know that I got offered the Nanny job and then within two days I got a call back from the painting company for an interview not but a few minutes after I got a call from an Occupy friend about some possible work doing organizing and/or historical research involving unions.  It comes in waterfalls!!  This last one is obviously really exciting at first glimpse, but I'll find out more on Thursday.

As for the painting, the interview ended up being canceled due to some kind of an "emergency".  But they said they'd get back in touch with me.  Maybe they googled me and found out I was a dirty hippie that lives in parks!!  Haha!!  I haven't heard back for two days now...  As it is though, they want me to be using my car (which I'm about to go under on), while not paying me nearly enough to live on (nevermind pay for gas and get the car fixed up for regularly use).  But this job - like most - just doesn't pay enough to sustain life.  Yes, they talked to me about advancement there and such, but we all know that painting isn't really going to be the thing that I get excited about for the future.  Full time painting houses for 10 or 12 bucks and hour?!  To live in NYC and have a car to head upstate in emergencies?  Huh!?

I think we all face this issue at times.  You have to have a job to eat, to live.  But then what?  What if the job itself isn't enough to live and eat?  If I need a car to do the job, but I need a better salary to keep the car to keep the job, what do I do?  Live out of the car?  Yeah, I've done that, it's not sustainable.  And while many people may think that you do what you have to do to move forward in life.  At what point does a society step back and look at itself and say, hey, we've got way too many people living in cars!  When there are so many jobs that do no pay living wages it is time to reassess things.  That is of course where I think we are of course, but just that we haven't realized on such a large scale that our lives are simply not sustainable.

So that is why I Occupy.  I hope that we can change that living situation for so many people.  That is also why I will become a nanny.  It pays well, will be enjoyable, and in this case is short term which will allow me to keep moving forward looking for other career work (and keep occupying).  I will only have till September to stay where I am.  So I have to put the pressure on here.  It would be great if the labor research opportunity would come through as something real and sustainable.  But as with all of these things, there will always be some conflict, some compromise that I will have to make to move forward.  Will it be the subject matter?  The pay?  The type of convictions within the organizations?  Who knows... but it will be interesting all the same!!  Forward we must.      

hiking (for a nominal advance on wages already earned...)

So I ended up finally getting an email out to my boss at the hiking store.  I tried to delicately explain my stance and why I should be paid.  His response was, frankly, appalling and literally sent me calling the national lawyers guild.  He didn't seem to see anything wrong with not paying me.  He had told me that I couldn't count on this job to be my main source of income, thus felt like he was covered and fine in not paying me on time.  He also questioned how he could possible pay me ahead of people that had been with him longer, and been waiting to get paid longer.  Yes, fair enough... they deserve to be paid as well!!  But what arrangement you've made with your other employees is between you and them and none of my business!  If you want to come ask me if I will do the same, fine, lets have that conversation.  The fact is though, that when you said that work would be sporadic at the store and I shouldn't count on it as my main source of income, you said I wouldn't be getting steady HOURS!!  You didn't say that when I did get hours I wouldn't be getting paid for them!  I mean, the audacity to even think, nevermind assume, that your workers would just be fine with working and not getting paid.

I waited till the next day to address it in person.  It was a struggle right from when I walked in the door though.  I saw my other coworker and the boss together.  The cold shoulder was evident from both of them.  The kind of fake smile and handshake where you are really thinking under your breath: "I hate you, you dirty bastard".  It seemed to me that my boss had obviously spoken to my colleague, sullying my name there for simply demanding to be paid for time I'd worked.  I can only picture how that story went: "tim is demanding to be paid before you!" "You've been here a year!" "The audacity!"

This is the way ownership gets us.  A political game that turns us against each other.  We are not supposed to talk about things like this, salaries, conditions, etc.  You know how this works.  We're NEVER supposed to ask other people what they make.  But why not?  Because we might all realize we are getting treated very differently?  Screwed even?  This is the heart of the idea behind collective bargaining and unionizing.  It is not so we can get extra days off a year and retire at 40.  It is so that there is communication amongst workers.  So that we will know if we are all being treated fairly.  As individuals we can be hired, fired, and taken advantage of, but as a collective group we can ask to actually get our pay, we can ask for humane working conditions, for dignity and respect in our daily tasks, and maybe even  a wage we can live on.

Yeah, frankly I don't trust this guy anymore.  I mean, I like him personally I guess.  But it is what we do that defines us, our actions, words, and how we treat people.  When I spoke to him, it was just as if he was trying to find a way to keep me on for the least outlay, with the least amount of integrity.  He agreed entirely to what I was saying bout it all, probably thinking: "yes! he's not actually going to ask for his full salary!"  I mean, he basically negotiated me out of demanding full pay for work done.  In this whole process he gets to pay me late.  Yet somehow I've accepted this.  Implicitly or not, I have agreed to getting shafted.  He also slipped in there at one point that this week he'd be paying February's wages.  This is of course what he said to me about last week as well.  But it still hasn't gone out.  But the worst thing about it all is that he doesn't realize that this is what he teaches us to say to customers about out of stock supplies and bills.  Like we don't recognize ourselves in these narratives.  Then, after all this, he then has the audacity to send an email out about a mandatory training a couple Monday's from now (yeah it'll be "paid").  Sorry bro, I'm nannying that day.  Working somewhere where I will get paid.  Your store is now at the bottom of the totem pole.  I will work for you when I can.      

There is one other thing that I want to bring up regarding this, which is pure speculation and may be completely colored by a singular and horrible experience in my past.  I mentioned that not getting paid like this happened to me once before.  That incidence was much worse.  The company owed my $29,000 in back pay, was stalling my work visa for that country, and was giving me just enough cash keep above water, but not enough to leave the country.  I was trapped and in a situation that was malicious in so many ways.  I was promised bonuses and a percentage to offset the situation, yet nothing was materializing while the owner lived it up, stealing money from the company.  I eventually got my pay back, but that's a looong story for a book!  No matter though, here I am again, with this hiking company getting screwed.

There is one thing that the two men that owned these outfits had in common: they were both long term military men (one British, one America).  The way they spoke, the calculations they seemed to take, the rationale they ultimately used, it was all so incredibly similar.  It's as if loyalty is a one way street that goes straight down the chain of command.  General to private, owner to worker.  As if hierarchy knows no bounds; resting upon its highest of peeks maintaining no moral ground from which to look down upon us from.  Neither of them seemed to stop paying their rents, their salaries, and their bills. 

But anyway, who knows if that is the case here.  All I know is that I don't have enough cash to pay a bill that's due this week and be able to eat over the next two weeks.  Yeah, I'll get some cash, but I won't get what I'm supposed to, thus my budgeting matters not.  But, I've learned something.  I've learned not to trust ownership (again) and I've learned to be wary of military ownership, especially those falling on hard times.  It also should go without saying that I've also gotten my daily fix of reiteration that our system is fundamentally flawed.  But let's just keep moving forward with that one.  One step... 

Moving Forward(ish)

So this week has seen a lot of different things come and go.  I have spent a lot of time looking for work for now, but also working on finding a way forward for the longer term.  Of late though, it's mostly been about conflict.  no matter what it is that we do in life it conflicts with something that we either believe in or should/must do.  I've been getting a lot of advice of late an it all seems pretty much unmanageable.  No matter what I do, whether it's in life or specific situations, there is no victory.  If I get a job in international development like my experience and degrees point to, in some people's eyes I run the risk of becoming a colonialist, imperialist, or even a missionary.  I can of course stay working where I am and just not get paid for the too few hours that I'm working.  But even then, the job is really just another capitalist wage-labor position bowing down to the man (not paying me).  I've applied to do commercial interior painting, I followed up on a nannying lead for a toddler.  Applied to more retail, and got a networked in an application for post-conflict reconstruction work.  Who knows what if anything will bare fruit.  Yapo has also come back with some work he needs done on a prospective funding line from England.  I am not sure it is feasible though at first glimpse.  But will get further in as I can.


The heart and soul of my time has been of course on Occupy stuff though.  I am really getting further into this sustainability issue.  We have to find a way to sustain the movement's individuals in a way that leaves them empowered and energized to progress the movement.  We also need to try to find a prefigurative way to illuminate the inequities of the current system by showing that another way is possible - and functional - under current auspices.

I've had some really good conversations with a number of people about it and am starting to see a solid research project, and maybe even a group for moving forward.  It would certainly be a long slow project, but ten years from now the movement will be judged on what it achieved, not how long it took to map out a structure for success.

So there we are: I am trying to juggle life, work, occupy, and social relationships and whatever else gets thrown in there that day.  I know as per societies wishes I should just be settling in and working away.  But that is just what keeps the cycle going.  If I stay both dumbed and numbed down the status quo will maintain and most of our lives will just continue to lag behind just a few.  But I can't and won't allow it.  We will all find a way forward personally and professionally, so that we can keep working on finding a way forward for the movement and in turn a more economic and socially just society.  The journey of 10,000 feet starts with a single step....

Blood in an open container...

So there was a sort of surreal moment the other night here in "timistan".  After a late night at a rather ritzy potluck dinner party with OWSers in Williamsburg (thanks MTA for sucking - yes that's the same MTA that's been raising rates and cutting services), I dragged myself out of bed Saturday and ran to work at the hiking store.  I spent the day in Park Slope selling high end hiking gear and chatting with local outdoorsy types.  From there it was off for a quick shower and then a celebration of a superfriend's Phd graduation (yes, she wore a cape all night!).  It was about a 7 or 8 block walk through Bed-Stuy to get there.

Saturday night in Bed-Stuy is an interesting occurrence.  Cops upon cops everywhere.  Barbeques on front steps and walkways, loud Afro-Caribbean beats pumping from blocks away.  It has a sort of gritty festive feel to it, the kind of thing that turns of many, but is the utmost of fun for those willing to scratch through the tough exterior and find the fun being had underneath.

We got to our friend's and had a little good conversation, a drink, some nachos and some more conversation.  The true surreality of the evening really kicked in when the chips were down and I went out to get some more at the local bodega.  Of course I wasn't barely out the door yet when I happened upon an older man laying face down at the corner.  I couldn't see his head as it was blocked by a fence.  I thought, well its NYC, I've seen some odd things and people laying face down on the sidewalk is not uncommon (the last time I saw this a guy was humping the sidewalk).  But once I came fully upon him and saw the awkwardness he lay there with I was a bit more concerned.  As I got to the other side of him to try to catch a glimpse of his face I saw a large pool of blood gushing out of him.  It was the same as you see it in a movie.  You know, the kind that is slowly expanding and flowing down hill as it pours out of a person?  I was joined by a group of other people right away as well.  One older gentleman and myself were assessing the situation as a younger group of people were checking in to see what was going on.   He was unconscious with his neck and head cocked in a very awkward way.  I called 911 and with the other man we tried to make sure no one moved the injured guy and that he had space. 

No one seemed to have seen what happened.  While we waited for help people speculated about it all.  Some say they heard a thump and looked over to see him laying there with no one around him, others that they saw him drinking earlier, he apparently lived just two buildings down.  The contents of his one pocket were strewn about, lotto tickets and some dice.  A couple of kids wondered if he'd been mugged or had his pocket contents snatched after he fell.  There was only speculation among by-standers, it seemed to me that if he was drunk he might have just simply stumbled over the curb and smacked his head on the ground.  It didn't really matter at this point though.  He lay there awkward and unconscious.

While waiting for the ambulance he started to move a bit, an arm and then a bit of his head.  This was very much a relief for me.  All that time playing football makes me very leery of neck injuries, and to see him moving his head was big.  I kept trying to get him to stay still but he seemed completely lost as he was awakening, kind of taking stock of all his bits and pieces.  He picked his head up to show a massive gash on his eyebrow/temple area.  He was completely out of it, dazed and wobbly.  At this point a cop car puled up and he all of a sudden got very nervous.  He tried to stand up and subsequently fell straight back down onto his backside.  Varying consistencies of blood covering the whole side of his face and arm.  The bleeding had slowed down, but it was certainly still bleeding.

The police officers came out and tried to get him to sit back down and to remain calm and subdued till the ambulance got there.  He was visibly agitated and claiming nothing on the ground was his.  He definitely seemed to be quite nervous and maybe even afraid of the police.  But nothing about him seemed certain of anything.  There didn't seem to be any reason to be afraid of these two officers though as they seemed harmless enough.  They were just trying to help the guy and were very thankful to those of us around him, but who knows the context of his life and the complexity of the neighborhood.  The cops got him pretty settled down though until the ambulance pulled up.  At that point the officers told us we could head out upon our way as everything was under control.  I went over to the bodega and got tostitos and water before heading back.  I checked in on the way and they said everything was ok - he'd be fine.  They had him sitting up on the back of the ambulance and were cleaning the blood from his arm at that point.  He seemed resolved to accepting the care from the EMT's and what had happened to him.

I went back to the party.  We fired up the nachos, got another drink, and no one else really seemed too bothered by it all past an initial query.  As the evening winded down, we headed out towards home.  We past the corner were it had all happened and there was still a huge blood soaked spot of the sidewalk next to some of the bits of his pocket that were strewn about.  We paused and then kept walking.

Another couple blocks away up Franklin we saw some police lights and commotion in front of us.  There were 7 police officers and a cruiser surrounding a kid who couldn't have been much out of his teens.  He looked befuddled, annoyed, and all together caged; standing with a semi-circle of officers around him and his back to a wall.  We asked him if he was ok, he said yes with some thankfully assured and bonding eye contact.  We thought to continue on but lagged as we listening to the banter between them all:

"No, come on, tell us you're a drug dealer.  Come on, tell us you are please."  
"No, I'm not a drug dealer." He said almost seeming bored of it.

It went on, a constant verbal berating of him.  We decided it just didn't seem right, so we stayed and videoed it.  The police reacted with some surprise, as if this type of stuff didn't happen out here in the hood.  A couple of white passers-by videoing them stop and frisk and shake down a kid on the street.  The one police officer of course tried to get us to move away:

"You're too close to the officer here, please go back there or across the street."
"Then we can't see or hear what's happening." We said as we stayed.  

The officer seemed to hesitate, kinda of surprised be our lack of immediate compliance.  He then offered another side where we still could see and hear everything.  So we swiveled around to that spot.  The kid seemed glad to have the support.  It was no longer seven to one.

"Yeah, film this!  This is bull shit, seven cops cause I got a little something extra in my cool-aid."

That's what it was all about.  As he'd said when we walked up, they were writing him a summons for an open container.  Seven cops and a squad car for an open container violation.  He started telling them what he really thought.  As if he'd never had the chance to tell the cops what he actually thought about how they treated him and people in his neighborhood.  With us there filming, the cops couldn't do anything even if they wanted to.  Who is to know what would have happened if we hadn't shown up.  They could have given him his citation and parted ways, or they could have hassled him, pushed him around or who knows.  As he was telling them all about their business though, the one main cop told us we should get back:

"We don't know what he's got on him."

We responded:

"It's not him we're worried about."

The police think somehow that their presence automatically makes people feel safe.  But fact of the matter is that the NYPD has killed 6 people this year.  There are video's upon video's of cops beating and harassing people all over youtube everywhere from the hood to Occupy.  The police do not make me feel safe.  You can argue with me all you want, but that is the way I FEEL.  I have been pushed, I have been berated, I have had all sort of unlawful, hypocritical, and arbitrary abuse of power dealings with cops at Occupy, and every one of them pales in comparison to what happens in black and brown communities every day of their lives.  No I do not feel safe.  I saw a statistic two days ago that in the whole of Germany last year the entire police force fired their guns 85 times - total!  In America police have dispensed that in one incident and on one person - multiple times!  We have a very specific mentality of law enforcement in this country that does not make me feel safe around police officers.

But that is not where the absurdities lie within that evening's stories as my feelings for the police are not what's important.  The true concern to me is that a young male walking through Bed-Stuy with a fountain soda cup spiked with alcohol merits seven plus cops and a car, yet it takes over ten minutes for officers to arrive on the scene of a man laying unconscious in a pool of blood on the sidewalk.  They weren't but a couple blocks from each other.  The whole place was crawling with cops and no one could run over and check on it? 

Anyway, eventually they get the kid's summons written and he grabs the ticket and takes off.  Literally as if he was a penned up animal given an open gate - half used to it, half ready to just expand his wings and fly as high as could be.  With that we exchanged a few snippy pleasantries with the cops and went upon our way. 

We weren't a block away though when out of some odd hallucinogenic cartoon movie these two white hipster kids riding completely impractically tall bikes ride straight through a red light.  It was like sitting in a film watching Armageddon when all of a sudden the film stops, the lights in the theater come on, and a purple elephant struts across the front of the screen... Poof!  The lights go back off and the bombs and guns start again!    

The whole evening was such an odd slice of Americana.  Face down and bloodied in a island of coplessness in a sea of cops, a text book stop and frisk harassment of a kid with the same spiked cool aid we've all had in our hands so many times, the absurdly princely white hipster kids perched so obliviously high atop their hobby bikes without a care in the world, gentrifying the neighborhood with each pedal, all the while while a couple of white people wander around one of the roughest neighborhoods in Brooklyn never once feeling unsafe amidst the carnage and chaos, as if our skin somehow created some sort of force field that shielded us from the atrocities of others' lives.  Resting in an island of aloofness, amidst a storm of uncertainty and social paradigms. Such an odd, surreal world we live in.

Hiking for free!

So I'm at work at the hiking store the other day and I finally get my tax paperwork and such in and ask: so when is pay day?  It's every two weeks, 1st and 15th is the response.  BUT, due to a warm winter with no snow and the growing/planning pains of a new store, they didn't do much business over the winter and struggled to stay afloat.  So they are right now only going to be paying for February!  ........  yes, a moment to digest....  Now, I can only assume that means that on this 15th they will pay February, and then the 1st will be March and then the next 15th finally to April when I should get some cash.  What?!?!  So I was hired in mid April and won't get paid until mid June?!?  Sigh....

Now yeah, anyone reading this blog regularly is going to understand that I am certainly not in a position to have to wait so long to get paid.  There are also a few people that know me going back that know that this isn't the first time that this has happened to me.  When I was in Prague I was working in a much different situation and position, but under similar compensatory circumstances.  I was a big part of a small company there (working pretty much as the chief operating officer) and was going to be getting a small percentage for all my work and sacrifice.  As we looked for an investor I was not paid much of anything for months and was owed thousands of dollars.  I was trapped then.  They had stalled my visa process so I couldn't get a different job and they owed me money.  I couldn't either justify or actually leave with so much invested.  Not to mention that I had a lot of me personally invested in this company trying to bring medical evacuation services to Iraq and Afghanistan.

This situation here is different.  I am trying to take New Yorkers with disposable income hiking in the Hudson Valley and I have no personal stake in the company other than the energy I bring to work that day.  I am just a laborer, working for the man, and I should be paid by the man.  Yeah, that may sound a bit mercenaryesque, but isn't that the problem of it all?  We take for grated in so many ways the rights of management and ownership.  Ownership takes it for granted that they can ask us to wait to get paid.  There are only so many jobs out there, so they hold a certain amount of power and control over us.  I don't know how much cash the company has or how much the owner is taking for himself.  But few people today think to look at that company itself and shame them for having the audacity to ask their workers to make such sacrifices.  If I don't just acquiesce my loyalty comes under question.  Will I continue to get hours?  to have my job?  How many people immediately question the employers "loyalty" to their employees and to society?  In a hierarchical work structure, it is always about being "loyal" to the boss, the owner, whatever.  If we were all truly seen as equal, no one would be asked to be loyal to anyone over the other.

I am sure the owner is paying his rent.  And all told, he did offer to give me something as an advance if I was really hurting, but who is he to "offer" such a thing?  Where does he assume his power to do that comes from?  As if his situation or business is somehow presumptively more important than whatever it is that I have going on?  Like we are a team or something with equal shares in victory?  I wish we were a team - all equally working towards one goal, but we are not.  We are laborers working to make him money, to make his company grow, his ownership and capital expand.  Yes, we get our wages but hold no stake in the ownership of the means of this production.  That is the system we live in.  We are the tools he will use to hopefully get rich.  So why should we, or how can he ask us, to make sacrifices not commensurate with our relationship with this entity? 

I mean, I don't really hold anything against him personally.  I definitely like him.  He's a good guy just trying to keep his business a float.  But I've been in that position before at another retail store in New Paltz, NY as well.  I worked and worked and worked for them on the floor, making them money, probably holding their store together for a time.  I tried to offer marketing and industry specific advice (I'd worked in other successful stores in that industry), but it went unheeded and the company went out of business a few months after I stopped working there.  So it is tough to see familiar things and have little power to change them, yet still be asked to make sacrifices as if I had power to change something within the company.  I think at minimum he should have mentioned it to me when I was hired.  At least then I could have factored it into my decision making and/or planning/budgeting.  But he didn't, he just left it unsaid.  There is certainly little integrity in that.  

That however is perhaps why he didn't.  He needs people to work for him to help his company move forward.  He can't do it all on his own and he is apparently losing two people that have been with him for a while.  I don't know why, but it is easy to speculate regarding a lack of both payment and even probably work.  I was also just informed, that while I was originally told that I was being hired for both retail sales and as a guide, that I really wouldn't be doing much retail work.  And as I see the demand for the tours, it looks like I am really just a standby guide depending on the number of people on the tours (i.e. the company and his ability to market - the same downfall faced in New Paltz). 

So the gist of all this here is that I am caught in another powerless dilemma that illustrates how little control most workers have over their lives.  What play do I have here?  I can say I'm not going to work anymore until I'm paid, but then I'm causing "a problem" and then if he wanted he could just cut my hours/not schedule me.  That would actually be the prudent business decision if he couldn't afford to move that expense forward a few weeks.  I would also become the guy that isn't "loyal" or isn't a "team player."  After all, he holds the power, it is his opinion of me that matters as to whether I work for him.  If I do keep working, he gets me more and more by the balls, the more and more that he owes me as the less apt I am to leave him and run the risk of losing everything I'm owed.  This is what happened in Prague.  I knew that if I left the company, we would never get any investment and I would never get paid what I was owed for the months I had worked.

What we all don't realize is that this is the intended dilemma of capitalism.  There has to be the "excess labor pool" of willing but unemployed workers that owners can always go to to replace "bad" or "uncooperative" employees.  They can thus act in their own interests as employees are mostly dispensable.  If I want to keep this job, and maintain any chance of my getting paid as a business priority or even in general, then I have to do what he tells me.  For if I stop working there he is certainly going to pay other bills and workers before employees no long with the company.  I am powerless.  I have to have a job, and I want to get paid for the time I've already worked.  So I can't leave and I can't really cause any commotion.  One person told me I should start picketing out front of the store and that I'd be paid by the end of the day!  Yeah, and then that would be my last day.

The point of all of this is, that this system as it exists today is not functional.  Why should a worker have so little power?  Because they "didn't take a risk?"  Maybe they didn't have the same opportunity to take a risk, or the same capacity to be able to take risks, or education on how to create a niche and plan through taking on both the risks and the business.  The fact is, that without average everyday workers, laborers, businesses can not and would not function.  Our system requires both managers and the managed to do their tasks for businesses to succeed.  Why then should one side of that equation be so powerless?  Why should it be so unbalanced?  I go to work, I do my job, and I get paid.  That is one of the general principles of capitalist production that little to no one would argue over.  So why then am I not getting paid?  And why am I so powerless to do anything about it?

A system with such disparities of power is not sustainable for one reason: because intrinsically we all are equal and thus all have the same amount of power.  Any system that alters that and skews it so blatantly in one direction or the other is unsustainable, and can only be viewed as temporary.  The question we face is just how long are we going to allow ourselves to be so powerless?  To be subjugated.