My Statement of Purpose

I started my academic career as an undergraduate in sociology. Growing up in a household that always had to make do with a modest income, my studies emphasized economic injustice in American society and issues of race and ethnicity. I was especially influenced by the way that economic sociology brought social and cultural depth to scholarship on economics that tended to focus almost exclusively on “the maximizing, rational individual.” After completing my BA in sociology, I pursued an interdisciplinary MA in Economic and Social History at the University of Manchester, where I gained exposure to theories and methods from economics, social theory, political science, and history. Together with my supervisor, Peter Gatrell, my research centered on the social transitions that accompanied economic and political transformations in post-Soviet societies. My thesis on post-war Czechoslovakia examined how Cold War politics shaped socioeconomic institutions. Specifically, this project examined how multilateral aid efforts had been undermined by geopolitical shifts, creating economic challenges for the local populace and hampering the reconstruction process. The Manchester program helped me to refine an abiding interest in the relationship between crisis and economic transformation.

Once I completed my MA, I found myself living abroad with no visa and few employment options. So, I took a job in an industry that drew on my past research, although ultimately tested my ethical and political boundaries. Based in Prague, the position involved working on security and economic development in Iraq and Afghanistan. In addition to research, writing, and improving my Czech language skills, my job included work on private and institutional financing, planning and proposing economic development strategies in war-torn areas, government contracting, and aid work. It quickly became clear to me though that I was flirting with war profiteering. The political and ethical conflicts with this job created one of the most challenging periods of my life. However, my disillusionment helped to develop my critique of the relationship between militarism and economic and political development. I saw first-hand how neoliberal development priorities penetrated all facets of everyday life in developing regions, limiting individual and collective empowerment as exploitative low wage employment led ordinary people to make distressing choices between feeding or protecting their families. I watched as neoliberal institutions, corporations, and political interests worked to “rebuild” countries and societies upon the “blank slate” created by war and destruction.

Wanting to situate this critique intellectually, I pursued graduate study at Central European University in the Sociology and Social Anthropology department. Whereas my work at Manchester was focused on macro-level socioeconomic analysis, CEU's program was far more anthropological, providing the opportunity to explore local systems and individual agency to a far greater extent. Classes on development, globalization, power, and resistance exposed me to the scholarship of Karl Polanyi, James Ferguson, Giovanni Arrighi, David Harvey, Arjun Appadurai, and Jean and John L. Comaroff, among others. This line of inquiry led me to realize that the theories and methods employed in many types of economic analysis were inadequate to the social problems and historical contexts that comprised the focus of my research. I was inspired by the insights sociological and anthropological approaches could offer the study of economics and politics.

At CEU I broadened my interest in post-conflict societies through sustained attention to the history and development of Sierra Leone. My research highlighted social and economic crises in the context of the patchwork of structural adjustment programs and various genres of civil strife experienced there. My work centered on the theoretical concept of “liberal peace” (or “democratic peace”), which posits that liberal societies—with their focus on the individual, private property, civil liberties, and free markets—are inherently more stable and peaceful. My research suggested that, to the contrary, an idealized notion of individualism often led to more competition. Because competition is inherently antagonistic, it often leads not to peace but more readily to conflict, increasing the probability of outright war. Following my research on Sierra Leone at CEU, I planned, fundraised for, and undertook an investigative/awareness-raising trip to Sierra Leone to learn and to identify opportunities for community-based entrepreneurial and humanitarian work to help people recover from civil war. As part of building local alliances, I worked on increasing cultural awareness, became proficient in Krio, and used my time to set up a community-based organization in the city of Makeni aimed at small-scale projects that could create jobs and provide investment for the local community. This work helped me appreciate the logistical problems of development aid in Sierra Leone, symptomatic of analogous situations elsewhere in the global South.

Back in the United States, that course of inquiry shifted in the beginning of October 2011 when I became active with Occupy Wall Street (OWS) and channeled my intellectual energy into applying this socioeconomic critique here. For years, I had hoped to establish an online People’s Think Tank for research and discourse using democratic and participatory approaches. When the Zuccotti Park occupation began, I used these skills and resources to help create and facilitate the Think Tank Working Group, which expands direct democracy through the collection and dissemination of ideas by directly engaging and empowering individuals. We continue to facilitate informal, open, and documented discussion forums throughout New York City and have expanded the Think Tank to other Occupations, community groups, and now to a weekly radio show here in New York City (wbai.org). Discussions range widely, from health care policy and corporate personhood to race relations in Zuccotti Park and Hurricane Sandy relief efforts. We have yet to realize the full potential of the project and are currently working on the logistics of how ideas generated in Think Tank discussions can be more accessible to the public, as well as part of public Think Tank research projects involving the ideas generated both through this process and those surrounding the greater movement.

My involvement with OWS has led me to a fuller appreciation of the relationship between economic and social change and academic scholarship on societal transition. My participation has only raised more questions for me about the relationship between liberal democracy and neoliberalism. In particular, I’m interested in mechanisms of social control in neoliberal society. For instance, the state's exceedingly violent crackdown on the protests has been largely shaped by military tactics and narratives based on the so-called “legitimate” use of force. These tactics have repeated modern methods of social control: a monopoly on the use of force, control of ideas, social messages, and protests. My experiences within the movement, and especially my interactions with the media, have raised unavoidable questions for me: Was there a systemic attempt to use repressive/oppressive and ideological apparatuses to exclude ideas, and to unfavorably skew public opinion away from the movement? What (if any) collusion was there between public and private actors—especially regarding the media and policing? How did the movement's own structure and message (anarchic, amorphous, and without clearly enunciated direction) affect coverage and public understanding of the movement? And most importantly, what does the Occupy movement and its interaction with state, private, and informational apparatuses mean with regard to “democracy” in neoliberal America and the world?

These are the questions I hope will frame my PhD work. Broadly conceived, the crux of my inquiry looks at a broader contradiction that has regularly surfaced in U.S. society in the face of civil unrest: On the one hand, U.S. national identity is often articulated in terms of rights and freedoms to political assembly and free speech, civil liberties and property rights, economic and social freedoms, and freedom from the use of repressive tactics often seen in “less democratic” regimes. Yet, this ideal has been in direct conflict with an institutionalized response using brute force, censorship, and coercive methods to suppress the Occupy movement. This was on prominent display during the slow transition of public empathy for the Occupy movement to the "law and order" and state/corporate message that many people bought into, even despite its obvious contradiction to the freedom of speech, expression, and fight for economic and social justice—the true democracy—that people are taught and wish to believe America is about. Are media, police, and public perceptions mere outcomes of a greater contradiction? And if so, to what origins? As the aforementioned institutions are largely shaped by state actions and interactions with private and corporate interests, the study's core would look at neoliberalism's dominant position within the shaping of American policies, worldviews, and culture, as well as exploring whether there is a growing part of America that has become so entrenched in “the system” (media, education, law and order, mass culture, etc.) that they can no longer assess and critique “the system” surrounding them.

Having spent the last year on the ground with OWS, sleeping in the park, organizing discussion groups, being actively involved with the media, engaging with Occupy on every level, and feeling the very repression I look to study, I am uniquely positioned with ties to the movement's core to carry out this study ethnographically, historically, and archivally....

Academia

So it is about that time again; where the academic calender is calling my name.  This year of course its especially loud as the job market proves to have no love for me.  Thus it brings me back to my eternal quest to get into and funded at a PhD program.  I thought for sure last year would have bore fruit.  But it didn't.  I cut my academic nose off to spite my occupation.  It seemed like a great idea at the time, stay in the New York area to be closer to Occupy.  But I overestimated my capacity within the power and strength of the advice I was getting from others in the know about my PhD applications.  I was surrounded by people that knew and fabulously supported me.  I felt like I'd get in everywhere!  But admissions department's don't know you like your friends and colleagues do.  I got overconfident I suppose, and applied most;y to the most sought after programs in the country.  It didn't work out as I got in to one place with too little funding and wait-listed at my top choice.  A couple hundred plus applicants for two spots.  I was in the top ten it seems, but I didn't get in.  Most of the advice I got from friends and family at the time was to give up, walk away, and find a new career option.  How many years to you keep trying before you realize they may just not be interested in my application?


So I put my efforts into Occupy and finding work in the non-profit and/or international development sectors.  It hasn't worked thus far.  My resume seems to not get me far in these communities and today's economic climate.  Not to mention that, as always, I find myself yearning for intellectual discourse, to be able to focus, to just sit and learn and analyze and try to come to new alternative ways of doing and contemplating things.  I always come back to it.  My passion will always lie in this type of work. I just need to find the best outlet for it.


So I've been looking into how to go about this in academia again.  What lessons have I learned from the last several application processes?  What can be changed?  What in fact should I be studying?  I've started formulating some prospective concepts in my mind over the last few months, and reached out to some people that I trust and have helped me throughout.  I feel like this past year and the people that I've found myself involved with has really honed some of my thoughts/perspectives, especially in formulating this concept.  A year on the ground as a part of a social movement brings a lot of concrete insights that are tough for those outside of it to replicate.  Combining this ground level Occupy stuff with my previous work has really broadened my context and critique of society.


In my head this summer I have been musing about writing a book about some things that make a lot of sense in terms of a PhD project as well.  I keep thinking about the meaning of the systemic, institutional, and successful suppression of the Occupy movement.  The main question that came into my head when thinking about American democracy and society as a whole was the question: "when do you give up on America?"  If Occupy can so easily be suppressed and marginalized, what hope do we have?  As I've been conceptualizing this thought, it centers around the systemic suppression of this open and democratic movement using the private media, the use of "legitimate" power in the form of the police, FBI, homeland security, etc, and a myriad of other tools to sway public opinion in unfavorable directions regarding the movement and the use of free democratic speech as well.


The point of it to me though is not to make another report on the suppression of another movement, but to focus on what this means for our society as a whole and our interest/ability to bring about change.  The main premise is that while "America" believes itself to be so many great things, it is in fact statistically falling far behind much of the industrialized world, and that the suppression of this movement (one envisioned to exactly address these issues and to do it with basis of free speech, economic and social justice, and a more inclusive society) tells me that the country could be on the brink of being lost to real change.  Is our society so systematically controlled as to stifle the exact cure of our ills?  Have the individual people (I know loaded and generalized statement) have become so entrenched in the system that they can no longer assess and critique the system?  It seems that we as a society are forced into a steadfast maintenance of daily life and survival, and that we perhaps blindly trust media and the state to the point of ignorance.  Hence what seems like an easy and slow transition from empathy towards the Occupy movement, to an eventual siding by many people with the "law and order" and the state/corporate message, as opposed to freedom of speech, expression, and the fight for economic and social justice/true democracy that we are taught America is about.  Basically, what does it mean for American society to have had a movement aiming to care for and give voice to all people be so resoundingly squelched by the establishment, and for this to seemingly be accepted by the general public as ok. 


I think these are very important issues to be addressed, and which stretch well beyond NYC and the US.  Even to the global issues and Africa work that matter so much to me easily play into it.  When contextualized through a global light, there is a systematic repression of justice movements throughout the world using the same tactics and weapons used here in the US and that all fall within the framework of neoliberal systems.  The police, media, state resources, the corporate control and influence over global political and economic systems.  The pictures and tactics from around the world are all the same.  Police forces and intelligence services being used as tools of capitalist and authoritarian regimes, all in the name of local or international order.  Public money being spent for police to guard private property.  These images even bridge the international political science discourse on liberal/democratic peace theory that I've done work on in the past with domestic issues of democratic voice and internal conflict/force. 

Obviously this global framework would be an important part of understanding the broader issues affecting things here on the ground in the US regarding democratic voice and the Occupy movement in an interconnected world.  But for me in these purposes, Occupy and the US would be a specific research focus to investigate the systemic issues inherent within the neo-liberal system, what the past year means about the strength of this system, and what "its" hold on power and social control is.  I wrote something touching a bit on some of these issues in a really short piece for the MetrOccupied newspaper.

That article brought me to some very poignant research questions that I feel should be asked regarding the media. While there was a wealth of coverage in the beginning by countless media outlets, what happened after the park was lost and the media coverage slowly dwindled away?  Was the media coverage suppressed?  Was it just the news cycle and fickle nature of private media?  Why did the mainstream coverage eventually seem to solely show negative clashes with the police rather than the movement's outputs?  And what of the alternative media that still covers the movement to this day?  What differentiates these media outlets?  I made some decent friends in the media over this past year and my conversations with them only raised more concerns and questions I'd love to ask.

There are also an equal number of questions to be raised in terms of the physical suppression of the movement by law enforcement.  This has drawn a great deal of attention in alternative and liberal circles and there are a number of projects on going that point out the inequities and illegalities throughout both this movement and others.  These studies would provide a solid foundation for a more expansive inquiry/analysis into the nature and legality of physical suppression by "legal" actors. 

That line of thought brings me to the crux of my interest:  the contradiction and conflict within America's national identity - based so profoundly on different types of freedoms - that I feel that the Occupy movement has shown.  From political voice, to assembly and free speech, to economic and social freedoms, civil liberties, property rights, and everything else in between, there is a devout contradiction here as despite this American self-image of being exceptionally free, the violent suppression of the Occupy movement (and others before it) shows that the country is in fact as repressive as many other countries from whom we like to differentiate ourselves.  The question then becomes where do these contradictions and conflicts come from.  What can the Occupy movement show us regarding this contradiction?  What is the "individual American's" role in this?  Do people uncritically accept their circumstances?  How does the concept of law and order and the "legitimate" use of force factor in?  To what extent does the media's telling of this tale factor into people's opinions, their social critique, and an American concept of "freedom"?  What does it mean to believe the media's representations?  And what would a critique of this "America" look like if it should exist?

The contradictions of course go well beyond just the media, police, and public perception.  They are shaped by state actions and their interactions with corporate interests and messages.  Do the police merely protect the interests of the corporate state and state-like corporations?  What is the outcome of this physical repression on the general public's sense of freedom and democracy?  And what of the possible "repression" of information by both state and private institutions?  Does it actually exist and if so under what context?

This inquiry also requires much more than just an interrogation of whether "America" has allowed the Occupy movement to by pushed a side, but what role did the Occupy movement itself play in its suppression?  How does Occupy's general choice not to engage with electoral politics play in?  How does the strong influence of anarchist ideology/principles factor in to the movement's appearance from the outside give current and historical constructs/prejudices?  Realistically, the media came out in droves early, and in many ways provided the support and interest in Occupy (and its related issues/messages) that allowed the movement to explode into a global movement.  So how and why did that change and what was Occupies role in that?  There is a lot of work to be done analyzing media content and frequency, and Occupy's role in framing this coverage, just as there is to discussing Occupy's reactions to the policing and suppression of the movement throughout the multiple levels of the US's social and political fabric.


Ultimately, this project takes me personally so far in the right directions.  It is a long way from Sierra Leone yes, but it tugs at the heart of my larger interests and interdisciplinary soul that will resonate further than "capitalist expropriation in Africa" - which is not a new topic to academia.  This project with Occupy, which has grown within me while having been on the ground with OWS for the whole year, puts me in a very advantageous position.  I mean how many applicants could say that they were living in the park, organizing daily, getting pushed by the police, being both propped up and stifled by the media, facilitating large discussion group every day and turning that into research outputs?  Nevermind maintaining an involvement?  How many applicants would have the background I do and would be applying for PhD's in the same places?  I the parlance of my neighborhood, I've got knowledge and street cred here.  And I've earned it.  I want to use that knowledge and leverage to get to the next level and to provide a proper break down and analysis of both what's happening here and its meaning.

Wooo.....  right, but where do I do this study?  I had been applying mostly in Anthropology over the ast couple years; a discipline that is great at accessing individual agency, power, national cultural images, and critiques of the media, but I've done a lot of work in Sociology as well, a discipline that is really strong on Social Movements.  I also already have a masters degree in history and could piggy back off that; assess the movement through the historical suppression of social movements and of social change in general and in American ideals.  There is also the legal aspect to it all.  There are law schools out there tied to interdisciplinary initiatives that could be very interested in this work.  I personally usually think in interdisciplinary terms as it usually bridges my interests well - giving the the best of many worlds.  But it also has its limits in the depth of analysis.  Those programs are also hard to locate.

I think the key for me is going to be to find progressive/critical mentors, academics and programs that are going to work with me, understanding that I am not just an academic, but an activist, a protester, a dyslexic football player... an all-together different sort of fellow.  So how widely do I apply?  And how do I afford the application fees?  If I am going to do it, I need to get it done this year and i need to get the applications done early.  I need all my ducks in a row, to do lots of research, and make some really astute choices to get in to the right schools.  We'll see.  Time to get reading so I can frame the study in the right way, reach out to the right people, and try to make things happen... Oh yeah, and try to figure out where to sleep next week, whether I'll have enough food, and what to do for the next year until a program would start - if I was to get in!  lol.  What I wouldn't give for a job!!  ;)

Free Learning

So during the last week I have been getting out of the house a bit.  I went to two study groups, and wanted to illuminate that these are the types of things that Occupy is doing and bringing to the social critique.  Despite what the media may cover, we are not just yelling in the streets, we are learning in small groups and helping to impart and exchange knowledge and ideas.

The first group was organized by the Urban Rebuilding Initiative based out of the Bronx.  They are doing tremendous work on activating communities, growing and giving out healthy food, and trying to energize communities to bring about real change.  They are also very engaged with the think tank.  We met in Manhattan for a reading and discussion of the first two chapters of Walter Mosley's book Twelve Steps to Political Revelation.  We had about six people there and ended up with a rather lively discussion about education and its place in society/society's place in education.  There were a few people I knew from Occupy, a few activists, and a young student just testing the waters of the world.   Great cooperative discussion that you don't find elsewhere.  Intelligent, informed, and experienced people those Occupiers!

The second group was last night.  The Free University, Occupy, and the Strike Debt campaign had a discussion group of about 15 or so people discussing debt and its meaning.  There was not the same focused discussion as with URI, but still, all the same it was an interesting discussion.  It was at the New School and included a lot more of an academic feel.  I don't know if I will go back to this one though as it wasn't what I expected.  I wanted to get more insight and understanding of debt rather than personal anecdotes on debt.  I have a fabulous debt resistors manual that my time trying to add that knowledge would probably be better spent reading.  But no matter, these things are tremendously worth going to for both learning and socializing.  Occupy has set up all sorts of networks and these types of learning things all over the city.  Lots to learn, nothing to pay!!

The Job Search

So in the last two weeks I have put in over 20 applications.  16 of them were for working with people with disabilities.  Funny how we come full circle.  I spent all that time in Connecticut working with the disabled population only to have left that job and joined Occupy.  Now here I am trying to get back into it.  But you know I didn't leave that job as much as I left that area and ran to Occupy.  If I was working and living in the city doing that I don't know that I would have left it as I could have done both Occupy and that job.  And that's where I am right now - trying to do both.  I was successful with that work.  So I'm looking at it again.  It's been a couple weeks now though and I haven't heard anything yet.  So my hope is dwindling with each day.  I've also put in a few of the typical idealist.org stuff that I've been doing - after school things, project management, economic and social justice stuff.  Same old.  And you know this is not me belittling anything, but me lamenting the waiting and the decreasing marginal levels of hope attached to each application as time slowly passes.

I did catch a break though this past week when one of the women I work with for the Occupy Radio set me up with a guy that does set construction.  At this point I know nothing more other than he needed someone next Thursday evening/night.   But good pay/work, so I'm there!  I must admit that while for the first three or four minutes it didn't seem to affect me too much, all of a sudden hit me.  Wow!! I'm excited.  I so desperately just want to work.  Just want to do something productive and have some income coming in.  Anything.  I am not sure what will come of this, but I am excited to have an opportunity.  Any opportunity really.  And this would be good.  I would get to do some building, it wouldn't be something that I would have to spend time thinking about outside of work, and would afford met to make rent payments!  What more could I ask for?!  I mean other than the obvious real career job of course!  But you know what?  I don't know what that is anymore.  Maybe that's just gonna have to change....

A Real Occupy Think Tank

So Friday I met with a Think Tanker about moving things to the next level.  We have been thinking for months (really since its inception for me) about creating a true research institution surrounding the work and issues we are focusing on at Occupy.  We met about trying to make this happen.  There are three of us that may really be interested in working on it.  We don't really have plans as much as guidelines.  But it is a good thing to move forward with.  The general concept was free-written as such:

We would structure this research institute under different auspices and governance structures than found in typical institutions.  We would incorporate a horizontal decision making structure into a managerial structure sharing input throughout ll levels of the institute and its research process.  Focusing on horizontal ideals while still working to maximize efficiency and expertise.  The research process would be facilitated by trained intellectuals doing research and working to guide projects on specific areas of interest and expertise.  These individuals would work within their main areas of inquiry or subject matter, but would largely be responsible for managing information and what would mostly be crowd sourced research supplemented/done by the general public.  The teams would be open and charged with briding public participation in reaserch and ideas while working with the scientifically valid research methods.  The idea would create a think tank that was far broader than a few PhD's sitting in stuffy rooms reading books, but for qualified intellectuals to act as  facilitators and discussion/project leaders aiming at producing a research process that includes and brings to the fore the public's voices and ideas both in terms of subjects and as researchers. 

From a methodological perspective, the research process would include at least four areas of data collection:

1. The general public on the ground. Open discussions, town hall style roundtables, community lead research/questions. This would take the form of individuals going out into public/private spaces (in cooperation with local community groups), asking questions, and engaging in public dialog with citizens and local communities.
2. An expansive web presence that would act as an idea/information conduit and repository that would open information and research to the public and researchers.
3. There would still be standard academic styled research and discourse.
4. Survey or phone based sampling to try to include everyday citizens into the dialog. This could be part of number 1.

The key component to this think tank would be a foundation based on open/crowd sourcing of the research, and teams of researchers that could be anyone and everyone from throughout the process.  At every level of society you can have a conversation with people with profound ideas and initiative; from CEO's to carpenters, there is intellect everywhere.  All the researching, writing, editing, and decision making would be done by and for us - the people.  With a large focus on engaging the general public both in the process of learning and engaging with their voices while coming to outcomes, options, and policy suggestions.  We believe that this will put individuals and groups that have traditionally been on the periphery, or marginalized throughout the whole process of intellectual creation, at the forefront of understanding and recreating their own social, political, and economic outcomes.  

The research focus itself would be within Occupy's principles and interests of political, economic, and social justice.  The research would however not inherently be done on the Occupy movement itself, but focused on doing research that viewed the world through the prism of an occupied lens and used this as its analytical and thematic point of departure. The institute would be designed to become the nexus for the ideas, research, and actions surrounding and produced by the Occupy movement.

Occupying our Airwaves

So Wednesday we started what will hopefully be a wonderful pathway forward for the Occupy Think Tank, and one I must admit I'm pretty excited about as well.  There is a pretty solid chance that we will be filling a vacant slot on the 6:30-7pm Occupy Wall St. Radio show every Wednesday on wbai.org, 99.5 fm in nyc.  Here is a link to the show from Wednesday, and below you can see a proposal that I wrote a few months back but that was not capitalized upon until just this week.

WBAI Radio, Occupy Wall St. Radio

The Occupy Wall St. People's Think Tank was on occupy Wall St. Radio Friday, February 17^th for one hour doing a version of the discussion forum that sprung up in Zucotti Park in the Fall, and has been expanding throughout the region, country, and world since. We would like to formally propose a structured think tank radio program that could appear regularly on WBAI's Occupy Wall St. Radio show or elsewhere. The concept would be as follows:

Participants:

• One facilitator guiding the discussion using Occupy's facilitation techniques based on horizontality and equality of voices. The facilitators would also not always be the same so as to get a mix of genders, races, creeds, etc.
• Ten plus studio participants. A usual OWS think tank has one recording device that is passed around similarly to a speaking stick. In the radio studios at WBAI there were 5-6 microphones, it would be very easy to have at minimum 2 people to a microphone as the facilitation technique would actually be aided by this method. The whole point of Occupy's facilitated dialog is to allow for patience and only one voice speaking at one time. Thus, people addressed to speak step up or pull the mic close to them. Our conversations are not about everyone always having a mic and being able to jump in, but waiting and holding collective, pensive, and pointed conversations.
• Telephone participants would buttressed the studio group. A phone call could be the equivalent of going on “stack”. The called could then be there for their part of the dialog, perhaps be allowed a direct response after others, and then hang up. This would depend on logistics and the number of phone lines as well.

Topics:

• The topics could range from all over the spectrum of economic and social justice, the occupy movement, global issues, etc, and would be set in advance (though we have mostly decided on the spot in public).

Facilitation:

• The facilitation technique would follow “stack” and allow direct responses, but would be limited to the specific facilitator's discretion and methodology. Some limit direct responses in length, some in number, some don't use them much at all. This can also be determined with your production staff. Clarifying questions, points of factual information, etc. will all go through the facilitator and be explained prior and online. Individuals must wait until thoughts are complete and facilitation calls upon them, rather than jumping in when people pause.
• The facilitators themselves would bring diversity to the show. One day a show facilitated by a white male graduate student on the future of the occupy movement, and the next show could be facilitated by an African-American man from the Bronx on issues of school pushout, and the next by a women leading a discussion on energy dependency and war. The beauty of this type of facilitated environment, is that it is about inclusion and leadership for and by everyone.

Promotion:

• With the conversation set in advance it could be advertised around the occupy movement in order to get maximum participation both in studio and via phone. This could also be promoted on WBAI and such to have as many different voices as possible. There could be an online sign up at WBAI and Occupy's pages to be in the studio shows. As the show would be about inclusiveness, openness to everyone, and horizontal voices, so too would the ability to sign up.

Conclusion:

This type of interaction should be very different from typical media dialog, and will in many ways be a learning tool for the audience on how to communicate with more patience. Many people describe the practice of being involved with occupy facilitation and the think tank as transformative. It teaches them to wait, to listen, and to allow for both themselves and others to formulate and carry full thoughts through to their conclusion.

We envision this show being able to air once a week for one hour. It would seem appropriate for it to be on Occupy Wall St. Radio, but could just as easily be on at a different time. We have a team of facilitators that could host the show. We would also help to fill the preset studio seats and promote real time phone participation through our channels.

#S17

September 17th was great...  Occupy's one year anniversary was a truly festive day that I didn't know how much I'd be able to be a part of.   After getting hit on my bike again (yes, again, coming back from going to the hospital to get checked out from the first time), I was pretty tense and sore.  Neck, back, hip and now knee.  I thought for the day that I'd sleep in and see how it felt when I woke up/if it was swollen, and I didn't even go to sleep until almost 2am.  But wouldn't you know, that my soul knows better that to take such absurd precautions.

I was already partly awake at 5:45 when my friend texted to see if we could go in together.  I wavered for a sleep deprived moment thinking of my plan to be prudent about my knee.  But I quickly found absolutely no reason not to get my ass up and get in there.  Passion is passion after all.  I mean, its the year anniversary!  I/we put so much into this, and it means so much to me.  My body, heart, and soul knew what my mind was trying to rationally ignore: nothing was gonna stop me from being there.

I had this song coursing through my head all day....

So the Think Tank crew met up around 7 at 55 water street as part of the debt area protest.  Lower Manhattan was divided into four areas, the 99%, education, eco, and debt.  We sorted out our crew, took our precautions, and started off with everyone else.  The morning was planned to be pretty open and fluid.   We were going to keep people from getting to the stock exchange.  But I'm not as much of a direct physical action type and not interested in getting arrested, so I didn't get to far into all that.  As people saw the next day though, there were a lot of arrests.  Many for people sitting down in the streets or blocking the way to the exchange (typical civil disobedience ala Ghandi style), but sadly most of the ones I saw were pretty random and absurd.  Grabbing people out of crowds on the sidewalk and arresting them seemingly just for being there.  But that is an old and tired discourse. The police are absurd, and the media's coverage of it all are of course going to be as well.  Again, we know this.  So lets talk about things we don't know!!

My feeling from that morning as I limped around lower Manhattan was that there were swarms of occupiers on every corner.  Around every building we turned, swaths of people.  Yes, I know the media will say there were 100 people marching and 180 arrests.... but I swear to you that something within that statement is inherent false!  There were a couple thousand people down there in the morning probably.  The point of the whole protest though was for them to be dispersed and to not move as one large mass.  The groups just kept moving and swirling their way away from cops and blockaids. 

It was a really good and inspiring action as I saw it.  But one that will not get good press given it seeming smaller than it was and fragmented - even if by design.  After a while I sat down with my co-occupier (who recently found out that she was being occupied by a little mini occupier!  Yes, be wary, we do multiply!!  ;)  Anyway, we caught a rest and then headed back out for some fun and excitement.  We walked around for a while, getting back into the flow of the day and the different actions.  

Eventually a number of us settled into liberty/zuccotti park and started up a Think Tank discussion.  WOW!!!!  We went for FOUR AND A HALF HOURS!!!  Talking about how to reach the 99%.  There was so much interest.  Our group varied from about 40 to maybe 70 people at any one time.  Such incredible insight and vantage points.  You can see notes here and someday audio will be up there as well.

The Think Tank discusses reaching the 99%

After this I poked around the park for a few hours.  Meeting new people, catching up with old people.  It was great.  We then had a popular assembly to discuss the day, what people thought of it, and what they did.  My group had a guy that had come up from New Orleans, one in from London, four more local stalwarts, and a new older woman there for her first time.  Everyone had different expereinces of the day and different perspectives to add.  you know the media has complete over blown the hurricane issac story?  That's the word on the street...  London can't do like we do in NYC, but their doing it like they do and are doing it, doing it, doing well!!  (yeah, to the melody of LL Cool J...).

It was getting late at this point and we were over 12 hours straight with little rest or to eat.  We wanted to stick around for the OWS Birthday cake, but that was apparently coming much later.  We slowly started to disband, but two of us ended up grabbing some of my favorit indian food around the corner and talking Occupy with the owner.  I've been going there for a year, and as I do, am tight with the owners.  Good perspectives to be learned there from local business owners.  In it for the long term, they agree with teh cause and the issues, but still, have additional issues with the methods of the movement.  Time to make the think tank happen!!

Home I went.  I was asleep 20 minutes after I got in the door.  Exhausting, invigorating, and inspiring.  I am so glad I was there for it all, and so glad that Occupy will be around forever.  

Yup!!  Free Kisses!!

Occupying Decency

Occupy!!!!!  So yesterday was wonderful!  Back in the occupied saddle.   It was lovely.  I saw so many friends and acquaintances that I have sweat with and stood ground next to, even bled with.  I was at Occupy town square for the anniversary festivities.  The first occupy town square was at washington sq park, and this one was much better and bigger!  Not that the first one wasn't great.  But this one seemed more magnanimous and had a whole crew of people from all over the world there.  A huge convergence for the Occupy S17 anniversary.  I guess all I can say is that it was so nice to be back around these people that are all working towards such great causes, and focusing on treating people with such dignity and respect.  I don't ever have to convince anyone down at occupy about world views or my contempt for the political system. The minute I step out of Occupy I run across people where I am always seemingly taking a "radical" stance.  I am the crazy guy tearing apart the system, raising issues that others don't see or don't maybe care much about

But this is where I came to yesterday: I don't care what you think about occupy or its methods, but if the world was full of people with Occupy's values we would have no problems.  Caring, loving, patient (or at least devoutly trying to be), they just fundamentally view the world in a way that respects everyone and everything in it.  Imagine a world where everyone respected everyone?  Everything?  No really, imagine if every person you came across today treated you with dignity and respect from the depths of their and your core?  Imagine if governments, businesses, services, everything was designed by and for people that fundamentally respected each and every person and thing in the world above all else? Black, white, brown, male, female, both, young, old, religion, ethnicity, whatever.  Imagine if EVERYONE was like this and had a world view that was like this.  The world would be a TREMENDOUSLY different place.... a much better place I think. So say what you will about Occupy, but they are good people, with great values.  We would all be so lucky to be surrounded by such good people. 

The Meaning of September 17th.

September 17th - the start of the Occupy Wall St. protests - was the day that would start a true test for the United States of America.  Whether you believe in the message of the Occupy protests or not, what truly has been tested here, to me, is whether America still stands for the freedoms generally thought to be our founding values (the historical validity of those values/freedoms are an entirely different story).  Thus far, one year in to the Occupy protests, I do not believe that we do uphold our ideals.  Freedom of speech, the right to peaceful assembly, to march through the streets and act out against injustice and tyranny?  These are principles deeply ingrained within the America's principles tough to so many from such a young age.  These ideas are what we are said to be founded upon. 

What I have seen though, through my involvement with the Occupy protests, is a systemic crack down on freedom of speech, on protest, and on messages that the people ruling the cordons of American power do not seem to want disseminated.  From the top down, federal, state, and local governments have colluded and systematically squelched or failed allow the movement to be heard.  Most importantly though it is not just the government but the politico-industrial complex that has stifled what they consider atypical political expression.  Collusion and corruption of the corporate and governmental apparatus has been amazingly efficient and effective.  What have you heard of the occupy protests of late?  Maybe you heard something on May 1st, maybe you if you looked for it you read something last week about Occupy supporting the unionization and victory of restaurant workers at Hot and Crusty in NYC, or supporting stop and frisk protests.  Maybe if you get our newsletter you know more.  But most people don't.  It hasn't been covered by the main stream media, or even much of the marginally mainstream media, since not long after the park was cleared.  Occupy "was no longer a story", something without need to be covered.  Even when an unprecedented collaboration of labor, activist, and community contingents teamed up to put perhaps as many as 100,000 people on the streets of NYC alone on May 1st, the media's coverage solely reported a claim that Occupy snarled traffic and 25 people were arrested.  They did not report why, or the reasons for the protests that day.  No witness accounts, no ground level reporting.

The police were at the same time doing everything they could to suppress and divide the protesters on that May 1st .  The top down collusion between Mayor Bloomberg, police chief Ray Kelly, and the entire NYPD has been criminal.  It lead to a 200 page report by the NYU and Fordham law schools that universally condemned the police's response as continually violating the 1st amendment and human rights. 

Mayor Bloomberg of ourse has a tremendous amount to gain in all of this.  Worth billions of dollars, the message that occupy pushes - ending corporate and governmental corruption and bringing economic and social justice to everyone (the 99% & the 1% included) - is not something the wealthy and powerful in this country and world seem want heard.  We are looking for better schools, living wages, sustainable employment, and a functioning electoral system.  Regulation of the banks, public private collusion, and the environment.  Equal opportunity for all races, ethnic groups, sexual preferences, genders, etc.  We want a world where the 1% does not control everything.  Where power is dissipated more towards the rest of us.

Now I can understand that those in positions of power would not want this.  They like being in charge.  But I can also tell you that as per America's bespoke values and purpose their personal power-lust should. not. matter.  If we are a country based on freedom, equal opportunities  civil liberties, and justice, then it should not matter how much money you have, you should be able to have a voice.  That voice should be able to be heard - and not just once a year in the ballot booth where the electoral options are already rigged by the powerful.  We should be able to see and have solid ethical journalism that is not controlled by private interests, that covers real people's stories, and the way real people live (75% of America lives on less than $50,000 a year, 20% below the poverty line.  We are not the Khardashian's nor aspire to be).  We should have elected officials that we can actually chose, not a one on one winner take all corporately controlled election of the rich.  We should have economic and educational opportunities that include everyone - no matter their socio-economic status at birth .  I mean our America today does not provide basic healthcare 50,000,000 people.  We are diving down a long steep slope and need to be allowed to speak up and slow this process.  To stop it.

What I have realized over the last year are in fact that our oppressors are powerful and deep rooted.  But the minute you squelch free speech - in AMERICA - the "land of the free and the brave" - you are quickly nothing more than an oppressor.  Federal, state, and local, governments have done this.  Local and federal law enforcement offices have done this.  Corporate money and back room dealings have done this.  The media has done this.  Thus, the general public has done this as well - if you believe we live in a Democracy.

September 17th to me is the day that America tested itself.  And one year later, if I am the one giving out the grades?  We've failed miserably.  The top down control has managed the information and propaganda and its social control mechanisms, while the bottom up will of the people has not materialized.  Will we rise up to the challenge and make amends?  Will we recapture our core values and freedoms?  Even in the face of losing power for some, will they do what is right and say, hey, this is America "home of the free and the brave", we have to let these people speak!  My inclination is no, they won't.  They will not, and that is why Sept 17th is the start of us trying to take our country back from our oppressors.  Sadly, that oppression started in the 18th century when the country was founded by the same people stifling us today.  The same rich, white, monied interests that didn't see African-Americans, Native Americans, or even woman as people of equal merit, but as tools, pawns, or niceties.  Amazing how we are fighting the same fight today that we fought back then.  Maybe that should tell us something, that those ideals of freedom and such are not actually what America has always been about... but maybe still, what it should be about, and what it will someday actually be!




   

Make Plays

I had a football coach once in college that probably doesn't realize how influential he and his one mantra were on my life.  He was my position coach for a year and he beat into our unit's heads and bodies everyday to "make plays".  If the ball was in the air, don't wait for it - go get it!  If you needed to block someone, don't sit on your heals, dictate the situation, make the block.  Running pass routes, lifting weights, studying the playbook or the text book - make plays, make things happen, don't wait for or allow things to be dictated to you! 

This has stayed with me my entire life.  I used it when I was a coach, I've used it in my personal life, and I've had no choice but to use it since I returned to this country and have been trying to set up a life.  You have no choice here.  There is no one here to help you, and despite what the "anti-entitlement" crew thinks, there is no real safety net helping me do much.  There isn't anyone helping me get a job and there isn't anyone really creating or even working to create jobs.  The politicians just bicker and politic circles around each other and the country.  Business owners are looking out for themselves and a bottom line that doesn't factor in all the stakeholders their collective success - managers, workers, communities, consumers, etc.  This country is in as much of a cultural downturn as an economic down turn.  I see a lot of that as systemic and am struggling to stay hopeful that it will change and go anywhere or help people such as myself anytime soon.  So we have to do what we can to try to make things happen.

This may sound simple, pull up my bootstraps right?  Ok, so I wear vibrams, they have toes and there are no straps - sorry, times have changed since we were out on the frontier and had straps on our boots....  Making things happen these days requires more than just one person.  I can't do this all on my own, and everyone who know me knows I've tried!  I've done all sorts of things from packing a bag and going to Africa to fill a resume and create opportunities, to trying to start small businesses, to volunteering in local government, to starting a non-profit in Africa and making a life out of taking risks aimed at making things happen.  But starting businesses, non-profits, and your own things require money, financing, partners, know-how and expertise.  Tough things to find for free in America.  It is one of the things that I love about the Occupy community.  They work together using principles of mutual aid and community.  It is tough to find that throughout the rest of my world right now: people working together selflessly to try to make profound things happen.

Sadly though, it will not help things immediately for me.  I have to create an opportunity here in New York City.  I have to make plays here.  I have to apply for jobs, I have to network like my life depends on it, I have to go up and get the ball.  We all do. 

The saddest thing right now though, is that there is only one ball in the game.  And where it used to be eleven people vying for that ball or job, now it is 500 players vying for the same ball.  It's almost as if we went from playing on the field, to sitting in the stands and betting our lives on the chances of catching a foul ball at a baseball game.  Slim to say the least.  So what is left to do but go out and make plays?  The question is, what plays do you make.  Do you sit in the stands with everyone else hoping to be in the right place at the right time and hope you can out-jump everyone?  Or do you try to go to the source?  Think strategically, ahead of the game, to innovate and change the game?

"Fear causes hesitation, and hesitation causes your worst fears to come true."

At least we can try.... 

Stepping Back, but Never Away

So I woke up this morning in a melancholy and dreamy state.  It was all Occupy.  I really miss being able to push on with the movement right now.  I have had to put all of my efforts into trying to sustain that involvement.  This summer has seen me either have to work or push to find work, and I've had to step back from the movement, sadly.

I had this sort of sinking feeling this morning about the others in the movement that are my friends and I have worked with for a long time now.  I had this feeling that they were thinking that I am somehow one of the many people now that has moved on or past it in some way - slowly disappearing in to the crowds of people that no longer show up to rallies, meetings, and events for whatever reason.  A feeling of letting them down.  But this is not the case.  I will be an Occupier for life.  I made huge sacrifices to be here and do this, and will always stand behind them to see the movement through till my last day.  It is because of what I see as this life long commitment that I am able to take this step back I guess.  In a movement that I have always said will not be worth judging until ten years in, what is taking a summer away to try to solidify life for the longer term?  To try to be able to more consistently engage?

This is where I am.  I have no choice and had to take care of my own personal situation: everything from emotional to financial and physical  issues.  When I left my job to go to Occupy, the movement could provide all of that.  Now it can't.  I have tried to start a research project that would seek to address these issues.  But it didn't get enough participation, in no small fault to everyone else is doing the same with their immediate personal lives.  So I have had to throw myself into solving this immediate problem for myself, and to be able work on the bigger picture once I am stable.  That is where I am right now.  Still trying to solve this, and once I do, I will be back to working for the movement.

I can assure you the need for Occupy hasn't gone away.  I read it everyday in the newspapers. And despite how much I like the people and the community, I am in it for the movement itself - because I believe in the message, I believe in the critique, and the need for change.  I took a lot of flack for "quitting a job to protest against unemployment".  But that is an ignorant critique.  As if a job is the be all and end all of our social ills, rather than the outcome of those jobs.  That job I had did not allow me to live on my own and to pay my own bills.  I was underemployed and underpaid.  Like so many people.  It is in-fact exactly that very reason why it was so important to stay involved.  Because this problem is not about jobs, it is about a system that creates jobs that do not meet our needs as a population and society.  Creating 700,000 jobs sounds great, unless they are all minimum wage jobs that don't pay a living wage.  Our society is in trouble, that is why I Occupy, and why I will always Occupy. 

Beginnings and Ends

Day after day the hits keep coming...  I was still reading in bed this morning when I got an erroneous empty phone call followed by another full one from the Hiking Store I visited last night.  The woman went straight into an interview, as if I knew she was supposed to call.  Twenty minutes later I had to be in their store by 10:30 for an interview and was feeling like this woman was trying to push me in the door for labor day weekend!  So I got moving on my Chi Gung, meditated my self into an outdoor hiking spot and headed down there.  I'm a five minute bike ride away. 

The interview went well.  I mean, if there was anything my personality was made for it was retail.  Interacting face to face with people and trying to help them, too bad that little capitalism issue always gnaws at me!  lol.  But this place is a hybrid, the largest consumer cooperative in the US, and would be perfect for me.  I've actually been monitoring their website for months hoping for openings.  Plus, I've always done great in retail, so long as the emphasis is on helping people, not strictly sales numbers, and definitely not commission.  I feel that the push for "sales" takes away from the desire to help people solve the issue they came in the store looking to address.  The minute it's about money - as with anything - the best outcome for the person/customer somehow gets lost. 

I was interviewing for footwear which I've got several years of experience with in specialty shops.  I'm kind of keen on doing hiking and backpacking work, but I'll take whatever!  I always could branch out and cross-train a bit.  So, anyway, to the interview.  I thought it went really well.  The only hiccup was the what do you need to improve upon question.  I don't have my canned answer down for that on well enough yet.  I always come around to the same answer, but fumbled with it a bit.  I told them I had to find stability.  It was the first thing that came into my head and I spoke before thinking better.  It's my situation now, it's where I am.  I lack stability and its my biggest weakness right now.  The biggest issue I am fighting to address.  I played with the answer quickly, as that it has been my focus, but I don't think it was completely evident that it wasn't about innate self, but about current life situation.  I quickly transitioned to the main issue I've used before and have actually been addressing.   I tend to get into places and analyze and critique things deeply. I'm a born critical thinker, i.e. perfect as a consultant, but not always as a low man on the totem pole.  So what I have been working on is being better and more political in how I express my critiques - or if I even do at all.  I of course didn't get to that statement that quickly while there though.  But I will next time.  I've been working on it mentally all day now.  I hope it doesn't hurt me.  Everything else seemed to go really well.  We had positive interaction, smiles, affirmative nods throughout, etc.  I didn't talk much about the rest of my stuff, mostly sticking to my retail history. 

All together interviews are tricky.  I always used to nail them and get job offers on the spot, but lately since being back here in the US I haven't been getting jobs.  I mean its certainly also due to my qualifications not being quite directly on here in the US as so much of my experience is from abroad and on global issues.  But anyway, the whole job search process is tough.  It starts with your life on one or two pieces of paper based on a one or two piece of paper description of a whole nother life you want to lead and someone else is trying to convey in such a small space.  All of this in the hope of getting a half hour or so in front of a few people that will decided your fate based on every tick of your eye brow or expression on your face.  I couldn't imagine what It must be like to be someone that struggles with inter-personal stuff or pressure like that.  It's so sad too, because everyone shouldn't have to be like that.  Our variances as a species is our beauty, why should the process reward only those with certain skills? 

But anyway, this is retail, you've got to be personable.  So it's a good place for me.  So all smiles throughout, and I'm thinking they are trying to push this through. Then we come to a close with:

"We still have some other interviews to do, we'll let you know in a week or two."

Ugh.... a week or two, I'm ready now!  But I'll tell you what, if I can't get this job, I can't get one!!  A retail hiking store with conscientious principles a cooperative structure?  The job was made for me!  And yes, I do want it!!  It would start as part-time, but it would be a decent enough income, I could work up to more hours easily.  Then I'd have time to work on my other projects, and even still there would be room for advancement as well.  The one thing that does really concern me about the interview though is that I'll get pigeon-holed into running stuff or not considerd for other departments.  They have 14 spots advertised and three areas that I am very experienced at.  I just need one of them to fit. The issue though as I'm worrying about it, is that I went into that interview and was just myself.  My views, my ideals, and translated them to a retail setting - which has worked for me in the past very well.  But I'm worried, I have been having a tough run of things of lat with actually expressing my views in the real world.  I have become marginalized for my beliefs in many circles.  If I don't get this job as is, then the only avenue left for me will be to sit in those interviews and lie.  I don't think I can do that.  But anyway, I felt good abotu it all!!  And I think it will work out and I'll be working in another week or two!  :)   

Anyway, no resting on laurels as I have nothing yet.  The day goes on, more job searches, organize some UN apps, pull out the idealist.org postings from the last couple days.  But I find myself peeking more and more at the Occupy stuff.  September 17th is coming up and I've had to focus on this survival search so pointedly.  I'm feeling out of the loop and missing being involved.  But I can't focus on that, and there's other personal baggage there as well that makes it tough to be involved with right now.  So back to jobs!  I speak to the woman from the Children's agency I interviewed with a month back, she's gonna help me there as well, and now all of a sudden there's a stack of apps to get done! 

Then I get the email!!  KENYA!!!!!!  Nope, didn't get it, they wanted someone with more impact assessment experience and quantitative skills.  I figured, kinda knew it when I walked out of their office really.  And it makes it easier for me.  I don't know that I would have taken it anyway given all the other concerns about it.  But to turn down a job - no matter how rough it could be on me or my career - would have been tough to do.  Anyway, so I went for a run, sweated out all the world's chemicals, and will live to fight another day....  Oh, and I might have a place to stay next month!!  :) 

I've got skillz!

Where I am with life right now.

So I'm feeling like I'm just going to step back and do a quick assessment of life as it exists for me right now.  I graduated from college in 1999.  I spent about four years figuring a little bit of life out, worked in NYC, went to Prague and got some invaluable experience both personally and professionally, and then came back to the US to look at schools and the Peace Corps, while doing odd jobs until settling on school in England and another football season in Prague.  That gets us up to starting school in 2004. 

Going into school I had some good but eclectic business experience including managing a non-profit in Prague for a couple years.  2004 started a 5 year rather specific career path that really moved me forward.  I spent two years working on a masters that focused on post-conflict reconstruction and post/socialist societies.  After a summer in China I went back to Prague and got a job working for two years on post conflict areas doing research, development, management, etc.  I was really moving things forward even if the job itself and the company was an absolute and complete  nightmare.  I was getting valuable experience. 

When this job ended I went for more schooling focusing on anthropological perspectives on international development with a continued focus on post war areas.  Five years straight working towards one end which was going to culminate in getting in to  PhD program and keeping things moving forward.  It was a struggle for sure and I didn't always know that it was the right thing.  But the point was, at that point in my life I was carving out a niche for myself.  I applied to Phd programs for 2009 but didn't get in anywhere.  At that point I had little money, my EU work visa had expired, and I felt like I wanted to come back to the United States, get some stability, a job, and spend time with my elderly Grandparents.  It seemed like a good plan.  There would be no language issues, no visa concerns, no cultural variances.  Things would be simple right?

So here I am three plus years later.  What do I have to show for this?  During this three years the best I've done is 15 dollars per hour working with people with disabilities in Connecticut.  I was driving an hour and a half both ways every day (22,000 miles/35,000km in 6 months) and couldn't afford to keep the car going and pay rent.  I was living with my grandparents.  Over those three years I sold running shoes, I officiated girls lacrosse, I volunteered in local government, I tried starting several businesses and non-profits, and even lived in the woods for a brief time.

At some point in there, I said fuck it, and planned a trip and went to Sierra Leone.  I was wallowing away in suburbia, doing nothing.  Applying for hundreds of jobs, getting no where, and figured hey, if no one is going to give me a job, then I'll just go out and make my own.  I fundraised, I planned, mapped out a walking tour of the country for three months and just did it.  It was invaluable and I set up some amazing opportunities that you can read about in this blog.  But of course I got malaria and spent much of the next six months trying to get right.  Everything in Africa went on hold, life took over and I just tried to find work.  Yet I remained underemployed, disheartened, and disappointed.

I worked hard at it and put in a number of Phd Applications again.  I put my focus back into academia and a PhD.  I did an amazing amount of research on the programs in the US.  I was all ready to apply.  Then Occupy happened.  A broad based systemic critique of american and global society.  Exactly what I had been carrying with me my entire adult life.  I, like so many others, had been trying to make things work in our little American Utopia, yet it had been a disaster for me.  The country had been spiralling downward for decades and it was time to take a stand and try to make things happen.  So I left the underemployed shitty ass suburban existence I was meandering through and went all in with Occupy.  In the first few weeks I was engageing in incredible things, talking to truly important and exemplary people .  I was networking myself into a great community and surrounded for the first time in my life by people that shared my views of the world and my values.  It was amazing.

Now here we are almost a year later.  I have been steadily looking for work since January.  In that time I have been a failed political fundraiser, an unpaid hiking store employee, worked at a farmers market until it went under, and as a Nanny.  Luckily I have had a free place to stay due to some of the best people out there.  However, that time is up.

All this while I have been trying to work on Occupy.  Everything was supposed to be temporary until school started in September.  But then I didn't get in anywhere.  I found out April 15th, and have been working on what the heck am I going to do.  Do I apply next year, again?  Do I look at a new career choice?  Push for my Africa stuff?  Legitimize the Occupy Think Tank?  Just look for any work?  The bottom line is that on April 16th I started perhaps a new phase of my life.  Most profoundly I decided to start networking myself in to the development community here in NYC.  As I got back into my Africa work I realized how much I love and am passionate about all of these things that I had been doing for years.  It was what my PhD work was going to be about and what I have always wanted to be a part of.  Occupy, gave me a domestic outlet, but my heart has always been in international issues and injustices.  So be it.  Network network network while trying to peice things together here is where I came to.  Combining them would be great. 

But there just aren't a lot of jobs in this arena.  You don't just go out and start helping people around the world fro one day to the next as the glacial pace of my Africa project shows.  You have to eat, you have to have housing.  Also in the midst of all this here I am going through a tough break up as well.  It really sucks.

So I find myself today on August 8th, with no job, the several interviews I've had over the last couple weeks having fallen through or morphed into unsustainble things, my nannying work has dried up and I have no housing come September 1st if I still have no job to pay for it.

I have been back in this country for over three years now and I have nothing to show for it professionally.  I can't even put Occupy on the applications for the UN that I'm putting in.  Yes, the Sierra Leone thing is a huge thing from the last few years, but only because I left here!!  So what is the point.  I had this wonderful progressive carreer going, step by step for five plus years and then it just fell off a cliff, and now I have nothing really to show for the last three years of my life.  The worst thing about it all as well is that people look at me and they see an unfocused person.  They see someone that is thinking of a new thing to do every day.  One day I'm a nanny, one day I'm an occupier, a writer, a development expert, thinking about africa, a phd, organizing, food justice, athletic training, whatever.  I must seem like my own three ring circus.  But I'm not, I'm just desperate.  I had a plan and I was working towards it.  Then I came back to America.  In three years, it all just disipated into the fumes of an ever more marginalizing American and global economy.

So at what point do you say enough is enough?  For how long do you keep fighting the same fight and expect differeent results?  I want to stay in NYC.  I want to just get a job here that matters, that does not compromise all of my moral and ethical standards of human dignity and such and just work away on a career.  But that isn't happening.  I want to wake up every morning at 6, do chi gung, go to work all day, excercise and come home and work on Africa and Occupy stuff.  But its not happening.  When do you say fuck it and reavaluate what you are doing and what your expectations of 'the self' are?  At what point do you give in and just get some shit ass job and work for the man's system hoping that you can have a family and TV to distract yourself from the everyday bullshit that has become human life in America.

I'm not there yet, I still have hope.  I will hopefully never give up.  But it is about as low as it gets rigth now.  I hurt on every level.  I am not eating enough, I have no home, I have a car I can't maintain but am stuck with, no job, and little reason to hope on most accounting of the last few years.  But I have skills!  A lot of them.  It's just too bad they are skills only an employer couldn't like... 

So what am I gonna do?

I came down to new york city to make a difference.  It has been almost a year now and that difference looked to be happening.  But I am afraid that that has been temporarily derailed.  Actually, sabotaged might be a better word.  Yes, that may sound a bit conspirecyesque, but yeah, if its sabotaged by people or sabotaged by the system, either way – or both – its still sabotage. And that is what I think has happened.  I have written about the media coverage and the collusion with the police in MetroOccupied ("In the News: Law and Disorder").  It is so obvious to those of us on the ground that there has been such a blatant attempt by the authorities to suppress the Occupy movement, and its been detailed in the report Suppressing Protest: Human Rights Violations in the U.S. Response to Occupy Wall Street by the NYU and Fordham Law Schools.  But the point of what I am trying to say is that we have been trying to address systemic issues and bring about broad change on large scale levels and have been completely stonewalled.  The media, the police, the governement, the courts.  Protest has been fully supresed in the US over the last year as I've seen it.  This is incredibly disheartening.  But so is life.

The point is though that this is a long term project. By that I mean forever. I will always be an Occupier, and I will take that to my grave. Talk of Occupy being dead is completely erronious. Occupy can't be dead as long as I'm here and I'm alive. For no mater what it is, it is me, it is all the people that came down and stayed in the park, that worked in the working groups, that marched on the streets, that wrote on the web, or even felt emotionally engaged for a few minutes - warm inside for a moment at the effort.

So what do I do between now and forever?  I have to find a way to move life forward and work on and embody the principles and issues of Occupy!  That brings me to today.  How do I do that?  I have to find a way to make a life, a career, and a way forward.  Things right now are tough though.  I have no income and I have no housing in one month.  I had a great set up just a week or two ago.  I had a prospective apartment, several jobs on line.  And now that has all changed.  Not to mention a relationship that was pretty special to me ending.  So for now, I've got little to work with, and I just spent three years doing the same crap.  Why can't it work out?  I just want to work on something that matters, that changes things.  But it isn't happening...  yet.

Competing to Love

Why does helping people have to be competitive?  Why is it that I want to get a job helping people so badly, but can't?  I want to work on alleviating poverty, I want to work on breaking down ethnic, racial, and gender barriers, I want to work on providing sustainable ways for the nearly 1 billion undernourished people in the world to be able to have food.  I want to work towards every individual in the world being able to achieve  human security, dignity.  I want to work on real, true democracy, so that the masses of the world can have real say in their lives.  And I want to work on this 80-90 hours a week.  But I can't.  I mean not for real.  I can do things on the side, I can Occupy, I can volunteer, I can apply for jobs, I can try to network or meander my way into these industries, and hopefully one day get a job.  One day.  But then if I get that job, who doesn't get it?  It's just like all the other jobs I've applied for and haven't gotten.  One job, hundreds of applicants who all want to work in an industry or on a project that matters to them and the world that they believe in.  But only one gets it.  Only one person gets to legitimately help the world in that way on that day.  The rest of us are left trying to find ways to do things in our spare time, unprofessionally, until the next application goes unsuccessfully fulfilled between waitress shifts, nanny gigs, and temp jobs to pay rent.

Obviously, this is the job market.  It is the same job market for anything and any industry.  Whether it be finance, advertising, non-profit, academia, whatever, there is a competitive market centered around making money to support one's self.  But hey, I've done things to strengthen my chances.  I have skills, I have experience, I am intelligent; just like everyone else.  Yet, I don't seem to be able to win these job competitions.  (To bad we couldn't just have a race to see who gets a job, I'd be all set then!).  But they're not. They're based on a fine tooth comb of your life, but without the life.  More on what some person sitting behind a desk thinks about your life on one piece of paper, about their company's interests, and all of that filtered through the lens of their's and society's prejudices and presumptions.  Because I moved around a lot in my 20's does it mean I will now?  Gaps in employment must mean I was just slacking off rather than couldn't find work right?  And what is to say that those "non-traditional" life moments don't add to a person?  Or that I packed a bag and went to Sierra Leone to fill that time?  Oh, wait, that looks flippant, unstable.  Being able to do anything anywhere isn't as desirable as being able to sit and role over on demand.

But it is not just me, there are also of course issues about the organizations' funding, their priorities, and whether they've been able to dredge up enough capital from the netherworld to be able get shit done.  It doesn't matter whether I can do the job or not.  It doesn't even matter that we all can do the job, or that there are too many candidates and not enough jobs out there.  What matters is that we are competing against each other to be nice to each other.  People are trying to help people, trying to put in hard work, and they can't - not on a real level.  Not in a way that allows them to sustain their own lives.  Our society has taken being nice - an inherently cooperative emotion and action, perhaps the quintessentially positive human trait - and turned it into something aggressive, commodified, and surrounded by competitive negativity.     

This is frankly just a horrible way to structure society.  Skilled compassionate people with no real and sustainable outlet for that desire.  I have skills damn it!  We all have skills!  But they are not skills that somehow mesh with or fit into this system that requires things to be big money makers.  I don't want to compete to help you.  Why don't we do it together, or divide up our efforts and help more?  No.... let's make it competitive!  Here's a vision for you: what could be worse than sitting back and watching an old lady trying to cross the street and needing help.  Two people come up to offer help to her, yet rather than working together, they turn on each other and start fighting over who gets to help her.  They don't both to take one arm and work together, or have one stop traffic and the other take her arm, instead they compete against each other and end up fighting amongst themselves.  This is where our society is today in terms of humanitarianism; we're brawling in the street over who can help the old lady across while we ourselves become a spectacle, rolling around on the ground in a fit of flailing arms and legs.  Of course the elderly woman continues to cross on her own because she's got stuff to do, until:  Smack!!  A truck comes along (whose driver is working a double to make rent and hasn't taken a break).  The two people keep fighting of course, as if the train wreck next to them isn't happening.  So sad.  We shouldn't have to compete to help people.  Organizations shouldn't have to compete for money to help people.  Nor should people have to compete for jobs for it either.  Utopian yes, but we should just be able to to be nice to each other and sustain some semblance of a life around it. 


      

Options

So the world is out there right? And despite not really having anything going on that seems remotely like "gainful employment", it doesn't matter, cause there are plenty of other things in the works.  I have the following opportunities right now:

• Two months in Tanzania building an educational program
• My work in Sierra Leone
• A possible job doing food justice education in the Bronx for a Children's organization
• The sustainable Occupy project
• I have work on the private military and security companies with the UN Watchdog
• I've got applications in at the UN
• Other job apps in
• I've got the application in at the World Bank
• And maybe substitute teaching come October

Tough times and tough decisions to get into, but all the same excitement and stress at the same time!! :)

Burning Both Ends

Wow!! What a long day... Its midnight in half an hour, I'm on a subway platform at 59th street. I just had a great meeting with a guy who was a Peace Corps volunteer in Sierra Leone in 1961-62. Yes, the first two years it existed. He really likes what we're talking about and was impressed with it all. I think it will open many doors for us/me. Time will tell. We have a lot to prove and to make happen, but even if in failure this will be a huge success.

The day itself though, wow!  I got 5 hours of sleep on a few drinks while discussing the sustainable occupy stuff last night. Then I was up at 6, chi gung, shower and get out to Brooklyn for work.  We went back into Manhattan and walked around the whole of the Museum of Natural History, then back to Brooklyn and worked late. I mannied for a total of 11 hours today, jumped on the subway and Africa meetinged it for 2.5 hours and now hope to get home and to bed before getting back up at 6 and doing it all again. Long nannying day and then occupy meeting after...

But this is the way it is right now. I am working hard. Occupy, Africa, Mannying, these are the keys to my future. They will succeed. #36

Farming for More Markets

So I started a new job yesterday... Yes another one.  Another look into another part of the world that lives around us.  This time I am working at a farmers market.  Not a typical one, but one that more or less acts as a Sunday organic market.  It has a pretty unsound business model, but the absolute best of intentions.  It is part of a workers cooperative, or at least will be some day.  The building is designed as such for the long term, but not wholly there yet.  Anyway, it is very interesting to see the world that exists there.

The business itself is a bit of a mess.  It is retail sales of a mostly perishable food supply, that only opens once a week, thus making the p in perishable capital.  They are losing money hand over foot in an endeavor designed to make money for the workers co-op. They are working on tweaking it into a collective kitchen project. There are some remnants of occupy style endeavors. People with the warmest of hearts and best of intentions, trying to do something that they only partially know how to.  Like occupiers trying to organize people or labor without talking to labor organizers or having experience at it, trying to run a retail produce business with knowledge of produce but no experience with retail business is tough, ambitious, comendable... but lacking in efficiency and know how.

All the same I think they are evolving and working to really do good things. The co-op set up is great, and if they add a kitchen that serves food daily they could end up with an outlet for food bought for a Sunday that won't last till the next one.  There also is a very strong personality coming with it that on first glimpse seems to be maybe too strong and independent. Not that there is not tremendous need to respect both this person and the project as they are doing it.  They've done good things, but there is always more to it all than that. We shall see, but another job, another day, another way.  Cooperative worker owned structures are great, I am excited to be a part of the beginning stages of something like this, and to have more work...