Ahhh... the nuances..

So again, I straddle two worlds and two worlds that are so incredibly complex in their own rights, and yet so even more profoundly complex when facing each other.  A political party and the anti-politics of Occupy... or wait, occupy as anti-political?  Isn't it hyper political, even while denouncing the political system and its own roles in it?  Wow, who knows, so really this being said, anything I say further will probably really make no sense, as Occupy really makes no sense (and by no sense, I mean this in the most endearing Daoist view of "the way", of something as being undefinable, unknowable, of simply being without being, doing without doing.  No one can define what "it" is, other than that "it"' being thousands of people acting uniformly separate.  Thus, comparing a political party to Occupy is a non-starter...

I do however, want to bring to light some observations of mine during the back and forth of both worlds.  I want to take a second here to think about the people.  Now I haven't done any real analysis or questioning of individuals in either place.  But as a participant observer, one can start to pull out sentences, themes, patterns, and structures that seem rather evident.

Tonight a comment was made about pushing, making quota, and getting to a place where one could "pay the rent" within an implication of ideology and principles taking a back seat.  I thought it worth exploring the concept of compromise that most everyone is forced into to survive our daily lives.  I mean, here I am, I don't pay rent.  I bounce around between several living scenarios, and am really just paying for food and transport.  I am afforded this luxury for two reasons, because I am willing to live a stabilized transient life style, and because I have found sympathetic people that will let me stay with them.  Most people - and I'm sure me longer term - are not willing to live this type of lifestyle by choice.  So we have to work, find a means of income.

What I find interesting, in a very limited observers role thus far, is that the two places that I am intertwined have such very similar interests, yet are still worlds apart.  At Occupy Wall St. we are currently having a very principled debate over taking money from rich corporately engaged funders.  Most every voice in the movement that I'm hearing is against it - on principle.  Yet if the political organization I am working for was offered this money up front, they would jump on it. As was said to me at work, money is politics, money is the way you vote in our current system.  This concept is such a stark contrast to Occupy, a place that seems to be so categorically opposed to money in politics (though again, what is ever concrete in occupy?).  The difference is usage of the system, and a principled disengagement from it.  The political party uses it to enact change.  Raising the minimum wage, anti-fracking, clean elections, no corporate personhood, health care for all, all issues occupy speaks to as well.  But Occupy isn't writing legislation, lobbying congress, or offering a specific stance.  Or is it?  (Occupy the SEC, Albany millionaires tax, Occupy Nashville's three demands, etc).  Oh wait, so you mean to tell me that Occupy is politically engaged?  Wait so how grey did our grey area just get?  This is getting complicated.

But anyway, I'm rambling a bit.  So back to work.  How is my coworker so wholly capable of making a career out of critiquing the very political apparatus that takes private funds, while simultaneously purporting to believe, and push through a fundraising job, that money is votes?  She fights the system within the system, hypocritical or not, through generally accepting that to be the way it is or has to be.  Ask for money to get money for a political campaign to get money out of politics..........

Yeah, I suppose we all should be confused.  And then of course there is occupy.  Asking for nothing, demanding zilch, but drawing a whole lot of attention.  Everybody knows Occupy, few know the party I work for.  One is getting specific things done within the system, the other causing a ruckus and making waves that may ripple the entire pool - based perhaps soling on principle?  Wow, tough game to play.  For me though, it's always been about principles.  How does one take money, even ask for money, so that a system that you fundamentally oppose can perpetuate itself in an effort to eradicate its perpetuity?  Sigh....  but what can II do?  I am like everyone else trapped in our social structures, limited by my own agency.  It's a job, and I need a job so I can keep eating, sleeping, and occupying.  Ugh... I'll never understand it.  Principally unprincipled. How has the world come to this subtle balance between being and being.  I really wish there was a way to figure it out!       

Dinner time!!

So we call people in the evenings, 4-9 at night with a 6:30-7 dinner break.  Last night for my break I went flyering for Occupy Town Square IV at Fort Green Park in Brooklyn (Sat, Mar 25th).  We work on the third floor, and underneath us is another politically inclined non-profit.  When I walked into their offices thinking I'd hand some flyers out, I was taken aback by the exact same layout and functionality as ours.  A bunch of cubicles making phone calls surrounded by the obligtor offices with doors.  Wow!!  I bet your saying, that's the way everything always is at businesses.  But more for me it just brought to question many things that run through my head about our political and non-profit world.

It wasn't the layout, it was the purpose and functionality.  Non-profit and political campaigns are simply about asking for money.  They are unfortunately not simply funded as an essential apparatus of the operating of a democratic state.  We do not as a society have an institutionalized funding apparatus for the things that are actually - to me - the most important to a society en large: governance and assistance.  Both of these are corner stones to democratic society.  And when I say governance, I do not mean the functionality of the government or what it does, but its guidance.  While we spend trillions of dollars on governmental programs from war, to social services, to government workers, we have left democracy fully and totally privatized.  There is no funding to amplify those voices being heard in small spaces, nor any funding to assist those not being heard in any spaces get into the public sphere.

No news here, but our democratic process - left unfunded - is left solely to the capitalist system and the free market for regulation.  Everything in the electoral system of any scalable importance is privately funded.  Hence these two organizations I've referred to spending so much time and effort on fundraising.  Why must organizations working so hard to bring to the fore political and socio-economic issues and injustices - so essential to a knowledgeable electorate - be so left upon itself?

Now I know, I am bring up an insurmountable political cauldron, but I am seeking more to just address a question of a principle: political awareness as a human right.  Why not?  The UN's declaration on Human Rights touches on political issues in article 21, but it's of course toothless and offers no substance.  But if anything is of importance, this is the first thing that a society should be promoting and funding: the awareness of our social world in a way that is transparent and builds social and electoral capacity.  Yes, I know, there are a million questions about what gets funded, how, by who, and how it would work in general.  But those are questions beyond the level of the "principle" that popped into my head, and they should be saved for another day.  At its core though, this concept stems from the public financing of elections and runs further into non-profits doing political work, and then even into non-profits doing relief, aid, and empowerment work.

Our society is bleeding.  Look around both America and the world.  Poverty is our greatest threat.  Disparity of means and wealth, health and wellness, human security.  Not some dictator or terrorist far off, but the poverty that keeps people down and allows them to be dictated to - our own Dictorship.  Our lack of transparency, our lack of democratic and social voice all handcuff us at every moment.   We live in a society where political speech is completely regulated on a systemic level in a way that discourages true democratic engagement and disallows true change. 

Fact is, these two organizations are both contingent upon not just money, but money that currently must come from private individuals, private foundations, companies, etc.  All of these entities have one thing in common: individual AGENDAS!  They all come from places not systemically promoting the greater good.  I want a political system that funds the agenda of itself, the free and fair democratic rule by the people - alllllllll the people.  Not just those with money, not just those with direct stakes in issues, but everyone.

How can this be done?  Well in our current context, we have to fund bringing a voice to everyone.  Meaning political pressure groups would need to be transparent and funded by a state-like apparatus.  Empowerment type groups and community organizations would have to be funded by a state-like apparatus.  All political parties would need to be funded by a state-like apparatus based on the common good.  They all could illuminate their issues to and for the greater good, and work towards addressing - or having their issues addressed - to and for the greater good.

Obviously, this is an INCREDIBLY complex and incomplete thought and does not actually fit well into our current socio-economic structure.  But the point I am trying to make is that a privatization of the democratic process - such as exists in America - does not serve the democratic process itself but rather those who privately can control and affect it through their own private individual means.  Again no mystery here, but still, it was tough to walk into a room and see it all so blatantly obvious, so blatantly preposterous.  That so much human capital was being spent on trying to make money to try to simply engage in the political process on such a basic level.  All this while, so much of our country's financial capital is being given to an effort to destroy both humans and their capital in agenda driven wars and policies throughout the world.  Maybe it wouldn't be such a bad idea to make the Pentagon do door-to-door and telephone fundraising for their wars, just like we have to do for the fight against poverty and for a democratic voice.      

Fire Ray Kelly!!

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



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

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

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


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

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

Kelly spies,
Bloomberg lies.

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

Occupying

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

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

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

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

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

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

Progress

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

Human Priorities

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

and we are complaining about our education system...

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

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

...and jobs...

Hi Tim,

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

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

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

These include the following;

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

- Opening of a Bank Account

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

- Registration with the Development Ministry.

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

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

You need to help with some Finance.

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

Yapo