Diamonds??

Written 3/7/2012

So I sat at my little rotating cubical yesterday and heard someone asking if anyone had called someone with the last name of Diamond.  It echoed around the room, reverberating to no avail.  Whoever this Diamond was, they had spoken to a woman, as it turns out, the woman they spoke to in our office was on the phone with someone else and couldn't take the call back.  My immediate thought was, so just jump on there and speak to them, help them out, engage with them.  If they're calling back they probably are serious about it all.  What if no one gets to speak to them again? Would they still get involved?

Anyway, as I raised this question, I was met with an awkward look.  "But that is her lead, her contact, and it wouldn't be right for someone else to jump in there and take that call" (i.e. possible contribution).  Well yeah, of course not - if you live in a black and white, me or you world!  It seemed so obvious to me.  If the goal is to raise money to keep fighting for progressive issues like raising the minimum wage or to stop hydro-fracking, then who cares about the credit for a commission or the quota!  Talk to the man!!  I mean if its a team, you could always split the amount given anyway!!

But the work there is about quotas, its about meeting them, and its about pressure being applying on people to get them to their quotas.  Now granted the pressure at this place is probably as low as it gets in a call center in the capitalist world.  They are all great people with good hearts.  But I have seen in a week and a half two people let go for missing quotas, and am watching a guy sitting next to me get smothered by the pressure to step up being put on him by both our boss and himself.  I can feel the worry, the stress, the negativity emanating from him.  And this guy is great!  I really get on well with him.

Again though, and I am going to sound like a broken record pushing for occupying everything and everywhere!  But why is it that in so many places in business and society we motivate negatively?  Get it done or else!  If you can't make this happen, you're out of here!  Now I am not in the room when he is speaking to the boss, and the boss is a really nice guy.  But fact of the matter is, keeping the job is about results.  Nothing else.  This is the way much of our society is structured, and it is unforgiving.

I have found so much love at Occupy, so much encouragement.  Not that there aren't disenchanting issues and/or chaos, even antagonism that turns people off at times, but there is very little pressure to achieve - to personally succeed - that I have felt applied have seen.  We work together, we each bring things to the table and no one seems to be chastised for doing or not doing.  Things are done in groups horizontally, so no one individual must feel the pressure of us all.  At one point, I tried to put a bit of urgency, responsibility on the people in the think tank, and I was not met with any agreement on it.  Occupy is about other things.  I have found it to be about encouragement, personal empowerment through both the self and others, and uplifting others through one's own self.

When I went down the first day, while no one was helping me, no one was standing in my way either.  I was able to find like minded people and do something.  A person stood on their own initiative and they were able to make things happen.  There were no interviews for a position there, there was no pressure.  It was volunteer, it was encouraging, and it was extremely productive as I saw it.  I was never told what I couldn't do.  And no one ever held anything over my head as a repercussion.  I like to think that I felt very comfortable with that and capable.  We got a lot done in the think tank, without the pressure of having to do anything.      

People often times say pressure brings out both the best and the worst in us.  People "step up" to the pressure.  But what about those that don't respond so well to it?  Are they just supposed to be left behind?  If you can't "win" should you be considered a loser if the game isn't best suited for your skillset?  Your passions?  I would say no.  I think we need a social outlet or system that allows for more of our skillsets, psyche's, and passions to be expressed and to have these outlets.

Capitalism often has a winner take all mentality that is exclusionary and which adds a good deal of pressure to 'succeed' to our lives (whatever 'succeed' means).  Occupy is a place that I never felt that pressure.  I felt welcome, I felt capable, and I felt like I could do anything if I saw a need or wanted to do it.  And yeah, maybe that plays into my skillset.  But at the same time, with the Occupy/liberty square setting and context aside, is it possible to imagine a society where no one told you you couldn't do something?  Where no one told you you had to do something?  Where everyone encouraged you, the only pressure on you was your own, and it was to do the things that you felt needed to be done or simply wanted to do?        

Accounting for Violence

What a head does to a window in NYPD hands

So what I saw last night was an absolute abomination. Six months of occupy protests, nothing has compared. I have no clue how many arrests there were last night, and I can't feel like there could have been much of any justification for any either. What I do know is that I saw cops fists flying at people on the ground. I saw batons swinging at a pile of people that had been dominoed into each other by the police mercilessly pushing back, and I saw a woman who started having a seizure while being arrested continuous bang her head against the ground while the cops sat next to her wondering what to do. Happy St. Patrick's Day!!

So the day started out simple enough day, I went to the Left Forum and listened to some very interesting discussions on the use of drones in policing, what current day movements can learn from the Eastern European revolutions of 1989, about Occupying philosophy, Education and Capitalism, etc. These were just a few of the hundreds of panels at the left forum this weekend. We had an Occupy think tank in the courtyard on “what a real/revolutionary bank would look like”. I tried to decided between a panel on transnational Africa and globalization, or China rising, but instead stood in the hallway and talked at length about deep thoughts of the day with a few other participants until we decided to head over to Liberty Square and see what was going on.

I had walked over a little earlier as rumors of bedlam had spread throughout the Left Forum (it was only a few blocks away). It wasn't bedlam though, it was a bunch of people in a park having a festive time. Drumming, dancing, talking, rejoicing, holding signs. It was great, the only stories I heard of bedlam revolved around the police “arresting people for dancing”. Not sure how that is, but that was the word on the street. Second time around it seemed about the same, no big deal, generally festive. A group of us went for Indian food and had long conversations about all sorts of things occupy related.

I started getting a bit antsy and wanted to head back to the park, it was 9:30. The park was interesting, just as we came out onto the street we heard cheers and/or shouts from the park, still a couple blocks away. It was loud, like at a small stadium, we hurried along. The march from the Left Forum had just gotten there. Michael Moore and Cornell West had lead a large contingent of people following Moore's evening address to the crowd at the forum. The park was full of so much energy. But no one was doing anything wrong or provoke anything.

Step in the plus brigade I think. There had been a General Assembly. I wasn't really a part of it. I had listened at first but was more interested in seeing the people, catching up with friends, etc. I didn't find myself in such a festive mood in general but couldn't put my finger on it. A lot of ups and downs of late, both in and out of Occupy.

All of a sudden though, the GA seemed to just jump up and move in unison from one end of the park to another. And when I say in unison, I mean in step and chant. Obviously the trail of cops follows along dumbfounded, reacting to a simple adolescent game, with confused looks and way to much seriousness. I wasn't really into it, but a huge group of everyone else was. Myabe I'm too old!! Ha ha!! I just liked watching the cops wondering what was going on. But of course such innocence had to all go wrong.

A few moments passed and the sound of bag pipes were heard. A group of bag-pipers came wondering upon the park into an ambush. They were all dressed in St Patty's day garb, kilted and greened out. The had heavy accents and couldn’t have been more than 20ish. As it turns out they were just a group of french speaking kids out marching around Manhattan playing bag-pipes on St. Patrick's Day – with NO affiliation with Occupy. Imagine it, they turn the corner and there is this mass gathering of people in a park! Woo hoo!! They simply march along and try to enter the park. I mean why not, it's St. Patty's Day, and there's a festive group of people in a park. Let's go march through there, right?

The police attacked them. Grabbing the bag pipes, trying to rip them away from them, a couple go down, they are just trying to scramble and get away. Of course all of the occupiers that had just come joyously bouncing over to greet these random bag-pipers immediately has cameras and lights all on the police brutality unfolding. These kids were scared to death, covering there faces, running wherever they could, police pushing and shoving and grabbing them. I mean, these are innocent kids playing the bag pipes on St. Patty's Day. The plain and simply DID NOT deserve to be “treated like occupiers”. Yeah, I say that because we are treated differently. Hence the counter-terrorism squad members of the NYPD down there That is the way Occupy is treated. Terrorists. Yeah, that's right, non-violent protest is considered terrorism right here in “the land of the free”. 

Just in case that's too blury, it says "NYPD Counterterrorism Bureau"

What has this country turned into?

Oh, this is just the beginning, it gets better (worse, much worse actually). So following this ugly show of police force, the occupation starts bringing out banners and other things. Wrapping the park in the voice of Occupy. One by one, three tents with statements on them pop up. And not pop up to sleep in, but literally pop up on giant sticks. Two person dome tens with protest writing on them. The police start massing, this is obviously a direct a front to their what? “Manliness?” Yes, that's probably a good term to use, that is really what the NYPD is about. Testosterone, lots of it. The police can do what they want and when, laws mean nothing. As a legal observer said to me when I asked if something we were watching was illegal: “it doesn't matter, of course its not illegal, but they'll arrest you anyway because disobeying a police officer can be made illegal. They can do whatever they want, and they get away with it no matter.”

This is the world we live in.

So they come enmasse to clear the park. They slowly push everyone to the one end of the park. But a brave group of protesters don't move. They actually lock arms and paivly sit down. They aren't going anywhere. This is a public park. Open to the public 24 hours a day. Or at least legally it is. I see police fists flying. Pushing, shoving, dragging, struggling, punching. No one is provoking anything. It's not the protestors doing the pushing, shoving, dragging, or struggling, punching, its the cops. A wave of blue clad soldiers sweeps the park clean of its voice, of it open space. In come the barricades. The park is cleared. The protestors mass on the edges. A number of them leave on a march. Take it to the streets the say. I stay.

All of a sudden everyone starts moving uphill towards the east of the park. Some kind of commotion, people are crying. It's tough to get close at first, all you can see is a well dressed woman in yellow writhing on the ground. As I get closer she comes up to all fours, gasping for anything, as if looking for a last breath from anywhere, panicking. The cops, seeming dumbfounded again, stand watching. A couple trying to do something, what is unknown. I didn't see what happened in the beginning, but it came to light later that she was being arrested, had handcuffs on and was being dragged and treated fairly rough when she started having a seizure. According to onlookers, everyone but the police abusing her recognized she was having a seizure, the cops apparently just continued to push, pull, yank, and some said even hit. Apparently once they figured out she wasn't struggling but actually having a medical problem they just let her down to the ground.



As this went on for what seemed like an eternity; she alternated between several positions. She would come up on all fours gasping for air, a blank gaze on her face as if nothing was being seen, only felt. They would give her oxygen. Then she would collapse, lifelessly to the ground. Smashing her head to the ground at one point. It was horrifying. This went on repeatedly, they got her on her back at one point, only to watch her go into convulsions and repeatedly hit the back of her head on the concrete sidewalk. Even she felt it. She looked at us for help, the onlookers, as she tried to reach her hand back to cushion the blow. Helplessly, her convulsions wouldn't allow it. The police did nothing, kneeling near her, doing nothing. Yeah, I know, your supposed to let a seizure happen - so long as the person isn't hurting themselves. Cushion her head for god's sake! The ambulance EMT's did little more (called by occupiers of course). Eventually they just picked her up and tried to put her in the ambulance. It wasn't working, back onto the ground she went. The police then made a row of themselves so we couldn't see anymore. Everyone watching was mortified. Their ineptitude. It was such a horrible helpless thing to see. We were penned in behind a barricade, a mass of people behind us trying to see. That was when they started pushing.

I was right at the barricade, seemingly trapped. A mass of people behind us, and angry police pushing the barrier forcefully back. Now I have only not done what an officer asked twice during this protest. Both involved hypocrisy. Once when on was telling me to get back while there was another one telling me not to be in the street behind me. I got bench pressed onto my ass into the street that time. This time again, I was told to get back into a street. Which is highly arrestable, both illegal and dangerous. But it didn't matter what was behind us, they were going to push no matter, and for no reason but because they didn't want us there seeing their ineptitude. The poor woman having a seizure, her skirt up around her waste, no one caring for her or her dignity. The brutalize us to cover up their own incompetence.

So as they push, there is no where to go, I’m trying to back peddle, but I’m not turning my back on them, I wouldn't trust them for a second. My feet can't go back, they get caught between someone else's and the moving barricade. Down I go, trapped under the moving barricade. They stop pushing, I only remember hearing someone say, "man down" and Lily trying desperately to help me with every ounce in her. I get back to my feet, they start pushing again. But there's still no where to go and they don't care. They push us all out into the street, then across it. Everyone seems to be thinking that must be it, we're back, the barricades stay on the other side. Then they just start coming at us. Batons out they start to swing them. All I could see was batons and anger. People start trying to back up, to run if such a thing is possible in such a small space. We manage to get through on our side, but a whole slew of people couldn't get back, there were too many. One falls, then they all do. There's a pile of people trying to get up and all the cops can do is swing their batons at it. Hitting people stranded on the ground, piled upon each other.

We're two blocks away now, the national lawyer's guild is there taking stories, seeing who has video of it. Everyone stands and stares in disbelief, some go to the ambulance for medical attention. Everyone is shaken.

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.