Unfamiliar Bedfellows

Written 3/21/2012

For years now since my undergraduate days and on through my graduate work as well as in life in general I have been trained and/or socialized in what is proving to be a very certain direction.  Much of this training has come from academic classes in the social sciences and research training in support there in.  I have taken all sorts of things from participant observation to archival research to (the dreaded) quantitative methods, but the approaches that have resonated with me most have been centered in, about, and around ethnographic styled encounters and methods.  I have realized something in the last few days regarding this though: ethnography and sales do not work well together!

At work, I am tasked with selling and fundraising.  Short sweet, controlled conversations with a very pointed and desired outcome.  Ethnographic styled interaction on the other hand is about sitting, listening, and engaging in subtle ways that do not control much of anything.  You are a participant, you are observing, but you are not imposing your will or your cultural paradigms, or anything else onto the situation anymore than is unavoidable. 

Its no wonder why I seem to suck at sales/fundraising!!  You are taught NOT to listen, to hear objections and to brush them off, to mostly ignore what people say (unless of course it helps lead you towards your objective).  In this "game", it doesn't matter if you actually want to empathize with people or their stories, you have to let it go.  They tell you to work on the pretense that what you are asking for is inherently in "their" best interests as well as yours and society's.  In short, to assume that you know what is best for "them" - whoever "they" are.  This is of course exactly the opposite of any participant observation/ethnographic endeavor.  Participate, observe, denote, and analyze later from the confines of seclusion and through other similar works or analysis.  How does one switch up speeds so quickly?

This has been one of my issues here at this job.  I have been tasked with switching up years of training, and in fact an entire way of life, overnight.  Its not coming easily.  Not to mention the fact that I actually care about these stories, I actually want to engage with them in dialog, learn and get to know the people on the other end.  But sales isn't about people, it is about money, and the only thing you need to learn is how to make more of it. 

Student Debt and House Bill H.R. 4170

So I just thought I'd weigh in quickly on this house bill HR4170 (summary, full, petition) that is trying to forgive aspects of student debt.  And before anyone gets all excited... no you would still have to pay your existing loans - there would just be an end in sight.  I do though have some very serious reservations about the whole thing.  Yeah, great, so the one trillion dollars already accrued in student loan debt may become more manageable for those of us buried under it, but that does NOT solve the problem or the causes.

The bill is marketed as both helping individuals and the economy.

Excessive student loan debt is impeding economic growth in the United States. Faced with excessive repayment burdens, many individuals are unable to start businesses, invest, or buy homes. Relieving student loan debt would give these individuals greater control over their earnings and would increase entrepreneurship and demand for goods and services. (full)

But obviously there are some serious issues that quick summaries and marketing doesn't lay out.  Firstly, debt default does leave a hole in the banks balance sheets (often covered by insurance or hedging with other investments, etc. etc ( and whose loses I don't have much sympathy for)).  It also makes the act of student lending more risky and less profitable - especially with a cap on interest rates at 3.4%.  This is not as I think things should be, but as capitalist lending is based pretty much solely on rate of return.  Thus, there will in the longer term be less money lent to students making school actually perhaps less accessible.  And while, according to the petition, "since 1980, average tuition for a 4-year college education has increased an astounding 827%, [and] since 1999, average student loan debt has increased by a shameful 511%."  So how are we going to cover this gap in the future?

"While current borrowers would be eligible for full forgiveness under the plan, future borrowers would be subject to a $45,520 cap on forgiveness (based on the average overall cost of a four-year degree at a public university). The aim is to incentivize students to be mindful of educational costs and for colleges and universities to control tuition increases." (summary)

(fyi: $45k doesn't cover one year of most any graduate school)

Yes, if we forgive some student debt right now you are going to make the people holding the 1 trillion dollars of debt happier, but you are actually harming the education system in this country for the future as "the bill would not affect funding for existing student aid programs", or the educational and research systems themselves.  The ONLY way to sort out the education issues in this country are to FUND the educations themselves.  Fund the schools, fund the research, fund the students, FUND IT ALL!!

It is great to say things like:

(1) A well-educated citizenry is critical to our Nation's ability to compete in the global economy.
(2) The Federal Government has a vested interest in ensuring access to higher education.
(3) Higher education should be viewed as a public good benefiting our country rather than as a commodity solely benefiting individual students. (full)

It is an entirely different thing to actually do something about it.  This bill is a start to help the people buried under this debt.  But tuition is not going to come back down on its own, nor is people's ability to pay for it going to somehow miraculously appear.  For the future of education (and the economy) you must do so much more.  Among other 'minor' things (like changing the entire way our socio-economic and political system operates), SPEND GOVERNMENTAL MONEY ON EDUCATION!!!!

Billions and billions of dollars.

At EVERY level.

(and EVERYONE knows where that money can come from!!)

The Occupy Think Tank on "Deliberately Considered."

A couple weeks ago I posted a piece on the Occupy Think Tank.  You can find it here.

are you scared yet?

Written mostly on 3/10/2012

So last night (3/9) I went to a really great event at Judson Memorial Church in Greenwich Village put on by the Occupy Legal working group. It was about US domestic spying, counter intelligence, and activism.  The event started out with an hour discussion about the newly published “zine” called “The dissident's survival guide”.  There was a great discussion of it, with commentary by and often arrested and antagonized dissident that has been raising a ruckus for years.

We then watched a movie about COINTELPRO which is the US domestic counter intelligence program.  The film, called COINTELPRO 101, was really quite disturbing under our current protest climate in the US.  Here we are in our "free" society, and have been survailed going back decades, and continue to be today.  I mean this movie wasn't new news to most everyone there.  But to see the description and dialog by the Black Panthers (one of which was there to discuss it afterwards), about the way they were systematically murdered by the US government was really amazing.  



The whole gist of the evening was quite disturbing in the depth of its fearmongering.  Obviously there is a lot of truth to these fears, but I think the fear comes from years of being taught that this didn't happen in our country!  We were repeatedly told about how shady this all was, and told story after story of actual events that have been going on.  Things you never read about in the media. Basically, we were all going to be political prisoners.  Did you know that the US has three prisons specifically designated for political prisoners.  One of the panelists had been incarcerated there for 8 years.

Now I am finishing this post weeks later, so much of the details are not making it into this post.  But it is very much worth saying that we live and have lived in a police state.  The reason we don't all know this is because they are good at it.  People that protest and voice dissent should be aware of the history of not just protest in America, but of the suppression of it as well and of the actual danger that it may bring to them.  I think personally that it is so absolutely absurd to think of Occupy in this way - as a danger to the fundamentals of America and its original values - especially being as deep into it as I am.  But the powers that be are certainly threatened by the messages and awareness coming out of the Occupy movement.  Society is waking up to the economic injustice of our social and economic system.  Those powers that be don't want this to change, and COINTELPRO is as solid a case-in-point of that fact.

Occupy.   

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.