Occupying Wall St!!

So we are actually doing it right now!  After all this talk over the last seven months of "Occupying Wall St" there is actually a contingent of Occupiers sleeping on Wall St right now.  i.e. NOT a park near it or an atrium off it, but on Wall St.!!  Appears the NYMD has let up a smidgen and they are actually giving people their first amendment right of free speech and protest, and the law that says so long as a person doesn't take up more than half the sidewalk they can sleep there in protest!  It has been four nights now I believe.  I think I will be staying there tomorrow night and taking it from there.  But I'm kind of excited about it.  The appeal of sleeping on the sidewalk/park left me a bit ago for the more directly engaged intellectual and activist stuff, but all the same, the protest is the protest!  Lets do it!

This is a big weekend for me in a lot of ways as well.  Lots of stuff going on!  Tomorrow is the Port Huron Statement at 50 Conference at NYU of which I'm part of a panel on "Intergenerational Dialogue Between Veterans of the 1960s Student Movement and Occupy Wall Street activists."  (12:30 at Ireland Fieldhouse).  The Port Huron Statement was written in 1962 by Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and was a big part of getting the civil rights movement.  Sadly though, when you start reading it you really get a sense of a couple things: one, society and its problems haven't changed one bit, two, the civil rights movement didn't really get much done, and three, that there were some really solid people out there trying to get things done back then!  So that's tomorrow.  Then Saturday morning there is a Think Tank meeting at 11am right before the Spring Awakening/City Wide Assembly.  Which should be an incredible family friendly event in Central Park South.  It starts at 1pm and will have an open space with lots going on: food, teach ins, good company, theater, and plenty of other stuff including regional and issue focused assemblies.  It will all be followed by live music in the park as well!

Sunday then of course will see the Farmworker Justice Rally at CHIPOTLE right off Union Square for the Coalition of Immokallee Workers who are getting abused by pretty much all the big chain markets and fast food stores in the country.  Then its a mad dash to work, and from there to the airport for a pick up - and all the while, while waiting anxiously to hear back from Rutgers about my future!  I'm on the waiting list there for Graduate School.  I also will be waiting to hear that night from a prospective part time job I interviewed for today.  Funny too, I can't remember what was happening Friday night, but there was something then too.  Crazy weekend, Ocuppying, thinking, working, waiting, futuring!!  I love it!

Sustaining an Occupation

So as you may have noticed for an Occupier this blog is decidedly not so much about Occupy events and outings as one would expect thus far.  This is because of the ever increasing realities of an occupier's life.  It is not about sitting in a park and simply shouting at cops or marching through the streets while the kitchen group gives you free food.  It is about sitting through meeting after meeting, reading over a hundred emails a day from any multiple number of people and working groups, and most importantly in trying to find a way to sustain the occupation within you.

This wasn't such a stress at the outset.  When I first got down to the park, I had been setting aside money for the trip/work in Africa written about earlier in this blog.  I had projects set up and ready to go and had been slowly saving money for them.  When the occupation started I went all in and used that money.  It bothered me a bit, but ultimately the occupation and any true socio-economic and political change that would happen as a result would have a tremendously positive effect on the areas of the world being expropriated by our system of exploitation abroad.  Hence, Sierra Leone without having structural adjustment programs and private corporate interests raping their land and resources for a quick profit (to very little local benefit) seemed like a good cause.  So I used that money to live off of while I was in Manhattan.  I was lucky to have this.

When I first went down to Zuccotti park (liberty plaza) it wasn't as difficult either.  There was nothing I needed to spend money on.  There was this amazing community of people all working together.  There was a safe enough place to sleep (Yeah, it was outside, but I had my sleeping bag and camping gear from my Africa trip and life).  We had sanitation, we had the kitchen, comfort (for a jacket or toothbrush), there was medical, meditation, whatever.  There was nothing that I/we needed or wanted really (other than a complete and total reassessment of the way we as a society lived our lives!).  The library, teach-ins, the think tank, we had it all..

Now truth be told, I wasn't eating enough and was running all over the place, but sustainable can be different at different times in one's life!  In general, the food situation was great at first, but then there became less and less, and the situation more and more tenuous.  There had been a time when the entirety of Manhattan's soup kitchen community was sending their people down to liberty plaza when they didn't have enough food or at times they weren't open.  We were feeding over a thousand people a day, and sometimes at each meal!

Food however, slowly went from being available all day in some capacity (usually however it was donated/when) to being cut down to designated servings usually in two hour blocks.  This certainly made it tough if you were facilitating the think tank from 12-6 every day and couldn't wait in line, or there was no food being served when you could wait.  The kitchen group was great though, they worked around it all and helped working groups in this situation out, delivering a few plates when they could or even a whole box of pizza at a time.  All told though, I lost a lot of weight during the original months of the occupation as a lot of people did.  It topped out for me at about 20 pounds (9 kilos) at  its height (I've since gained a little back though).  But so be it, I was carrying more weight than I needed anyway!  

Anyway, point is, that while it was getting tougher, things were still manageable.  I was spending a lot of nights outside of the park at this point as well, and also still working some upstate/eating up there, sleeping in my car, whatever.  But then the park was raided.  The NYMD (New York Military Department) destroyed virtually everything: 4500 of the library's 5500 books, computers, the entire kitchen, all of the think tank's stuff and much of the data we'd been collecting on what people wanted out of the movement.  After this, there was no place to go; no home, and food was much tougher to come by as there was no longer three meals a day, only whatever you could get your hands on when you were down at the park and/or the kitchen delivered food.  It was a lot of cold beans!  All of a sudden, sustainability was a huge question for everyone. 

I was really lucky in all of this though.  I had gotten to know some really great people and was connected with a family that invited me to stay in a room in their their basement.  There were some catches as other people used the room for work things during the day and I didn't want to be too far in their way in terms of the kitchen.  So things got much more expensive as I had to eat out a lot more.  And they live in Greenwich Village, where eating out is a practice in financial humility.  I found one place to get Pho (Vietnamese soup) for under 10 bucks and ate there a lot.  But hey, who cares!!  I didn't have to pay rent and with a little money in the bank I was living A LOT better than A LOT of people.  But still, time adds up with time while money does not.  The room and the savings went a very long way, but it has been over six months now and the money ran out long ago.

So this is the reality of the occupation.  Individual's are not funded as best as I can see (though Ben and Jerry of ice cream fame have tried to interject there financial will upon us in quite negative manner I might add, and much like a structural adjustment program!).  People as a result of the lack of means are falling off to the side or minimizing their time at Occupy due to the strict human needs of food and shelter (and who's effects are magnified by capitalist exploitation).  We all need to eat, and most are not used to being homeless and sleeping "rough" - especially on a cold night in NY.

So here we are an occupation that no longer gets donations (which it had difficulty allocating through its processes anyway) and no longer has a designated place to live and eat for its members.  We must find ways of supporting ourselves, as it is within these confines that the occupation is struggling.  While we are all horizontally living in our hearts, we are all living individually in our day-to-day realities.  My food is my responsibility, your roof is yours, her income her's.  This is weighing very heavily on many people including myself, and it feels very heavy in a down economy where jobs in general are very tough to come by, nevermind jobs one is actually qualified for and stimulated by. 

So that is my point of departure with my job.  I have to have it to support my occupation, even while it so profoundly detracts from my occupation.  I work evenings.  I miss all the meetings it seems worth being at.  I am constantly stressed about whether I'll have my job by the end of the week, and wasting time thinking about minute details of telephone calls.  For 5 plus hours a day I am treading water, not really moving forward much in terms of personal or occupational growth.  But that is the way things are right now for the occupation.  There is a tremendous amount going on.  The working groups are doing countless things and making countless things happen at each and every corner, but we have lost a lot of people - not in heart - but in time and commitment.

I've been talking to a lot of people about this and we've been thinking about ways to make the movement more sustainable, but it is tough.  It will take a great deal of planning and fine tuning to get a proposal together that could be acceptable and within the principles of the Occupy movement.  But it is the essence of where we need to be right now though.  While the "movement" being sustainable is a given at this point, we need to be able to sustain the daily lives of individuals within it - while maximizing their and our power and/or capacity to work for the movement.

Transformation Within?

Written 4/3/2012

I really hope not!  So here I am. catching myself in this fundraising world starting to think in fundraising terms, staring to frame things in "whether people will give money or not":  "great conversation, they didn't know us yet and weren't ready, but they'll give in the future."  Sigh....  It feels like a dark day.

I've become that guy.  Or am capable of being that guy as I have to.  It is really interesting in thinking about it all in the context of time and the transformation of the self (or at least within one's self).  Here I am in the beginning of this job (read the recent  posts) complaining about and analyzing the position and the culture at this organization, and now here I am, becoming indoctrinated within the same framework.  Thinking about contributions, about getting donors.  I mean it would be virtually impossible not to.  My livelihood right now depends on it.  If I don't raise money, I am gone.  I was one day away this weekend from being done.  I have no choice but to fall within the lines (or confines) of this cultural paradigm.  It is truly sad.  But this is exactly what we as a society are required to do everyday, and in every job.  There are corporate cultures, certain ways of doing things, and requirements that we all must adhere to should we wish to maintain our places within the social order and the working world's order.  And it truly is sad.  Not that we become a part of a culture or a part of something semi-uniform.  That in many ways is positive and very inclusive.  It gives a sense of belonging to many people in many settings, even work.  

My issue with it all is that this is what American culture has seemingly become about: work.  We work as many hours as any country out there and our jobs have become how we mostly define ourselves.  What is the standard question most people ask when they first meet someone?  "So what do you do?"  Who is proud to say, "I'm unemployed?", "I'm in between jobs?", "I just got out of school and am still looking for work?"  Fact of the matter is that we for the most part have started to define ourselves by what we are professionally.  Not what we do when we are at home or out in our free time.  We are our jobs.  If that isn't the case, next time someone asks you what you do, say: "I run and hike when I'm not reading ancient Chinese philosophy."  See, you can't say you're a runner, because then people think you're doing it professionally, and if you said I'm a reader of ancient Chinese philosophy they'll likely ask, "wow, how do you get paid to do that?  Are you a professor?"

Fact is our minds gravitate to work and jobs.  It is how our society has taught us to define ourselves in so many ways.  So that is my dilemma.  Am I now becoming a fundraiser?  Not an occupier, not a runner, not and academic?  Just an organizer, or more aptly a fundraiser?  I'd like to think of myself as a lot of other things and perhaps lastly as a fundraiser - and in fact do.  But it seems that my thoughts are perhaps starting at times to betray me.  When you start seeing people you speak to on the phone as per their capacity to give money, you are a fundraiser, even if just in that singular moment.  Funny how we transform as human beings: with the ebbs and flows of our lives and our social scenarios.  This shows how fickle culture can be on a daily basis.  Whether it is the horizontalism in Occupy, hierarchical fundraising in a political party, or the profit maximizing push of a corporate entity; all are reasons why we need to change our whole social and economic structure.  The world we are currently living is completely corporatized and privatized.  We have to change how we view our worlds, and our lives within them.  We need different motivations, different pathways, and different outcomes to strive for.  We have to change the system.  It is the only way to change our reliance and adherence to these disingenuous social norms, to change our reliance on believing that this is the only way life can be.  Another world is possible. 

Police Guarding Barnes and Noble?

So I went into Barnes and Noble the other day and was surprised to see two uniformed police officers in the store.  I thought at first that it was simply a guy shopping on a break.  Then I saw the second one and later approached them both when they were together.  I asked if they were specifically guarding Barnes and Noble.  They explained that they were on their day off and that they did this work on the side to make some extra cash.  I questioned the uniforms and they said that the department said they were allowed to wear the uniforms for the work.  They were kind of vague and trying to pander to the, "hey, we don't make enough money, you know, gotta get it somewhere."

Now fast forward a couple days and I'm in another Barnes and Nobles and there is another cop there in uniform guarding the place.  I asked him as well and got a bit more information.  Seems the department gets something out of it.  Some kind of money or something?  It was vague, but I have some serious questions about this here.

So lets rewind this whole thing now and put it into context.  For all intents and purposes, to the innocent onlooker, Barnes and Noble is protected by the New York Police Department.  They even don't bother hiring some crappy security firm, no they go all out and get the NYPD, uniforms, guns, and all.  WHAT!?!?!  I must admit this needs a little more research here, but that is NOT right as far as I'm concerned.  That is a private company that is being protected by the police, i.e. a private corporate interest being protected by the state, i.e. tax payer money being used to protect Barnes and Noble.  Granted Barnes and Noble is paying the officers personally, but where do those uniforms come from?  Who pays for them?  Who pays for their training?  And most importantly, what kind of message does that send?!  It tells me and anyone that doesn't think to ask that the state is willing to use their own means and mechanisms to protect corporate and private interests.  This of course is what we have been saying down at Occupy for months.  We are treated differently in security terms, the police crack down on the protests in disproportionate and hypocritical ways as per Bloomberg's dictate of the day - including in the protection of private property and interests - and now the NYPD is visibly protecting a private retail chain?  I think it is absolutely appalling, but not even remotely surprising.  yes, if the individuals want to do it on their own free time, and they want to wear whatever rent-a-cop uniform B&N has them wear, then so be it.  But full on NYPD uniforms?  Guns, badges, batons and all?  No way.  That's wrong on so many levels.  The state should not be protecting private corporate interests. 

(Oh wait, that is actually exactly what the modern capitalist state does... foreign policy, economic policy, bank bailouts, student loans, NAFTA, imperialism, structural adjustment programs..... all designed to promote national (or really the private interests of members of those nations) both domestically and abroad.... ..........sigh.......... shaking my head...) 

At what cost?

Written 3/28/2012

So I feel a bit like I'm up against a wall on this.  I have to get myself to the right place in terms of the quota, but today was a straight disaster.  I got one contribution for less than 10 dollars.  I was trying.  I was engaging with people, having great conversations, and completely getting people familiar with everything we do and the party itself.  In fact I would certainly say I did a hell of a job today, just not my job today.  As I've said before.  My job is to make money for this party, not to get out the vote.  I'm great at that, but that isn't how the game works in our world.

Anyway, so the gist of it all is that it is tough to work hard, to try daily, to push yourself, but to not succeed.  It is not something I am very familiar with.  I tend to have success in many ways and in most things I try to do.  This has been a bit different of late though I guess.  I haven't gotten very far with schools and jobs back here in the US, so maybe I should no longer say that.  But I guess more pointedly, I haven't done good getting jobs and into schools.  Once I'm there, doing, I usually always do well.  But not in this sense.  Not this job. Seems I generally fail at this kind of sales and fundraising throughout my life.  Everyone always thinks I've got the personality for it, but it doesn't seem I've got the heart or character for it.

No matter, tonight was a tough night.  Felt like I was just trying and trying (too hard probably) to make it work.  Not only was I pushing and pressuring myself, but I was taking it kinda hard.  I was having great conversations, but then nothing would come of it.  I'm actually kind of disappointed with myself over it all.  Here I am measuring success in a political sphere on whether people give me money.  Its so far from where I have and want to be.  I can feel this ugly transition in me, toward measuring my self through this outcome.  It is so sad.  I believe in these mutual and communal ideals, yet here I am now, forced to deal with and become driven by this job and a success based on monetary outcomes.  It is so sad that society can't function as Occupy does, and the Occupy couldn't provide a sustainable life for me.  It doesn't pay, and in our society it seems that this is the first and foremost thing that matters.  Food, shelter, clothing, they all come from money these days.  Money I don't have, and that I need this job to provide.  But at what cost?

The pressures on me now!!

Written 3/28/2012

You may recall a couple weeks ago that there was a guy there at work that got called into "the room" and came out with "that look" on his face: half distraught, half pissed, and have trying to look as unaffected and as stone faced as possible.  So a couple days ago, I walked out of the room with "that look" on my face.  I was not getting it done!  (As you might have gotten from my last post!)  The pressure has been put on me now and somehow, while I don't feel like I've put pressure on myself since then, my numbers are up a bit.

Pressure is an interesting thing for me these days though.  My boss actually seemed quite disturbed by what he seemed to perceive as a "laissez-faire" attitude to it all.  But then again, laissez-faire is a word that is as misused as much of my general philosophy of life is misunderstood in the West.  If you read back into much of my writing, you'll see Daoist philosophy and thought come into play.  This is why this pressure stuff is so interesting to me.  How is it that pressure fits so readily into our concepts of drive and pushing for the things we want?  My boss gave a related version of the old Yoda mantra: there is no try... you're just going to do it.  I of course responded with a much more pensive and calculated, "well my history has shown me that the odds are against me in this kind of work, but I believe in the causes we are fighting for and am working hard, analyzing my self and working to make myself better each day and each hour.  The results will be what they are and they will be, but pressure won't become me."

He seemed baffled by this.  A willingness to just work as one works, do as one does, ground one's self in the heart of  history and reality while simply allowing life to happen, your world to happen, things to just be.  Yeah, it made no sense to him either!

It's all so funny though, I spent so much time in life embracing pressure, stepping up and thriving in it.  Especially in sports, and then even in business settings.  But now I take an approach very different from then, one that allows my heart and soul to feel at peace with life.  I just work at things, and allow them to be.

I think some of this is why Occupy works so well with me.  It's a place where things just happen, are done.  People don't seem to try, they just come together, think of something to do, and it just happens collectively, communally, and organically.  It is an amazing place.