I hope to edit down my footage from the Chicago NATO protests of May 17-22, 2012 over the next few days, releasing sections as a serialized documentary as I learn how to edit. So please, check back in every day or so until the story is told.
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This is something I have to say now.
I was once told something while hitchhiking that made my stomach hurt. A business guy in a convertible picked us up; a few hours into the ride he asked me,
“Can you guess what the next two big economic bubbles are going to be?”
“Probably green energy and biomedicine.” I said.
“I think green energy is right on.” He said, confidently. “And maybe biomedical. But, what I think is next, is going to make you sick” he said, smiling as he did, having gotten to know me a bit by then.
“Yeah, whats that?”
“Dissent.” he said flatly.
I laughed at him, but if he was right,… well, I do feel sick,… maybe that is the calloused to marketing pessimism in me speaking, but what I do know is that if he was correct it will be more than certainly be an ugly charade in the hands of the media and current market, but further and more importantly the duty of the networked, aware, organized and empathetic of society to expand and enlarge the activist/protest community, which is limited in it’s ability to change in that it is designed to bring attention to perceived and obvious wrongs, not offer solutions; those interested in creating a genuinely fairer society will need to start getting together, to be there; not to get rich and retire into some Ayn Randian valley at the end of a utopian silicon wrist band rainbow, but at the very least to make sure the ugliest sides of capitalism as normal don’t capitalize on and catch the zeitgeist into movement in corporate chains for any longer.
That said, since the end of the occupy encampment at Dewey Square most of my mental energy has revolved around the idea of what a voluntary worker/owner ran collective enterprise would look like, on a small and on a grand scale; as big as occupy, or bigger,…assuming the momentum which the movement had achieved to the point and transitioning into the next phase. A friend worded this concept of the next unifying tactic to me very succinctly, though he felt uncertain of what that tactic would be, by stating, that, ‘it was physically occupying land to have an open dialog with each other which had brought us all together in the first place; Occupying. It was just kind of there, and gave us a sort of purpose. It will have to be something, either that, or like that, which captures the momentum we have.’
I feel that for the movement take the fomentation of protest in all it’s fulminate and passionate best and bring that energy for change into the community, to create genuine change, we would need to create that change necessary in ourselves for a better society before we could ever achieve the society we feel entitled to. We have been paying into. The only way I can conceive to achieve this is through peer to peer to community interaction and exchange.
It seems to me we operate under an illusion currently, one that says if we all but purblindly toss our hope, votes, and taxes into an abysmally dark and deep rabbit hole of a system,..one so abstruse and seemingly unjust while ineffectually attempting to balance its entirety on,….profit,…not to float, not the ability to feed or educate,…
maybe starting today,…or soon, we could begin to gamble on each other, instead of paying someone else to care for us.
Now for some wild speculation.
What if occupy supporters created a corporate entity, which sought to fund raise, collectivize, acquire, and pool as much of the abandoned and blighted property in this country,..or world, as it could; as it’s plow.
With the property, the community and collective could use models of consensus to determine varying degrees of building use and sustainability;add complete transparency and neutrality based on gender, race, age, economic condition, creed, or any other system, and maybe we have?
Libraries,.. of books, tools, instruments, recording studios,… free schools. Cafes. Gardens. Theaters. All conceivable manner of public institution and service.
If pooled collectively, perhaps capital could be loaned, granted, or sought for affinity groups looking to form worker owned collective enterprises of their own. A people’s union.
As for the dreaded legal structure, I can at least imagine a corporation with thousands, or millions of board members, chairs rotating as fast as legally allowable, perhaps even fractions of seconds so everyone could be CEOs for a few minutes in their lives without the power to destroy or harm the orientation of the movement and mission; that, I at least hope, to be the liberation of as much life as possible without causing further undue harm to life on this or any planet.
Who knows what will become of tomorrow; all that can be known of now is that unless we still wish to be be enslaved then we must free ourselves today.
Be well.
I met Michael Steel during the NH Primary at JD’s Tavern, the bar inside the Raddison Hotel, across the street from Veteran’s Park.
I was with a few Occupiers in the lobby when I saw Mr. Steele near the exit of the bar, and I told them I intended to ask him a question.
A couple of the occupiers walked over to introduced themselves, to break the ice and engage him about the movement.
At this point Mr. Steele said that he had always been very supportive of the occupy movement, since day one, adding that he saw an energy which the early days of the tea party had, and that he respects us for tackling the rampant corruption within our system. With that, I asked,
“Sir, I have a question for you on that note. Would you support the criminal prosecution of the top level banksters which made away with the american dream?”
He said that with criminal charges it could be a slippery slope, one we would need to be prepared for if we were to go down that road, and that he wouldn’t want to see anyone prosecuted for simply making a lot of money.
I pushed further, asking,
“What if it was proven that these banking executives wantonly abused systems with which they had privileged information on to the detriment of our entire society?”
“Well, if that was the case, then I would support it. But you need the evidence, show me the evidence.” Adding “You wont find it, because no one is looking for it.”
“Why not?” I asked.
“Because the system has a way of protecting itself.”
“Well, what should we do?” an occupier asked.
“Just keep doing what you are doing. You guys have it right.”
I was asked to give a speech before Colin of Arabia played the American Nightmare/Give up the Ghost Reunion show in Revere last night; the following was prepared, however a truncated version was offered to the crowd.
I spent two months down at Dewey square, sure sometimes dirty, and yeah even sometimes involved in some hippyesque scenarios,…
But, what I want to talk about tonight is what is happening moving forward.
Physical occupation is a tactic, not an end, to get too bogged down with tactics, as opposed to education, to me, seems to be asking for a system which solves all of the problems of society for us, furthering us from blame, but also, and perhaps more dangerously, furthering us from the personal responsibility for change as something reachable and within us ourselves.
What is happening in this country is that the dialog has changed, drastically. inequality issues are on the table across the country, the people have the mic; Just attend your local General Assmebly.
You see, when I sat down think about what I was going to say, I wasn’t wrong or lying when I laid out a speech gilded with my vision of things moving forward, of every abandoned building in this country being reclaimed, legally, by the neighborhood surrounding it, so that we, the people can spring forth centers providing the civic and social services we need and require in our communities in the shadows of the bloated and failing which have failed us, so that groups and individuals can thrive and fulfill their mutual and self interests.
That is the beauty of what is happening in this country wight now, because at its base, the occupy movement is a conversation, and a sort of festival which has sprung up around it, this concept of consensus, the process of making decisions in a group while allowing for all voices to be heard as equal, or, as it is being referred to in relation to the Occupy Movement, horizontal democracy.
When the people took public space, on september 17, in order to have an open dialog with each other, we found that across the world the entire spectrum of political, social, ecological, and economic idealism was cracked open.
The idea of consensus appears to be gaining momentum; Moving into small towns, able to sustain once or twice a week General Assemblies, as opposed to physical 24 hour encampments.
It may be a hard pill for some to swallow, that the idea is so easy we have already won if we realize this one truth, that no longer can only the few prosper to the detriment of almost the entire herd.
That we can no longer allow ourselves to live with the cruel hope that elected officials will buck the trend and course of history and enact policy in the interests of the people.
What is currently on the table is that we are currently seeking is a center for civic discourse, an organizing headquarters and base of operations, the scope of which is being discussed.
We have and are looking at a lot of buildings in and around the area,some we can rent and move right into, some we could maybe buy and completely renovate, others would have to build from the ground up.
With effort and diligence as well as the help and voluntary association of everyone who would like to see genuine change, who would like to be a part to of a re-engaged public, whose will and spirit has been renewed, whose confidence and abilities have been restored, we can lay down a blue print of how to reclaim some of the blight in this country.
Howard Zinn said something to the effect of,
“if you want to be truly dangerous, if you really want to make the power structures scared, make being a radical, a revolutionary cool.”
Without us getting lost in the aesthetics, let us take that, along with the DIY and root ethics of punk rock and hardcore, to help blur the line between this, the punk rock movement, which is innately limited in it’s abilities to effect real widespread societal change, and the activism movement, where the sky, and maybe prosperity and justice is the limit.
As I sit, pacing for hours, anxious, should have hopped on a bus to Boston,… word that the people are soon making an attempt to take Duarte park in New York City, and that the police are defending it… As I hear that the Egyptian military has began shooting it’s civilians. I feel. I feel that tug at my throat and eyes; that welshrat pang of dread,…and hope, for in all living despair lays dormant a cruel kernel of hope for something different. Cruel in the sense that in the interim it allows for all the same old fears to remain,… that the public body will continue to ignore state issued and instigated violence against it’s citizens, never to question the corporate noose cast about it’s neck,…agonizing at times and transcendent in others, hope always lays static, a romantic notion that societies will wake up, cast off the corporate chains, to reclaim the zeitgeist, the spirit of the age; awoken from within, an intentional and carefully considered contumacious resistance to perceived tyranny, unjustified power,..to realize that it has already won in this struggle; if it, the public body, so chooses,…Based innately in the sheer power of number, and the strength of peace as a tactic; if the lowest up to the middle chose to pull themselves up simultaneously while the highest on the ladder overcame prejudice and sought to utilize privilege, together, in one surge of momentum the people could be one, all systems of caste completely abandoned. Oh, here he goes again,….
To divorce the forced relationship between human movement and money.
When you pass that building next, the one long fallen into the decay of time, ask yourself, why did it get like that?,… and, what could it be. If the people got together, those with money provided supplies, and all those with muscle provided ability; what could all this space look like.
That park, that place, full of food and music? Accessible, to everyone. For whatever they, we devise. Cognitive and tangible, tactical liberties. To buy, sell, or trade with my foe, friend, or neighbor as freely and conveniently as to currently hit the 7-11. Maybe if we ate far more of what our neighbors made the world would have less cancer.
When we drop the notion, it is ok to hold, like playing cards which lay hidden in the hand, under utilized areas, properties, namely,..to the detriment of the herd, the whole world gets a lot bigger. More room to bounce ideas off your fellow human. Less likely kids can just kick rocks down dead end streets as the only option, all day,…when we unleash the potential hidden in the back of everyones mind, one brick by small notion at a time.
Community centers in abandoned WalMarts, old court houses into libraries. Our jails more like hospital universities; society a much nicer place than it currently is, so that it would still be considered unfortunate to have to go there.
I want to play with what it means to realize we have already won. The dirty word, socialism, I feel all of the necessaries for it exists within the base frame of our current capitalism. The problem, lay in that the free market, or capitalism, yolks individuals in its all inclusivity and perverts human nature. To the point, if a person who architects a system, or business, say, a bookstore, wasn’t to hire out the time and labor of other individuals, it would currently be considered committing a grave economic flaw. There are exceptions, and those I am championing.
Follow that?I feel The current mean model of economic subordination operates somewhere between slavery and the illusion of free will.
Where as, in reality, if persons get together and agree to open, again, say a space for use as a bookstore, collectively, they could all agreed to pay each other equally. Or wilder, perhaps the store could exist voluntarily and it could seek to loan out it’s material; who wouldn’t appreciate a tool library in their town?
We need not wait until the government mandates we act fairly with each other. We simply have to network, agree to shop at business owned by those who deal equitably. These could be as simple as 99% approved stickers on business windows. All over town, the nation, the world, noting on the door, if this or that business practices fair trade. If they are decent to their customers, maybe chooses to forgo using animal products when possible, slave labor, sweatshops, or any other type of practices deemed unethical.
If we began to buy blight property all over this nation, we could rebuild and repurpose the nation ourselves; establishing wealth and equity in credit unions while doing so, as well.
We will need to campaign for our cause, to teach, more succinctly. To rove the countryside and the world in diesel buses, converted into vegetable oil; carting food, books, people, supplies, message, art, music, life, from town to town, city to city, state to state.
Into the state forests, with reclaimed, repurchased, surplus tenting, which our government once used to occupy other nations. Intentionally. Protesting in the city, gathering in the forest. On farms, growing our own sustenance, or finding where it grows wild across the land.
Once we occupy our minds the surface of everything begins to change. Once we see a possibility, if we allow for the play of ideas to spill over into real life; to imbue the certainty of everyday surface value with the more fanciful notion of potential.
Not only to see things for what they are, but also for what they could be.
Every citizen, with a window.
Or at the very least some shelter from the rain.
No matter how down.
Damaged.
Deranged.
For,… alas, maybe this movement may have sparked the true international citizen. Awoken the ineffectual. An intentional subculture; based in life,and consensus, completely, intentionally; internationally, in solidarity with everyone involved in the struggle, of life; I heard it once said,
“We are all oppressed and that is what unites us.”
Let it all be free;you, me, time, clean earth,sky, water, sun; for everyone.
John Ford