They Who Sleep Deepest Yell Loudest!

One thing that everyone in the field of political interest can agree on is that we are a dissatisfied lot. What's funny is that people usually respond to dissatisfaction by cultivating it and letting that which we are not happy with grow and grow. Then we start to think we have a really big problem. And maybe we even go beyond imagining too much and actualize the problem (see, mental health for many excellent examples). Sometimes comes this inspiration to face problems for what they are. No smaller, no bigger. Just precision. Sometimes there comes determination to take action on solving the problem. And then there is a willingness to not know the outcome, but only to experience the effort of trying.

Going to a General Assembly at my local Occupy kept making me think of something. Something kind of foreign for MY generation, maybe. Isn't this an exercise of a great deal of faith? Could there be another place in town right now where more faith was being displayed? Taking a leap beyond reason. Believing that what a few hundred were doing could have an impact on a metro-area of almost a million, let alone the most financially "diverse" country in the world. And then the whole world, too?

In one way, faith is simply acting on behalf of a principle or abstraction with "ultimate concern"; meaning, the outcome comes into very little consideration in deciding to take the action. It is done for concern of what is right, alone. For a generation who must know everything, and who often thinks that their opinions do know everything, the Occupiers are acting with very little idea of what the outcome might look like. And better yet, they continue to resist general political comforts--leaders, a list of demands, a clear vision of resolutions, etc. The only real guarantee that the 98% (99% - the 1% of people actually protesting) would give all the subversives, is that their entire movement will fall far far short of its own expectations. Most would probably even call them delusional.

Consider please: There are a relative few out there on the pavement, yet proportionately, there is a lot of conversation and media coverage in this country right now of said pavement dwellers.

Has anyone noticed gas prices lately? Has anyone noticed banks backing off fees, and having these middle to left-leaning ads about creating jobs and small businesses through loans and such? No, you are right, I haven't noticed any of these institutional indications of trying to pacify the masses, either.

And all of the Occupy jokes? Yeah, it's easy and it's old already. But there has been one thing our viewer audience of a generation really has confirmed, and that is that laughing at serious issues and assigning dingbat comic-relief personalities to authority figures is a political action we will all sign up for. On our couch or at our desk. With hundreds of millions of $$$'s in ads at stake. I mean, some people still consider Jon Stewart a journalist. I think he knows that they think this, and doesn't sleep well at nights sometimes. I think he wanted to do some good last year, and the only way him and Colbert knew how to organize a rally was predicated on how everyone else besides them was not "sane." In short, the same thing that everyone says all the time at all levels of intelligence and education: that everyone else is stupid and crazy. There was very little responsibility those men took in what they do--helping a whole bunch of people laugh off their political discomforts on the couch and feel general pleasure about what should logically be disturbances. Does this sound like facing problems and moving forward, or just trying to feel better about things we feel bad about? I know, stick in the mud here, right?

So, what is Occupy actually doing at these GA meetings that's different? Well, first there is an announcement that, even though leaderless, the group needs to agree on if [so and so] can lead tonight. And then, if anybody would like to speak then please talk to [so and so] to get on the stack (google this). And to please talk, but please keep it to 45 seconds in the interest of others. Nobody will take over, nobody will dominate, but all should speak. There were also some songs. And some motivational speaking and chants. There was a mumbly attempt at Woody's "This Land," but hardly anyone knew the words, which was sort of adorable. And then they told of all the hand signal definitions, and when the meeting started and it was all business. Work committees filed in and gave reports. Groups were broken into. Ideas heard. Constant output, constant feedback. "Release early, release often" (wikipedia this one). There was also dissemination of texted information from other Occupy movements around the country. The news seemed believable, like we didn't have to read it on ten websites before we started to believe it, because why would your fellow soldiers lie to you about anything? It came from our side and so we had to be honest. There was, in general, support, there was ritual, there was feedback, and most important--it was all in call and response. The effect of the human microphone, besides standing close by and feeling togetherness, was that you had to pay attention to everything that was said so you could say it back. There was a lot of comprehension and listening! It required real attention! The meeting's information was the exact opposite of the background drone of, say, a television. It was no pop up ad.

Overall, it was a really satisfying experience. And there was a HUGE improvement in the flow of the meeting, and the quality of the information, from the very earliest days of the City Hall gatherings. I noticed that the protesters were getting quite good at rallying, organizing, passing on messages of solidarity and spirited encouragement, and all in a timely manner. There wasn't a lot of pride by the people sleeping there versus those going home to a warm dinner and roof. There was a great respect for the 38 Occupiers who got arrested peacefully a few weeks ago, some of whom were "illegally" back on the premises after being out on bond. They sat honorably in the center and it was encouraged that the rest of us build a tight circle of protection around them. It felt like a childhood game that somehow had the potential to make national news. It made me happy.

And so begs the question, who's really happy with the way things are anyway? Is Obama, at the top? No. Is the leadership in Congress? No. Is the media on the right? Well, maybe in a personal smugness aort of way, but they don't sell spots by talking about this racket. They act angry and yell! Is the left media doing anything but slanting there headlines, and covering the enemy in more and more inane ways? It doesn't seem so, and they turned on that guy they got into office really really quickly.  And is the average citizen? Are the outliers? Apparently, there is some fifteen or so percent that feel ok about where this country is politically right now. I really am not sure I have met even one of these people.

Every one of us portrays a constant sense of fight and unhappiness, and it's all talk talk talk. It is such that politics and dissatisfaction have simply become interchangeable words. Sometimes, in debate, we all try to imagine how everyone in the political sphere sleeps at night. We really wonder. We agree that this may be the real mystery.

I think this 1% of the 99% is really on to something. They are cultivating a togetherness based on a solution, and building toward something without any sights on a conclusion. They are crazy. They are too busy refining and moving to know anything. And in the process of solidifying, some are having the times of their lives. I heard several times people just saying they are just so glad they are getting to see this and be a part of it in their lifetime. None of us have any idea what may happen, and the campers are looking at a cold cold winter ahead. But true as day, they are exercising a faith with no additives or preservatives. And more important, I am going to bet that the politically active sleep deep at night with the feeling of having put their best efforts. I guess too naive to understand that even Hope! and a slogan that We Can Change! in reality just means great compromise. As Buckminster Fuller once said, "Dare to be naive." Perhaps because not knowing is a more vital option than not doing.

9.2% Fed Up

Remember the days when we could complain about the skyscraper steeple with all the marketing people?
When it was boardrooms filled with lined pockets, 2-deeing the human touch?
The days before branding was a basic necessity, or convincingly sold as such.
I'm on an unpaid internship with myself; the ever-green naif watching how a self gets sold.
Just add red pumping blood and grow giant weary of fitting day's mold.
Got no key card to this bean-stalk brothel of iron and glass;
this broke stick, puttin' down stones, well-mannered whore.
Whoa Jack, can't take it no more can't take it no more:
We the people Souls, scheming One Refreshing Roar!

This Post is Not a Distraction: Eggheads Rally for the Children!

Purpose on the horizon.

I think I lost some romance along the way when it comes to my rebellious writer's life. I always secretly wished for an authority figure to burn the books I wanted to read, withholding me from true enlightenment. I had heard about it an awful lot, and I will usually be the first guy in line to sign up for the thing that exposes the evil-doings of the "Man." But combing through all of this priveleged enough middle-class boy's experiences, never once has somebody told me I couldn't read something I wanted to. Especially not something of intellectual challenge and value. So, while I commend you Sir Orwell and your futuristic accusations, let's talk a little about Huxley instead.

This is what I am talking about. I heard about the makeshift Occupy library being taken down in NY. And I am really excited for this idea that Douglas Rushkoff, as the writer of a staple on the Occupy reading list, Life, Inc., responded with. "A book can have more influence for being destroyed than having existed in the first place," Rushkoff wrote in his blog recently. From a writer trying to spread his ideas, that is an astute observation in how information gets disseminated among anti-authoritarian leaning folks. There is such a reactionary streak in humans, such a 1984 mentality, that in fact it can be a catalyst for needing to know what the book says. We want so badly for the oppression that's coming down on us right now to be simple, coordinated, and bloody evil. But it's messy, swelling organically, and a deeper symptom of all sorts of abstract things. We are going to need to dig deep on this one. In many cases, the causes of this system-gone-wrong are still obscure, let alone the solutions for it. But get 'em in, tell 'em it's Orwellian, right? The cops taking away the books can sound just like the evil Hays Code moralists or the religious zealots persecuting Spinoza. The truth, though, is the book just sits there until someone tells me I can't have it. Because more accurately, the real miracle is getting a large quantity of people to read a whole book, take in its ideas, and really bring them to their public life. Not that people don't do this. But let's be honest, many don't do this. I have spent a large part of my post-college years not doing this.

In this vein, I remember when I was younger I had heard some parents were mad about something on the sophomore curriculum, and knew some shit was gonna go down in Catcher in the Rye. I honestly wasn't much of a reader up to that point, or even a try-er in school. I did well, but I liked what I liked and my interest in books wasn't there yet. I had hoop dreams, man. But I devoured that book from the little motivations of my fifteen-year-old streak of perversion, only to find out it was only a few "fucks" and a platonic scene with a hooker. Also to find out? There was this guy talking who seemed just as weirded out by being a teenager as I was. That turned out to be one of the first instances of me connecting with a book--it planted a seed that a book could be something more than a homework assignment. That the human connections made in a novel could lead to healing, to helping me feel less alone. That a book could be sacred.

So, I pose that the real challenge in this climate is getting people's attention for more than a short article or musing. Is there an advantage to the 1984 mentality? A use? Because reading an entire book in this Info Age, is the crazy part. And if a cop told someone they couldn't read it, well I would abso-loot-ly be reading that book as a teenager. The absolute danger in this society, as talked over and over again by Neil Postman during the pre-Internet 1980's, is that we are in fact distracting ourselves with such immersion that the powers have no problem operating coolly behind closed doors. We assume the gates to what is precious in our Constitution is guarded heavily, when in fact the robbers just walk right in.  It's a costly assumption, not made on a "trust" that is being betrayed as much as an assumption as the result of our appetite for amusement. And the robbers have pulled off a shockingly straight-forward job--it's just filling up cabinets with board members, cutting each corner in every facet of civic life, one by one, and gearing policies toward the profiteers in order for profit. I mean, I don't really have a solution here, but I didn't even think about the park-dwellers having a library. Its presence, its pictures, and its reading list, is very important to this. It has meaning beyond a few people getting better informed ideas. Rebels read their way into effectiveness. Damn straight. And now THEY won't even let us do that!

Oh, that so appeals to me. And I know this is venturing dark/hopeless territory, but stay with me. There are still the trying people to speak of. And the trying people are the ones going on, in spite of. The trying people know that they can afford some intellectual skepticism if their hearts and feet are in the right place.

Well, I went to the public education rally tonight on the Capitol steps, and there was a lot of people there who have read, and I deem still do, a lot of books. A breed of eggheads going extinct? I don't want to get in to that, but it was amazing to see folks young and old, well-mannered and pissed, at least trying to know just what in the fuck was going on. Extremely articulate people who had figured out rally effectively, to nourish frustrations with words and inflections of voice. Who had the attention spans to listen and pull off a lovely human microphone. To quote our forefathers appropriately, and separate love of country and community with disgust for being in an abusive relationship with it. We smiled and shouted and marched to City Hall. It was a quality Thursday night. And you know what always kills me about what people say? That the politically active act like victims. There is nothing victim-y about protesting. It is empowering. If our society is organically one body, I think of the people still fighting among the vital cells. And it feels good to come together. The fight comes from this inner-source that says "I want to know what the fuck is going on here!" That's what happens when you get withheld from the truth, and you have the know-how to dig and think deeper. That's what happens when you go to school and want to learn and read and leave school with the same feelings.

The two most terrifying things I heard tonight, among many, were:

1) Privatizing Public Education since it is working so well for corrections facilities.
2) State government massacring school budgets, while profits are being made off of standardized testing, amenities, etc. And that we should just go ahead and kiss the feet of every one of our legislators for cutting just 5B, and not 10B like it was supposed to be (classic used car salesman tactics).

I don't know if these things are going to be changed, but I do know that it is imperative we work under the direction of our finest thinking caps on this problem. Seriously, the  fanciest ones we got. I still have a semblance of an attention span at 30 years old. I am grateful for that. Some use it at work then they feel justified for just letting their brain check the hell out. I have had about ten great teachers, and two amazing parents, that showed me everything I needed to see about why learning is the greatest joy in life. I'm lucky. In the current climate, at least a few of those teachers would have been working in a call center with no jobs on the horizon. And I'm sure my impressionable brain would be sinking deeper into this Huxleyan world of orgy porgies and centrifugal bumblepuppy. It is truly a great battle not being constantly distracted this day and age. To go through a day consuming information voraciously, and not really getting anything of real substance. Many don't win this fight. This is no revelation. Yeah, we can get stupid and stilted as adults, but the lucky ones never lose the love for the substance.

And yeah, the government is taking our teachers and their autonomy away,  and the cops are destroying OWS's books, but what we can all do our communities a favor by staying the hell awake. Battling the lazy brain. Pursuing challenges and interests. Occupying your attention spans. Not worrying so fucking much and being too scared. Like, scared to leave the house and go to a rally by yourself (which I totally kinda was tonight). See, I didn't think about it I just went. Talk about intelligence. Cultivate what the best part of you is interested in. I hope, dearly, it includes change. I hope the trying people can pass education on, freely, to the next generation. We can pass it on the good old fashioned way. Orally, by devotion, time, good quality interaction, and attention. Not out of righteousness and resentment, just out of joy, and a zest for living.

Occupy Karl Rove's Twitter Feed!

Do you think it would make @KarlRove uncomfortable if every single American on Twitter followed him? I think it would. #OccupyKarlRove!

Pestilence

I must admit, it's seeming a little low momentum here in TX. Scarily so. I happened to walk through my local camp the other day on my way home from the mechanic's. I was thinking about dead starter engines and lack of money and somehow re-employment, and though very grateful for the men and women present, it was clear that many of the Occupiers were people I have in the prior months seen wandering the streets and parks. The invalids. The CH is often filled with smart and sweet folk, but this is all I saw this particular morning. And ick, what a reminder. Especially, that on this Tuesday morning I still had it pretty good. Don't get me wrong, I am in love with the fact that the disenfranchised are sleeping at City Hall. I am in love with the fact that the authorities are putting their collective, ineffectual heads together to find a way to tell what amounts to the bottom 1% of the 99% to be on their way. The same people they were probably busy shooing around town from this place to that before this whole deal started. And now, the powers that be are rendered even more helpless by our sacred laws of Liberty. Sanitation issues and hazard as reasons to disband this whole charade? I could actually see this having some weight, but who cares? I want people to be there for this grand social experiment, and they have a right to be.

There is this other beautiful element of the evening-time and weekend emergence of protesters coming from anywhere and everywhere. The slime balls. The real pains. The people who have some modicum of something in this economic climate (probably still too little), and nonetheless deem our current situation unjust. These people are the real threats. The pests who smile in corporate HR by day and display their range of dissatisfaction by night. The day-jobbers, the underemployed, the more able job-seekers who haven't lost it all yet, some civic-minded lawyers or students, and then all the student loan people--all the people who went to college and got really complicated there and aren't digesting the simple diet of manure being fed to them. And then, yes, there are even those odd folks who are just kind of mad about some petty personal vendetta and think they are talking to the White House (like this one girl mad about never having dental insurance as a kid (I even love you, too!)).

Frankly, as I walked through the camp around eight in the morning I briskly thanked the protesters and wanted to get the hell out of there. I only had a few dollars in my pocket and I had a coffee addiction to answer to, and that's really what I was thinking about. It really wasn't a thought process of political solidarity on my part, or empowered rapture by any means, and certainly not any of that other hope I've been imagining under my roof, and not the stars, each night. I was feeling like the people were place holders doing a great service to their community, but holding the same cardboard signs that just said different kinds of things. And I felt like a jerk, but all complicatedly so. I'm trying to be honest here. I'm learning to live with this complicated idea of hypocrisy better. Of values more or less matching actions and beliefs. We are a generation with absolutely no experience in the political arena. We have been under the illusion of complete powerlessness our whole lives, and it might take some practice. Me, I am passionate about people's rights and have a story that lines up with someone needing to take political action, but to be honest I don't know what to do half the time. And especially with the pests at that City Hall space, just a mile from here.

So today I got more tired of it and decided I'm doing something and not thinking too much about being I'm a hypocrite or a poseur. There is a fear in considering myself that, but why? See, I cannot be a person of perfect integrity until I actually start doing something, and then do it for a while. So it's a bit awkward still, but this feels good. And why not just be content in calling myself the same pest as all the City Hall dwellers have the guts to? I think this movement seems to be about keeping on going. The spirit of this movement is just that. Simple. Poseur-proof, because Occupy just means being there. Taking the space up. Digital, physical, conversational. All of it it. And now I even want to Occupy my own good intentions. The movement's about how to not think ourselves out of reasons to keep going, and how we DON'T need the phD in this to say something about it. In fact, it's the people who paid for those phD's who are in much worse shape--in this particular case. The scoffers say we have it too good to be complaining. If we are so poor, why do have iPads and Blackberrys? And we tell them about something that really feels like it should be a basic right (no, not entertainment). And they say something about handouts, and we say something about tax loopholes. See, hypocrisy is a very bland idea. One need look no further than their own hands and feet to see it. We are all working in a highly imperfect system in imperfect bodies that shouldn't be sitting around waiting for the perfection fairy to grace us. Just go.

It feels to me that we must locate a qualitative difference beyond our personal discrimination, situations, circumstances, interests, and biases, and just take some positive action for as many people as we can possibly imagine. Let the TV heads in their impatient days ask: "Heh, heh, so where's this revolution by now?" Well it's not leaving, even if it's not exactly coming right now, either. It's just not going away. And won't. Obama can change his mind on us ten times. The other conservatives will gain increasingly throbbing veins in their righteous foreheads. And we will stay in place. Occupying their space maybe or maybe not, but getting better ourselves. Occupying ourselves with principled things. Occupying their heads with an annoying buzz in the background. We will be reading Bruce Levine, Douglas Rushkoff, Chomsky, Zinn, Postman, and hell maybe even some Michael Moore. And please let Thoreau, Emerson, Dewey, Huxley, and others of the past really need to enter into this conversation. We will be having ideas, gaining momentum on the Internet, and learning how great it can be to engage in open public dialogue again. That simply, democracy is based on the concept that the sum of disagreement is greater than one idea, and so we shouldn't be afraid to disagree any more. Or feel that it is too much of a burden if we can't just click-through it. These values, this attraction, is slowly seeping into life, and perhaps right now we just keep letting it.

We shouldn't burn hot too soon. There's so many more to join. Maybe we have them just where we want them. There are so many cards left to be played. And our hands get stronger every time the powers that be use one of theirs. They play pepper spray and batons, we take a picture. They use mass handcuffs, we take a video. They have illegal meetings of collusion, we expose it. That is the idea. We are all journalists and protesters and upright citizens. Powers that be don't enforce this way if no threat is felt. They are scared. So embrace pestilence. Plant seeds, crawl around, be seen. Keep reminding them that we are here. Let their consciences and wiggly fingers go to work. Let them put their hands on this. And even on us. Let them do it and more momentum will surely follow.

See, some Occupier right now is drawing out another sign as brilliant as this: "The more you screw US, the more WE multiply!"

After all, we are the: "...bugs and the lice,
And the roaches, and the termites,
And the sand fleas, and the tater bugs,
And the grub worms, and the stingarees,
And the tarantulas, and the spiders, childs of the earth,
The ticks and the blow-flies --
These is all of my little angels..." (Woody Guthrie's Mean Talkin' Blues)

See, we don't care who has the best messages, where they are shown, or how they are carried. We don't have the need for greedy ownership that THEY do. By any means, we just spread. We are already everywhere, just that some are unaware of what they are yet. The others. The ones being screwed in heavy numbers. The only real threat standing between the rich having their way and having their all, too, is all of us. Rich people HATE vague inconvenience. They HATE a lack of discrimination when it comes to the problem.  How else can they determine whom to pay for its removal? And even if they can afford to hire all the exterminators in the world, it just doesn't guarantee that we pests won't keep multiplying and coming out of the wood works--even the cubicles!

First thing's first!

We aim to follow our highest calling and become varied citizens who dwell in authenticity and are ruled by genuine humanity. We believe this starts with day to day decisions, individual actions, and communal inspirations. We keep our sights on the bull's-eye and never the arrow. We hope this will aid those interested in cultivating the gift of civic life and making it something better for all the people, especially the trying people.