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!