#myNYPD #ftp

Had some great fun this week participating in the hijacking of the #myNYPD hashtag on Twitter. In a PR move, the NYPD issued an innocuous call to submit pictures of kindly cops helping out New Yorkers by submitting photos under the #myNYPD tag. Activists quickly took advantage of the NYPD's offer, and flooded Twitter with tweets and pics of police terrorism. The hashtag quickly trended, rocketing to the top after thousands and thousands of tweets.

I've written up the story on Kasama: "#MyNYPD: The people turn the tables on the pigs": "This was a victory for the people. This act of rebellion showed creativity and spontaneity, and more than anything it showed how corporate social media can be co-opted and harnessed to our own purposes. It may have been a minor skirmish against the armed thugs in blue, but we won this one." Head over there to read the whole piece.


Here are some of the tweets I sent out. I tend to tweet only on special occasions, but you can follow me @CahokianISH. The first pic was a random incident I witnessed walking through the 42nd Street Subway Station.

#myNYPD #ftp I was just passing by, subway cop just slammed this kid to the floor. He only asked for a swipe. pic.twitter.com/2I8SmpcDSv
— ISH (@CahokianISH) April 23, 2014

This one was from the one-year anniversary of OWS, S17 2012. The cops were pretty brutal that day. I also wrote about it on Kasama.

Ties that bind. #myNYPD #OWS Yes they pulled him out of the crowd and threw him to the street. #ftp pic.twitter.com/fxW3yEYHlX
— ISH (@CahokianISH) April 23, 2014

This was from a big demo in November of 2011, I think right after Zuccotti had been retaken by the cops. This was a moment when the crowd started to throw down all the police barricades. It only lasted a minute but it was exhilarating.

Your barricades will not stop the people. #myNYPD There are more of us than there are of you. We have the power. pic.twitter.com/IvKwK05gFo
— ISH (@CahokianISH) April 23, 2014

Michael Stewart was a graffiti artist killed by the cops in the early 1980s. Somewhat randomly I mentioned him here on The Cahokian. 

This young man didn't get to grow up because of #myNYPD Remember Michael Stewart. #graffiti pic.twitter.com/2fZAgAtVXN
— ISH (@CahokianISH) April 23, 2014

Report on East Flatbush

Memorial for Kimani Gray in East Flatbush. Photo by me.

I've written up a report of last week's events in East Flatbush in the aftermath of the police murder of Kimani "KiKi" Gray.

"Last Saturday night Kimani was in the neighborhood hanging out with friends. At 16, he was learning to navigate some tough turf. There's not an African-American kid his age in Brooklyn who doesn't understand the way things are: staying in school seems pointless, finding work will be hard, being pushed around or thrown up against a wall by cops is the price of leaving your house, and sticking with your friends or even a gang is the way to keep it together.

That night two plainclothes cops decided Kimani looked suspicious. They claim he pulled a gun on them from his waistband as they approached him. Two menacing strangers walking toward a kid who was just out on the street with his friends...."

Read the whole report at Kasama. 

 

That's All Right, We Got This

View of downtown Manhattan after the Hurricane Sandy blackout showing only the Goldman Sachs building still lit.

At the height of hurricane Sandy on Monday night, lower Manhattan was plunged into darkness. As the wind buffeted the city and the waves overran low-lying coastal areas, electric power failed in many parts of the city. My Brooklyn neighborhood was lucky, surviving with only a few downed trees. In lower Manhattan, one building stayed alit: the headquarters of Goldman Sachs, the massive Wall Street firm legendary for corporate greed on a massive, should-be-criminal scale. This symbolic coincidence has not been lost on the people of New York City. Fuck Goldman Sachs. Fuck Wall Street. We don't need you.

Occupy Sandy Relief NYC: almost ten thousand likes on Facebook in 4 days translated into many hundreds of volunteers on the ground and significant real-world mutual aid.

While Mayor Bloomberg debated cancelling the New York Marathon with the tabloid press, while President Obama claimed to be sending massive amounts of FEMA assistance, as the Red Cross started cranking up its donation engines, the people of New York also noticed something else: nothing was actually happening on the ground to help the thousands of people either displaced by wind, flood and fire, or trapped in powerless, heatless homes no longer served by public transportation. Enter the Occupy movement, yes the Occupy Wall Street movement derided as dead by so many on all sides of the media. Occupy activists gathered together and quickly formed "Occupy Sandy Relief: NYC," simultaneously unveiling a Facebook page and going out to the ravaged Brooklyn neighborhood of Red Hook to see what was up with our neighbors and try and lend a hand. Fuck the liberals who are phonebanking for Obama this weekend. Fuck the smug pundits writing their contemptuous obituaries for Occupy. Fuck you Mayor Bloomberg and your private NYPD army. We don't need you.

Outreach for Occupy Sandy at a Brooklyn Church (photo by me)

Within a day the Occupy Sandy activists had a food kitchen set up near a blacked-out low-income housing project and were prowling the flooded streets reaching out to frightened hurricane survivors. In a few hours they expanded operations to the Rockaways, both to the middle-class neighborhood ravaged by a massive fire, and the working class areas full of people seemingly abandoned by the city and alleged relief agencies. They soon began to reach out to Staten Island, where angry residents were feeling ignored and forgotten. (While Staten Island is home to a notoriously right-wing white community it's also home to large working-class communities of color: A community of color which just lost two of its youngest sons, swept away in the flood to their deaths as their mother cried for help, ignored by cold-hearted neighbors.) Politicians started to tour the scenes of devastation. And yet, people were still left to fend for themselves. Grassroots organizations started to follow Occupy's lead and soon started helping to fill the void. But one thing became very clear: those who were most effected by Frankenstorm Sandy needed mutual aid. We would have to do this ourselves.

After my small neighborhood General Assembly meeting this morning, now held in the lobby of an apartment building on rent strike because of the machinations of a charitable agentocracy, we walked over to St. Jacobi's church and joined the hundreds of people arriving every few minutes to make donations of food, material goods, or their time to the cause of people's hurricane relief. We sat through a quick volunteer orientation where it was explained that this was not about saving other people it was about empowering communities to help themselves. It was explained that this was Occupy walking its principles of anti-oppression and horizontal organization. Racism, sexism and homophobia were condemned. We were advised to treat each other and members of the afflicted communities with respect, without being condescending or patronizing, to listen for what was needed. Each of us could be a leader in the relief effort. In a half hour I was leading volunteer orientations myself. This was Occupy's radical vision in action. Fuck the nonprofit industrial complex with its overpaid staff and its penchant for channeling people's rage into harmless nonprofit triplicate. We don't need you.

Altar for the Day of the Dead at St. Jacobi Church in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, in the recreation room being used by hundreds of volunteers to sort donations and prepare food for meals to be delivered to hurricane victims. (photo by me)

Tens of thousands of meals were prepared for people in affected neighborhoods. Carpools were organized to ferry goods and people between Occupy Sandy intake centers and those neighborhoods. Donations flooded in. People spread out to help neighbors support each other, help clean up, help find out who was in need. People were motivated and stayed enthusiastic and united. This happened under the leadership of a movement led largely by anarchists and social justice activists radically influenced by anarchist thought. An activist friend of mine complained on facebook that a "socialist" acquaintance had shouted at her, "we need solidarity not charity." Which is sadly typical of much of the left's sneering dismissal of Occupy. Because this is real solidarity. This is the real world. This is what it means to organize, to relate to real people. These downtrodden and oppressed people don't look like a history book, they look like your neighbors, surviving a hurricane. Fuck the social democrats waiting for an imaginary labor party they can make themselves head of. Fuck the trotskyists and their world of weasel-word formulations. Fuck the condescending saviors who think they know everything but don't even know who the workers are and won't lift a finger to be with them.

Time has moved on. This is not the world of 2008. This is not the world of 2010. This is why I am not voting for Obama. This is the future. This is hard work. This is painful. This is joyful. This is the not-so-slow-motion apocalypse that we can only stop if we get real busy now with our friends and comrades. This is the possibility of winning. This is the possibility of losing. This is fear, this is hope. This is how it's going to be, from now on.

Fuck the government, fuck the state. We don't need you. People's power is coming.

FIrst Report on #S17

"Unfuck the world!" NYC today!

Appears now on Kasama, written by me.

Occupy anniversary party rocks Downtown NYC
An Occupy organizer, a woman named Lisa, asked for a show of hands: “Who was here a year ago?” A few dozen hands shot up.
“Who wasn’t?” Hundreds more shot up.
All of a sudden it didn’t matter that there weren’t thousands of people sitting in this circle: it was clear that a real movement had been born that in the space of a single year had rocked our worlds. Something tangible had been created from nothing, and it was gathered on a beautiful late-summer night to talk about mass anti-capitalist action on the streets of New York City.

read the rest here.

"The Most Powerful Workers in New York City"

Locked-out Con Ed worker in Brooklyn: "If We Go Out the Lights Go Out!"

On Sunday, July 1, contract negotiations between New York City's electric utility, Consolidated Edison or Con Ed, and its 8,500 unionized workers represented by the Utility Workers Union of America broke down. Even though New York City was entering a heatwave, stressing the electrical grid across the city, the electric company locked out the workers, replacing them in their crucial jobs with a smaller number of managers and bosses. The union for the workers has continued to try to negotiate with the electric company, but they've also been holding daily pickets and solidarity rallies across New York City.

A group of revolutionary organizers calling themselves the New York City Renegades have been agitating among the workers with some of the most powerful worker-focused propaganda I've seen in years. This is a brilliant example of some of the fruits of the Occupy Wall Street movement: class consciousness, solidarity, autonomous community/worker organizing outside the confines of existing organizations, all in convergence with solid revolutionary organizing traditions. The goal of these organizers is to "unite the workers with the 'hood." I met with some of the Renegades in time to pass out some leaflets at a rally of the UWUA workers outside the Con Ed offices on Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn; I found the gathered workers hungry for solidarity, the leaflets flew out of my hand.

These leaflets are a necessary challenge to the top-down strategies of existing union leadership. Union-busting is a priority strategy of state and local governments, both Republican- and Democratic -led, across the country. The Renegades are arguing that the small minority of working people who are still unionized must unite with those who are not, in order to beat back a fundamental attack on the right of people to organize themselves. A bitter defeat is possible: the unions who still hold sway with public employees desperately need allies.

Here are two of the leaflets distributed by the Renegades to the locked-out Con Ed workers in preparation for organizing a workers and community meeting to plan a course of action.

THE MOST POWERFUL WORKERS IN NEW YORK CITY

Con Ed, MTA and healthcare workers are the most powerful workers in the entire city. But they have been defeated by the bosses and politicians in every major labor fight in the last decade. Unless things change quick, more defeats are coming.

The bosses win because they pit the poor and working class public against the workers when the workers resist. In this right over the Con Ed contract, many everyday people see the wages of Con Ed workers as the cause of their high utilities bill, instead of a small taste of what all working class people could win if they stick together. Others consider the lockout a private matter to be handled between Con Ed and its workforce, instead of an issue that affects all New Yorkers. This is a trap set by the bosses and politicians, and it has worked all too well.

The only way to escape this trap is for workers to lead the whole of New York City in a struggle for a better life, including people outside their own workplaces and unions. If MTA workers called a fare strike with free transit for everyone in the city, all poor and working people would immediately support it. If Con Ed workers called for a strike to end stop and frisk and make utilities free, every young person of color in the city would have their back.

If workers provided this kind of leadership, all the crap about young people smoking weed and acting like delinquents would disappear. Young people would show up at picket lines and throw eggs at managers. They would fight the police tooth and nail if scabs were brought in. Instead of beefing with each other and hurting the community, poor and working class youth would direct their anger at the bosses, politicians and police who oppress us all. One million students are on summer vacation right now, with no work and few social programs, waiting to take up this fight.

Will Con Ed workers provide this leadership for New York City? It will require leaving isolated pickets outside Con Ed yards, and doing public actions at drop-in centers and other busy locations across the city. It will require explaining to millions of everyday people what the Con Ed workers are fighting for, and discussing how to fight together against the bosses in the common interest. It will require finding new ways to fight, and taking initiative without waiting for direction from the union leadership.

If free utilities, healthcare, and transport become part of workers' demands, the working class of New York City will unite, and become unstoppable. Then workers will be able to win not only a contract, but a hell of a lot more.


And here's a second, follow-up flyer:

THE MOST POWERFUL WORKERS IN NEW YORK CITY, PART 2

Management is preparing for a long battle with Con Ed workers, and is willing to risk the deaths of New Yorkers and its own management to win. An opponent like this can't be defeated with kid gloves. Con Ed workers need to take their gloves off and beat management to a pulp. But how?

Praying for a blackout to bring Con Ed to its knees is hardly a winning strategy. It's more like the hail mary of people who don't have a plan to win by their own initiative. Rallies are often just glorified pep rallies, and do little to win over the public. The rally on July 5th was like the festivals put on during Roman times. Orgies and spectacles were the order of the day while the rest of the society was collapsing. Right now we have millions in prison, many more in failing schools, and even more with no jobs and no hope of finding them — many Black and Latino. These same people are being told in the Daily News that stubborn workers are the cause of their problems.

There is a lot of big talk about the power of the union. But a lockout tells another story, that management was preparing this for months, getting ready to sucker punch the workers. Where were the union leaders when this was happening? Sitting around, reassuring workers that they were powerful, while sipping margaritas with [NYC mayor] Bloomberg and the ruling class of this city. That's not a winning strategy.

Con Ed workers have a choice: either build a citywide counterattack against the bosses, or submit to a drawn-out, exhausting negotiation process that will probably end in an ass whooping. Tough talk is not enough.

A growing crew of young people is ready, willing and able to join with Con Ed workers. We want to strategize and try out new ways to bring the workers' struggle to millions of everyday New Yorkers. We want to uppercut [Con Ed CEO] Kevin Burke and knock his ass out. Together we can make it happen.


Here's an excerpt from a third flyer calling for a community meeting:

WORKERS AND COMMUNITY MEETING

We believe only the rank and file of Local 1-2 can win against Con Ed and lead NYC. The ranks have power, but they have not used it so far. There are only two endings to this struggle: defeat or victory. The next 10 days will determine the next tens years of your life. Won't you wish you gave everything you had to fight against Con Ed?

The point of this meeting is not to tell each other Burke is a jerk, Con Ed is making lots of money, and the unions are under attack. All of us know these things. The purpose of this meeting is so Con Ed Workers, along with community members, can discuss how we can win against Con Ed. We must think, plan, and execute a strategy to defeat Con Ed. We do not have even a second to lose. Management is working its ass off to defeat you. How hard are you willing to think and work to win?

[...] Should we occupy Con Ed HQ, should we march through the streets of Manhattan shutting them down or occupy Brooklyn Bridge? Should we ask the people of NYC to not pay their bills while workers are locked out?... Bring your ideas to the table!

NYC Gay Pride 2012

Occupride/Occupy Wall Street contingent, gay pride New York City 2012

I wrote a report on this year's gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender pride parade in New York City. It appears on Kasama. Here's a couple pictures I took of the day.

NYPD pens in queer people on Christopher Street

"The Party's Over" - Return of a Familiar Friend?

"ARM TEH POOR," Graffiti in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, April 2012 (photo by me)

In the 1980s, a striking graffiti logo appeared all over the streets of lower east side Manhattan. The scene of an extended conflict over gentrification and how New York City would evolve, the LES was home to tenant activists, counter-culture punks, pioneering queers, artists, and the struggling Puerto Rican working class people who took the neighborhood over from the immigrant Jewish community who had, as it were, moved on up. The graffiti was an abstract depiction of an upturned cocktail, and was said to symbolize "The Party's Over." The graffiti was ubiquitous and mysterious, though it turns out it was completely the creation of a local musician and activist, Peter Missing. You can see an original here.

"OWS 2012" Graffiti in Union Square, March 2012 (photo by me)

Is the iconic "Party's Over" logo making a little comeback? I first noticed the upturned-cocktail in chalk at the Occupy Wall Street Union Square encampment in March. But then I noticed it on a lamp-post in Brooklyn, along with the inscription "ARM TEH POOR" ("teh" being the ironic/hipster misspelling of "the," of course) and a hammer and sickle.

It's got an almost apocalyptic resonance, this logo: Which isn't that far off, since the 1980s in which it first arrived was a massive cultural and political turning point both for the city and the world. It does seem appropriate that the symbol return with OWS, who reminds us that we are complaisant with today's challenges at our own risk.

“Another World Is Possible” – May Day in New York

Occupy/Ocupemos Sunset Park banner. Photo by me.

After months of planning and hard work May Day was a great success for the Occupy movement in New York City. Though you wouldn't know it from reading any New York newspapers, thousands of people participated in hundreds of actions all over the city during the day, and the culminating march from Union Square to Wall Street saw many tens of thousands of exuberant protesters filling the streets. Confrontations between demonstrators and police were few until the final hours of the protest, when cops violently broke up an assembly by some of the protesters who kept things going after the officially tolerated time.

While it is true that the "general strike" calls generated by many in the movement proved only symbolic, the day marked the vibrancy and deepening of Occupy, which spent the winter building ties in neighborhoods and communities, and across networks of activists and organizations. Occupy is anything but moribund.

For me the day started in Brooklyn, as my local neighborhood Occupy assembly, Occupy/Ocupemos Sunset Park, gathered on the Avenue in front of two local branches of the big banks Citibank and Chase. We had planned a march/speakout that would go through one of the main drags of the neighborhood, stopping at various stations to address issues relevant to this multi-ethnic, working class community. So at the point of assembly we carried out a skit about the role of the banks and about income inequality. About 35 of us marched.

The next stop, shown above, was at the offices of May First People Link, the independent radical internet service provider that has recently been targeted and harassed by the FBI. The First Amendment from the Bill of Rights was read in English and Spanish, and May First People Link members read a statement to the gathered protesters.

From there we moved on to the site of a horrible incident of police brutality in the neighborhood a few years ago where several members of the Acosta family, including the grandmother of the family, were strip searched and brutalized right out on the street. Harassment by the NYPD in Sunset Park is a daily thing for the neighborhood's Hispanic residents, many of them immigrants. A member of the Acosta family thanked us and reminded us of our right to reject police mistreatment.

Reclaiming the courthouse. Photo by OSP.

We moved on to the Courthouse building on 4th Avenue, which we have previously targeted for a "People's Repossession." This time we had a ribbon cutting ceremony, and placed a sign promised the "Future Home of the Sunset Park Community Center," and the gathered folks yelled out all the things we'd like to see in such a desperately needed bit of community space. Everything from free daycare and cultural classes to a health clinic and legal aid clinic. Right now this beautiful landmark building is occupied by cops being warehoused to push pencils. We rejected the idea that any immigrants to our neighborhood are "illegal."

From there we stopped at the Dewey Middle School. The city is cutting back services in our neighborhood to working-class families, cutting back funding to daycare and after-school programs, and threatening schools like this one with union-busting turnaround or transformation into for-profit charter schools. Dewey was just saved from turnaround by community outcry, and we celebrated that fact while giving Mayor Bloomberg's corporatist Department of Education "F's" on a giant report card for its role in toying with the education of the children of our community.

Occupying the Subway. Photo by OSP's Krys M.

From there we marched to the Subway at 36th Street and 4th Avenue. Above ground we stopped to call for full employment jobs programs and, well, for an end to capitalism! A bunch of us went down into the subway together (above, and yes, that's me) to ride to Union Square for the big march. On the subway we met up with folks from Occupy Red Hook who are also engaged in organizing an assembly in their neighborhood, right near ours.

Occupy/Ocupemos Sunset Park is a really awesome group of people I'm incredibly proud to work with. We planned the day's event together and carried it out in a real spirit of collectivity.

"Everything for Everyone – Dream Dangerously" Kasama banner in Manhattan. Photo from Kasama.

So into Manhattan we went. I spent some of the time with my Occupy Sunset Park comrades, and some of the time with comrades from the Kasama Project with their wonderfully challenging banner shown above. From my end of the absolutely packed Union Square I couldn't hear the tail end of the rally, but I marched most of the way downtown until my middle-aged ankles started complaining about the day of walking. I missed the assembly at the very end; friends reported that it was incredibly empowering and almost magically beautiful.

It was hard from any one spot amidst the assembled thousands to get a feel for the whole crowd. There were people from every imaginable left group, from unions and community organizations, and thousands of Occupy activists displaying their nack for truly revolutionary creativity. I ran into all sorts of people I've gotten to know from the past few months of organizing.

The mood was high and celebratory, despite occasional minor harassment from the cops who kept trying to pen the marchers in. It's the first time I can remember where a march this size was seized with such absolutely revolutionary optimism. People sang, and chanted, laughed and smiled. And while "This is what democracy looks like" was a favorite, Occupy really showed its colors by chanting things like "Another World Is Possible." This is absolutely a moment when people are coming together to see things with fresh eyes, casting away old illusions and attachments, and bringing a real spirit of hope and real change.

It was not, in the end, a general strike. And millions of New Yorkers probably didn't notice what happened. But I know I feel energized by this May Day; it was a taste of what we can do. A reminder, for sure, of all the work to be done. But tens of thousands of people did see it, did participate in it, and together we can keep building and growing.

For me the day was full of the positive lessons of what real democracy looks and feels like. It's not elections and waiting for somebody else to save us, knowing they will mostly betray us, it's taking things into our own hands because, well, the world is ours, the world, is us.

The State of Obama

What a difference a year makes, but I just can't join the chorus of finding anything President Obama said last night in his third State of the Union address interesting or acceptable. Why pretend you're happy with crumbs when you can see that there's a whole cake there for the taking?

After listening to Rmoney, Swingrich, the hateful Rick Santorum and the kooky racist Ron Paul for several weeks, of course at first one is struck hearing Obama's intelligent, measured words by a sense of relief. He's trying to connect with people, and mostly in a positive way. The dogwhistle of blaming poor people or black people or immigrants or gays (yes, Rick Santorum, that would be you) for the nation's woes is gone. The intentional lies are notably absent, or at least prettier. He invokes fairness. He brings up eminently reasonable proposals. He doesn't sound like a carnival barker (hi Newt!), and his emotional range usually seems genuine instead of learned in front of a mirror while listening to Ronald Reagan tapes (hi Mittens!).

But we are so numbed by the extreme-right horror show on the Republican side of the aisle that I think it's too easy to be distracted by our wishful thinking into missing what is actually going on.

Last night President Obama beat the same war drums we're used to from Republicans. That line about "all options being on the table" regarding Iran — recently echoed, by the way, by liberal darling Elizabeth Warren — is an actual threat to pre-emptively attack a foreign sovereign state. It's based on stale warmed-over hype recipes from the Bush era about Iraq. And speaking of George W. Bush, even that warmongering mass murderer called for a democratic Palestinian state in his last State of the Union address. Last night Obama mentioned only the American commitment to Israel, the country currently engaged in massive ethnic cleansing against Palestinians in both the Occupied Territories and Israel proper. Obama is actually war mongering. He is actually engaged in covert wars and assassinations. How could it get worse than that?

Obama doesn't brag about the policies of repression and the stifling of dissent that his government is deeply pursuing. But the fact that he didn't mention them in his speech doesn't mean they're not happening. We cannot just look away and pretend that these things could be worse. They're already about as worse as they can be. He signed the NDAA that potentially guts due process. He had a teen-aged American citizen assassinated along with his more notorious American citizen father. His law enforcement agents have waged campaigns of harassment against peace and international solidarity activists. Many believe the fall's national campaign of repression against Occupy encampments was coordinated from the very top halls of so-called law enforcement. When he uses the nebulous term "immigration reform," what he really means is deporting more of our neighbors.

To those of us who wished for real national healthcare in this country, in his speech last night Obama bragged about his health insurance reform being kept in the private profit-making sphere. We can't keep telling ourselves that we had to give up the so-called public option only because of congressional horse-wrangling over votes: the truth is we didn't get it because Obama didn't want it. He's not lying to us: we're lying to ourselves.

In his speech he parroted the same ridiculous small government/tax-cutting rhetorical nonsense the Republicans play. He is absolutely pandering to Republicans. And while it could be argued that mere pandering is harmless, remember how just this last year his administration abandoned environmental protections and advances in contraception. Over and over we tell ourselves that Obama is pandering to the right when it's actually the left that is being pandered and condescended to. And oh yes, that payroll tax holiday he keeps waving about: that is the death of Social Security as we know it. We won't find that out till later, of course.

He can claim that he wants "fairness" but I'm not seeing it. The deck is still stacked in favor of what we euphemistically call "Wall Street." And let's be clear: this is not because Obama is a bad person as the Republicans would have it, but because he is a creature of the 1%. He is acting in his own interests, and in the interests of his friends and colleagues. You and I are not included in that list, no matter how many folksy e-mail appeals to wish Joe, Jill & Michelle a happy birthday that you receive from the Obama reelection campaign. It's really time to stop projecting values on Obama that he just doesn't have.

Almost two weeks ago my local Brooklyn occupy group, Occupy/Ocupemos Sunset Park, had a wildly successful event for Martin Luther King's birthday (I promise a full report soon). I gave a short presentation toward the end of the program. These are from my notes for my remarks:

"2012 is an election year, and somebody is going to promise you that your life will be better if you vote for them. You're free to vote for whoever you like, but my guess is that you're going to be disappointed. Because democracy, the people exercising the right to live and work together fairly and justly, is not really about elections.
History does not remember Dr. King running for office. History does not record who Dr. King voted for. What History remembers is Dr. King leading the people to go out in the street to take what belongs to them. Dr. King showed us the links between big issues like racism and injustice, enforced poverty and the outrages of war. But he also showed us the importance of coming together right here in our own communities to fight for what is right. If you're waiting for a politician to save you you're going to be waiting a very long time. This is up to us."

Again and again we are disappointed in who we vote for. Hell, I argued for supporting Obama last time around even as I suspected this disappointment would return. For three years now I've also watched self-identified progressives struggle with Obama. Over many issues in the last three years anger welled up against him from the left. I am embarrassed that at times I argued against that anger. And yet now as the likes of Rmoney and Swingrich gather like bathroom mildew, these progressives return to the circle of wagons around Obama.

We think it will be worse under the Republicans than under Obama. But is that really true? What if the worse is already true. When Obama is looking to compare himself to... Teddy Roosevelt, this is a sign that we should heed. For people who think of themselves as 21st-century progressives that is called aiming very very low. I read a bitter comment on a blog today: Obama supporters "would defend Hitler, if he had only been a Democrat: 'He only killed 6 million Jews... hell look how many he left alive!'" A little harsh perhaps, but it makes a certain point. Where does the constant need to apologetically find Obama's silver lining come from? Weakness, I think.

I'm actually not at the point of telling anyone not to vote. I guess in some ways I still hold the position that since elections will have one of two winners, it's not more harmful voting for a lesser evil than wasting a dollar on a lottery ticket, in the off chance it winds up making a slight difference. But I am more and more convinced that as long as we devote our energy to a game that is designed to disappoint us, we will get only what we're asking for. Asking for a lesser evil is still asking for evil. Why not ask for something one actually wants? Excuse me, why not take what one is actually entitled to! In 2008 this seemed like an abstraction. In 2012, with the sea change in consciousness called Occupy Wall Street, it doesn't seem like an unimaginable goal to make the elections irrelevant. Maybe, just maybe, we're no longer weak.

I'm not going to spend the months between now and November fretting about the election. I'm going to spend it trying to organize my community, trying to spread the possibilities of the Occupy movement. Obama's not going to save us. We're going to save ourselves.

Even The Longest Night Gives Birth to Dawn

I took this photo a month ago, when there were still some leaves on the trees. That's the full moon above and a streetlight below, and it's right on my street. The leaves are all gone now, though it's a very un-Winter-Solstice temperature of 61 degrees outside; it's almost muggy out.

I don't see a moon outside my window in the night that has fallen today. The longest night of the year has begun, after the shortest day. I woke up in darkness and arrived home in the same inky blackness. It's no accident that so many religions have significant holidays round about now as the natural world works its predictable though still miraculous magic. Somehow even though it's about to get cold and snowy here in the northern hemisphere, climate change allowing, nature holds out an olive branch: this signal that all is not lost. The days are gonna get longer, the light is gonna come back.

It's been an interesting year. Things have happened that I didn't think could happen anymore. Even as my middle-aged joints ache and complain, my heart and mind are lightened with the promise of good news. Oh not the good news of herald angels and flaring stars and possible prophets, but the signs of awakening slumberers, the possibility that the coming Spring will bring more than just flowers and new leaves.

25 years ago in the depths of the Reaganite midnight I laid down my spears and arrows, and quenched my torch. I kindled different fires for a while, gathering embers. I walked some different paths, and visited some different worlds. I have no regrets for the years I spent doing what needed to be done. That different time that is a half of my life is as much me as what came before and what comes now, after. Older and wiser turns out to be more than just a cliché.

Tonight it's going to take a moment longer. But dawn is going to break. In glorious sun or overcast with clouds, no matter. The world turns. Stretch your arms. Take a step. Arise.

Tomorrow is going to be a good day. Walk with me: let's share it together.

Keep Occupying!

The #OWS movement is off the front page headlines...for the moment. The Occupy Wall Street encampment in New York City and those across the country have been mostly trashed and uprooted by a coordinated national campaign of violent repression...for the moment. But this is not over. And I'm not just saying that.

The movement is alive, and deepening all the time. There has been a sea change in political consciousness, and that continues filtering out across the roots and branches of society. As The Occupied Wall Street Journal says, "The Beginning Is Near." Protests and direct actions continue in NYC and nationally, building support for the notion of direct democracy. The words "Power to the People" have returned to life.

The movement of consciousness springing to life is not just the same old, same old. It's not just the shop-worn cliches and trite stereotypes and stale abstract ideas: it's the drive for human collective liberation returned to life, tidily encapsulated in the simple notion of the 99%.

One of the blogs I read is The Wild Hunt, a blog about the Neo-Pagan community that helps me to stay in touch with some of the ideas that have informed my own journey. Consider the editorial just published by its mainstay Jason Pitzl-Waters, "Occupying Everything" that concludes: "There have been those who’ve spent a lot of time pointing out that the Occupy movement has feet of clay, or has lost the moral high ground due to one incident or another, but I think such arguments miss the point. This isn’t about the good behavior of every Occupier, its about what needs to happen now. We need a shift in our priorities, we need the dramatic excesses of our current capitalistic system to be reigned in, and we need justice. I think modern Pagans have much to offer the Occupy movement, and that this movement has much to teach us in return. We are, after all, part of the 99% too. I know that there will be Pagans who disagree, who’ve written off the Occupy movement in one fashion or another, but I can no longer sit on the sidelines and pretend to have no opinion. For me, the Occupy movement is the movement I was waiting for during the anti-globalization protests of the 1990s, a true continuation of the work sparked by social justice pioneers like Dorothy Day, Gandhi, King, and Jane Addams. Now is the time for Pagans of a like mind to envision what our social justice looks like, to craft a theological and historical framework for a future where we have a voice, because that future is happening now. I guess what I’m saying is that we need to Occupy Paganism, and in turn, Occupy everything."

Pitzl-Waters understands, in a profoundly spiritual way, how the Occupy movement has resonated across society with a call for a world in which together we take back what is ours and then collectively share out of love, mutual respect, and responsibility.

I was at a meeting of Occupy Sunset Park, the organization that has sprung to life in my own Brooklyn neighborhood. A fellow emerging activist was saying how she felt the movement was reclaiming the notion of what is public, where parks and institutions are places that welcome and serve the communities in which they are located rather than act as fenced-off monuments to somebody's money.

I attended a terrific forum by the group Kasama which counts among its adherents one of the members of the Occupied Wall Street Journal editorial collective. Kasama is a profoundly radical communist organization but one that has approached the Occupy movement with creativity and respect. While I'm not sure they would use the word, I think they understand what a spiritual revolution OWS is engendering in peoples' consciousness. One Kasama leader described exactly how I feel: that for decades those of us who early in life awakened to consciousness as people yearning for social justice and human liberation — as revolutionaries — felt defeated; that the best we could hope for were lesser evils and retreating into living politically moral but isolated lives. And how the Occupy movement has changed everything, giving us back the hope and energy of what is possible.

We've experienced devastating one-sided class warfare for decades now, and finally the battle has been joined. People are opening their eyes and seeing. It's different now, from here on out.



For sure this has been recognized by the other side. The 1% understands what a threat looks like. The violent repression, the media manipulation, the attempts to subvert the movement, these have shocked people into paying attention to what's happening. But don't be fooled by the lack of headlines now. As the movement roots down into communities like mine we know there are plenty of obstacles in our path. But we also know what we can do, together.

#Occupy together; Spring is coming! Power to the people!

Photographs by me from the #OWS rally in New York City's Foley Square a couple days after the Zuccotti Park eviction

"We Aren't Talking to Them"

The following is the Editorial, "We Are Free People" from the just-printed issue #4 of the Occupied Wall Street Journal:

"Democracy is not simply speaking truth to power, to ask, politely or not, for reforms great and small. Sometimes you have to do it yourself.

The 1% is just beginning to understand that the reason Occupy Wall Street makes no demands is because we aren't talking to them. The 99% are speaking and listening to each other. 4,167 people have been arrested since the occupation began; millions more are reimagining the world we want to live in.

Police forces have been deployed by Republican and Democratic politicians alike to break a movement that was first ignored and then mocked in what passes for news. It's not just America. This is a living democratic movement that is global in scale and growing in real time. That this beautiful thing is met with state violence says everything we need to know about the perpetrators. It also means we're on to something. Their attacks are based on an understanding of power that's dying, if not already dead.

Mubarak is Berlusconi is Bloomberg is Quan is Walker is pepper spray is broken politics bound to the past and we make no demands of them because free people constitute governments, not the other way around.

We don't know how this is going to end, but the beginning is near."

(Photo is a sign at this week's 30,000+ rally at New York's Foley Square: "Not a different slice, we want a different pie!" After his cops tried their best to harass and repress the rally and march afterwards, Mayor Bloomberg said, "That's not even Occupy Wall Street...those were trade unionists." How very little he understands.)

"We Are Free People"

"We Are Free People - Occupy Wall Street Now"

What an exhilarating day. I was stuck at work til late afternoon when I made it to the 30,000+ strong #OWS rally down at Foley Square. Amazing energy. Much to report later. Much to think about the foiling of the coordinated national attempt to crush the movement on Tuesday. For now the beautiful poster above says it all.

#OWS Occupies Times Square

Many thousands of people turned out Saturday night to bring the #Occupy Wall Street movement uptown to Times Square. While confused tourists milled about and police laid down a heavy hand with horses, motorcycles, and blocks and blocks of metal pens and barricades, thousands of people came out just before sunset to express their support to the rights of the 99% for economic (and social) justice.

The police response seemed to atomize the protest a bit, isolating a louder, angrier crowd around the military recruiting station from a more playful, music-playing "Occupation Party" crowd up near the TKTS booth. The police prevented feeder marches from joining the protests, and generally amped up an aura of explosive tension. After some abusive arrests earlier in the day at a protest inside a Citibank branch, the cops staged a confrontation with some protesters at the end of the Times Square event, arresting dozens. The protesters were engaged in nonviolent expression, and it's clear that the Mayor has ordered the police to limit that expression as much as they can get away with.

I love the sign above: "Decolonize Wall Street - Wall St. Is On Occupied Algonquin Land - Decolonize the 99%"


The Occupy Times Square Action was part of a global day of actions, with protests held in hundreds of cities in dozens of countries. Here's a sign expressing common sentiment at Occupy Wall Street Protests, and I gather, at protests world wide: "If Voting Could Change Anything, It Would Be Illegal - Join Us. We Are the 99%." If the fruit of all that excitement prior to Obama's election means anything, this is certainly a point up for debate.


And Cuban revolutionary Che Guevara made a welcome return visit to New York City courtesy of this red flag with the iconic Korda silhouette of the martyred hero. Of course my eye gravitates to red flags, but there was plenty of more middle-of-the-road sentiment present also. Considering this is a movement of the 99%, that road is pretty broad; and more power to it.

(Photographs by me; click on them to see them larger)

#OWS Occupy Wall Street in Danger

From OWS:

"EMERGENCY #OWS EVICTION DEFENSE:
Prevent the forcible closure of Occupy Wall Street

Tell Bloomberg: Don't Foreclose the Occupation.
NEED MASS TURN-OUT, SHOW UP NO LATER THAN 6 A.M.

This is an emergency situation. Please take a minute to read this, and please take action and spread the word far and wide.

Occupy Wall Street is gaining momentum, with occupation actions now happening in cities across the world.

But last night Mayor Bloomberg and the NYPD notified Occupy Wall Street participants about plans to “clean the park”—the site of the Wall Street protests—tomorrow starting at 7am. "Cleaning" was used as a pretext to shut down “Bloombergville” a few months back, and to shut down peaceful occupations elsewhere.

Bloomberg says that the park will be open for public usage following the cleaning, but with a notable caveat: Occupy Wall Street participants must follow the “rules”.

NYPD Police Commissioner Ray Kelly has said that they will move in to clear us and we will not be allowed to take sleeping bags, tarps, personal items or gear back into the park.

This is it—this is their attempt to shut down #OWS for good.
PLEASE TAKE ACTION

1) Call 311 (or +1 (212) NEW-YORK if you're out of town) and tell Bloomberg to support our right to assemble and to not interfere with #OWS.

2) Come to #OWS TONIGHT AT MIDNIGHT to defend the occupation from eviction.

For those of you who plan to help us hold our ground—which we hope will be all of you—make sure you understand the possible consequences. Be prepared to not get much sleep. Be prepared for possible arrest. Make sure your items are together and ready to go (or already out of the park.) We are pursuing all possible strategies; this is a message of solidarity.

Click here to learn nonviolent tactics for holding ground.

Occupy Wall Street is committed to keeping the park clean and safe—we even have a Sanitation Working Group whose purpose this is. We are organizing major cleaning operations today and will do so regularly.

If Bloomberg truly cares about sanitation here he should support the installation of portopans and dumpsters. #OWS allies have been working to secure these things to support our efforts.

We know where the real dirt is: on Wall Street. Billionaire Bloomberg is beholden to bankers.

We won't allow Bloomberg and the NYPD to foreclose our occupation. This is an occupation, not a permitted picnic."

This morning on the radio (WNYC no less) the pro-Bloomberg media cheerfully reported that Bloomberg visited the encampment and said they would be allowed to stay if they temporarily vacated the plaza for cleaning. Of course the radio didn't say that the city's intention was to end the encampment by establishing "rules" denying the right of people to lie down in the park after they "cleaned" it. For the record, when I've been to the plaza it was cluttered and full of people but it didn't smell, there was no filth, and no evidence of the lack of sanitation facilities (which for crying out loud, New York should have in its public spaces anyway). Let this be crystal clear: Bloomberg and his media enablers are liars on the side of the 1%.

UPDATE: The overnight protest effort seems to have at least postponed the eviction. Some inspiring details in this Gawker account.

This Is What Democracy Looks Like!

"Rise Up – We Are the 99%"
Artwork from a one-day guerrilla art exhibit for Occupy Wall Street called "No Comment" held in the now empty former J.P. Morgan building in downtown New York City.


"Another World Is Possible. On a Quiet Morning, I Can Hear Her Breathing"
Sign on the sacred space altar at one corner of the Occupy Wall Street encampment in New York City.


"Power to the People!!" Sign near the drum circle at the Occupy Wall Street encampment today.

"No list of demands. We are speaking to each other, and listening. This occupation is first about participation. - Tens of thousands of New Yorkers streamed into Foley Square on Wednesday — labor unions rolled out, students walked out. The occupation of Wall Street grew to resemble the city we live in. What race, age, religion, occupation did we represent? None of them. All of them...This is our movement. It is our narrative too. The exhausted political machines and their PR slicks are already seeking leaders to elevate, messages to claim talking points to move on. They, more than anyone, will attempt to seize and shape that movement. But how can they run out in front of something that is in front of them? They cannot.... We aren't going anywhere. We just got here." — editorial note from the second edition of Occupy Wall Street's broadsheet "The Occupied Wall Street Journal"

More art from the "No Comment" guerrilla art show:


"Think outside this box - Fuck Nationalism!" graffiti on an American flag.


"Wake Up - Unite - Organize - Rise - Forgive - Evolve"


Wall stencil. Not sure what it means, but a striking image.

"This Is What Democracy Looks Like"
"They Got Bailed Out, We Got Sold Out"
"All Day, All Week, Occupy Wall Street"
— chants from the Occupy Wall Street protest

(All photos by me; click on the images to see them larger. All credit to the original artists)

Occupy Wall Street: Spring Is Coming!

I haven't seen a crowd like this at a protest since some of the big anti-war marches in the run-up to President Bush's attack on Iraq. I haven't seen such a big protest with such a broadly anti-capitalist pro-social/economic justice focus, well, ever. Tonight thousands of people came out for a rally and march sponsored by a coalition of labor unions and similar organizations to support the Occupy Wall Street encampment. I missed the beginning of the event at 4:30, but by the time I got down there after work at 6:30, the march was long and spirited and I could see neither ahead to the front of it nor back to the end of it. The march ended up at the Occupy Wall Street base down at Liberty Plaza, where some dispersed, and some, a much smaller group, attempted to continue the march down to the heavily barricaded Wall Street area itself, where a small number of marchers were eventually arrested. The police presence was massive; and dozens of empty buses were parked all over the place should the cops need to fill them up with arrested protesters. I've already seen one video of a short but vicious episode of cop brutality.


"Revolution: Anything Less Is Bullshit."

I continue to be inspired and impressed by the diversity of protesters, by their enthusiasm, and by their many creative ways of expressing a fundamental disagreement with the status quo. There was a wide spectrum of opinion: and I can't but note how significant it is that despite the reputation of the Occupy Wall Street organizers for being "hippies," the organizations of working people have recognized the crucial nature of the moment and the opportunity to change the national discussion opened up by the newly vocal and rebellious left.


"No Bulls, No Bears. Only Pigs"

As a veteran of another time of activism, I'm so excited to think that perhaps the moment has finally arrived when people are waking up to the class war being waged against them, and waking up to the possibilities invited by standing together outside the structures and contexts of systems like elections that are stacked against us. A huge banner I wasn't able to get a good picture of read: "Arab Spring. European Summer. American Fall." (Someone in the crowd yelled, "Global winter!") I so worry that the approach of cold weather will dampen the fighting spirit, and I hope this nascent movement manages to hold itself together to reveal a real American Spring in the new year.



This guy was exhorting the crowd to move on to Wall Street. He was telling people around him that he had been there since the very beginning a few weeks ago, amazed that what started out as a handful of people has taken on such life and become so big. As one sign I loved said, "I Lost My Job But Found An Occupation."

There are many many challenges ahead for this movement. The left is furiously debating how to relate to this new and amorphous radicalization. (I recommend a perceptive and thought-provoking discussion on Kasama, especially this post by Kasama leader Mike Ely). There is all kind of danger of co-optation, not least from the politicians gearing up for next year's election. And there is the very real threat of repression from local police and politicians who are freaked out at the possibility of the militancy and rebelliousness evidenced this year in the U.K., Greece, Spain, and the Middle East.

But there is also so much possibility. Spring will be a beautiful season.

"Don't Be Afraid to Call It a Revolution"

I spent part of the afternoon at the Occupy Wall Street encampment in downtown Manhattan today. It's a few hundred people gathered in a small paved park roughly midway between Wall Street and the World Trade Center site. I found the gathering truly inspiring. It seems to get its energy from the overwhelming presence of young people, but it's drawn plenty of the not-so-young; while it seemed to be majority white it was by no means exclusively so. Having watched three years of so-called Tea Party protests on the news it was utterly refreshing to see — even on signs challenging President Obama — a complete and total absence of the dogwhistle racism foundational to the teabaggers' modus operandi. Here was real protest about economic issues (as well as social justice ones). Significantly I saw many trade union activists identifying themselves as such.


I've read hype describing Occupy Wall Street as an attempt to bring the spirit of Egypt's Tahrir Square to the United States; and while this movement is much smaller than that, I thought there was a kernel of truth in that. The energy at the encampment is busy and exuberant: some people were playing music together, others grouped together energetically discussing the issues. The encampment seems alive with consciousness and awareness. The signs are clever and inspiring: "Feel It Trickle Down?" "Arise and Seize the Day." Significantly just yesterday 700 Occupy Wall Street protesters were arrested on the Brooklyn Bridge as the city's repressive forces displayed their no tolerance for disruption of traffic. Despite that act of repression the spirit of the Occupiers seemed completely undaunted.



I suspect the weather will shortly curtail the momentum of the Occupy movement, though a solidarity march this Wednesday is scheduled to bring the encampment the support of unionized workers and groups like the Working Families Party. Hopefully the spirit of this exciting movement can be kindled throughout the winter and bring us a real American Spring next year. It thrills me that young people are proclaiming "Don't Be Afraid to Call it a Revolution." Could people be starting to finally wake up?



I thought this protester dressed as the Hindu goddess Mother Kali was brilliant: Change Is Coming, indeed. I like how she's managed to so succinctly unite spiritual and political consciousness in one playful statement.

Occupy Wall Street has issued a declaration, crafted by a consensus gathering at the encampment. You can read the full text at Dangerous Minds. It was also published in their "The Occupied Wall Street Journal" broadsheet, just printed and being passed out for free at the encampment. In part it begins, "As one people, united, we acknowledge the reality: that the future of the human race requires the cooperation of its members; that our system must protect our rights, and upon corruption of that system, it is up to the individuals to protect their own rights, and those of their neighbors; that a democratic government derives its just power from the people, but corporations do not seek consent to extract wealth from the people and the Earth; and that no true democracy is attainable when the process is determined by economic power. We come to you at a time when corporations, which place profit over people, self-interest over justice, and oppression over equality, run our governments. We have peaceably assembled here, as is our right..."

All photos by me. Click on them to see them larger.