San Francisco

Mic check! mic check!  Five vans are parked around the corner! They are on their way!

Within a few minutes bands of workers in  hazmat suits arrive on the sidewalk in order to clean the park. There is a brief stand off as people stumble out of tents and the workers see their task of cleaning an occupied park.  Some of the occupiers start to carry their tents down to one end of the park and others stand on the sidewalk while the cleaning crew rummages around between the remaining tents. After just a few minutes the ordeal is over and its back to occupation as usual. I talk to a woman who has been there for seven weeks. She tells me that the occupiers and the city are both scrambling around trying to find loopholes in the laws and make things work to their advantage.  The whole scene is fairy calm although there is some confusion, and the occupiers seem to be working hard to comply with the cities recent heath and safety ordinances. A man at the information tent reminds me that in 1906 thousands of people lived in golden gate park for months safely and healthily , we have a history he says, we know how to live together.

Just a few feet away is the weekend artists fair and people are shopping without much notice of the occupation.  A few blocks up on Market St holiday shopping is already underway and it is business as usual.  It is strange to me that such struggle and passion is confined to such a small space within the park and so many people are able to turn a blind eye and continue to consume, to live normally in the face of blatant inequality. Its easier not to look the issues in the face.

Thoughts on Occupy

Although many of the occupy encampments have been evicted or become somewhat defunct I would not say that the movement has been defeated or failed. In fact in light of the Nov 17th day of actions with thousands of people out in the streets I would say things are far from over. An awareness of inequality has been raised in the common consciousness.  Two months ago I would not have been asked while I was waiting for the bus if I was going to the protests.  Random people on the subway would not have asked me my opinion on corporate personhood. Every kitchen table I’ve sat at in the last 15 days has been in discussion:

Does consensus work?       Can a non-violent movement succeed?     What is the most effective way to petition our government?

I believe that change in each of our own minds and lifestyles are essential to the movement. If we want to end corporate power, we need to reduce our consumption and reliance on corporations.  We need to create equal and fair relationships in our day to day lives. AND we need to stand up in public and continue to speak up for justice and equality.

Occupy your mind – Change the world

Bay Area Good-byes

Fifteen days and a continent later we arrive in San Francisco. The train arrives late in the evening to Oakland and we take a bus across the bay bridge as the twinkling lights of the city greet us.   Jenn and Claires epic journey has come to an end but the occupation movement is far from over.  I will continue to post news and thoughts on the movement as I continue to be involved.  Keep posted for my upcoming reports on the San Francisco and Berkley  encampments as well as news from the Portland Movement in the coming months.

 

We are the 99%

 

–Jenn

 

 

And a Romper

The Last Three Days

New Orleans: Lord of the Flies

It is cold out tonight. It’s not the biting chill of Maine or the high-desert cold of Colorado, but here in New Orleans, the hair on my body is standing up from a balmy 80 degree day dropping to 55 at dark. As Jenn and I walk into Occupy New Orleans I only acquire more goosebumps as a homeless man in a hooded sweatshirt and no shoes weaves his way towards us. We slide to the left, and continue into a park lit solely by the orangey light pollution of near-bye buildings. The park is a square city block with a pagoda in the middle and radiating ripple of berms with trees, leading to an outer ring of flat grass. Tents line the berm and lie in distinct pockets around the perimeter. One pocket of tents house the homeless, one pocket is “Integrity” the self-hired enforcement squad, one house the gutter-punk contingent and the last is where we’re headed.

For those of you who have seen or read the Harry Potter series, please visualize Professor Trelawney. For those of you who haven’t, think long stringy hair, squirelly eyebrows, layers of skirts and vests, and round coke-bottle thick black rimmed glasses. Now place her on a leather office chair in the center of a tent city encampment, in the dark of an unlit city park.  Here we have Laura, the part time taro-reader, leader of Occupod, the splinter cell anarchist group of the New Orleans protest movement. Yes, you heard that sentence correctly. New Orleans has an Occupod, an anarchist contingent and Laura.

Laura and her Occupodees don’t participate in assembly, they don’t believe in democracy (which begs the question of why they are participating in a self-proclaimed democratic protest movement) and have physically isolated their group of tents from the rest of the encampment. As Jenn and I sit on plastic milk crates, Laura talks to us about her goals. It becomes apparent to me that a. I don’t believe anarchy is sustainable. b. This movement is going to fail and c. I wish I had brought a tape-recorder cause this woman is f*ing nuts.

After being talked at by Laura, Jenn and I took the tandem for a cruiser ride down Bourbon. Maybe it was coming straight from a creepy, doomsday Occupy, maybe it was low blood sugar, but being on Bourbon street felt like being dropped straight into Lord of the Flies. Drunk women in heels staggered off curbs, music assaulted the air from every bar’s loud speakers, silver street artists mugged for 5 dollar photos, solo cups littered the pavement and plastics beads came whinging in from above, tossed by bar patrons on second, third and fourth floor balconies. Hordes of tourists clutched oversized and oddly shaped margarita cups, and the blocks of Bourbon just kept flowing. Soon enough we escaped one block over to watch two amazing women play the electric fiddle and guitar. A drunk homeless man kept trying to cheer for them and instead of chasing him off, one of the women invited him to sit next to her in a folding chair. As I munched on an apple and watched them play, I thought about the debauchery we had just attempted to leave behind. Just then, another street artist loped by, wheeling his bass in a hard case behind him. In mid-song a small nod was exchanged between the two women and the man, and he continued on. The song ended, the tourists lining the street corner clapped, and I decided humanity might not be lost after all. But damn I wish I’d gotten that anarchist on tape.

-Claire

OCCUPY Yourself- More links to make you think

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1817933359/occupy-comics-art-stories-inspired-by-occupy-wall?ref=discover_pop

Kickstart Occupy Comic book collaboration project

 

http://kickitover.org/

Harvard students walk out on the econ professor who wrote THE book on economics

 

This is the adbusters image that started it all.

 

http://538refugees.wordpress.com/2011/10/17/ows-one-month-later/

collaborative blog

 

Links

Things to explore:

https://twitter.com/#!/search?q=%23occupydenver

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupy_movement

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_Spring

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchy#Lists_of_ungoverned_communities

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outline_of_anarchism

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_culture

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_inequality

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dollar_hegemony

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_bloc

#SOLIDARITY

 

Occupy city links:

NYC

http://occupywallst.org/

#occupywallstreet

Atlanta

http://occupyatlanta.org/

#occupyatlanta

#occupyATL

D.C

http://occupydc.org/about-us/

https://twitter.com/#!/search?q=%23OccupyDC

#occupydc

New Orleans

http://noladefender.com/search/node/occupy

#occupynola

#occupypod

New Orleans: Tandem Bikes

“Its tropical here!” Claire yells over her shoulder as we breeze by palms and open air cafes in t-shirts.  We’ve spent the last two days exploring the city on the tandem bicycle which is an adventure and a mission.  We ring the bell and wave at everyone we pass, lots of smiles, lots of surprise!  This is a friendly city, it has the feeling of a small town, people are not in a hurry and love to stop and talk.  The weather is sunny and warm a nice surprise after maine has already bundled up for winter! Summer take two!  The city has an up and coming feeling with hip neighborhoods and students, although there is no forgetting that poverty hits this city hard and abandoned houses and police sirens are not uncommon sights.

 

After exploring the city we make our way down to city hall and duncan plaza where the occupy encampment is. We meet Shay, a reporter who has been covering the occupy encampment and he takes us around. We attend a planning meeting for the Nov. 17th day of action.  The consensus  model is sloppy and takes the conversation round and round. Both here and in DC I wish for stronger facilitators and a bit more structure. For instance someone moves to create a rough agenda to help make things clearer and the idea is lost in the shuffle.  There are lots of individual ideas and not a lot of collaboration.

 

The encampment here has split into factions with mini camps  clearly separated from  each other by lots of space and fences or lines  surrounding the tents.  Each camp has different goals and will trade with other groups for supplies or human power but mostly seem to be very insular.

 

Shay tells us that this park has been a homeless gathering point for many years and now with the occupation it is no different.  There seems to be a mix of anarchists, homeless, students, liberals and hippies. Hare Krishna’s meditate as a group of gutter punks walk bulldogs past a group of young radicals sitting under streetlight smoking cigarettes and trying to concense, while anarchists hack power their orange extension cords running off into the dark night . The result is chaotic and unity of the “99%” is loose.   People at many of the occupations we have visited do no seem to be interested in a united front.  I suppose this makes some sense as many see the problem as consolidated power and oppression in the form of large corporations and government. However it leaves the encampment with a feeling of each man for himself with cooperation only an afterthought based on survival.

Written by Jenn

 

 

Why Amtrak sucks so hard:

Disclaimer: If you don’t like snark, read no further:

Let me begin by telling you about our Amtrak (mis)adventures.

It all began with the rail-pass. It’s a deal where you can have 8 rides for the small sum of 360 within a period of 15 days- or so we thought. When I went to buy the pass a week after checking it out online, the price had increased to 429.00. Blah #1. So I buy it online, get my code and arrive at the station in Providence with plenty of time to collect my first ticket, and board the train to NYC. Wrong again. The Amtrak man almost has an anurysm trying to figure out how to connect my railpass code with a physical ticket stubb, and while I glance nervously at my watch, prints out a ticket that has not only the wrong destination, but also the wrong last name.

Fast-forward past NYC and D.C to the train from the Capitol to Atlanta. Junkshow #3 (#2 involved the NYC to D.C train being 40 minutes late and costing an extra fee. What? After buying a railpass?). It’s a 6:30 p.m overnight train and we have coach tickets (just seats). After collecting our bags from an $8 per hour bag check, and as Jenn goes to refill our water-bottles, a short, festively plump woman in a tweed jacket and lugging an overstuffed rolly bag approaches me. ‘Oh, Hallo!’ she says in a thick, thick, thick Polish accent, ‘I vud laihk to know, vhere, to sit.’ It’s unassigned seating and I tell her so, with the woman sitting next to me agreeing in a soft southern accent. ‘Oh, so how mahny seats I get?’ One, ma’am. She looks surprised. ‘Vat, only one?’ Well, if theres’s not a lot of people you can probably spread out, but yeah, only one. More astonishment. She turns to the woman sitting next to me, ‘Oh, hallo!’ Oh Rosetta stone, how I love thee. ‘I vud liahk to knaw, how long it is to New Orleans?’ ”Umm, around 27 hours,” comes the reply. This time it’s utter bewilderment on the Polish woman’s face. ‘Please, you tell me, why you crazy, why you not fly? It is too long, crazy person.’ The soft-spoken women delivers the zinger: ‘I’m eight-months pregnant.’ Again with the astonishment. I’m bamboozled and engrossed by this interaction- the woman is obviously ready to burst, and the Polish woman is chagrined. Jenn returns, Amtrak announces our track and after a cursory glance at our tickets by an Amtrak official, we proceed to K26.

We board. I sleep. We talk. It’s dark now, and I’m sitting in the window seat facing in towards Jenn. I notice the man across and up a row from us is watching TV. Thats nice, I go back to talking to Jenn. Wait, what? There’s no T.V on Amtrak. So, the man has very thoughtfully brought his own 30in. widescreen TV monitor with him, which is now perched on his baggage in front of him, blaring out a terrible shoot-em up Vin Diesel movie. Nope, no headphones. My distraction from Jenn is almost complete when halfway through the movie he decides to switch to another Vin Diesel thriller in which the opening scene features the dies doing a double backflip on a snowmobile off of a 300ft. cliff and while in the middle of the backflip unholstering his gun and reaching over his shoulder and aiming and shooting and blowing up the giant jetfighter airplane that has appeared behind him. Between that and the fact that the armrest on the window seat is slanted so you can’t actually rest an arm there, and the morbidly obese couple snoring their way to cookie heaven, it was a long night.

In the morning the obese couple can’t seem to collect their stuff fast enough to suit each-other and much ‘John, John!, MaryAnne, MaryAnne, John! Move left, move to your left! We’ve gotta go!’ ensues. Jenn gets stuck behind both them and a blind woman. I speed past and escape to find a map at the Amtrak kiosk. They don’t have any maps, of anything. Would I expect any less?

But as Jenn just put it oh so finely, Amtrak’s redeeming quality is well, it’s a train.

-CMJ