Editor’s note: This is the final installment of a 14 part series of excerpts from Jim Gober’s book titled “Deep in the Heart of Occupy Austin.”
“The illusion of freedom [in America] will continue as long as it’s profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theater.” Frank Zappa
Today was the Saturday before Halloween and we planned a 4 pm march to the capitol
building that continued down dirty 6th street then back to the plaza. As people
gathered about the plaza in preparation for the march, I went around and talked to
my friends I met along the way. Only the most clueless could not smell the coming
fascist assault. I told my young friend Kendall how proud I was of him and all he’s
learned, I thanked Carlos for his sense of humor and unbelievable spirit along the
way, I talked to Larry and hoped he someday finds the money he needs for his dream
of a veterans’ shelter for the homeless, and then I spotted Brighton, standing on
the curb holding a protest sign. Young beautiful peaceful Brighton, who broke up the
argument between the drunken instigator and me weeks before, who had put his soul
into the movement, and now stood there for the last time, his eyes still aglow with
the optimism of a young person who believes all you need is to be on the right side
of the argument, and you will win in this world. I told Brighton how impressed I was
with his bravery and dedication and how much I admired him and all his hard work. My
heart was so full, and the pain was so great, I began to cry unashamed because these
were my people, my friends, and my family, and I loved them. And with each of these
people I talked to, I asked, “How long do you think we have?” And the answer was the
same. Hours.
The march began and went off without a hitch, but when we made the turn down dirty
6th, I noticed the police had abandoned us and were hot-footing it back to the
plaza. It was then I knew the end of the movement as we knew it was nigh. When we
arrived back at the plaza our belongings were being rifled through and piled
willy-nilly to anger and disorient us. As the sun set, the plaza seemed to groan in
pain as rumors flew like leaves in the fall breeze and people confusedly planned
their next move. There were a few speeches to rally the troops, but most were
hunkering down waiting for the impending invasion. The murmurings of the occupiers
began to sound like a family praying over a dying relative. We were just waiting for
the police to come and pull the plug.
About 10 pm, the blue monsters began massing in the parking garage beneath the city
hall and another group formed a solid line along the western side of the plaza. You
could walk right up to the line, get inches from their face and look deep into their
eyes. It was breathtaking to see the entire history of the world’s oppression
encapsulated in their emotionless orbs. The steady stream of Halloween revelers that
passed through our camp on the way to the bars downtown appeared as grotesques while
we awaited our execution. As another line of police formed on the east side of the
plaza, I looked at the protesters. I watched fear turn to courage, then courage to
solidarity. I can only hope one day everyone experiences the part of the human
condition when everyone sticks together armed with only their faith, while
surrounded by the enemy armed with guns, tasers, mace, and batons ready to hurt,
imprison or possibly kill them. And to see all the brave women in the mix was
unbelievable. It was a deeply religious experience. I witnessed the shimmering
beauty of God in all its glory. Once people walk into this realm, they will not go
back until justice is served. Maybe, that is what the fascists are really afraid of.
That once we form the solidarity only seen in a battlefield, solidarity so strong
even death cannot destroy it, the fascists will be doomed. Fear not, my brothers and
sisters, for we have seen the light and the light cannot be extinguished by the dark
blue uniforms of the fascist machine.
There were a few more discussions on whether to move the food table as requested in
the rules passed out by the Police Chief the day before, but after a while it was
obvious the food table was going to be our Raison D’être and wasn’t going anywhere.
There was a short standoff about midnight as the pigs got into a “V” formation, then
at 12:30, they moved in from both the east and west sides of the plaza. The cries
and sound of breaking hearts was so deafening you had to cover your ears so it
wouldn’t overwhelm your sense of judgment and make you attack the pigs with your
fists, feet or whatever weapon you could find. Our core supporters and leaders
locked arms around the food table, but they were quickly subdued and bound with
plastic handcuffs. “Why?” everyone asked. “Why are you doing this to us?” There were
cries of “Shame” and “The whole world is watching,” but the fascists were
undeterred. As the table was dismantled and carried away, the pigs walked into the
crowd and grabbed people they had identified as leaders of the movement weeks
before, who were not doing anything but what the rules had told them to do. When it
was over, 18 of our people were taken down. About 3 hours later, the power washing
crew came in fronted by a another police line that grabbed 20 more people who either
refused to move or were still disoriented from the first raid. By then, I had
already moved on to take a walk and cool off. The plaza was not a place to be
another minute for someone with my temper. And the sight of seeing people I loved
being demoralized and carried away because a bunch of fascist pigs decided a picnic
table should be over here instead of over there made me nauseous.
The ridiculous display of overwhelming might used to wrest a picnic table from a
bunch of rag-tag folks who are trying to tell the world, “This is what democracy
looks like,” kept playing over and over in my head, and although it was about 2:00
a.m. and the bars were closing, I decided to stroll down dirty 6th street to lose my
thoughts in the Halloween celebration. What I saw was shocking. When I entered dirty
6th from Congress Avenue, the entire street was completely occupied with stumbling
drunks and humans behaving at their worst. I saw indecent exposure, public
urination, fighting, slick piles of pink, orange and green vomit, people treating
each other terribly, plenty of illegal drug use and needed to only glance down an
alleyway to see a sex act performed by two men in the wide open. It was all there
and ignored by mounted police whose tongues were hanging out as they looked only at
the women’s skimpy Halloween costumes. As I walked through the crowd, I laughed
openly and loudly while tears ran down my face. Was this a dream? Did I just witness
100 policeman destroy a tiny group of committed sober adults who were making a
statement about the theft of our country from the powerful fascist machine by
arresting them over an 8 by 2 foot food table? Did I just walk five blocks east and
see a hundred thousand people doing everything we were accused of, and getting away
with it, because their mission was to get intoxicated and find somebody to fuck
while pissing and vomiting all over everything? Oh that’s right-they were spending
lots and lots of money. And when you spend lots of money you get away with
everything-even the murder of thousands of innocent people. So here was the bare
truth in all its painful glory. This is what we’ve become. This is how America
really works. An old food table used to feed the poor and unarmed equals bad.
Reprehensible behavior while you spend lots of money equals good. And if it takes a
billy club to beat that idea into your head, so be it. This is America God damn it
and that is how it operates. Any questions?
I went back to the plaza and tried to sleep between a boulder and the bricks of the
city hall. I could hear the voices of lonely men and abandoned women as they
gathered under street lights somewhere in the distance trying to make a final deal
before dawn. Zero-eyed people rolling on ecstasy or geeking on stimulants walked by
looking deep into my eyes to see if I had anything to offer. I had a fitful sleep
and was up as soon as I saw the first sign of dawn. I rolled a cigarette, and
watched life begin to stir among the tattered battle scene as the sun rose over the
plaza. The survivors began rebuilding the camp straight away, but this time it had
an air of Austin funkiness, because everything was broken and had to be patched
together. Unfortunately, most of the core supporters and strategists of Occupy
Austin were now not only in jail, but banned from the plaza for at least a year.
While this was an unmitigated setback for the Austin occupation, it gives others the
chance to step up and hopefully get the movement going in another direction. As I
walked around the plaza asking questions about the state of affairs, you could see
many in shock from what happened the previous night, but also plenty of street
people waiting around for a cigarette or slice of pizza to arrive, oblivious to the
disaster that had befallen our camp.
I stood back and looked at the remaining occupiers. What I saw was many of the bums
that gave us a bad name in the first place, who avoided jail by just laying there,
the same way they avoided everything else in life, and many of the people who worked
very hard to make the movement work, but were now packing things up and milling
around waiting for rides to somewhere-anywhere but the plaza. By mid-morning, the
plaza had the look of a busy bus station or the last day of summer camp, where
everyone is saying farewell and waiting for the winds of fate to scatter them hither
and yon.
By noon, the police presence was once again gaining steam. It occurred to me the
protesters inhabiting the camps throughout the US, who are now completely surrounded
by uniformed fascists, have actually built their own prisons in which they will
suffer mightily in the coming months. Since I am interested in fund-raising and
public relations for the group, I asked around and finally found someone who might
know a little about the financial side of the movement. I asked her where the money
we raised would best be spent. She said to get more food and water for the occupiers
at the plaza. At first I thought, you have to be kidding me? Aren’t we done here?
Then I thought, yeah, we can rebuild, and we will rebuild. Are we going to fail
because the fascists thought we would go away because they stole a broken down food
table? Hell, no.
Yes, we all felt like frogs in a cauldron, where the fire was turned up so slowly we
didn’t know we were cooked until it was too late. But we learned about the
psychological control of an angry mob by the fascists, and as the saying goes, “We
won’t be fooled again.” But we have a choice; we can fight them like dogs, or work
within a system that unfortunately favors them. But as I said before, we must be
smart enough to take the fight to them on their own turf. We sat in the plaza for
four weeks and allowed the fascists to bring the fight to us, while we became an
easy target for their horrid and demeaning tactics. They have everything they need
on their side to keep us under their thumb, we know that. So we have to work smarter
and be tougher in order to win this fight. At this point we have two choices, go to
jail, or freeze to death, of which neither of those am I interested. But I am very
interested in promoting the core beliefs of the occupation movement and will never
stop fighting for what I strongly believe. And if some of our brothers and sisters
want to tough it out on the plaza until we see change, then I will support them to
the end. But myself, I am going to work on getting somebody with money involved in
the movement so we are no longer a broke-ass joke. And if that somebody happens to
be a liberal billionaire, so be it. When it comes to beating or pepper-spraying
billionaires, the fascists tend to freeze up. They are funny that way.
That Sunday afternoon, Police Chief Acevedo, true to his passive-aggressive form of
mind-fucking, made a statement quoting Gandhi and MLK before releasing the
protesters, who cannot reenter the plaza for two years. I went with a small group of
angry and passionate survivors marching from the plaza to the police station to
welcome the prisoner release, but most folks didn’t want anything to do with the
cops, and especially didn’t want to go stand around the police station. The release
was still an emotional moment for those who went. While I recognized some of the
folks being released, some of them must have shown up Saturday night for no other
reason but to create chaos and get arrested, because they were completely new faces,
to me anyway. Meanwhile, back at the plaza, the police presence had become
overpowering. By Sunday night they outnumbered the remaining protesters 2 to 1.
I thought about the speech I wanted to give on day one, when I wanted so badly to
express my thoughts and exercise my freedom of speech in a public plaza to a group
of like-minded people hungry for change. Now I know, if I stood in that plaza right
now and gave that speech, in which I implored the police to stand with us instead of
against us, I would be immediately arrested, and indeed there was an arrest of a
young man who attempted a rallying speech in the late afternoon. Over 5000 people
across the country now have police records from this nationwide protest, and not one
of the war criminals, war profiteers, investment banks CEO’s or hedge fund managers
that caused the financial collapse in this country and the deaths of hundreds of
thousands of people have gone to jail. Obviously, this is a fascist police state we
are now living in. To some of us, it’s plain as the nose on our face, while others
just don’t “have time to think about these things.” Or maybe they don’t understand
what freedom of speech means. It is the ignorant people who taunt and laugh at those
attempting to exercise one of the basic tenets of our democracy that frighten me the
most. While they talk about our troops overseas fighting for our freedom, they don’t
have the slightest clue what freedom really is because they are imprisoned by the
straight-jacket of fascism and corporatism.
I thought back on Saturday’s march to the Capitol, before the camp was raided. While
marching down Congress Avenue, I caught up with my friend Carmen, who I met on the
island only a few weeks before. When I spotted her, she was trying to manage two
large cardboard signs while clutching a list of protest chants she had written in
blue ink on a scrap of folded notebook paper. They read, “Whose water? Our water!
Whose food? Our food! Whose land? Our land! Are we afraid? Nooooooooo, we are not
afraid.” She was trying to get the few protesters at the back of the line to go
along with them, but was frustrated because her small voice, with its beautiful
Puerto Rican accent, was not being heard, and the tall folks in front of her, many
in Halloween costumes, had relegated her to the back of the line.
I hollered, “Carmen!” and she was happy to see me and thanked me for the profile I
had written about her on my blog. I asked her what was going on and she explained
her disappointment that she couldn’t get anyone to chant her demands. So I took a
look at them, gave her a big smile, and then Carmen and I chanted in the loudest
voice we could muster, “Whose water? Our water! Whose food? Our food! Whose land?
Our land! Are we afraid? Nooooooooo, we are not afraid!” We chanted the lines over
and over and louder and louder and let the voice of freedom ring out and echo
against the glass and granite of the downtown buildings. Our cadence rang down the
hollow side streets and the alleyways where the downtrodden sleep and newspapers
blow on cold and lonely blue-gray dawns. It rang over the capitol building, where
the Lady of Liberty looks over manicured avenues where the mentally ill wander
aimlessly in search of help, and it rang over the din of expensive cars and city
buses filled with those too blind to see. It was freedom ringing and it was ringing
for us, for you and for all the folks in this fight who are jailed, shot,
humiliated, tasered, beaten and maced because, like Carmen chanted, “Are we afraid?
Nooooooo, we are not afraid.”
At one point, Carmen was confident enough to stand in front of a group of bewildered
diners sitting at a sidewalk cafe while she chanted her list of demands. I was
immensely proud of her. After we made it a few blocks, and were out of breath from
exercising our First Amendment rights to such an extent, Carmen looked at me with
her beautiful face so full of life, kindness and excitement. The bright autumn
afternoon sun slanting into her exquisite brown skin made a tear in the corner of
her eye glint like the most spectacular topaz ever seen. She joyfully exclaimed,
“Boy, did that make me feel good! Thank you, Jim!” And I hugged the tiny fragile
body of this beautiful woman, whose only mission on earth is to express love for her
fellow man, and replied, “Thank you, Carmen.”
Afterthoughts:
What you just read was a true first-person account of the birth of the occupy
movement in Austin, Texas. Although it flows in fits and starts, the movement is by
no means over and will continue as long as dedicated people see the truth and stop
believing in the lie America has become. Because I am proud to be part of the
movement and a passionate believer in the cause, I encourage everyone with a voice
to stand up, get involved and be heard. We are the 99%! Carry on brothers and
sisters. I love you all more than you know. We aren’t perfect, but we will prevail.
For more information on Austin Occupy, please visit: occupyaustin.org
In Solidarity,
Jim Gober
Jim, you think the Occupation Movement is ‘a broke-ass joke’ because of lack of money, but I think it’s because of lack of results, which in turn is a result of the very ‘core values’ you want so much to promote, in particular the ‘no politicking’ thing, as people think politicking is the way things get done in this country, that an organization that isn’t going to do any politicking isn’t going to get anything done, & they don’t want to waste their time with an organization that isn’t going to get anything done. I’d like to change that portion of the core-values to read simply ‘we favor no political party, save our own’, so people think there’s at least a THREAT that we might actually do something; but since the core-values seem to be cast in concrete, I’m thinking maybe we should start an alternate Occupy Austin with that simple change in place, & see if it makes any difference. What do you think? Let me know at [email protected], Subject heading ‘OAAlt’.
Well, I tried my idea at Occupy Austin’s GA last night, & think I set a new record for simultaneous blockages, people jumping up & down, beating their chests, screaming “block!”,”block!”, “block!”; no chance for clarifying questions, objections, discussion, or even to point out that all complex dynamic systems evolve & grow thru successive waves of differentiation & integration. It reminded me of nothing so much as the last scene of Donald Southerland’s “Invasion of the BodySnatchers”, when the last remaining morsel of intelligent human life was about to be devoured by the Space Aliens.
So it seems if the Occupation is to move to the “next level” that Chomsky calls for, the impetus must come from outside, from all those who have been driven out after becoming convinced that the Occupation could never achieve any useful results under it’s current structure reuniting to start alternate Occupations revised according to the insights they’ve gained in their experience with the current organization, to see if they can come up with something that actually works. Barring that, the only next level I can see for the
Occupation is death by terminal-inertia, induced by premature ossification. I, like you, don’t want to see that happen.
To elaborate a bit on why I think the Occupation movement has become moribund in this country (sorry for the long hiatus, my computer went up in flames the day after my last post, & it took Fry’s forever to de-fry it) the 2nd line in the OA’s official Core Values statement reads “We are non-partisan.”, which has been universally (&, by many, quite avidly) interpreted as “no politicking”, apparently on the assumption that if we are to embrace 99% of the population we must avoid divisiveness, & politicking is divisive, therefore, no politicking. Then, having recognized that we can never get 99% of the population to agree on anything, in the GA’s we insist that everything must be done by consensus! How much sense does that make? Sounds like a Catch-22 to me, an ironclad guarantee that the Occupation will never achieve anything. So I hope its clear now why, in our efforts to include 99% of the population, we have instead succeeded in EXcluding 99% of the population.
The question remains: Where did this formula for inertia come from? Did OA develop it themselves, or was it foisted on them from outside? My impression is that almost all the facilities & procedures of the Occupations around the country were delivered whole-cloth from Occupy Wall Street, a movement misdirected from the start in that the Wall Street money-mongers are just trying to find ways to benefit from the funny-money scheme being perpetrated by the usurers who control the Federal Reserve system, in which they print-up our money for us &, tho they back it up with nothing of their own, claim it belongs to THEM & we have to do their bidding to get some of it.(a great deal for them, but a rotten deal for the rest of us, which amounts to little more than a scheme to impoverish & enslave the American people. The suspicion then arises that Occupy Wall Street may have been deliberately set up as a diversion from the funny-money scheme which the rest of the world, having been suckered into the scheme by Nixon back in the ’70s, is in the process of rejecting.
Further evidence that the Occupation might actually be controlled by the .000001% & their 1% flunkeys can be seen in the experiences of the 99%Declaration. Started by a N.Y. lawyer who quickly saw that the Occupation would be seriously hamstrung by it’s Core Values & GA Operating Procedures, the 99%Declaration website enabled occupiers (& anybody else who might be interested)to enter & debate grievances, propose solutions, & vote on those problem-solution pairs they thought were most important, thus enabling the Occupation to gain some focus as a problem-solving organization. Occupy Wall Street immediately attacked the lawyer as a nefarious charlatan trying to sully their good-name & destroy the movement. When the 99%Declaration started gaining traction & attraction more people than the Occupation was attracting, a coup was pulled-off, the founder cast out, & the web-site shut down, then replaced with an alternate website stripped of all data & all facilities save the grievance entry mechanism, so they ended up with thousands of complaints & nothing else. The original conception of the 99%Declaration was to gather the dozen or so most popular problem-solution pairs into a petition to be presented to the top muckity-mucks in each branch of government as an advisory of what the people wanted the government to do. Its hard to imagine what sort of document they’re going to come up with now, but my guess is it will be well designed to persuade the govt that the people are a joke, thoroughly incapable of self-governance, or even consideration.
Its not necessary to imagine that the remaining Occupiers are all willing agents of the 99%, its only necessary to imagine what its like to be brought into an overpopulated world where we’re neither needed, wanted, nor provided any opportunities for a decent life. The natural response, it seems to me, is to decide that this is a world that needs to be destroyed, to see if any opportunities might rise-up out of the rubble, much as a monkey will lift a rotten log over it’s head & dash it to the ground, to see if any juicy bugs might scurry out to be eaten. Anarchy is the dominant philosophy of the under 30 crowd which populates the Occupation, & this makes them sitting-ducks for the 1% & their .000001% masters, as the German labor-leaders discovered in the Haymarket Massacre in Chicago shortly after the Civil War.
So it seems we have an ironic turnabout from the situation that existed in the counter-culture revolution of the ’60s. Back then it was those OVER 30 who couldn’t be trusted to do the right thing as they had become too enmeshed in, & perverted by, the corrupt system by that age; today its those UNDER 30 who can’t be expected to do anything sensible, their faith in the possibility of rational problem-solving having been destroyed by the fact that none has been in evidence in our political system since the Kennedys & MLK were gunned-down in the ’60s, & precious little before that since Teddy Roosevelt was gunned down for having resisted the establishment of the Federal Reserve in 1908.
If we suggest that a 3rd party might be the way to go since our current 2 parties are so widely recognized as hopelessly corrupt & a 2 party system is a sure sign of a ruling oligarchy anyhow, then the claim will surely be made that a 3rd party can’t win. But if this claim is based on the experiences of Teddy Roosevelt & that of Huey Long when HE ran as a Populist against FDR in 1936 complaining about the funny-money scheme FDR
had set-up in 1933 as a cure for the Great Depression & catching a bullet in the head, it seems the evidence supporting that claim is a little tainted. The conclusion I would draw from that evidence not that a 3rd party can’t win, but simply that I wouldn’t want to be the candidate! This fits well with the sentiment that the Occupation should be a leaderless movement.
If we then go on to point out that Anarchy, while a wonderful ideal, is impractical in the overpopulated world we have today as we can’t all go back to living of roots & berries again, & that Democracy, being the worst form of government except for all the rest, is the closest we can get to Anarchy today, would our Occupy anarchists be persuaded to give rational problem-solving one last try? God only knows.
Here’s something I submitted on the topic to the 99%Declaration, back when it was still a going proposition:
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Finally deliver on the promise of Democracy in America by increasing the level of representation in the Popular House of Congress from 1/1,000,000 to 1/1, creating an electronic Congress of the people.
This country was founded on the promise of Democracy - i.e. government by the people, hence serving the interests of the people. That original promise was only partially delivered because large-scale Democracy wasn’t possible 230 years ago. 5 million people (not to mention the 200 million we have today) couldn’t get together in a room, or even a colliseum, to discuss & resolve problems; the best we could have was a plethora of small local democracies bound together by a central government, of limited powers, populated by “representatives”. Even the leading Federalist (precursors of our modern Republicans) of the day admitted that representative government was only justified when the people couldn’t get together to do it themselves. But as our population increased over the years from 5 million to the 300 millions we have today, necessitating the transfer of more & more power to the central level, the relationship between our original solution & Democracy has diminished to the point of absurdity. Today the physical constraint noted above no longer exists. Thanks to the wonders of the electronic universe we’re creating out on the Internet we no longer need to get together physically to discuss & resolve problems, we can get together electronically, create an electronic Congress of the People. The need is dire, & the opportunity now exists, for now the people CAN get together to do it themselves. Its time to stop paying lip-service to Democracy, & give it a try!
You might wonder, re an electronic Democracy, how useful solutions to national problems could ever be extracted from the yammering of 200 million people on the Internet, but I think it could be done.
Just to muddy the waters a bit, suppose we were to embrace, as a solution to the population-explosion, a new polyamorous form of family composed of 6 men & 6 women as principals, along w 6 kids & possibly 6 Grandparents. Each family could then select 1 of their members to participate in the tiresome democratic discourse of the nation, presumably able to keep a close enough eye on imr to ensure that e is faithfully representing the family’s interests, so, by shifting some of the load of problem solving by democratic discourse to the family, the problem is now reduced from the yammering of 200 million people to the yammering of 20 million people.
Next, consider the fact that, even if we have 1000 outstanding
problems to deal with (not unlikely, considering how feckless our Congress has been throughout the 20th century), most people will only deal w the handful of problems that bear most directly on THEM, so the problem is now reduced to 20 million / 1000 times 5 = 100,000 people dealing w each problem. Still way too many to participate in a useful discussion, but we’ve made progress. The key to further progress would be a filter that bounces redundant messages back to the senders (with a note to the effect that what they said has already been said in message123, or whatever) while bumping a tally on the message that got in first so we know which messages are considered most important by most people. This would not only keep the affinity group’s discussion database down to a reasonable size
(i.e. if there are 1000 salient points to be made in dealing with an issue, then there are 1000 messages in the database), but would also relieve most of us of the need to actually read all the messages in the discussion database. We can simply have our say on the issue with assurance that what we say counts, as its been counted. Only a solution proposer need read all the messages (or at least all the most important ones) to come up with a reasonable solution to the problem. If the proposed solution doesn’t gain a majority vote, I would require all who vote “no” on the proposal to state WHY they’re opposed, so the proposer can gain the information e needs to improve isr proposal. In this way the proposed solution would bounce back & forth until approval has been gained, but the job still isn’t done, as the proposal must now be put up to a national vote. A solution which seems fine to the affinity group dealing with it may still conflict with the interest of some other group. For instance, a solution to a problem w seems fine to Texans, may not seem so great to the people of North Dakota. Again, we could require that all who vote against the proposal say WHY they’re opposed to it, so differences can gradually be ironed-out, & the proposal become law.
Clearly this would not be a rapid process, but it doesn’t seem to place to many demands on any individual, & what’s the hurry, anyhow. I’d rather get a good solution to a problem in 2 years than a non-solution in 2 weeks or 2 days, which gives us things like “Patriots Homeland Security” Act, which only seems well designed to turn the country into a maximum-security prison-camp, & Holy Perpetual Terror-War to induce Armageddon so Jesus can hurry back to save us.
If we were to draw on the services of the free-software community for software development, then the cost would boil-down to providing the necessary computer access to everybody in the country, & beefing-up the Internet to handle the additional load, probably less than 1/10th of what we pay for “defense” every year, while the benefits would be infinitely greater (assuming the difference between creating a Hell on Earth & a Heaven on Earth can be considered to be infinite).
Of course, as soon as you mention “Democracy” in some circles (& not just the TeaPartyites, either) they’ll say “Oh! That would be 2 sheep & a wolf trying to cross a stream in a canoe!”, hoping you won’t notice they’re confusing Democracy with Anarchy, as, in a Democracy, you’d instead expect to get a canoe-full of wolf bones! (&, fortunately for the wolf, sheep arn’t much inclined to EAT wolf-meat.) If that ruse doesn’t work, they will then say “Oh! But that would be despotism of the majority!”, as if some other despotism (possibly one in which THEY are the sole despots?) would be preferable. All
government is despotic, that’s why sensible people try to keep
government to a minimum; but, the lust for power being unbounded, & vigilance never being eternal, must resort to periodic revolutions. Next they’ll say “But Democracy can only be implemented, on a large-scale, electronicly, & the computer can be fixed to count your votes incorrectly!”, as if paper ballot-boxes can’t be stuffed, & “representatives” & their political-parties can’t be “fixed”. The essential difference here, I think, is that in an electronic system all the computer code would be out in the open for all to see & inspect, so the integrity of the system would simply depend on whether the majority of people are of good will or ill; if the latter is the case, we’re doomed anyhow. Finally, all else having failed, they will tell us we don’t really want Democracy anyhow, “because all our friends & neighbors are actually reactionary red-neck Commie Jew perverts who wouldn’t even support the Bill of Rights, & want nothing so much as to have sex with our children & then poison them on Halloween, on the rare occasions when they can tear themselves away from the Boob-Tube!”, but I don’t believe it. I seems to me most people, if left to their own devices (a big “IF”, of course), like to fix things, improve things if there’s nothing left to fix, &, when all improvements are done, try something else just for the Hell of it; this is the sole source of all human advances as far as I can see; cracking the whip over slaves doesn’t cut it.
Then there are those who insist the Occupation can only be driven “bottom-up” by dealing with local problems, forgetting the 2nd half of the maxim “act locally, think globally”. Acting locally only makes sense, & can have a lasting impact, if there’s an easily accessible causal chain of links from the local problem to successively more global problems. For instance, supporting the Grey-Water movement on the south-side could not only gain us many new members but also lead to an attack on corrupt govt agencies profiting from the levying of spurious fines & confiscations, which in turn could lead to an attack on States which have chosen to solve their financial problems on the backs of the people rather than by joining
the states which are suing the Federal Govt for its complicity in the Federal Reserve’s funny-money scheme to impoverish the people, which in turn could lead to a renunciation of the corrupt Federal Reserve Note currency which belongs to & benefits only the money-lenders, & its replacement with a currency that belongs to & benefits the people.
In fact, I suggested this very thing to Occupy Austin & received 2 responses: one from a woman (in charge of the “Welcoming Committee”, I think) who professed to know nothing about the Grey-Water movement, & evinced no interest when I explained it to her; the other from a gentleman who suggested I must be a secret-agent of the Real-Estate industry! After considerable head-scratching, I was finally able to parse this charge as follows: By supporting the Grey-Water movement I was out to destroy the neighborhoods, paving the way for slum-landlords to move-in & make a killing at the expense of the people, which in turn would enable the the Real-Estate industry to launch a “Gentrification Program” & make an even bigger killing. (I was only able to arrive at this amazing conclusion by imagining that I WAS a special-agent of Real-Estate interests!)
If I had my druthers, being convinced that the 3 most serious
problems we are confronted with are: fake “representative” democracy, which concentrates power in a small enough number of hands that the money-bags can control it with their bags of money & have their way with us; the Federal Reserve’s funny-money scheme, which enriches the money-lenders who control the Federal Reserve while impoverishing the people; & the global population-explosion, which the money-bags find so useful in forcing more & more of us over to the Dark-Side, as we breed ourselves into oblivion; I’d like to see those Occupation sites which are blessed with the presence of a Federal Reserve branch in their midsts focus on pointing THEM out as the “Nexus of Evil” Baby Bush was advised to search far & wide thru the world for; the sites not so blessed focus on calling for the establishment of Democracy, now that large-scale Democracy is finally possible; while Occupy Austin serves as the U.S.Occupation’s Federal Government, in the classic sense of helping to coordinate & expedite the other sites’ activities (while mulling over the possibilities for dealing with the population-explosion in their spare-time!).
Barring that, I’d at least like to see the Occupation focus on SOME important problem & see it thru to a conclusion, as a possible 1st step in reestablishing rational-thought as a means of actually solving problems, rather than simply as a means of rationalizing our complicity with the forces of darkness & evil.
With that I rest my case (unless there’s a serious demand for further exegesis!) in hopes that the Occupation can have SOMETHING to celebrate on its 1st birthday (Oct.4th?) & in the assurance that, no matter what, we shall surely get what we deserve.