Editor’s Note: a version of this story originally appeared on the Ms. Magazine blog.

“What took so long?” was the general sentiment among those gathered in Washington Square Park in Manhattan last night for Occupy Wall Street’s first ever Feminist General Assembly.

Despite being woefully overdue, May 17 was a beautiful and significant night: Not only was it the eight-month anniversary of our movement, it was also the International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia and the 181st anniversary of the First Women’s Anti-Slavery Convention. This intersection of issues created a perfect backdrop for discussing the challenges and importance of feminism to Occupy Wall Street–a movement often criticized for being stubbornly multi-issue.

I arrived to find a diverse crowd of around 300 people. Members of the Occupy Wall Street women’s caucus, Women Occupying Wall Street (WOW), were giving a shout of solidarity to Occupy Maine. The people of Lafayette, Ind.; Bend and Portland, Ore.; Chicago and a handful of other cities were also holding feminist GAs. The Raging Grannies sang  “Evolution is too slow, revolution’s the way to go!” and things were off to a raucous start. I pitched in with a paintbrush to help record the shared values we were brainstorming–“Trust!” “Creativity!” “Justice!” “Humor!”–and, ignoring my friend’s smirk, embraced the consciousness-raising exercise as though I were encountering it for the first time. After focusing almost exclusively on women’s organizing for the first six months of Occupy Wall Street (OWS), I was happy for the chance to just participate. More importantly, I was happy to see so many new leaders and so many of the elusive “unfamiliar faces” we had spent meeting after meeting trying to attract to the movement.

When we broke into smaller groups to discuss feminist goals for the Occupy movement, the fresh spring air had a cleansing effect on issues that felt dusty and spoiled. One young person who had never been to an Occupy Wall Street event and didn’t identify as a feminist shared a concern about not being taken seriously when calling out sexist behavior. A woman in a wheelchair spoke about how her disability had led her on a journey of liberation from societal standards of beauty. A member of OWS’ Safer Spaces group reminded us that:

Ally is a verb. It means more than just saying you’re anti-racist. It means doing something.

Someone with a sign that read “Women against Ableism and Sexism” argued that we can’t be feminists without being against war. We discussed how being a feminist means moving beyond capitalist conceptions of productivity to value things like food and family and fun–and how we can model this in our own lives and in our organizing.

The Assembly closed with a moving performance from the Mahina Movement, and I silently checked “fun” off the list of feminist accomplishments for the evening. As I biked home to Brooklyn with two friends from the OWS men’s circle, which had offered childcare for the event, I learned that they spent most of their time “baby-sitting” disgruntled men who would otherwise have disrupted the evening’s proceedings. Figuring their active allying made up for the shortage of actual children, I checked off “family.” My stomach was empty–OWS lost their kitchen space at the last minute–but I figured that for a first attempt at re-imagining OWS as a feminist community, two out of three wasn’t bad. A new world–a feminist world–was definitely possible.

-Melanie Butler-

Photo by Christina Daniel.

New York, NY – Well, it’s been six months since my last adventure in NYC with OWS after slugging it out with Occupy Muskegon all winter, fighting for the clean-up of a local paper mill that is being demolished, demonstrating with and for a slew of local schools that are closing, attending inter-occupy summits around Michigan, including a wonderful retreat at Circle-Pines—a co-op activist family campground—and starting up a local, community-based newspaper with fellow OM members—OMNews (www.occupymuskegon.net/omnews), in addition to attending more city and county board meetings than I can fully remember and volunteering once a week at the Muskegon County Museum of African-American History.  In that same time, my wife and I joined a community garden,  have been working to form strong alliances with other active groups in the local area, and I have also started interacting with a few poetry groups, as well. I have a family and novel that’s just begging to be revised, too!  Fortunately, I taught myself how to juggle a few years ago.

I left late in the day Sunday, around 4:30, with a questionable truck, limited funds, and a load of revisions piled up in my classes at WNMU, in addition to a pile of grading at Everest.  Cranked up on coffee and good music, I drove as far as mile marker 78 in Pennsylvania and crashed in the back of my truck at a TA Travel Center with the parking lot lights shining through my tinted windows.  The next morning I drove the rest of the way into Brooklyn, found a spot to park after a bit of driving around, and spent the rest of the day at Milk & Roses trying to return grades to my students at Everest with a laptop that refuses to connect to the internet.  After four hours of slugging it out with faulty internet, I was tired of sitting on my ass, so I swigged down a glass of wine, packed up, and headed back to my truck to take it easy before the May Day General Strike the next day.  Sitting in my truck, imbibing on the few treats I’d brought with me, wondering what the next day
would bring, full of hope for a massive showing, but also filled with anxiety that the day would be small, splintered, and the movement dying, I couldn’t help but think how odd it was to find myself there, sitting in the back of my truck, back in Brooklyn for OWS, without my cousin, Joe.  (You sure missed a beautiful day, Joe.  I wish you could have been here…)

I couldn’t get over to Manhattan until I moved my car to the other side of the street, so I slept in a bit, killed some time having a cup of coffee at Julie’s—a great gal who’d befriended Joe and I when we were in town last October (I haven’t seen the older lady, Alice, who lives next door, yet) and took a quick shower.  (Thanks, Julie!)  A few minutes to 1 pm, I moved my truck and headed into Manhattan.  I was hoping to link up with the Guitarmy to sing along with them as we marched.

In Manhattan, I found my way to Bryant Park.  There was a large group gathered there to be sure.  Teach-ins were taking place in various pockets around the park, a large group was meditating on a set of steps with an Occupy Wall Street banner, and the Statue of Liberty puppet was there dancing to the drums.  The air smelled of sage and the crowds energy filled me with happiness.

I walked around and dug Bryant Park, checking out the protestors, the teach-ins, the literature being passed out, the signs and flags waving in the air, even the spectators watching from their tables.  The crowd was smaller than I’d hoped, but still large, alive, and kicking.  I also knew from the schedule that many groups were out and about the city protesting at various locations.  Many of the unions were off doing just that.  Soon enough, a march started, leading the way to Union Square, where Tom Morello, Immortal Technique, and many others were to perform.

The march to Union Square was fairly tame. We took the streets a few times, but the cops continually pushed us back onto the sidewalks.  The police presence was large, but nothing like we’d see as the evening progressed.  At one point, I actually came across my old professor and mentor, Anne Waldman, who I was thrilled to see.  We chatted it up on the street for a bit before she ran off, away from the bus fumes blasting our direction.  The most beautiful moment in the march was once I caught up to the Guitarmy and we were trapped by a traffic light away from the rest of the march.  We had an enormous group of marchers behind us, and we ended up at the tip of a triangular median, playing and singing, “This Land Is Your Land.”  We marched and chanted to Union Square, and then the marchers diffused into all directions around the park.

I had no idea how big the group was at Union Square until I saw an aerial shot later that night online, but you could feel it as we were often pressed against each other with nowhere to go.  The police brought in an army of mopeds then, literally a platoon of cops ready to run you down—there were so many of them!  The police who were not on scooters formed human barricades in addition to the metal barricades that were up everywhere you looked.  They did an annoyingly good job at compartmentalizing people and squishing us together.  People were getting irritable and claimed the police were trying to incite a riot.  I think that has a lot of validity from what I saw and felt.  We all wanted to kick those barricades down and push those cops back just to breathe.  There were women with strollers who grew more and more concerned as people were pushed into the park and not let out.  Finally, after the crowd continued chanting “Let us out!  Let us out!” the cops opened a barricade and let a group of tens of thousands of people file out between them and their barricades like a bottleneck.  It was aggravating to say the least, but we kept the peace, showed our strength, patience, and simply marched by them.  All day, all night, I saw no signs of violence and somehow missed the group of Vets and clergy who were arrested defending our GA at Battery Park later in the night.

From there, we marched and marched and marched.  It’s a bit of a blur, really.  We danced in the streets, chanted, sang songs.  I ran all over the place taking pictures and videos until a guy marching next to me asked if I’d push his bike so he could take out his drum and join the drummers.  I obliged him long, long after it was necessary, as it turned out he was the best drummer there.  Finally, after dusk had turned to night and we’d passed by Zuccotti Park, which I thought was our destination, I gave him back his bike by the bull and the crowd of tens of thousands of us stopped.

Each time the police stopped the march, people would think it was over and trickle off.  We started a sit-in in the middle of the street, but the drums were still playing and all those thousands of people in the back couldn’t see or hear what was happening.  We were halted for so long, we lost a lot of people then.  Finally, after the sit-in communication failed and the police bowed to the crowd and let the march continue, we headed to Veterans Plaza for a GA.

Veterans Plaza was packed.  It was there that I really reflected once again, on what an honor it is to be here, to be part of this, to be with these people.  We talked about the fact that the police were surrounding us and had cut off a majority of the march back on the other side of the street.  The GA filled Veterans Plaza, but many thousands were not able to be let in, due to the police and the size of the park.  The more people announced the police surrounding us, the more people would trickle away, until finally there were maybe a couple hardcore hundred who stayed and talked about the tactics we would use to defend the park.  As more and more police formed around us and more and more people trickled away as we neared the 10 pm curfew, we decided the risk was too futile, so we tapped back into the crowd on the other side of the street to march to a 24 hour location.  Unfortunately, by then, our Vets and clergy had been arrested defending our GA and much of the thousands of people had splintered off.  Some headed to the waterfront, I later learned, but I never did see that group again.

The rest of us marched, noting how small we were by then, considering the tens of thousands we’d started out with.  The police planning to splinter us off from each other and continuously herding us around through barricades, scooters, and their own bodies, worked fairly well.  In the end, after trying to take Wall St. through any crack we could think of, including the subway underpass and cutting through a large store, always meeting with more barricades, we did a temporary sit in on the street to discuss our next action.  In the end, we opted to go home to Zuccotti, where only a couple hundred of us, if that, gathered.  There we went through park defense training, talked about how we would hold the park down, and waited for the folks from the waterfront to show up before the cops raided the park.  As midnight approached, there was no sign of the crowd from the waterfront, and though a few more police showed up, the park was largely free from officers compared to many other nights.  Last night, they were scattered all over the city.

After a small GA to discuss if and how we would try to hold the park, we all waited around to see if we would be kicked out, or if our reinforcements would show up.  Around 12:30, seeing no reinforcements and no raid from the police, watching more people trickle home, I decided to head back to the truck in Brooklyn and catch some z’s.  My legs were stiff and it takes a while to get back to Brooklyn at that time of night, so off I went.  Today is largely uneventful for me, unfortunately.  I haven’t checked the schedule for OWS yet, as I have to sit in this coffee shop and get some writing done for my WMNU classes.  I will have to do the same tomorrow, but if I get up early I am hoping to make it over to Manhattan for the night’s activities after I help Julie move a refrigerator up from her basement apartment in the evening.

-Dylan Hock-

Editors note: Inspired by Occupy Wall Street and angered by the mass arrests on the Brooklyn Bridge, Dylan drove to NYC to join the movement last fall. Read about it here.

And read the rest of our May Day coverage here. 

OCT. 16, 2011 – I arrived in New York City Wednesday morning on a one-way ticket from Chicago. My goal: to join the Occupy Wall Street movement. I came prepared to camp out in the occupied space, Zuccotti Park, also known as Liberty Plaza. I knew it was going to be cold and rainy for at least the first few days I was there. I knew that this would make camping out all the more difficult. And I knew that this would be a fitting and ironic baptism by “fire.”

With the help of fellow protesters, I set up my sleeping area that morning near the perimeter of the park. They provided me with two plastic tarps and recommended I take some cardboard for “cushion.” So I laid down the first tarp, placed a broken-down cardboard box on top of it, laid my sleeping bag on top of that, and then spread the second tarp over the top. At first, I just tucked the ends under the bottom tarp, like a bed sheet, but I realized that this was probably not going to be an effective water barrier from the rain. So I found someone with packing tape and they helped me tape the two tarps together, encompassing my sleeping bag in a waterproof pocket.

Or so I thought.

After a wonderful day of talking to a number of amazing individuals and the two-hour General Assembly in the evening, I was pretty well exhausted by 10pm (especially considering that I had not slept at all the night before). With a full heart, I climbed into my sleeping cell. The ground was hard and I didn’t have much room to move around, but it was surprisingly warm in my little cocoon. I was also embraced by a comforting sense of safety and solidarity with the people around me. In my area, some were already fast asleep, while others chatted from their sleeping bags. In other parts of the park, there were soap-box discussions, committee meetings, a small drum circle, and other activities interspersed between tarp-covered bodies. This calm murmur of human activity was like a spontaneous community lullaby. The intermittent drizzle of raindrops against my tarp was the crisp harmony complementing a soothing melody.

Soon, the rain began to pick up speed and force. I felt myself become the drum against which nature hammered out her emphatic crescendo. A peaceful energy surged through my body. I felt at one with the world. I felt grounded, solid and true. It really would have been the perfect lullaby, if only the tarps had held out. But once my toes sensed frigid rainwater seeping into my sleeping bag, I knew it was over. I wasn’t going to be able to sleep in the park that night. I wasn’t going to be able to sleep at all.

So I spent the rest of the night wandering around the financial district of New York City, umbrella in hand, pausing beneath awnings every so often. I sat in a late-night Mc Donald’s for an hour or so until it closed, then rode the subway around until it opened up again just before sunrise. It struck me that this night of sleepless transience, a temporary and chosen experience for me, was, quite disturbingly, a persistent, involuntary reality for the homeless citizens of this planet. This realization was jolting. This realization was more chilling than the rain. This realization was a humbling welcome to the long, hard fight I came here to join.

Stavroula Harissis

I boarded the World Trade Center-bound E train on March 17th (M17) not knowing what to expect when I got out on the other side, a few blocks away from the now infamous Zuccotti Park. It’s been a long winter for Occupy Wall Street. The past few months have seen the movement deal with increasingly violent repression and evictions nationwide, as well as – at least in New York City – a lot of internal bickering and debate on everything from nonviolence to funding sources to housing of occupiers. Many occupiers have been referring to winter as an “incubation” period. The mainstream media pretty much considers the movement dead. Whatever it is, it is vastly different than the Occupy Wall Street of 6 months ago. Or at least it was until M17, the movement’s six-month anniversary.

I spent most of the train ride to Liberty Plaza (Zuccotti’s reclaimed name) conjuring the many nights of elation and frustration I have had in that park – the countless general assemblies, free meals, cigarettes, stimulating conversations, rain storms, arguments, marches and finally, the brutal eviction that brought it all to a screeching halt. Since the eviction, the park had been empty. Or maybe barren is a better word. A cold (literally), lifeless slab of concrete in the valley of the gargantuan buildings surrounding  it. Whatever vitality we brought to that place had long been replaced with barricades, security guards, and an eerie stillness.

When I emerged in Lower Manhattan, I was hit by a wave of déjà vu. I could hear the drums and chants inside the park reverberating throughout the neighborhood. I realized that even the sound of the neighborhood had changed since the eviction. A flash flood of warm familiarity washed over me. On the six-month anniversary of our movement, I was transported back to its beginning. I picked up the pace and almost sprinted to the park. When I arrived, I found it once again brimming over with occupiers and police.

 It was wonderful to see the park electrified with people power again. That powerful feeling of remembrance and recognition continued to surge through my body like a kind of muscle memory being reawakened.

As soon I walked into the park, I witnessed someone being arrested by the NYPD. The mood was tense and rowdy. I was surprised by the number of police, all with a dozen or so zip-tie handcuffs hanging from their belts. I saw a few old friends and gave and received many hugs. We talked about the insane tug-of-war in which we are constantly engaged with the NYPD. They show up with batons, handcuffs, guns, and riot gear and raise the tension level in the park, then put the onus on us to deescalate. There were a few other arrests, and the police shouted at us where we could and couldn’t stand and what we couldn’t bring into the park.

Throughout the day, different marches left the plaza and came back to cheers and raised fists. It was as if we were in the midst of a mighty stretch after a long slumber. As afternoon turned to evening, the overall mood of the park shifted and the police presence seemed to taper off a bit. The chants going around and the drum circle in full swing filled the park with that familiar cacophonous buzz. There is something amazing about chanting and dancing around with complete strangers. One of the more popular chants of the day was taken from the Spanish Indignados and proclaims simply and rhythmically: “Anti-capitalista!” It was refreshing to hear so many chant that radical declaration. Even through the winter, we had kept our radical roots.

At 7pm, as customary, we had our general assembly (GA). This was my first time attending a GA in a good while, and by the time it was over I was re-enamored with direct democracy and twinkling fingers. There were hundreds in attendance – probably our biggest GA of the year. It was also surprisingly lacking in rancor or squabbling, except for the traditional begging of the drum circle to keep it down or move away from GA. We consensed on signing on to a letter calling for a federal investigation of the NYPD for spying in Muslim communities and broke out into discussion groups to talk about our ideas for May Day. There was a palpable spirit of camaraderie and solidarity in the air, and many OWS veterans commented to me that they felt truly transported to “the good ol’ days” before the eviction and even before the tents went up at Zuccotti, fighting with drummers and all.

After GA a large march which included Michael Moore and Dr. Cornel West arrived from the Left Forum. Suddenly there were over a thousand people communing in the park, some playing games, some doing interviews or making media, others just talking and smoking. There was a Capoeira circle, a mic-check speak out, and of course plenty of drums and dancing. The mood was jovial in spite of everyone’s noticing that the police presence seemed to be increasing as the night went on. At one point, a barrage of bag pipes could be heard on the southwestern corner of the park. This being St. Patrick’s Day, a small Irish marching band had either purposely or by coincidence found its way to Liberty Plaza, equipped with bag pipes and snare drums. The crowd in the park erupted with cheers and applause and ran to the park’s northern perimeter to greet the band. In a confused scuffle (at least from my vantage point) the police moved in, forced the band to stop playing and moved them to the other side of the street. One officer told me they feared the band would “cause a riot.”

Suddenly an orange net appeared. Usually, this means that you have been kettled by the police and are about to go to jail. But this orange net had the words “Occupy” and “99%” stenciled on it. A group of protesters were extending the net and creating a barrier between the police and the occupiers. I admit, being surrounded by that net gave me a creepy feeling , even though I knew it was ‘on our side.’ Yellow OWS caution tape started to go up all over the park too, tied on the trees and cutting through the crowd in odd angles. I wasn’t really sure what was going on, but I could almost sense the tension in the park boiling over. An exorbitant number of police were amassing on the northern side of the park. I stood on one of the benches in the park to try to get some perspective, and I saw what all the fuss was about. A group of occupiers were erecting tents in the center of the park. The net, the tape, all of it, was to protect the tents. A light came on inside the first tent and the words stenciled on its side became visible: “You cannot evict an idea whose time has come.”

I watched as the tent was hoisted into the air and cheered with the crowd, but I knew that what had been a glorious and rejuvenating day would have an ugly ending. We paraded around with two tents for a bit, all of us enjoying what we knew were the last exquisite moments of our resurrection. Then, as if someone hit a fast forward button, we jumped from reliving those first amazing months of Occupy to November 15 – eviction day. Much like that night, the police lined up on the Broadway stairs and announced that the park was closed. They told us that being in the park was now an arrestable offense. And so those who were willing to risk arrest moved to create a human wall on the eastern end of the park, a few meters from the line of police officers. I moved toward the middle of the park and stood on a bench to see the NYPD march in and start arresting people. After about half an hour they had moved everyone out of the park and began erecting barricades around the park’s perimeter. After being pushed and shoved out of the park, those of us who remained stood on the sidewalk, most of us bewildered by the brute force we had just witnessed. We were on the western end of park, isolated from the far greater brutality happening on the eastern side. In the background I could hear people calling for a march.

By this point, I was both mentally and physically exhausted from this behemoth roller-coaster of a day, but I just couldn’t tear away. I ran through the gamut of emotions and questions we all ask ourselves in moments like these, trying to balance my sense of duty and solidarity with the sheer terror of the situation at hand and its possible outcomes. Do I want to get arrested? Or beat up? Is it worth it this time? In truth, I had to fight off the urge to wave the white flag and go home. But I was angry, dejected, and so was everyone else. In the end, I decided to march with my comrades.

A few hundred of us wound our way through Lower Manhattan, flanked all the while by police in scooters and squad cars. We turned sharply down side streets a few times, which seemed to confuse the police, but definitely caused confusion amongst the marchers. I found myself running down the sidewalks and streets with large groups of other occupiers just to keep up. This, plus the sheer volume of the police response, made for some moments of pandemonium. We took the streets several times throughout, prompting arrests and batons. Police smashed an occupier’s head against a glass door. We passed a least one broken store window (though it was unclear if it was broken by Occupy) and at one point on a side-street in the Village, some protesters emptied several trash receptacles into the streets to block the police. It worked, to everyone’s excitement. I saw several police scooters with trash and plastic bags caught in their wheel wells.

When the march reached E. Houston shortly after that, I decided to hop on the nearby F train and make the trip back to Queens. I wanted to stay, continue the march, be with my comrades, express my anger and my joy – but I just had to break away. I knew that things would only get uglier, and I was already delirious with a cogent mix of exhaustion, frustration, and the high of marching through the streets. It felt as if I had lived the whole history of occupy in the span of 10 hours. On the train ride home, I found myself thinking that despite its dystopian ending, M17 had been a success. It was a re-ignition of our imaginations; a reminder of all the beautiful things we built from scratch in that small park, and all the hardships that came with them, and how easily it can be wiped away.

Spring has definitely sprung at OWS, and it’s only the beginning.

- Danny Valdes -
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The action at Liberty Plaza, New York, began on September 17th 2011. Inspired by the indignados of Spain and the brave Egyptian souls of Tahrir Square and others in the Middle East, the Occupy movement in the U.S.A. is not yet 4 months old. In that brief period of time we have traversed incredible territory and achieved almost unbelievable success. Political conversation in the U.S. has been transformed, the majority of the U.S. electorate now say they support the changes Occupy is calling for, and cities throughout the nation are home to nightly General Assemblies and long-term encampments – at least in those cities without over-zealous mayors or police departments.

I have been involved in my local Occupy Santa Fe movement since our first day of action, outside Bank of America, on October 1st. I was struck then by the hope and inspiration that lit up the 60 or so faces of the people around me, and the almost constant sound of honking horns as passing drivers enthusiastically signaled their support. Since then we have held further rallies, organized marches, mic checks, workshops, teach-ins, and begun political campaigns. We have gathered for General Assembly three times a week, we have launched countless Working Groups, and we maintained a physical occupation almost consistently for three months.

However, the Occupy movement is not without its struggles. The energetic honeymoon period of those first few weeks, when revolution and transformation was on everyone’s lips and appeared eminently possible, even inevitable, is over, and we are now dealing with the stark reality of all that we must confront and all that we must transform.

We have attempted to bridge the gap between the highest aspirations and values of the movement and the reality of the culture in which we live. We have not always succeeded.

The harmony of the early actions and meetings has given way to division and arguments over tactics, strategy, process, and identity. General Assemblies have at times become fractious, and on one occasion even violent, and have led some of the founders of the local movement to walk away in despair at ever creating a better world. The structure and process of General Assembly and Working Groups have attracted criticism, complaint, obstruction and sabotage. Activists have turned on one another, and it sometimes seems as though we spend more energy fending off personal attacks and responding to spurious gossip than we do working for change.

Santa Fe had one of the longest-running camps in the U.S.A., which inspired community support and opprobrium in roughly equal measure. Though the camp attempted to model itself on that of Liberty Plaza, with zero tolerance of drugs, alcohol and inebriation, the reality was a series of disturbing alcohol-fueled episodes, occasional outbreaks of violence, theft, and discord. Camp was the source of much disagreement in General Assembly, with those wishing to withdraw support pointing to the dysfunction of the camp, while others focused on historical oppression of those marginalized by our society – the homeless and the victims of alcoholism and addiction – and their right to our support. In the end, just as the City of Santa Fe started to make noises about closing down the camp, the General Assembly of Santa Fe took action and withdrew funding and logistical support. An incredibly difficult and painful decision for many to take, it was ultimately supported by consensus, including some of those who had been campers.

What is happening? Why has this movement, that began with the vibrant fall colors reflecting the depth of our belief and hope, so quickly lost its luster? What has happened to the promise of Occupy?

I believe that the transformation we are trying to bring about is huge and that the problems we are facing are an inevitable result of the size and nature of the task.

Occupy is trying to bring our community together, to reconcile, to welcome all voices, and to work together toward common values. But participatory, consensus-based, grassroots democracy is not easy, and we are not practiced in it. Rather we are conditioned to give away our power to others or to scapegoat.

We live in a culture that has forced us all to turn away and suppress our natural inclinations toward compassion, relationship, and respect. It is a culture so violent and oppressive that we have grown to believe it is natural to make war on those we disagree with. It is a culture so greedy that we don’t hesitate to exploit the riches and beauty of the earth for our own comfort and pleasure. It is a culture so individualistic and selfish that we barely blink at the vast inequalities in material wealth that surround every one of us. It is a culture so riven by fear and dominated by power that true social justice for all is a dream that seems all but impossible to achieve. And, most importantly, it is a culture that has become enslaved to the impersonal systemic forces of economics that, at some level, exploit us all.

To transform such a culture requires that we transform ourselves and our political and social processes. And transformation is, at best, disorienting, and at times destructive in its process of upheaval and change. Having grown up in this culture, so far from what our hearts know is possible and continue to long for, we all carry within us internalized anger, fear and distrust. In relation to the dominant culture and the established power elites, those emotions are not misplaced. On the contrary, they are both understandable and rightly placed.

We come to Occupy carrying all of this cultural baggage with us. No wonder then that the growth of this movement is challenging and fractious. No wonder that common ground is hard to find when the dominant culture has so divided us.

But Occupy’s struggles are necessary and beneficial. The disagreements and challenges we face are the “grist for the mill,” the vehicles by which we learn, the opportunities to take another step in our growth as a movement and society.

In order to support that transformation, we must come to see these moments for what they are – opportunities to grow and learn. And we must find a place of equanimity and gratitude within ourselves in the face of each learning experience, both towards the situation itself and to the people who are challenging us. We only start to go astray when we perceive what is happening as the problem, and we start casting about for the people who are to blame, the forms and procedures that are wrong. Instead, we must all examine ourselves and our own capacities to rise out of the dominant culture of violence and oppression.

This is not to bring a Pollyanna perspective. When we disagree with someone, we must tell them; when we see the flaw in a strategy or tactic, we must say so; when a step in consensus decision-making has been missed, we must name that; and when personal agendas trample over process and consensus, we must not stand by silently in progressive, liberal apathy.

This is a call to invest in the integrity of our actions and the moral focus of the movement. Gandhi’s teaching is now so oft-repeated that it has become a cliché, but right now the necessity to “be the change we want to see in the world,” is paramount. That is true for each individual activist and for the Occupy movement as a whole. We are not there yet, I am not there yet, but this aspiration must be our guiding star, for under that light we will occupy the moral high-ground and catalyze a societal transformation that will be so much more than cosmetic change.

Occupy is about evolution and transformation, not revolution. We will not replace existing leaders with new leaders or attempt to fix what is broken in the existing power structures; instead we must bring forth a new story. The root of this new story is love — love for ourselves, love for each other, love for our planet, and a deep and profound love and longing for justice.

That love is backed by a fierce commitment to seeing this through. I know that because I feel it in my own heart and I see it in the eyes of all the beautiful, brave souls alongside whom I am so proud to work. And it is that quality of love that I believe must guide our interactions with each other as we find our way through the storms of challenge and the disorienting dilemmas of these early days of our transformation. In that love and commitment rests the hope that Occupy will become truly worthy of the 99%.

- Thomas Jaggers

Intensity in Tent City

This is the third in a series of excerpts from Jim Gober’s forthcoming book titled “Deep in the Heart of Occupy Austin.” A new excerpt will be published at OccupiedStories.com every Wednesday, so come back next week to follow Jim though the evolution of Occupy Austin.

The next day, as I clustered with a group of strangers waiting to cross Lavaca Street on my way toward the plaza, there was a sculpture of an armadillo on the sidewalk, which is Austin’s unofficial official mascot. A little girl asked her daddy, a 40 year old tough-guy with jail-house tattoos and a mullet, what it was. In his most authoritative voice he announced to her, and everyone else waiting to cross the street, that it was an armadillo, and it also has leprosy, a terrible disease that you get from armadillos. And in fact, he boisterously informed us, the last great epidemic of leprosy in the US was in Louisiana where a whole bunch of people got it from eating armadillos. When the walk sign came on and we started moving, he topped off his story with a “go figure” as if all the people in Louisiana are so much more stupid than himself they must all eat armadillo, and of course we were all supposed to go along with it, and I imagined some of us did. But at least he was being a good dad, which is more than I can say for a lot of men. And I’ll bet that’s not the first bullshit story a father ever told to impress a child with his worldly knowledge, however flawed it might be.

Since I wrote most of the day, it was about 4 p.m. as I neared the plaza. It was swarming with people and the scene was chaotic. The first thing I saw was a dreadlocked young man I recognized from one of the first meetings. He came across as a trustafarian; expensive “hippie” clothes, dreadlocked hair- the works. I watched as he charged up to a group of bored policemen slumped against a piece of art, commissioned by the city, that must have cost a quarter million dollars. It was of a uvula carved out of granite. Yes, it was a large piece of grey granite with a hole cut in the middle and a highly polished uvula hanging into the center of the circle. The entire 10-foot tall monstrosity was mounted on thick hand-hewn wooden skids.

As the trustafarian approached the policemen, he demanded they stop all people from smoking, “over there and over there and over there,” because, “the wind is blowing the smoke toward my pregnant girlfriend.” The police let him know that smoking is allowed as long as it’s 15 feet or more from the building. The police didn’t move nor change expression much as they offered this disappointing news to a young man who looked like he was used to having what he wanted. As I started to make a note, the trustafarian came over to me. I said, “Hey Mon!” as a thinly veiled insult to his Rastafarian/rich boy appearance. He pointed his nose at me, and with his pupils no larger than molecules in the center of two blue pinwheels, asked if I was the guy with the beer and with a lot of passion at the meeting in Zilker Park a few days before. I didn’t know where he was going with it, but the vibe was negative because no one of the younger set liked me comparing Facebook and Apple to fascist mega-international corporations who operate sweatshops in China. I wasn’t sure if he wanted to engage me intellectually or let me have it because the police told him to buzz off.

Thank goodness, my cell phone rang. It’s one of those tiny pay-as-you-go jobs and was all tangled up in my pocket. I told Hey Mon I would get back to him in a second, and to please go sit back down and I would catch up with him. I got back to wrestling the phone from my pocket and in the interim missed the call. Since I couldn’t figure out how to get the number back on my cheapo cellie, I went ahead and sat down under a tree next to Hey Mon who introduced himself as Joshua, then introduced me to my new best friend for the night, John. I mentioned the grassy lawn area and landscaping we were sitting on was going to be destroyed in a few days, and Joshua said, “Yeah, we should protect the environment or something.” Then he got up and walked away and I didn’t see him for the rest of the evening. After a while, Joshua’s girlfriend came back and gathered up a few things. She was brilliantly beautiful even while pregnant, and I liked the idea of the occupiers procreating. Somehow, it gave me a tiny ray of hope.

My new best friend, John, was a cool guy-a perfectly shaped 5’ 7.5” middle-aged male full of intelligence and insight mixed with the most mischievous laugh you ever heard. Although childlike, it had a patina of maturity and enrapturing finish. He offered it freely without being disingenuous. This guy had plenty of good light to share, which was amazing since he was going through a divorce, had 2 daughters and had to pay mortgages on two places. He is in the building business and it’s not going so well right now. But as he explained to me, you always look at the world from the inside out and not let the outside get in and mess with you. The inside must remain at peace. This is how you should look at the world; from a peaceful place. I could tell he had been on a long personal journey and was seeing the light after a long time in the rough.

John shared his blanket with me for a minute or two, but I couldn’t get too relaxed, because although I really liked him, I didn’t want to miss out on all the other fun. The plaza was overflowing with exciting and interesting people. And besides, I had to find a bathroom. And I did find one in fast order. It was clean and air conditioned, right beside the city hall plaza. You just can’t beat that. After the bathroom visit, I poked around the plaza. One lady had a huge sign that said, “It is well that the people of the nation do not understand our banking system. For if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning-Henry Ford.” It must have taken her forever to make it because the words were made out of some sort of tissue and thick glue. I was thinking it was a long quote for a sign, and Henry Ford was more loquacious than I thought. The number of people holding signs along the sidewalk was also quite impressive and cars coming from all directions were honking in support.

I found myself listening to a guy who recommended that someone-he didn’t say who-should take all the money out of the banks and buy gold with it. I turned to a man next to me and said, “That doesn’t make sense.” Lucky for me, a hippie girl about 16 and still full of baby fat turned and explained,” During times of hyperinflation, people buy gold and silver as a hedge. But that’s what they did in the eighties and it crashed and everyone lost a bunch of money.” I asked, “You mean like the Hunt brothers?” But she didn’t know who I was talking about, and her eyes crossed a bit before she looked back at the speaker, who I had listened to long enough. I turned my attention to an achingly Asian guy dripping with acne who was explaining the difference between dialoguers and monologuers in a mix of languages so foreign some of them must only be spoken on the sun. About then, a rough-looking woman walked by with dyed jet-black hair that fell into her face to make her almost unrecognizable. Emblazoned on the back of her pink t-shirt with the arms ripped out was the handwritten statement, “This is only the beginning.”

A group of cute young girls hula hooping on the corner were definitely attracting attention. So much attention that two cops had to saunter over to their location to make a phone call. A middle-aged lady next to me pointed out, “See-the cops are going over there because those girls are attracting too much attention on the corner with those hula hoops and might cause a wreck.” When it was obvious the men in blue had no intention of stopping the show, but were in fact getting a front row seat to look down the tube tops of those little cuties, I felt the older woman shrink a bit. But, I didn’t look. It would have been too painful to watch.

Then it was time for a meeting and we had to go over even more hand signals than back at the Thinking Tree. Not only was there twinkle fingers in the air if you like a comment, medium height twinkle fingers if you feel mediocre, and down low twinkle fingers when you don’t like something, there was a shape you make with two hands resembling a vagina, which means you have a point. And there was crossing your arms at the wrists, which means you are blocking a motion, and there was making pointy guns with your forefingers and shooting them in the air used to shoot down an idea. Making a “C” with one hand means you have a concern. Then there was “Mic Check,” which is how occupying camps without a PA system communicate. It works by someone yelling, “Mic Check,” then everyone yells “Mic Check” to get everybody’s attention. Then the speaker tells everyone what to say-or yell-and they repeat it so everybody down the line hears the message. Since we had a PA, we didn’t do too much of the mic check unless something very important needed to be heard way across the plaza. It is a painstakingly slow way to communicate, but keeps the speeches short and sweet. If someone is not acting correctly, everyone is supposed to clap loud three times. And there was a bunch of other signals I didn’t catch, because all of a sudden there was a chaotic scene.

A small group of people decided to erect a tent on a grassy spot at the edge of the plaza. Occupy was told by the police only one tent was allowed, and that was to keep the protest signs dry if it rained. But these guys wanted to set up another tent and were hell bent about it. There was a round of mic checks, a series of three loud claps, pointy guns, down low sparkly fingers and people just flat out yelling at them to take it down, but nothing mattered. They set it up right in front of the facilitators while the hand signal lecture was being given for the millionth time. Those hand signals were meant to control everything, but these damn tent people were screwing everything up and no amount of hand signals had the slightest effect on them. At one point, everyone surrounded the tent and started pulling on the poles. The four interloping instigators, one of them a tow-headed child of 4 or 5, all managed to wiggle inside the tent and hold on for dear life until they exhausted the crowd. You had to hand it to them-they were the real deal. When everything settled down, they propped up the tent, repaired the damage with a roll of duct tape and hung out a sign that said “Tent City.” And that was that.

Then there was a dust up where somebody locked their bike to someone else’s, which resulted in at least a dozen mic checks until the police cut it off with a bolt cutter. After a while, it looked like everything was settling down for the evening. The smell of high-grade marijuana, incense, alcohol and burning ether from meth pipes wafted by in the warm and heavy evening air. A few people carried in stacks of donated pizza and people eagerly lined up to grab a slice without being pushy. There were lots of bottles of water and just about anything else needed to stay comfortable on the hard floor, steps and mezzanine of the city hall plaza, which was now home to hundreds of occupiers. As the night progressed, the mood became edgy, and in the darkness I couldn’t tell who was friend or foe, but it didn’t matter. I chatted endlessly with drifters, occupiers and curiosity seekers about philosophy and economics until I thought my head would explode. Tonight I could feel Occupy breathing as one, and I was finally part of it. About 3 a.m., I was down to just enough energy to make it home and collapsed on the couch with the front door wide open. I was so happy.

Editor’s note: This article was originally published on thisiswhyioccupy.tumblr.com as a two-part post. Part 1 – not included in this story – gives a detailed outline of the consensus process. For readers unfamiliar with consensus process, you can see the author’s explanation here.

Consensus is a process. I laid it out as best I could – tried to make it bite-sized and accessible.

At the heart of consensus is discussion.

Communally we develop the proposal. Ask questions to make sure we understand it, but also to make sure the proposer hasn’t missed any opportunities or details – not to question the motives of the proposer, but to help the proposal be better.

We express our concerns so as to take any opportunities for oppression and place them out in the open for everyone to see and address. To move forward together.

Our greatest asset – as a movement, as a community – is the individual experiences, feelings, and knowledge that each person brings to the collective.

The ability of a group to reach consensus on anything is dependent on the group having some level of shared goals, visions, and principles that bring it together. It doesn’t have to be explicitly stated or documented, but at least on an individual level, we have to acknowledge what brought us here, and assume that some part of that brought everyone else here too.

… in a nutshell …

In its broadest sense, Occupy Wall Street seeks social and economic justice – an end to the systems of oppression that consolidate wealth in the hands of the extreme few at the expense of everyone else. Obviously there is so much more. But if you want my sound byte of what OWS stands for, there you go.

Occupy Wall Street wants to liberate space – both physical and ideological. Without public space in the hands of the people, the community, can a public sphere truly exist? And ideological space, taken up for generations by the moneyed few, utilizing violence and systematized pillars of oppression to hold power over women, people of color, and gender queer (to name a few), is being opened up for those voices to be raised – by taking their rightful place in this discussion,we shape a more inclusive and just society.

… morality …

To be perfectly honest, yes, our system of consensus can be abused. The way it is currently set up, we can only accept a block at face value, as the blocker explains it. Regardless of how well that block is explained, whether it is along explicit moral, ethical or safety lines, or someone only having a few words to say why they can’t let the proposal pass, the block stands.

As a community, we can take their explanation, try to understand it, and try to empathize with their position, their feelings, their experience and offer an amendment that might be found agreeable to both the blocker and the proposer so that as a community we can move forward toward consensus.

What we cannot do – what we must not do – is question the block itself.

And this brings me to my first block.

I’ve regularly been attending General Assemblies since October 17th. When not on a Facilitation team, I have rarely spoken to the Assembly. I tend to think that if I give it enough time, someone else will say what I’m thinking. Often I’m right, sometimes not.

This is what we call, “Step Up, Step Back.” If those of us with male, white-skin privilege step back, opening up the space for those who have traditionally not been encouraged to take it, someone will have the opportunity to step up and say pretty much exactly what we would have said.

There have been proposals I haven’t agreed with, or don’t particularly like, so I down-twinkle them in the temperature check. If I really don’t like it, and it moves to modified consensus, I’ll vote no.

There was a proposal a few days ago requesting the GA to ask two members of the Housing Working Group step down from leadership and coordination roles. I have serious concerns with recent decisions and actions of the individuals in question and supported the concept of this request, but the individuals were not present during this proposal or the discussion surrounding it. I think it’s extremely problematic to essentially put people on trial in absentia.

I stood aside. I had serious concerns with the proposal, but defaulted to the community to make the ultimate decision.

… the proposal …

A proposal that has been bounced around and discussed amongst individuals for a while now, possibly in part instigated by people’s reading of CT Butler’s “On Conflict & Consensus,” is that the community should be able to evaluate the validity of a block and decide if it meets certain criteria. For the record, I have never read CT Butler. I’ve heard him speak some, but have not read his book. Also for the record, I don’t really care what he has to say on this topic. OWS is like nothing anyone has ever seen before, and previously held notions or ideas have to adapt to OWS, not the other way around.

The blocking proposal has gone through various forms, and has come before the GA at least twice. I happened to be on the Facilitation Team both times and therefore couldn’t participate in the conversation. This past Sunday, it came up again, and I was finally able to add my voice to the conversation.

In its current form, the proposal wanted to empower the community to call a point of process on a block if any member of the General Assembly felt that the block was not meeting the criteria of an ethical, moral, or safety concern. The Facilitator would then take a straw poll to see if the community considered the block to meet those criteria. If 75% of the Assembly were in agreement that the block is valid, then it would stand. If not, it would be collectively removed.

… concerns …

I have many concerns with this proposal and the direct and implied effects it would have on the movement as a whole and the individuals that make it up.

I expressed my concerns during that point of the process and being that the proposer or the subsequent friendly amendments did not alleviate them, I chose to block the proposal. I tried to articulate my concerns as best I could, both during that stack and again when I explained my block.

I’ve thought about it extensively in the days since and had conversations with people who were not in attendance, in preparation for when this proposal eventually comes up for consideration at a future General Assembly.

… blocked …

I blocked this proposal because it so antithetical to everything this movement stands for, in my eyes.

Occupy Wall Street, as a movement, is about addressing root causes. We seek to create social and economic justice.

This is not a charity and this is not about bandaging symptoms. If we can address symptoms, and alleviate suffering along the way – as a byproduct of our work – that is great, but our focus has to be deeper – our path must be laid out and must be long-term.

Taking a temperature check on the validity of blocks is not a means to build more meaningful consensus.

This proposal is designed to deal with individuals who make our process more difficult than some feel it needs to be. It is in effect putting a bandage on people’s discomfort and frustration. It is not dealing with, acknowledging, or seeking to remedy the root causes that might result in someone feeling the need to obstruct our process in the only definitive and powerful way we have – the block.

Consensus is about discussion, debate, dissent, concessions, questioning, all with the intent of resolving conflict.

This proposal is a cop-out.

This proposal adds process in place of building community. We need to put in the time and hard work to get to know each other, as people, in order to build this community. It will, and should be, hard, slow work.

But, it will be worth it.

… prefigurative …

As a movement, we must be prefigurative. It is our obligation to embody the ideals and values of the world we seek to create. The ends do not justify the means. We cannot build a new world on the groundwork of an ugly movement.

We can only hope to drown out the negative voices with the even louder voices of positivity. Attempting to silence the voices we find disagreeable is re-creating the systems of oppression we are trying to topple.

Because this is a movement of incredibly diverse people with different backgrounds, upbringings and experiences, we need to acknowledge that different people have different communication styles and unconventional articulation abilities, or prior access to education. But that doesn’t mean their input is less valid.

I think we’ve seen quite often that – while I love this community passionately – it’s not always a safe space. I would like to have faith that in some cases, when someone blocks, they do have a moral or ethical concern, but perhaps they don’t feel safe expressing those concerns, for fear of being a dissenting voice, or facing hostility from the other members of the Assembly.

At some point, we need to trust that people come here to act in good faith.

Obviously not everyone does, and I’m not talking about provocateurs or infiltrators, but people who traditionally haven’t been given the space to have their voice heard and perhaps are acting out now that that space has been provided.

But that doesn’t seem like a good reason to me to add in additional punitive process.

In the absence of community agreement and shared values, which I am conflicted about documenting this early in the life of this movement –this occupation – this proposal feels exclusionary to me.

I’m not quite sure we’re ready to say definitively what our community values are, or our shared ideals, or goals. The Safer Spaces Community Agreement for Spokes Council is a good start for our code of conduct, but I don’t think that’s exactly the same as defining what our values are.

Occupy Wall Street has only been around for four months and our scope is huge. There has to be room for dissent and disagreement and discussion within our movement. We need to be inclusive, not codify punitive measures of exclusion.

There are individuals in this movement who have been labeled disruptors or agitators. People who recently have taken the position of blocking just about any proposal asking for funds that do not address the basic needs of the homeless Occupier population – food, housing, and Metrocards, for example. There is an argument that can be made that these blocks are made along ethical lines – that this occupation has people dependent on it, and we have an obligation to care for them; with funds depleting we must focus on their needs.

You don’t have to agree with this line of thinking, but agreement is not the issue.

… misdirection …

This proposal is clearly a way to target individuals and not the issues at hand. Already we see adverse reactions to certain individuals, regardless of the content. Either their presentations, or they themselves, are enough to make people tune out before they even begin speaking.

Taking a temperature check to evaluate a block feels punitive, and I’m not sure we have a right as community to address the concerns of specific individuals as it pertains to a block.

We should not debate the validity of anyone’s individual concerns. Rather, we can decide communally, having heard the blockers’ concerns and the stand asides’ concerns, that we still want this proposal to move forward. We can do that. We have a process for it – modified consensus.

But what we should not have is a system in place to validate or nullify someone’s moral, ethical, or safety concerns, however effectively they are communicated.

I’d rather have modified consensus at the expense of consensus than consensus at the expense of an individual.

… unfriendly …

A friendly amendment was suggested – and accepted by the proposer – to put in place a one-week trial period to see how this whole process would play out. When I restated my concerns to explain my block the proposer reminded me of the amendment to see if I would be willing to delay my block a week. To allow this trial period to happen so as a community we can evaluate it based on practice.

My response was, “I do not feel comfortable putting a trial period on what I feel is immoral.” I stand by that.

This proposal is ugly. I don’t blame the people who wrote it or the people who support it. I understand why they want this failsafe in place. It would be convenient. It would make things easy. But the more embedded I get with OWS, the more I learn about the history of radical and revolutionary movements and organizations, the more I truly believe this should not be easy.

If it were easy, it would have been done already.

If it were easy, we’d be living in a more just world.

If it were easy we would have toppled the pillars of oppression that uphold the empire.

We have to be willing to put in the hard work – to live better now – to create a better world as we go.

I’m willing to put in the work. I’m willing to struggle. I’m willing to be frustrated and angry and exhausted.

I’m willing because I am looking forward to the eventual victories of our collective struggle.

This – this very difficult struggle – is why I occupy.

- Brett Goldberg (@PoweredByCats on Twitter)

When I arrived at Liberty Plaza last night, October 20th, 2011, a little lost, trying to find my way around the Occupy Wall Street camp, the first thing I did was find the line for dinner. I was hungry. I had worked 13 hours that day, and needed to eat. I had heard that brilliant local chefs have volunteered to cook these fantastic meals for the protesters at the communal kitchen, so I lined up behind a guy who looked almost exactly like me: lost, a backback loaded up, a peaceful, accepting look on his face. And as we turned the corner, edging forward, we got our paper plates loaded with rice and lentils, soup bowls loaded up with a brilliant spicy stew, bread pudding, and apple sauce. All donated by supporters.

Our supporters.

Eating, sitting on a curb in the park, I got to talking with the guy next to me; “Its my first night here. Where do you throw trash?” “You sleeping here?” “Yes,” I said, admitting I hadn’t brought a sleeping bag, not knowing how things were.

“Welcome brother.” A handshake. We kept eating. Everyone’s eyes said the same thing, “welcome brother,” not in a creepy cultish way but in that way people who have gathered together to change things say it with their eyes. Walking around the camp, my next step was to see if they had at least a pillow for me to use; at a distribution center for donated clothes and blankets, they handed me a fleece, rolled it up, and said, “This could make a good pillow, don’t you think?” It did, and it would.

I walked around, I joined in the people’s assembly discussions about representation; I browsed in the provisional library, set up in plastic bins–in which The Beat Reader and Noam Chomsky were marked as REFERENCE. Reference indeed–next to Whitman, as well. In a spontaneously gathered group on the steps, I sang Bob Dylan in a crowd with a famous singer who showed up to help out; more folk music flowed from his guitar. Everybody, it seems, had a guitar.

I found a shining granite bench to sleep on; I was getting tired, and almost all the ground-space was taken up by people camped in tents or under tarps. The wind was blowing. It was getting colder, but I needed sleep; so I set up my “pillow,” put on an extra layer under my jacket, put my gloves on, put my hood up, and curled up on the bench.

Nearly asleep, back turned on the “path” between other sleepers and protesters, I suddenly felt a blanket being placed over me. I looked up, gave a thumbs up and thanks, and she said, “Keep warm dude.” That thick donated blanket would keep me warm through the windy, 45 degree night. I’d awake in the morning to donated bagels, a cup of coffee, friendly directions to the subway, so I could get to work on time.

My night at the protest glows in my memory, sustains me; we were all cooperating; we were all, remarkably. generously supported by each other, and by all the unseen anonymous supporters who gave us food, blankets, books, time. A thousand strings of support seemed to stretch out from every moment I occupied the park. I think of my fellow protesters down there tonight, as it gets colder–as “family night” goes forward (kids are invited tonight to the camp).

As the sign says: no protest, this occupation is an affirmation of all that we can do for each other, an affirmation of the way things can be. You see somebody sleeping without a blanket; you find them one. You put it on them. You keep them warm. That’s how you occupy privatized public space, take it back.

When I return to do another night there, I’ll bring books, food, and some pillows for the next person who needs one.

- Spurgeon Thompson

CHATTANOOGA, TN – At the very end of today’s County Commission meeting, County Commissioner Larry Henry, with no public notice, brought forward an “emergency resolution” that empowers him to seek legal actions against Occupy Chattanooga in the supposed interests of “health” and “safety”. No public discussion took place on this matter prior to today and the resolution itself was not included on the publicly available agenda prior to the vote.

A reporter interviewing Occupy Chattanooga members on the lawn of the Courthouse said that the County Commission was planning to waste tax-payer money by pursuing
legal action in Chancery Court. Occupy Chattanooga has been peacefully and very
respectfully (even deferentially) demonstrating since moving to the courthouse in
November.

The County Commission had previously met in secret, violating the Open Meetings Act
or “Sunshine Law”, to discuss taking legal action against Occupy. Since then, County
Commissioners Warren Mackey and Tim Boyd have both publicly stated their opposition
to the current “Sunshine Law” which demands greater government transparency in favor
of a new law which would allow for private, closed-door deliberations.

According to the Hamilton County Commission website, the next planned meeting of the
County Commission is an Agenda Setting Meeting on December 29th and then another
Regular County Commission Meeting is scheduled for January 4th. All meetings are
held at 9:30 AM.

County Commission Chairman Larry Henry can be reached at (423) 894-6269 & (423)209-7200

UPDATE:
News Channel 3 Eyewitness News has reported the following about the County
Commission’s actions today: The move was conducted as an “emergency resolution”, which allowed the resolution to be added to the agenda without notice. Chairman Henry tells Eyewitness News commissioners have been crafting the resolution for some time.

This obviously leads me to wonder, when exactly was the County Commission “crafting”
this resolution? They have not discussed the resolution prior to today. Was this
resolution the product of their previous closed-door meeting that violated the
Sunshine Law? It would seem that the County Commission has acted illegally by
deliberating/scheming in private about how to begin the process of evicting Occupy
Chattanooga.

-Chris Brooks-

NEW YORK - Police prepared for the worst. Protesters hoped for the best. As police gripped their batons, protesters gripped their cardboard signs. Police held the brakes on their motorcycles while protesters hammered down the triggers of their cameras. The frenzy of clicking shutters buzzed through the air like a swarm of angry bees. A mere 10 hours after protesters were sipping warm coffee in a small lower-Manhattan park, tensions rose to a boiling point in Times Square.

Zuccotti Park, renamed Liberty Square by protesters, is a base station for participants. People at the park sleep, eat, receive medical attention and exchange information. Some volunteers even offer prayer services and massage therapy.

In the center of the park sits the comfort station, which provides protesters with toothpaste, toothbrushes, warm clothing, blankets, tape, tampons and anything else they might need to stay and protest for as long as they’re inclined.

Every day a general assembly meeting is held to make announcements and discuss ideas, policies, procedures and events such as marches.

Because amplification devices are not allowed, messages are relayed to the large groups of people through a method referred to as the “people’s mic” — someone shouts their message, and everyone who hears the message repeats it. For larger crowds, the message is repeated three or four times to ensure that everyone can hear it.

On Saturday, Oct. 15, protesters left their home base to march with people rallying in Washington Square Park. The march covered more than 50 police-lined blocks, picking up people and gathering passion along the way.

The protesters ended their march by meeting with hundreds of people already demonstrating and stayed to hear speeches from organizers, and fellow protesters.

Set in a “progressive stack,” speakers were asked to come and offer words of encouragement and insight through the people’s mic. People of minority groups pushed to the front of the line in order to encourage voices that are usually deafened by our society, to be heard louder and clearer than ever.

An announcement was made that a march to occupy Times Square would begin at 3:30 p.m. It wasn’t long before the protesters reclaimed the sidewalks and left in pursuit of the “center of the world.”

By 6 p.m., Times Square had filled with thousands of protesters. Within minutes, a truck carrying dozens of police barricades stormed down 7th Avenue against traffic. A policeman heaved welded steel gates onto the pavement below while officers on the street lined them three deep in places to keep people from blocking off traffic completely.

A few minutes later two dozen officers mounted on half-ton horses arrived. By 7:15 p.m., a formation of riot police stood in tight formation on West 46th Street. What was supposed to be a peaceful protest began looking more and more like a war zone.

Meanwhile, back in Zuccotti Park, Plattsburgh State sophomore Katylynn Gimma found herself recruited to help make food for protesters. A man approached her, asking if she wanted to help feed the movement and she joined the effort.

“Everybody had this mentality that they were feeding the troops,” Gimma said.

She spent hours with other volunteers preparing 3,500 servings of food, including bean dip, soup, and stir fried rice and vegetables in a soup kitchen called Liberty Café, which the owners lent to protest organizers to use when not in business.

When the cooking was done, they took a break from their hard work to each try a little of what they had just prepared, and reflect on the importance of their role as support for the Occupy Wall Street movement.

The man who organized the volunteers gave a small speech in which he expressed his appreciation for their help and how proud he was with the way the group of strangers had come together.

“None of the groups that had come to help him had gotten so close over such a short span of time,” Gimma said. “He said he had never seen a group of kids work so hard for something.”

To Gimma, time spent working the small Brooklyn soup kitchen was her way of helping, without the glory of cameras and the publicity that the protesters on Wall Street were gaining. To her, they were equally important parts of one central movement.

“These people had all come together to work really, really hard so the front lines could stay strong,” Gimma said. “They understood that not everybody could be there, or should be there.”

Meanwhile, back in Times Square, the scene grew hungry for conflict. Steam poured out of two tall construction tubes and played tricks on cameras’ auto focusing. The hot, humid air added an eerie tone as the scene transpired. Thousands watched from the street below, millions watched on television.

Chants in unison rung between glass and concrete buildings, while officers looked on.

“Let us cross,” the crowd began chanting. Protesters demanded the right to cross 7th Avenue and Broadway on West 46th Street. “It’s our right,” a woman yells. Police remained unconvinced.

The crowd began to surge and the horses were brought to the front lines. One officer kicked his heels into the side of his dark brown vehicle, sending it charging at the mass of people. A woman screamed and fell back into the crowd.

A few minutes later, a man yelled out at a line of officers, a steel barricade jerked up from the ground and into the air like a ship’s hull tearing through a stormy sea. Waves of people pushed and pulled before batons were finally raised. The sound of truncheons could be heard hitting metal, then metal, then flesh.

A man holding an American flag with a peace sign jumped in amidst the chaos. Without saying a word, he stood calmly between the masses. Those with uniforms and those without took deep breaths in unison. A few protesters were pulled away and arrested.

An officer asked through a loudspeaker six times for protesters to move back, trying to restrain his impatience. Protesters followed with their own demands.

“You move back,” the crowd roared.

To the protesters’ surprise, the police obliged this request, electrifying the crowd with raucous energy that spewed out in deafening cheers.

“We love you, we love you,” the protesters cheered.

“Police are the 99 percent,” another chant added.

After three hours of police bullhorn, and protesters using the people’s mic, the negotiations saw progress. After police asked protesters to stay on the sidewalk while they attempt to open lanes for traffic, protesters increased their demands to cross the street.

“If the streets are open, we deserve to cross,” a man yelled to police.

For all their patience, after hours of waiting, the protesters heard good news. They were told they could cross 46th Avenue and Broadway. The crowd erupted with joy.

“Thank you, thank you,” a final chant declared.

Once the protesters were allowed to cross the street, they willingly left Times Square for subway cars, taxi cabs and departed by foot. Some went back to Washington Square Park to celebrate their day, others back to Zuccotti Park to enjoy what was left of Gimma’s rations.

By the end of the showdown in Times Square, Gimma was already surrounded by thousands of other protesters. After finding she had left herself without a voice, she was given a drum and mallets to help lead the crowd.

“This one guy pulled me up onto the podium to have me do the chants, but by then my voice was completely gone, so I just wasn’t making any noise,” Gimma said. “The guy next to me put his hand on my shoulder to stop me, and then he took a drum off of his neck and put the strap around my neck.”

She said the fun time spent in Washington Square Park following the rally was important because it was a celebration of the day’s victories.

“The news said how dozens of people had been arrested, but they didn’t really mention as much the other thousands of people who tried their best to keep this a peaceful protest.” Gimma said. “People just felt accomplished. They’re trying to instill a whole new way of living. They kept it peaceful, and they were celebrating the fact that they were able to do that across thousands of people.”

She said she hopes that eventually through protests both well organized and peaceful, the rest of the world will see that the movement has a real purpose.

“It will, in the long run, have people take us more seriously,” she said. “Instead of just having it be a bunch of kids who are trying to be like, ‘f**k the man.’”

(()videos from the day)))

http://player.vimeo.com/video/30940139?title=0&byline=0&portrait=0

http://vimeo.com/30940139“>Occupy Wall Street: As seen through the eyes of CP’s EIC, Kristofer Fiore

-Kristofer Fiore-