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, 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-

Editor’s note: This post originally appeared on Ryan Rice’s blog.

Washington, DC-The big question on everyone’s mind seems to be, “Did the SEIU try to co-opt the occupy movement?” We all knew the Democratic Machine would attempt this at some point, so was this the first attempt? I think they tried early in the week and got dealt a massive blowback by three hundred occupiers that defiantly marched out of the SEIU camp, held general assemblies to talk out strategy, and aired tons of grievances directly to the organizers.

Obviously I don’t know what’s going on behind the scenes. I assume something dastardly. But I know that the SEIU structure made a noticeable shift in power with our actions. They stopped enforcing wrist bands for food, allowing hungry but unaffiliated people to eat. They worked horizontally with some occupiers to open up two hours of us introducing the concept of a general assembly, consensus, the history of the movement, and all the spirit finger stuff.

We then posed a question to the audience of rank-and-file and participants. I recognized the three organizers in the audience that had been introduced from the meeting the previous day. So, everyone was in attendance, along with an estimated thirty occupiers in a crowd of about one hundred and fifty people. “What ways can the Occupy Movement and Labor further their similar goals?”

Excerpt:

1. Beef up “direct” journalism
2. Mass actions at the capitals of each state combining the spontaneous and organic nature of the Occupy movement with the resources and existing networks of the trade unions, especially the membership
3. Overcome barriers to communication between the two movements; create direct and transparent lines of communication
4. Labor and unions are top-down, bureaucratically-structured organizations while the Occupy movement is horizontal and “leaderless”
5. National Labor Committee for National GA
6. Further outreach to local community members through Local Labor Committees for local Occupy locations
7. Get to know each other better, more dialogue, better planning

We lost a little bit of attendance and ended up taking the most interested parties (the three organizers were not among them) and moving to the international tent. We now had a split group of about fifteen occupiers and fifteen union members. I believe there was a writer for Truthout present and a Mother Jones writer who came in late. Either way, Gia shot video and recorded the discussion.

The conversation was really productive, in my opinion. These workers said the same types of things that people say on their first day visiting an occupation. Most of them were just as radical and excited about the “systemic change” needed. I said something about Occupy co-opting the unions and giving them their teeth back. I said I thought a great marriage would be using the direct and radical action that occupations have spearheaded and inspired with the numbers the unions can mobilize.

 

And Liz, who facilitated in OWS and helped us in our first days here in Occupy LA, made great points about questioning all of the privileges a capitalist society creates. Check that privilege! And stop policing our comrades that take the streets! I’m excited to see the media our people shot.

We exchanged contact info and agreed it would be helpful to continue organizing actions together in a transparent, local-level way. OccupyLA hopped into a ‘SEAL’ action [covert and risque] where we went to protest Speaker of the House John Boehner’s Christmas Party at the Chamber of Commerce. Great target, and it was a combination of clever renditions of Christmas caroling and angry boos when attendees arrived and had to walk around a “99% Carpet” with protesters prostrate underneath. It was a great photo-op, as union events tend to be.

I talked with a few occupiers about the week’s events, and no one could recall a protest against a Democrat. There was a “find your representative” action, but it was fairly neutral in messaging and more educational.

I spent the next hour at a sandwich shop with Occupies Boston, LA, Portland, and travelling occupiers. Strategy, shared meals, and a breakout spoken word session. Reminded me of just how protective we must be of this movement. Of course we will not be co-opted, even though they try. We are all too beautiful and brave to allow that. We all clearly march to the beat of our own autonomous drums, and poetry by fiery revolutionaries reassures me of that.

We walked on over to the Washington Monument for the second ‘national general assembly’ of occupiers and whomever else wanted to attend. There were 19 occupations and 5 organizations (unions, businesses, etc.) It worked more like a giant working group, where facilitation posed 2 questions:

1. What does Phase 2 look like?
2. How do we increase solidarity and cooperation between the occupations?

We shared contact info, and just like how OccupyLA started, we took down emails for a google group. Funny how organic processes can repeat themselves. Nevertheless, just like the first general assembly, it was like a family reunion. We were more determined to talk strategy, and I think the notes show that.

Personally, I feel like the initial backlash to the situation at the National Mall was real, collective, and necessary. And with the events and awareness that happened throughout the rest of the week, I’ll submit that the Occupy Movement passed with flying colors. We were all transparent in our gripes with unions and yet were still open to talking issues and vision of whatever it was that brought each occupier to the streets.

-Ryan Rice-

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published in Slake No. 4. To read all of the stories from that issue, purchase the issue or subscribe at shop.slake.la.

Los Angeles, CA-The air is cool and the ground is damp from a recent downpour when I pitch my tent on one of the few unclaimed patches of dirt on the southwest lawn of Los Angeles City Hall. It’s just two weeks since the movement took root here and this is prime real estate, a couple hundred feet from the steps of the nightly General Assembly of Occupy Los Angeles. I stomp my last stake in the ground as night falls and the lights on the plaza steps come on like some kind of tribal hearth. It’s the nightly call to gather and conspire to change the world. Jimmy, a sixty-year-old schizophrenic I recognize from Skid Row, isn’t going to make it. He’s shuffling to an R&B classic that’s been playing in his head since he left Detroit in ’72.

I’m not going to make it either. I need to mark my territory. So I curl up in my sleeping bag and take stock of my immediate surroundings. Hollywood gangbangers are posted up on one side of me. On the other are Cliff and his mute wife. Cliff says they’re here for the free food. Drum circles carry on endlessly to the south and a tribe of feral teens makes a den directly across from me.

I check my camera gear and doze off. Sometime around 1 a.m., a body topples onto my tent and wakes me from a dreamy sleep. I crawl outside and find myself in the middle of a scene that could have been happening at a warehouse party in Pomona. A mob of twentysomethings from Nowhere, California—white hippie chicks, Venice Beach drifters, cholos, neoanarchists—are drinking, dancing, flirting, and fighting in the walkway in front of my new home. Clearly crystal meth and acid are in the mix. It doesn’t take long to see that Occupy L.A. after dark is the best party in town if you’re a disenfranchised kid on the economic margins.

But it isn’t all fun and games. As the mainstream media keeps its eyes on Oakland and New York, Los Angeles will quietly and steadily become one of the largest and longest-running occupations in the movement. Before its end, Jesse Jackson, Bill Maher, Deepak Chopra, Cornel West, and other name-brand liberals will drop by to pay their respects. The fifty-eight-day occupation will hold numerous teach-ins, workshops, marches, rallies, and acts of community outreach. The Day of Action march on November 17 will bring more than 2,000 protesters into the streets of downtown, and the block party on November 27 will bring thousands more to City Hall. Occupy L.A. pressure will also help stir Councilman Richard Alarcón’s responsible-banking ordinance from its two-year coma.

After a few hours of fitful sleep, I take a stroll around the neoclassical/art deco mash-up that is L.A.’s City Hall. Inside, a weak mayor tries to preside over council-member-run fiefdoms in what often plays like a sloppy political sitcom compared to the one-man show in Michael Bloomberg’s bloodless New York. Around here, consensus is always hard to come by, whether you’re indoors or out.

Walking the grounds, I see how the tent clusters have formed. The music tribe takes the south lawn; the meditation tent and people’s library are on the north; an artist colony of sorts is forming at the northwest corner; some other less identifiable contingencies form on the west. The east is no-man’s land sprinkled with freelancers that include marijuana reformers. Throughout, people are hard at work in places like the media tent, the wellness tent, the welcome tents.

Then there’s Chris, a scrappy young guy from Louisiana who is camping in the Bike Scum tent. Chris is not an activist in the traditional sense. He doesn’t attend the General Assembly. He isn’t on any committees or a member of any affinity groups. He doesn’t go to the teach-ins or work groups, nor does he listen to any of the G.A. guest speakers who come to show solidarity. He’s just out of prison and he’s getting ready for the crackdown.

“I’m here to fight,” he says, twirling a rock wrapped in a long, leather strap. “I love it.”

Journal entry—October 9, 2011
This is a place of cultural violence and bad breath; patrician manners gone missing. This is the revolution. The anarchists, the advocates, the activists, the militants, the socialists, the communists, Skid Row psych patients, off-season burning men, the gangsters, the enraged, the curious, and the middle-class parents who bring their children to the frontline of the American class war for a lesson in the price of democracy.

One week into my occupation and I’ve already met most of the campers, know most of their faces, some of their names, and why they are here. Mario Brito, Occupy L.A.’s liaison with the city, is a Catholic activist who in his teens got involved with the Cesar Chavez-led United Farm Workers movement. Elise Whitaker from the actions committee is a twenty-one-year-old Midwestern transplant with a lot of energy and organizing skills. She seems to magically appear wherever something’s about to jump off. Max Funk is an economist from Coachella who developed a software program he says could route all financial transactions through the U.S. Treasury, eliminating the need for banks. Anthony is an eighteen-year-old from East Los Angeles who has joined the facilitation committee.

Occupy L.A. embraces a policy of inclusion just a block from Skid Row. Among the campers, one can see the human embodiment of the issues that propel the movement: deficits in income, education, housing, health care, and mental health, the prison-industrial complex. The bursting seams of our social fabric have names and faces and are living in tents on City Hall’s lawn.

Like David, a fifteen-year-old SoCal hippie who needs to get his schizophrenic father treated. But if he does, child services will send him back to live with his grandparents in a gang-infested neighborhood. As with a lot of folks these days, David doesn’t feel like he has a lot of good options. For now, pitching a tent at Occupy is just the least-worst one.

Most mornings Juan, a former schoolteacher, can be found sweeping the south plaza at the base of the steps just outside the mayor’s office. His makeshift broom is a large piece of filthy cloth tied to a stick that he drags from one end of the camp to the other. The bank foreclosed on his home, so Occupy L.A. is a temporary safe haven. With his leathery face, rotted teeth, quirky yellow harem pants, and whatever headdress he’s got on that day, Juan routinely disrupts the General Assembly with his ranting and prancing. Juan can be loud, chaotic, annoying, or incredibly entertaining depending on the day. The wheels of direct democracy move too slowly for him and he isn’t afraid to let folks know.

“We need to find a place of our own now,” he says in a thick accent, taking a break from his housekeeping duties. While others fantasize about creating a sustainable living situation in the middle of downtown, Juan, with more real-life experience than most occupiers, understands that the camp’s days are numbered, no matter how much love Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and Police Chief Charlie Beck publicly profess.

Journal entry—October 19
A constant influx of new arrivals includes an increasingly large collective of defiant outliers who take the camp hostage nightly, producing a relentless racket and making it impossible to sleep. Fatigue almost makes me reconsider my commitment to the new revolution, but not really. Truth is, I’m head over heels.

I haven’t seen Santiago all day. My tent neighbor is short in stature but has a big heart. A Salvadoran gangbanger who followed a girl to City Hall, he’s been seduced by the cause. Now he’s part of the internal peacekeeping force and says he’s had a big transformation. I ask his tentmate, the guy with the Sinaloa Cartel tattoo, if he’s seen Santiago. He says Santiago took some guy to Lamp Village, a homeless shelter on San Pedro and Fifth Street, to get cleaned up.

When he gets back, Santiago tells me he’s never heard of the Spanish “Indignant” movement or the magazine Adbusters or any of the many Occupy creation stories. He blazes a bowl of weed and says he did some horrible things after his parents died when he was a teenager, but that was all in the past. Now he’s going to become an activist. “Now I can feel, like, my heart beating. Like, now!” he says. “I wanna help people. I wanna stand up for what I believe in. I wanna take the light back to my hood and shine it on my homies.”

How he’ll make the transition from gangbanger to activist is unclear, even to him, but he says he doesn’t care. He’s twenty-three. “It’s like, fuck … what the fuck else am I doing? Shit. There is no place else. This is it. That’s obvious.”

For these kids, protest is the thing, the Occu-party is just a perk. Lacking education and experience with formal conventions, they express themselves and support the movement with what they have—their bodies. You can almost feel them sucking in the positive reinforcement like oxygen, or weed.

Later that night, as the General Assembly kicks off, I sit on the plaza steps with Temper Goldie, a delightfully aggro, cherub-faced young woman from San Diego. Goldie has HIV, hep C, and no medical insurance. She says she was pregnant with twins when the San Diego police shot and killed her first husband last year. I don’t ask why. She says she lost the babies. She’s also lost her patience with the chaos at the L.A. occupation and is heading for Oakland tomorrow. I guess she prefers a different kind of drama.

Announcements about upcoming actions and other business are aired, then proposals, including one about adopting a set of community norms so we can all get a good night’s sleep.

Fat chance. Around midnight, a band with a portable P.A. system powers up in a tent cluster across from me and blasts music till dawn. A hundred hipsters show up and party down. The scene could have easily been happening at the Dragonfly on Santa Monica Boulevard on any Saturday night. The next day the wellness tent is out of condoms.

Journal entry—October 26
Kurtz upriver. I’m now three weeks in a tent and haven’t seen a mirror in days. I’m not exactly sure who people are looking at when I talk to them. Occupy L.A. is a time-release love drug, an ecstasy-and-coke cocktail with a Demerol garnish. She comes on slow and then opens you up like a randy teenager at a sixties peace rally. The morning after is another story altogether.

The occupation of City Hall is just shy of one month old. I get up early and head to Starbucks in Little Tokyo, a block east of City Hall. I haven’t been out of the camp for days and can’t stomach the stench of the few Porta Potties. On the way back to camp, I run into Commander Andrew Smith near the plaza’s south steps. Smith has been one of my LAPD sources for years, and a cover story I did on him for the L.A. Weekly in 2005 when he was captain at Central Division didn’t hurt his career. Now Smith is in charge of media relations and community affairs and is LAPD’s public face vis a vis the occupation. Smith strolls the plaza in his starched blues with a confident ease.

He tells me the department respects people’s right to protest. He reminds me that Chief Beck came up through the ranks during Rodney King and Rampart. As Smith puts it, the department wants to show that “this is not Daryl Gates’s LAPD.”

It’s not just the LAPD that wants to put its best foot forward. Activists from around the city have been spring loaded, waiting for an opportunity like this. So far, it’s symbiosis. L.A. gets to occupy in peace and the police get to show how far they’ve come since Rampart or even the MacArthur Park May Day melee in 2007.

I run into Julia Wallace in the plaza at dusk on November 3. She is gearing up for the anti-police-brutality march in solidarity with Occupy Oakland, which has been taking a beating from the cops. A social activist from Inglewood, Wallace is a member of a revolutionary organization called SU/LU (Struggles United/Luchas Unidas). She and her twin sister can often be found riding the bullhorn at the frontlines of most marches.

The plan is for an unpermitted march through the streets of the financial district. It is defiant by design. Unlike the other marches, the cops haven’t been notified. People from Occupy Oakland are here to support the protest. The crowd is a little rougher around the edges and darker in hue than the typical Occupy L.A. Not that Occupy L.A. is an Anglo affair. By my estimate it’s about 40 percent white, 35 percent Latino, and 20 percent black, with a mix of other ethnicities making up the rest. It’s also overwhelmingly male.

“We have the power! We have the numbers! There’s no amount of helicopters that can change that! Organize, occupy, strike, power!” Julia leads the charge. You can almost feel the heat rising from the pavement under the feet of 400-plus marching from City Hall to the financial district. No one is intimidated by the police officers clocking the procession. The undercurrent of rage is palpable.

Thirty minutes into the march, cops appear in large numbers. Young officers, looking like they might be questioning which side they should be on, white knuckle factory-fresh batons. Someone asks, “Why would you feel like a criminal for expressing your First Amendment rights on public property?”

Journal entry—November 3
Tonight’s march against police violence was ecstatic. The power of the people is intoxicating. My heart was banging so hard I thought it would split my ribs. I met an old friend from the seventies in the streets of L.A. tonight—me. A defiance that I’d put into a box sometime in the eighties is reasserting itself. The world is unhinging from the rusty moorings of economic, political, and corporate oppression.

While Oakland gets ready to rumble and New York is about to get evicted, Occupy L.A. more or less does what Los Angeles does—gets shit done. Occupy L.A. will sanction more than sixty actions in fifty-eight days through an ad hoc network of committees, subcommittees, affinity groups, and occupiers holding teach-ins, workshops, marches, and rallies. There will be solidarity marches, bank transfer days, Citizens United protests, a National Action Day march with the Service Employees International Union and Good Jobs L.A., and regular appearances by high-profile progressives on the City Hall stairs. For the most part, the atmosphere remains festive and serious, accommodating but not overly indulgent.

Things are going well. Occupy L.A. is producing results. You can still bring your kids to the plaza and have a good time at the revolution, as long as you don’t let them wander out of sight. Arrests are still an anomaly.

The we-can-all-get-along vibe between the cops and the camp starts to shift when a group of fifty or so occupiers join a flash mob at the Bank of America branch on Seventh and Figueroa. There, they confront customers, chanting, “Bank of America, bad for America.” Some protesters plan to pitch a tent near the entrance. A young black guy in a mask lays down his sleeping bag and chants through a bullhorn, “Don’t forget your inner child.”

The whole action is more stunt than hostile confrontation. But when the cops show up, it is with an old-school confrontational stance. Lieutenant Paul Vernon, Central Division head of detectives, snarls, “We don’t owe you anything. We’re not doing First Amendment gestures here.”

Meanwhile, turns out Mayor Villaraigosa has been on the phone with other mayors trying to reconcile the desire to appear down with the cause with the need to appear in control of the situation. After the first Oakland clampdown, Mayor Jean Quan admits to participating in a strategy call with the mayors of seventeen other occupied cities. The crackdowns in Oakland, New York, Portland, Seattle, and Atlanta play out similarly: an overwhelming show of force, mass arrests, night-time mobilizations, the use of nonlethal projectiles, pepper spray, sound cannons, tear gas, and clubs. Los Angeles holds out, even though Villaraigosa, as president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, is obviously in the loop.

Finally, November 24, Thanksgiving, cops post signs announcing that City Hall grounds will be closed at 10:30 p.m. nightly. As a compromise, the city offers Occupy an office space across the street and a patch to pitch tents at an urban farm in South Los Angeles. It feels like a weak attempt to retain some moral high ground and official affinity with the 99 percent. The gesture is refused and a press conference is scheduled for the next day.

As word circulates that the Occupy camp is getting the boot, some pack up and some climb into trees. Others prepare for violent confrontation. Santiago helps me pack up my tent. He is already thinking about moving his to the next occupation, wherever that may be.

All the usual suspects are gathered for the Friday press conference at the third-floor conference room in City Hall. Villaraigosa stands at the podium with Chief Beck at his side. Network news personalities, local affiliate reporters, and print media journalists wait patiently to be spoon fed the official line. Throughout, the media has all but refused to take the movement seriously, opting instead for lazy condescension, calling it an “endless slumber party.”

When an Occupy activist interrupts the show to read from the General Assembly minutes rejecting the city’s relocation proposal, the journalists shush him. Villaraigosa cites health violations as the reason for the eviction just moments before admitting that Department of Health has found no actual violations. The bobbleheads don’t register the inconsistency. A news babe from KTLA asks if there will be special eviction procedures for Occu-pets.

The mayor declares the 500 tents will have to vacate City Hall Park by 12:01 a.m. on the twenty-eighth. The announcement’s timing, in the vacuum of a postholiday Friday afternoon, all but ensures it won’t be contested in court. In response, the G.A. sanctions a block party for Sunday, November 27, to protest the eviction. Two thousand gather in the plaza for the assembly and the block party floods the streets until midnight. All the TV crews show up. Santiago is elated as theLAPD show up in riot gear and parade like peacocks before surprisingly backing off.

Journal entry—November 25
Quote of the day: Two young homies in hoodies enter camp from Main Street as Esai Morales is singing with a band on the south steps. “Can we get some Adele up in this bitch?” Occupy L.A. is not without humor. It just feels that way sometimes.

Monday morning, the City Hall lawn is like an empty battlefield. A few die-hards still tweaking from the block party linger in the plaza. It would have been the perfect time to raze the Occupy village, but perhaps the timing lacked drama, or news coverage. An eerie détente settles in as the movement and police regroup.

By Tuesday evening, though, a thousand people are back at the plaza steps for the General Assembly. Up-to-the-minute tweets have everyone alerted that the LAPD is staging at Dodger Stadium. News trucks line the streets; the media is fully present and sufficiently caffeinated. A pretty-boy newscaster from KTLA has a gas mask hanging from his belt. CNN tries to pull up next to City Hall, but protesters block its path and kick the van. Cops have to escort the van away. It’s CNN’s first Occupy L.A. appearance.

Journal entry—November 30
If you flatten one tent, ten more will reappear.

At 12:15 a.m., Wednesday, November 30, 500 riot-gear-clad police burst through City Hall doors and spill into the camp, passing under the Cicero quote etched in the building above the south plaza steps: He that violates his oath profanes the divinity of faith itself. Another thousand police broach the camp’s perimeter, where hundreds of occupiers link arms, chanting, “We are peaceful.”

Cops with billy clubs chase hundreds through the streets. The bomb squad, the arson unit, and cops in hazmat suits are all on the scene. The police even break out that little dune buggy thing not seen in public since the Lakers championship riot back in 2009.

Helicopter searchlights and news-crew spotlights illuminate the action. A pool of reporters surrounded by police guards watches the spectacle. The mayor stands near the patch where I’ve pitched my tent for the past two months. He wears an enigmatic grin and an LAPD windbreaker. Commander Smith and other officials are caught in the frenzy, unavailable for comment beyond what everyone already knows: it’s closing time.

After weeks serving on Occupy’s action committee, Elise Whitaker is terrified as she links arms with others in the middle of the plaza. Whitaker is arrested and will spend three days in jail, including fourteen hours in solitary confinement after protesting the treatment of another prisoner. Police will make 300 arrests. Among them is an eighty-five-year-old woman who will be forced to urinate in a plastic bag while she’s detained.

Occupiers who aren’t arrested regroup at La Placita Olvera across from Union Station. A medical tent is up and ready, but so far there are no injuries. The buzz of having played cat and mouse through the streets of downtown with the police is undeniable. It feels like rebellion.

At 5 a.m., I walk with Santiago through the aftermath. The camp is leveled. Construction crews put down concrete barriers and chain-link fencing. City Hall looks more like a prison yard than a symbol of public service.

“This is like the future of tomorrow, today, at City Hall,” says Santiago with the particular metaphorical panache of a young cholo. “And they, like, brought the bomb squad? Shit.”

Journal entry—December 1
Tents are vortexes of accelerated transformation. My place on the Westside, far from the physical nexus of Occupy, is not a sanctuary anymore. Mailbox full of bills and empty of checks. Whatever doesn’t feel real is falling away like a dried scab. Convictions that had been replaced with counterfeit aspirations are resurfacing. Today, I am packing up everything that I need. It isn’t much. Getting rid of everything that isn’t essential. I’m leaving the house I’ve been occupying for the past four years.

A few weeks after the eviction, Santiago calls from county jail. He was popped on a weapons charge but let out after three days. I guess we can’t afford to keep people locked up indefinitely anymore. I pick him up across from Union Station, where he was still occupying a tent. We go to Philippe’s. He likes the 9-cent coffee (soon to be 45 cents).

Santiago’s posteviction transformation, like my own, is not going to be easy. But he’s sticking with it. He’s been to almost every Occupy action since the encampment was shut down, including the Bank of America foreclosure protests the week after the eviction and Occupy the Port in Long Beach on December 12. He went to protest public education cuts and rising tuition at the University of California regents meeting at UC Riverside on January 19. If he can find a ride, and isn’t in jail, he’ll probably occupy Chicago on May 1, when the G8 and NATO hold summits. He definitely won’t want to miss the DNC in Charlotte in September 3. He’s now a foot soldier in the class war.

- Sam Slovik -

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-

-Anonymous-