Photo by John Jack Anderson.

Editor’s note: This story originally appeared on the author’s Facebook and at the Occupy Austin website.

Austin, TX-On Thursday, August 9, I took my two children, ages 4 and 7, to an Occupy Austin event called “Chalkupy the World.” Many other cities around the country, and even abroad, participated in this event. I’ve been to a few Occupy events, support the methods and messages of Occupy, and am somewhat active in one of the Occupy groups that does work dealing with the local school district. The Chalkupy event was supposed to be a gathering of people using sidewalk chalk to express, well, anything really, but mostly dissent or disenchantment with the way things in our country have evolved to either favor the ultra-wealthy or punish the poor, middleclass, marginalized, or otherwise “different” people.

I anticipated that this was going to be a small event, and one that would allow me to show my support of the Occupy movement while also letting my children participate, or at least keep them occupied. They like chalk; they like to draw. I wasn’t really expecting police intervention. I’m a responsible mother; I would never knowingly put my children in harm’s way. I thought, particularly in Austin, this event would be reasonably innocuous. But I’m also responsible enough to want to teach my children to participate in the citizenry, to stand up for what they believe in. I can’t say I’m altogether surprised at what happened, which is really a sad comment on our society.

I took my children because I thought it was an appropriate place for children to participate in coming together, in citizens who don’t know each other meeting in person, in public space…in space that is for the public. I think it’s worth mentioning, too, that the day before, I had just read William F. Buckley Jr.’s essay “Why Don’t We Complain?” Writing in 1960, the famous conservative commenter remarked on how much people at the time were willing sit back without remark and endure unreasonable situations. He explains that it’s sometimes complex, that there are often hidden reasons for why some things are the way they are. But his essay challenged me. And on August 9, I was feeling a duty to myself and my country to speak up for things that seem unjust. If I didn’t, who would? How would my children learn to speak out against injustice?

We had picked up two packages of giant-sized sidewalk chalk earlier in the afternoon. They were the biggest chalk sticks I had ever seen, and I found their cartoonish proportions a little humorous. Two sticks in each pack. Two sticks for each child. I knew there would be more chalk waiting at the event, but it’s always good to come prepared. As we drove to the event, I reminded my children they could draw anything they wanted. I want my kids to participate in the public sphere, but I don’t want to be too heavy handed in what messages they feel forced to repeat. They will change their minds about many issues many times as they grow. I don’t think I need to force them to accept any point of view right now. I did tell them, though, that they might want to think for a minute about one thing they thought would help make the world a better place. My younger child thought about rain. My older child mentioned recycling. I told them that would be great, and that they could draw as many pictures as they liked.

When we arrived, there were about 10 Occupiers on the southwest corner of 11th and Congress, just across the street from the Capitol, where Occupiers had been warned not to use chalk. But we were all on public property on this corner. We noted the large box of sidewalk chalk on the bus stop bench. It had many more color options available. So both of the children picked out a couple of colors. My son, my older child, set in on his design. He decided that drawing the earth in a “recycling triangle” would be good. My daughter started drawing butterflies. She’s just recently developed the skill of representation, so her drawings are actually starting to look like something. I wrote a message about how I would be better off financially had I never decided to pursue graduate studies.

This is true, by the way. I would have been earning a middle class income from the time I graduated college in 1997 through today. I wouldn’t have any debt. In fact, in my one year working in a corporate office after I earned my bachelor degree, I saved over $7000 dollars. I’m pretty thrifty with money. I would not have had to take out student loans (all subsidized), and I wouldn’t have had to live on the approximately $800 monthly most graduate assistants make. Of course, I would not have become more educated about history, philosophy, justice, and education. It makes a difference in your perspective. It’s important to remember that education is not a commodity. I don’t owe money for student loans because I wanted a boat or an expensive purse. I owe money because I wanted to be an educated citizen. I thought that was a responsible decision. I’m still waiting for someone to tell me it would have been more responsible to keep my office job and keep my mouth shut.

The adults had already noticed the group of state troopers gathering across the street in front of the Capitol. Apparently, one was also hiding in a car across Congress. Whatever the case or the number of eyes, four troopers crossed 11th Street over to our corner. They promptly arrested two adults who had been chalking. One of the arrested chalkupiers was wearing a mask covering his face. When my children and I first arrived, they asked about the mask. I simply explained that some people like to be private. They accepted this answer without further inquiry. Indeed, children are often at ease when their parents or role models help make sense of the world for them and are honest with them about what they see. That’s not always a very easy task. Taking a moment to consider one’s response and how it will potentially frame the world for children does take a little more effort at times, but I’d rather not go around dividing the world up into “people like us” and “people not like us” for my children. I imagine there are parents who would have explained that the young man with a mask was just weird, wanted attention, thought highly of himself, whatever excuse they could use to make sure that their children understood that he was “different” and that “we” don’t act like that.

When the troopers came to our chalking area, my children were frightened. My son began to cry. He’s pretty sensitive, but very logical. My daughter feigned crying to be like her big brother. She’s big on drama and intensity. She has asked me to recount the story of the time I stepped on a nail when I was 12 years old a thousand times, but she’s not given to crying, unless someone else has tried to pick out her outfit for the day. Without any warning, the troopers arrested two chalkupiers. I approached one of the arresting officers and politely asked if he could help me understand why two people were being arrested. He deferred to the other who explained that chalking public property was considered criminal mischief. I asked if it was explicit in the penal code, if the code was specific in naming the use chalk on public property as criminal mischief. He explained that no, but it could be considered such.

Let us remember, too, that a number of courts have upheld citizens’ use of chalk as a form of expression. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals wrote, “No reasonable person could think that writing with chalk could damage a sidewalk.” (Mackinney v. Nielsen 69 F.3d 1002, 1995). To make this absolutely clear, in our country, we have freedom of speech to protect unpopular speech. This does not, however, protect use of dangerous or slanderous speech. We all know that we may not use words to threaten another or incite violence. That kind of speech is not protected. Similarly, had there been threatening messages or even obscene drawings, that use of chalk might reasonably be considered mischievous. But there were no such messages or drawings, only messages of dissent and drawings of the earth and butterflies.

After the troopers took the arrestees across the street, I calmly gathered my children and started toward the car. I certainly did not want to keep them in a place where they might be subject to violence or see their mother arrested for chalking. They were both teary. We walked for a minute. Then, I literally asked my children to stop for a moment while I thought. As a parent, you really have to do this sometimes. Sometimes, you have to stop and figure out what is best. If we left at that moment, what lesson were they going to learn? What meaning would they make of what just happened? Of course we were going to be discussing this at length; that goes without saying. But what would they take away from this event if, having told them it was not right for the police to arrest those two people, I simply walked away, too. I knew, already, I wasn’t going to go back to the chalking corner. So I simply turned around, crossed 11th Street to the Capitol, and I told my children I wanted to talk to the troopers, to see if I could understand what was going on.

Now, I’m an adult who (not that it’s anybody’s business) has never been arrested. And that might even be a damning statement against me, depending on who you’re asking. Because, without doubt, there is injustice in our country. We have one of the highest rates of childhood poverty in the “developed” world; we have the least amount of access to health care in the “developed” world; we don’t let consenting adults of the same sex enjoy basic civil liberties; we allow bankers who stole millions of dollars to continue their practices without so much as an investigation. These are surely injustices. Don’t get me wrong, I am thankful we live in a country where women are allowed to obtain an education; I am thankful our country attempts to educate every child, whether poor or rich; I am thankful for many things. But that does not absolve me from my duty to make this country better for the vast majority of people. What I’m stalling in admitting here is that talking to police makes me nervous. Which is a shame. At any rate, I had an example to set for my children. Children should learn to speak respectfully to officers of the law; they should be willing to approach one if it seems that something wrong has happened. And as a mother, I honestly did not want to walk away from this with children frightened of a police officer who might be trying to help them if they were lost or if there were an emergency such as a fire.

The three of us walked up to two troopers standing in front of one of the gates in front of the Capitol. Honestly not knowing protocol, I extended my hand to the trooper closest to me and said, “Hi, I’m Hillary Procknow.” Her arms remained around her chest. I fumblingly said, “Oh, I guess you’re not allowed to do that.” I explained to her very politely that I did not understand why two people had been arrested and that I was indeed concerned because my children were now afraid of police. “What,” I asked, “can you help me understand to explain to my children that they do not need to be afraid of the police.” She repeated what the other officer had said about chalk and criminal mischief. I reminded her that chalk is not explicitly mentioned as mischief. She said that just like free speech, if a citizen is offended by what someone says (or chalks) an officer can tell the person to stop or arrest them. No trooper had explained that a citizen had complained. I replied, “I’m offended by what a lot of people say, but that doesn’t mean I want them to be arrested.” In any case, when I pressed her about what I should tell my children about their fear of police, she recommended that I go home and have a discussion about how it’s wrong to damage public property, and that it was going to take tax payer money to remove the chalk. I offered to go home and get rags and buckets. She said it wouldn’t make a difference. Of course, we did go home and have a discussion. I did tell my children not to be afraid of police. (We are not people of color, so it’s a lot easier for me to say this to my children than it is for others. If we had dark skin, this particular issue would have been much more complex. And that conversation will come, too.) But, I also told them that our country is not perfect. Just like at home, we all have to pitch in.

Many people wonder, I’m sure, what chalking a sidewalk does to make this country better. I want to be clear on this. People coming together, in public, to express themselves is something that makes the country better. I don’t mean this to apply to any particular political persuasion (and, in fact, Occupy has a firm stance on its resistance to embrace any particular party). When people meet each other, disagree, agree, argue with civility, see each other’s faces, learn to be in a public space and tolerate the presence of others, important things happen, and not necessarily or even mostly sweeping political change. The country learns what it looks like when people participate, when people recognize each other as human. The country learns what it looks like when people decide for themselves to think beyond political platforms and party lines, and come together to imagine new possibilities that simply are not available on a ballot coming to you in November.

Jane Addams, one of the great educators in our country’s history, who fought for the rights of poor and women, for sanitary conditions for immigrants all over Chicago, had some reservation about women’s suffrage, which she did fight for. Why? Because she knew in the 1910s what we have witnessed over the past 100 years: when people have the right to vote, it’s all too easy to dismiss the other important civic obligations they have. Did I vote this season? Yes? Check. Done with my responsibilities. When you feel your obligations are limited to a multiple choice form once or twice a year (if you’re a very conscientious voter), you have failed to understand every other obligation to your country, your fellow citizens, your neighborhood, your local public school, the poor, the sick, the marginalized. Being in public and expressing in public are ways to make this country better. Not the only ways, certainly. If I should have known better than to bring children to a public display of dissent, then I truly hope people will come out in public and make the public a safe place for all of us to be.

The two arrested Occupiers were charged with Class C misdemeanors. Apparently the charges may be increased to Class B. Class B misdemeanor charges result when the damage done costs between $50 and $500 to remedy. The cost of erasing dissent, in this case of erasing chalk from a public sidewalk, will cost tax payers less than $500. The cost of erasing dissent, by making the country’s citizens fearful of participating in a robust public sphere, by making them fearful of coming together, by making its children afraid to be with others and afraid of the police, will be paid for generations to come.

Epilogue

It rained the next day.

-Hillary Procknow, PhD-

Editor’s note: This is the final installment of a 14 part series of excerpts from Jim Gober’s book titled “Deep in the Heart of Occupy Austin.”

“The illusion of freedom [in America] will continue as long as it’s profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theater.” Frank Zappa

Today was the Saturday before Halloween and we planned a 4 pm march to the capitol
building that continued down dirty 6th street then back to the plaza. As people
gathered about the plaza in preparation for the march, I went around and talked to
my friends I met along the way. Only the most clueless could not smell the coming
fascist assault. I told my young friend Kendall how proud I was of him and all he’s
learned, I thanked Carlos for his sense of humor and unbelievable spirit along the
way, I talked to Larry and hoped he someday finds the money he needs for his dream
of a veterans’ shelter for the homeless, and then I spotted Brighton, standing on
the curb holding a protest sign. Young beautiful peaceful Brighton, who broke up the
argument between the drunken instigator and me weeks before, who had put his soul
into the movement, and now stood there for the last time, his eyes still aglow with
the optimism of a young person who believes all you need is to be on the right side
of the argument, and you will win in this world. I told Brighton how impressed I was
with his bravery and dedication and how much I admired him and all his hard work. My
heart was so full, and the pain was so great, I began to cry unashamed because these
were my people, my friends, and my family, and I loved them. And with each of these
people I talked to, I asked, “How long do you think we have?” And the answer was the
same. Hours.

The march began and went off without a hitch, but when we made the turn down dirty
6th, I noticed the police had abandoned us and were hot-footing it back to the
plaza. It was then I knew the end of the movement as we knew it was nigh. When we
arrived back at the plaza our belongings were being rifled through and piled
willy-nilly to anger and disorient us. As the sun set, the plaza seemed to groan in
pain as rumors flew like leaves in the fall breeze and people confusedly planned
their next move. There were a few speeches to rally the troops, but most were
hunkering down waiting for the impending invasion. The murmurings of the occupiers
began to sound like a family praying over a dying relative. We were just waiting for
the police to come and pull the plug.

About 10 pm, the blue monsters began massing in the parking garage beneath the city
hall and another group formed a solid line along the western side of the plaza. You
could walk right up to the line, get inches from their face and look deep into their
eyes. It was breathtaking to see the entire history of the world’s oppression
encapsulated in their emotionless orbs. The steady stream of Halloween revelers that
passed through our camp on the way to the bars downtown appeared as grotesques while
we awaited our execution. As another line of police formed on the east side of the
plaza, I looked at the protesters. I watched fear turn to courage, then courage to
solidarity. I can only hope one day everyone experiences the part of the human
condition when everyone sticks together armed with only their faith, while
surrounded by the enemy armed with guns, tasers, mace, and batons ready to hurt,
imprison or possibly kill them. And to see all the brave women in the mix was
unbelievable. It was a deeply religious experience. I witnessed the shimmering
beauty of God in all its glory. Once people walk into this realm, they will not go
back until justice is served. Maybe, that is what the fascists are really afraid of.
That once we form the solidarity only seen in a battlefield, solidarity so strong
even death cannot destroy it, the fascists will be doomed. Fear not, my brothers and
sisters, for we have seen the light and the light cannot be extinguished by the dark
blue uniforms of the fascist machine.

There were a few more discussions on whether to move the food table as requested in
the rules passed out by the Police Chief the day before, but after a while it was
obvious the food table was going to be our Raison D’être and wasn’t going anywhere.
There was a short standoff about midnight as the pigs got into a “V” formation, then
at 12:30, they moved in from both the east and west sides of the plaza. The cries
and sound of breaking hearts was so deafening you had to cover your ears so it
wouldn’t overwhelm your sense of judgment and make you attack the pigs with your
fists, feet or whatever weapon you could find. Our core supporters and leaders
locked arms around the food table, but they were quickly subdued and bound with
plastic handcuffs. “Why?” everyone asked. “Why are you doing this to us?” There were
cries of “Shame” and “The whole world is watching,” but the fascists were
undeterred. As the table was dismantled and carried away, the pigs walked into the
crowd and grabbed people they had identified as leaders of the movement weeks
before, who were not doing anything but what the rules had told them to do. When it
was over, 18 of our people were taken down. About 3 hours later, the power washing
crew came in fronted by a another police line that grabbed 20 more people who either
refused to move or were still disoriented from the first raid. By then, I had
already moved on to take a walk and cool off. The plaza was not a place to be
another minute for someone with my temper. And the sight of seeing people I loved
being demoralized and carried away because a bunch of fascist pigs decided a picnic
table should be over here instead of over there made me nauseous.

The ridiculous display of overwhelming might used to wrest a picnic table from a
bunch of rag-tag folks who are trying to tell the world, “This is what democracy
looks like,” kept playing over and over in my head, and although it was about 2:00
a.m. and the bars were closing, I decided to stroll down dirty 6th street to lose my
thoughts in the Halloween celebration. What I saw was shocking. When I entered dirty
6th from Congress Avenue, the entire street was completely occupied with stumbling
drunks and humans behaving at their worst. I saw indecent exposure, public
urination, fighting, slick piles of pink, orange and green vomit, people treating
each other terribly, plenty of illegal drug use and needed to only glance down an
alleyway to see a sex act performed by two men in the wide open. It was all there
and ignored by mounted police whose tongues were hanging out as they looked only at
the women’s skimpy Halloween costumes. As I walked through the crowd, I laughed
openly and loudly while tears ran down my face. Was this a dream? Did I just witness
100 policeman destroy a tiny group of committed sober adults who were making a
statement about the theft of our country from the powerful fascist machine by
arresting them over an 8 by 2 foot food table? Did I just walk five blocks east and
see a hundred thousand people doing everything we were accused of, and getting away
with it, because their mission was to get intoxicated and find somebody to fuck
while pissing and vomiting all over everything? Oh that’s right-they were spending
lots and lots of money. And when you spend lots of money you get away with
everything-even the murder of thousands of innocent people. So here was the bare
truth in all its painful glory. This is what we’ve become. This is how America
really works. An old food table used to feed the poor and unarmed equals bad.
Reprehensible behavior while you spend lots of money equals good. And if it takes a
billy club to beat that idea into your head, so be it. This is America God damn it
and that is how it operates. Any questions?

I went back to the plaza and tried to sleep between a boulder and the bricks of the
city hall. I could hear the voices of lonely men and abandoned women as they
gathered under street lights somewhere in the distance trying to make a final deal
before dawn. Zero-eyed people rolling on ecstasy or geeking on stimulants walked by
looking deep into my eyes to see if I had anything to offer. I had a fitful sleep
and was up as soon as I saw the first sign of dawn. I rolled a cigarette, and
watched life begin to stir among the tattered battle scene as the sun rose over the
plaza. The survivors began rebuilding the camp straight away, but this time it had
an air of Austin funkiness, because everything was broken and had to be patched
together. Unfortunately, most of the core supporters and strategists of Occupy
Austin were now not only in jail, but banned from the plaza for at least a year.
While this was an unmitigated setback for the Austin occupation, it gives others the
chance to step up and hopefully get the movement going in another direction. As I
walked around the plaza asking questions about the state of affairs, you could see
many in shock from what happened the previous night, but also plenty of street
people waiting around for a cigarette or slice of pizza to arrive, oblivious to the
disaster that had befallen our camp.

I stood back and looked at the remaining occupiers. What I saw was many of the bums
that gave us a bad name in the first place, who avoided jail by just laying there,
the same way they avoided everything else in life, and many of the people who worked
very hard to make the movement work, but were now packing things up and milling
around waiting for rides to somewhere-anywhere but the plaza. By mid-morning, the
plaza had the look of a busy bus station or the last day of summer camp, where
everyone is saying farewell and waiting for the winds of fate to scatter them hither
and yon.

By noon, the police presence was once again gaining steam. It occurred to me the
protesters inhabiting the camps throughout the US, who are now completely surrounded
by uniformed fascists, have actually built their own prisons in which they will
suffer mightily in the coming months. Since I am interested in fund-raising and
public relations for the group, I asked around and finally found someone who might
know a little about the financial side of the movement. I asked her where the money
we raised would best be spent. She said to get more food and water for the occupiers
at the plaza. At first I thought, you have to be kidding me? Aren’t we done here?
Then I thought, yeah, we can rebuild, and we will rebuild. Are we going to fail
because the fascists thought we would go away because they stole a broken down food
table? Hell, no.

Yes, we all felt like frogs in a cauldron, where the fire was turned up so slowly we
didn’t know we were cooked until it was too late. But we learned about the
psychological control of an angry mob by the fascists, and as the saying goes, “We
won’t be fooled again.” But we have a choice; we can fight them like dogs, or work
within a system that unfortunately favors them. But as I said before, we must be
smart enough to take the fight to them on their own turf. We sat in the plaza for
four weeks and allowed the fascists to bring the fight to us, while we became an
easy target for their horrid and demeaning tactics. They have everything they need
on their side to keep us under their thumb, we know that. So we have to work smarter
and be tougher in order to win this fight. At this point we have two choices, go to
jail, or freeze to death, of which neither of those am I interested. But I am very
interested in promoting the core beliefs of the occupation movement and will never
stop fighting for what I strongly believe. And if some of our brothers and sisters
want to tough it out on the plaza until we see change, then I will support them to
the end. But myself, I am going to work on getting somebody with money involved in
the movement so we are no longer a broke-ass joke. And if that somebody happens to
be a liberal billionaire, so be it. When it comes to beating or pepper-spraying
billionaires, the fascists tend to freeze up. They are funny that way.

That Sunday afternoon, Police Chief Acevedo, true to his passive-aggressive form of
mind-fucking, made a statement quoting Gandhi and MLK before releasing the
protesters, who cannot reenter the plaza for two years. I went with a small group of
angry and passionate survivors marching from the plaza to the police station to
welcome the prisoner release, but most folks didn’t want anything to do with the
cops, and especially didn’t want to go stand around the police station. The release
was still an emotional moment for those who went. While I recognized some of the
folks being released, some of them must have shown up Saturday night for no other
reason but to create chaos and get arrested, because they were completely new faces,
to me anyway. Meanwhile, back at the plaza, the police presence had become
overpowering. By Sunday night they outnumbered the remaining protesters 2 to 1.

I thought about the speech I wanted to give on day one, when I wanted so badly to
express my thoughts and exercise my freedom of speech in a public plaza to a group
of like-minded people hungry for change. Now I know, if I stood in that plaza right
now and gave that speech, in which I implored the police to stand with us instead of
against us, I would be immediately arrested, and indeed there was an arrest of a
young man who attempted a rallying speech in the late afternoon. Over 5000 people
across the country now have police records from this nationwide protest, and not one
of the war criminals, war profiteers, investment banks CEO’s or hedge fund managers
that caused the financial collapse in this country and the deaths of hundreds of
thousands of people have gone to jail. Obviously, this is a fascist police state we
are now living in. To some of us, it’s plain as the nose on our face, while others
just don’t “have time to think about these things.” Or maybe they don’t understand
what freedom of speech means. It is the ignorant people who taunt and laugh at those
attempting to exercise one of the basic tenets of our democracy that frighten me the
most. While they talk about our troops overseas fighting for our freedom, they don’t
have the slightest clue what freedom really is because they are imprisoned by the
straight-jacket of fascism and corporatism.

I thought back on Saturday’s march to the Capitol, before the camp was raided. While
marching down Congress Avenue, I caught up with my friend Carmen, who I met on the
island only a few weeks before. When I spotted her, she was trying to manage two
large cardboard signs while clutching a list of protest chants she had written in
blue ink on a scrap of folded notebook paper. They read, “Whose water? Our water!
Whose food? Our food! Whose land? Our land! Are we afraid? Nooooooooo, we are not
afraid.” She was trying to get the few protesters at the back of the line to go
along with them, but was frustrated because her small voice, with its beautiful
Puerto Rican accent, was not being heard, and the tall folks in front of her, many
in Halloween costumes, had relegated her to the back of the line.

I hollered, “Carmen!” and she was happy to see me and thanked me for the profile I
had written about her on my blog. I asked her what was going on and she explained
her disappointment that she couldn’t get anyone to chant her demands. So I took a
look at them, gave her a big smile, and then Carmen and I chanted in the loudest
voice we could muster, “Whose water? Our water! Whose food? Our food! Whose land?
Our land! Are we afraid? Nooooooooo, we are not afraid!” We chanted the lines over
and over and louder and louder and let the voice of freedom ring out and echo
against the glass and granite of the downtown buildings. Our cadence rang down the
hollow side streets and the alleyways where the downtrodden sleep and newspapers
blow on cold and lonely blue-gray dawns. It rang over the capitol building, where
the Lady of Liberty looks over manicured avenues where the mentally ill wander
aimlessly in search of help, and it rang over the din of expensive cars and city
buses filled with those too blind to see. It was freedom ringing and it was ringing
for us, for you and for all the folks in this fight who are jailed, shot,
humiliated, tasered, beaten and maced because, like Carmen chanted, “Are we afraid?
Nooooooo, we are not afraid.”

At one point, Carmen was confident enough to stand in front of a group of bewildered
diners sitting at a sidewalk cafe while she chanted her list of demands. I was
immensely proud of her. After we made it a few blocks, and were out of breath from
exercising our First Amendment rights to such an extent, Carmen looked at me with
her beautiful face so full of life, kindness and excitement. The bright autumn
afternoon sun slanting into her exquisite brown skin made a tear in the corner of
her eye glint like the most spectacular topaz ever seen. She joyfully exclaimed,
“Boy, did that make me feel good! Thank you, Jim!” And I hugged the tiny fragile
body of this beautiful woman, whose only mission on earth is to express love for her
fellow man, and replied, “Thank you, Carmen.”

Afterthoughts:

What you just read was a true first-person account of the birth of the occupy
movement in Austin, Texas. Although it flows in fits and starts, the movement is by
no means over and will continue as long as dedicated people see the truth and stop
believing in the lie America has become. Because I am proud to be part of the
movement and a passionate believer in the cause, I encourage everyone with a voice
to stand up, get involved and be heard. We are the 99%! Carry on brothers and
sisters. I love you all more than you know. We aren’t perfect, but we will prevail.
For more information on Austin Occupy, please visit: occupyaustin.org

In Solidarity,

Jim Gober

Editor’s note: This is the thirteenth in a series of excerpts from Jim Gober’s 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 final installment will be April 25th.

Today was Friday October 29, 2011, the day we found out APD Chief Art Acevedo is just another slime-ball, like the rest of the fascist ilk. His slick speech on Thursday night about how he supports us, blah, blah, blah, was met today with what was basically an eviction notice. He came around and personally passed out the fliers himself, with a big smile plastered on his thick skull, of course. There were so many rules, they would be impossible to follow. For example, everything has to be moved once a day, such as the food table, so it is not a “permanent” structure, and any sign not being held when they show up to fuck with us will be confiscated and tossed. Then the power washes will resume three times a week which means the freezing cold plaza will be soaked with water between 3am and 5am, and don’t think you can evacuate to the Island across the street, because the park curfew is now enforced there after 10pm.

Then there were enough other rules to keep the GA meeting arguing until late in the night, with some vowing to do nothing but stay there and Occupy-which is unfortunately not a radical idea, but creates the danger we may lose our core supporters. It’s funny that no matter how hard I rack my brain, I don’t remember one Tea Party protester ever being evicted from anything, even the town hall meetings when they did nothing but disrupt the entire meeting while a Democratic senator was trying to speak about delivering affordable healthcare to everyone. But look how many OWS protesters have already been forcibly removed from every meeting, park, plaza or “town hall” for just standing up to complain about their desperate plight, which is real and not manufactured by the propaganda machine. The police brutality forced on the innocent people who can see through the fascist lies is unspeakable.

I was beginning to feel our little sideshow may be about over, and may be over in much of the country. What is amazing is how Acevedo managed to move us along. It never occurred to some of us (including me), that have never experienced the psychological part of crowd control, only brazen force, exactly how it was going to be used against us. But this was a typical fascist technique we should have recognized: smile while you fuck ‘em over good. Now we have a choice: to physically engage them, which will last for about 5 minutes before we get beaten and gassed and handed a police record the fascists can use to forever lock us out of the plaza and society, or we can get worn down by constantly moving our shit around, to appease King God Acevedo, until we finally get fed up and leave on our own.

Meanwhile, as the fascists are having us move things about, the billionaire Koch brothers will spend billions to defeat Obama, and once that’s done they will install a fascist dictator into our government, which we are only a presidential election away from having. This news comes as dirty tricks by the GOP will prevent 25% of African-Americans from voting in the next election, and the fascist money flooding to the corporate media will brain-wash us into believing that having our throats cut by big business is good for us. Do you really think the corporate media, from Rockefeller Center to Main Street USA, that stands to make millions from the corporate “citizens” in the upcoming election cycle, will be on our side? Hell, no.

All of this news about a bunch of rules that amount to nothing more than hastening the demise of the Austin occupy camp follows on the heels of more arrests in Nashville, where the camps are being cleaned out, and the order in New York for the protesters to give up their generators and gasoline, which provide power and heat. So the camps, which just yesterday thought they were getting a reprieve, and also thought the fascists were backing up because they had hearts, are today getting demolished. For some reason, this passive-aggressive tactic is even more demoralizing than outright confrontation, and causes the protesters to seethe with anger even more than if we had our day in the ring with these jerks. Today, in America, niceness is a weakness and is there to be plundered, and now we felt like we were hogtied and about to be raped.

In reality, the camps could not last forever, and as I said before, to be seen is to be heard in America, so they had to be cleaned up. The fascist state cannot tolerate anyone making a complaint or wandering around homeless and upset because they’ve been picked clean by our system. But true to what a grass roots movement is, the anger is stronger and will only grow. Cut us off at the top and the roots just get deeper. This is real grass roots, not the astroturf of the Tea Party. I believe the camps should be allowed to remain and dissolve on a consensus vote by the occupiers, which is coming anyway, because most of the people involved in the camps have little or no real-life management skills. I had to laugh last night when I heard one of the young protesters say the reason the number of protesters was thinning out was, “people were afraid to come and learn from our young minds.”

The idea that a certain group of people with no experience and little education are in control, or are “smarter” than everyone else, has a corrosive effect on America, and I presume will destroy the occupy movement. For example, older workers, which these days includes anyone over 50, are now pushed out of society to fend on their own. They are considered too dumb for even the most basic work, even when they have years of experience doing it or advanced college degrees. Half of the problem has to do with the healthcare expense burden older workers place on American companies, while the other half has to do with a marketing machine that convinces everyone in a society that dumb is smart and anyone who questions anything is an idiot. It reminds me of the dumb kids who bully the smart kids at school because they make the lazy dumb kids look bad. It also reminds me of how every progressive idea in America is piled on by the fascist press until it disappears under a pile of right-wing bullshit. Americans must stay dumb. The carousel of stupidity must continue to spin, so the fascists riding on it can wear their pretty bonnets and waive at the poor folks, who fought tooth and nail to get a ticket so they could ride along and pretend they were rich too, but for some reason, the carousel never stops to let them on. Really smart people don’t dump their money on dumb products or believe hollow slogans which mean nothing. But it is America’s innate ability to follow the slogan that is causing us to follow the fascist ideal as well. This is an ideal where we harshly judge each other and get apoplectic because someone isn’t going along with what the voice on the latest electronic gizmo tells us to do. Like lemmings, every living generation in America is now rushing to see who can jump off the cliff first simply because we can’t think for ourselves.

But to be fair, the Occupy movement has generally been inclusive of everyone, including the older folks, but you could see from last night’s meeting the youngsters were in charge, and were making it known they’ve successfully pushed out many of the older people who made the process work until now. Maybe it’s because, like the young man believed, the old people are afraid of learning things from all those “young minds.” But in reality, too many of those young minds at the plaza are not in control of anything due to an absolute inability to get anything done besides spout off a lot about a system in which they don’t have a voice or real knowledge. Add the cold weather and even the true protesters, who braved the cold the night before, had left much of it to the “brains” of the outfit that weren’t coming up with any solutions, were splitting into cliques, and were also getting bogged down in the new rules set out by the police.

Once Friday evening rolled around and the deadline of 10 pm to move or rearrange our belongings neared, I noticed many of the original protesters had magically reappeared to lend their support. But I worried too, because these were our leaders and a raid followed by arrests would permanently remove them from the camp. They should have stayed home. The clouds of doom were gathering on the horizon, and you could see the mighty ship we worked so hard to build listing frightfully in the cruel waters of history. Still, there were some incredible, passionate rallying speeches, including a beautiful one by my young friend Kendall, who had soaked up the philosophy of the movement like a sponge, and of whom I was so proud. Hopefully, he will go on to college in order to flourish in this world, even though it will mean taking on massive amounts of debt that will put him way behind his peers, most of who will become cogs in the wheels of the fascist machine. But Kendall, if he holds true to his values and keeps an open mind, has great things ahead.

I started thinking that this is the time we need to think about digging deeper into the movement instead of simply occupying. It is time to join the different groups and become involved in not only the Occupy community, in which I still strongly believe, but the community at large. As of today, the occupation brand of civil disobedience is pushing us further to the fringe where we can be ignored or taunted. Just today, a man about 30 years old stomped up to the steps of the plaza and demanded everyone take this crap off his city’s property. Then he stormed off. This man is the type who would stand by while our skin was being stripped off by a pair of pliers. One would hope people like that don’t outnumber us, but they do in the media and other places where money makes the rules. So we must work against the fascists on the national stage, on their turf, with intellectual arguments, which they will never have on their side. Something tells me we will never accomplish anything by wandering aimlessly around a makeshift camp hoping for the world to change.

But believe me when I say there are heroes in the local movement that existed on that plaza-especially the women, like Jamie, who leads the night marches every night at 9:30 and is constantly coming up with ideas to get more people to the plaza. I can still hear her chant and never again will I hear a call to action that carried more conviction and came from deeper in the soul than when Jamie shouted, “This is what democracy looks like,” over and over until she lost her voice. And other women, like Michelle, who worked the welcome desk all day, then was disheartened to see the food line of hungry homeless form faster than she could get across the plaza to get a slice of cold pizza. People like Michelle and Jamie and a host of others did without a lot to keep the scene together. And to all those folks, I am deeply indebted. But when our main focus becomes dancing around a bunch of rules made up by disgusted fascist suits-rules designed specifically to trample on our right to peacefully assemble-one has to question: What the fuck are we doing? Oddly many people in our society want to see us hurt, even though we are fighting for them. I suppose mean is ingrained in our culture and has been since the days when the Puritans believed that if you were sick or poor, it was your punishment from God, and you did not deserve help. And if you didn’t fit into their rigid view of society, which changed depending on who was in charge, you were burned alive at the delight of the others. Sound familiar?

The Occupy movement has changed me as a person. I am enlightened, tolerant and genuinely love the people I’ve met, who enjoyed exchanging ideas with me. For the first time in years, I had conversations with people who had open minds and not minds moldy from age or slammed shut years ago because of some prejudice or another they are not even aware they have. I enjoyed talking to people interested in what I had to say, and also being interested in what they had to say. We let our ideas soak in and not just roll off all the layers of preconceived notions. The Occupy movement is and will continually be fun and interesting, but to be effective we must change our tactics. That is what political movements are about, and like it or not, this is a political movement.

Today, I brought a sleeping bag donated by my neighbor to the plaza and gave it to Buck, a middle-aged African American man who has become my friend, although he occasionally asks me if I am going to kill him, which I assure him I’m not. Why would I waste my tobacco and a perfectly good sleeping bag on somebody I was going to kill? His troubling questions aside, he was still very appreciative. He has nothing except the clothes on his back and gets cold and lonely at night, just like everyone else. Just like you. But tonight, there was no room for comfort. You could hear the rot-infested fascist tide on the march. Soon they would arrive to throw us into the streets in a desperate attempt to separate us from our right to free speech and assembly.

I thought no matter what happens tonight or tomorrow, I’ll be attending every organized march until I can no longer walk or crawl. And I will continue to put my energy, money and time into this cause, which has risen haphazardly without the use of millions of dollars of dirty money from the propagandists such as Fox News, the Koch brothers or Dick Armey’s Freedomworks. We are the people, and the Occupy movement will continue. Who knows how long the plaza will be occupied? But I’m afraid the camp and accompanying sideshow is drawing to a close, because we cannot waste our time and energy sitting in one place surrounded by the police. It is time to bring the fight underground, where we can work and think without trying to survive the elements or having some drug addled or mentally ill individual screaming about someone stealing their whatever.

Once the end comes, it will be up to all of us: the older and educated people with experience, who can put a professional face on this movement and begin to work through the established power structure, as well as the young idealists who have the energy and optimism essential to any political movement. But there has to be some guidance and organization. I have seen so many young people in this movement try to reinvent the wheel, unaware the US has a system to be heard, albeit confusing and complicated. And while it doesn’t cost money to break windows, it costs a lot of money to change opinion through a structure that, like it or not, includes working with the corporate press and reaching a wide audience with sane arguments instead of haphazardly planned events that only illustrate how angry people have become. Everyone in America knows what is going on now and everyone is pissed. We need to channel that anger into reform. So we have to raise money. That is how America works. At this point the occupy movement reminds me of someone sitting on the roof of a car instead of the driver’s seat and getting upset because the car isn’t taking them anywhere.

As I walk through the plaza tonight, I know this movement, which came into the world kicking and screaming like a child born in the darkest part of the forest, will grow up and walk into the sunlight and become a powerful force that will conquer the fascist demons that have pillaged the countryside. But to make it work, we must roll up our sleeves and stop sitting around the plaza waiting for food to arrive without even taking the trouble to hold up a homemade, worn out and illegible protest sign. And it is disgusting to see everyone grovel at the feet of the fascist police so they won’t run us off, which they eventually will do anyway.

At this point, the movement on its surface seems to be faltering because many in the US like to see people in pain, especially when the power structure those people dared to challenge crushes them. This allows the coward to say, “See, I told you so.” But oddly, while Americans look at pain and torture as a source of satisfying entertainment, they sit in their homes scared to death they will be the next victim. I’m sure there is a psychological term for that, but it escapes me-oh yeah, fear manufactured by the fascist corporate media. It keeps you in the house watching the TV so you’ll watch more commercials and buy more crap. That’s how a cult, religion and even a controlling spouse works to control you. They keep you afraid so you won’t leave the fold. The bogeyman, or devil, is waiting just around the dark corner. The sheep will always fall in line once the big scary sheep dog starts nipping at their haunches.

One thing I’ve been amazed at is the number of people who laugh at, criticize and taunt the homeless and sick in our country. And I’ve seen it all now. But I have also seen the light, and I am not going back. I am a warrior for what is right and what will be right for our democracy. My personal and spiritual growth experienced through the movement is amazing and life-affirming. I was dead inside and now I am alive again. I love everyone I’ve met and I know together we will make a change, but now we need to move to a bigger battlefield that is not surrounded by the slimy police, and away from people who occupy the camps that do things like vandalize city property or steal from each other. And for the young people involved in the movement who are hanging around the plaza and the occupy movements throughout the land and not doing anything: Read some damned books.

Whose street? Our street! Remember that? The plaza was our boot camp. We must follow our hearts and tell people every day to do their part to stop the fascists from rolling over us. There is no second act-this is it. Move your money to a credit union, shop locally, support local farmers, and don’t buy anything made in China. Look who is behind all the propaganda you hear. America is in no danger of becoming a socialist or communist state like the propagandists want you to believe. But we are in danger of becoming a totalitarian fascist state run by billionaires-and we are on the edge. That, you can believe. Let’s all work for the better of each other and this country and stop trying to strip others of dignity and then laughing when we do. Do you want to continue to be that country? Do you? If that is the case, may God have mercy on us all.

-Jim Gober-

Editor’s note: This is the twelfth in a series of excerpts from Jim Gober’s 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.

AUSTIN,TX - Today, the sun rose on more news that occupy camps around the US are being raided and
harassed and the pace of the fascist assault is quickening. In Denver, the fascists
attacked the camp with a hail of rubber bullets, shooting people out of trees,
tear-gassing them and beating them with clubs. Pictures of hideous wounds from the
actions of the fascists were posted across the internet. In San Francisco, an attack
was called off at the last minute. The fallout from the latest attack on the camp in
Atlanta continues, and across the country occupiers are beginning to dig in for the
winter. With the occupy movement only a few weeks old, and the fascists reacting so
badly, it makes you wonder what the future holds.

In Oakland, the blame for the disastrous attack on the protesters is being shuffled
between the mayor and the chief of police. But isn’t that what the fascists always
do? Keep shuffling the blame until it goes away? I got bad news for them. It’s not
going to work this time. We are not going away until the fascist system that has
created a one-sided casino where a few win while millions starve is destroyed,
demolished and ground into the earth never to return again. There will be no more
lobbying, no more payola to congress and no more fascist control on the local, state
or federal level. There will be no more corporate citizenry that carries no
responsibility to any laws whatsoever. No more commodity indices that drive up the
cost of food. No more unregulated financial instruments, and no more free loans to
investment banks. There will be a fair tax system that stops the vacuuming of money
off the streets so it flows directly to the fascists, who then use the money to
decimate the laws that are supposed to protect us from them. And for God’s sake, we
demand the fascists stop using the police to beat the crap out of us-or kill us. If
anyone dies from the outrageous actions of the police, who are now protecting the
thieves, the streets will run with the blood of more and more victims because the
fight is just beginning. America, which was once a shining beacon on the hill for
the whole world to see, will collapse upon itself. When we rebuild, we will
inoculate every politician that enters the arena against the scourge of fascism, the
horrible crippling malady that spreads by contact with a dollar bill. And we will do
it with the threat of the same punishment the fascists dish out to the innocent.

After writing all morning, I arrived at the plaza on the last warm and balmy
afternoon of the season as October was drawing to a close. The mood at the camp was
subdued, and of course the local press was out hoping the 25 or so occupiers hanging
around in the middle of the day were going to try and burn down a tree or something,
because they were angry at the pig-headed attempts to destroy freedom of speech and
assembly across the country. The news clips of people being brutalized didn’t cause
the press to throw down their cameras and join us, it made them come to the plaza
and hope upon hope they would witness their fellow citizens being brutalized in the
same way. I wandered over to the welcome booth and took a picture of the welcoming
committee, Carey, John and Melanie. I interviewed Carey who’s been with the scene
since the first day. He said he is optimistic because the general assembly is
functioning well, people are working together better and the goals are getting
solidified. His optimism was contagious and it was great to hear some optimism at
this point. But others I talked to were more concerned, and the prognosis from most
of the old-timers was we had about two weeks.

Then, Austin Police Chief Art Acevedo arrived on the scene in a business suit and
made a statement to the press: “Out of all the people out here, most are exercising
their first amendment rights, but then there are the few who step off and do things
inappropriate. Quite frankly, most of the arrests that are made here are made from
those drinking in public and causing fights or what have you.” He did not seem
irritated, but every time he looked up at the mezzanine, which sits above the wide
steps most people use for sleeping, meeting and storing gear, he looked concerned.
The press has reported only one or two arrests, but today, according to the folks I
spoke to, there had already been seven. The police department was obviously lying to the
press about the number of arrests, and the press being the press, were too lazy to
verify the truth. Something was going on that didn’t smell right.

So I had a question for the press. I caught the attention of a news reporter from
KVUE-TV who just finished covering the Police Chief’s statement. It was an old
friend named Shelton, who was wearing the most beautiful burgundy guayabera shirt
you ever saw. I asked him to tell me about the biggest challenge he has covering the
occupation. He expressed frustration on finding someone to talk to who is in charge
of this leaderless movement, so he could sort out the truth, because he hears
something different from each person he interviews. I was pleased to see the
maddening effect we were having on the press, especially when I’ve watched them go
out of their way to interview the most fucked-up person they could find over and
over again. While at first frustrating, the search by the press for the most inept,
had unintentionally become an integral part of the guerrilla war against the media
we are waging in which we use the lack of relevant information and leaders to
confuse, obfuscate and keep them guessing what we are going to do next. We didn’t
even have to work hard at it, because the press, in their race to the bottom, were
driving themselves mad by cherry-picking the least informed and vacuous people they
could find hanging around the plaza. There were plenty of lucid people who knew what
was going on the press could interview, but now our attitude was to go ahead and let
them to interview the slacker. Why should we care anymore? The press isn’t going to
give us a fair shake anyway. But since Shelton was my friend, I suggested to Shelton
that he talk to Sylvia, who is our official media person, and he said he did talk to
her. Sylvia told him the press should only talk to her and that anyone else was an
impostor. Then Shelton pointed at a man in a pink shirt who told him he was the
media contact and Sylvia was an impostor. You could see Shelton’s frustration
manifesting itself in beads of sweat along his brow, but I told him to talk to
Sylvia anyway and he thanked me before I took off. Later in the day, I saw Shelton
interviewing Sylvia and he didn’t look quite as harried or alarmed. The next day, I
learned Sylvia was relieved of her duties and another media specialist named Carl
was chosen. I laughed thinking about poor old Shelton scrambling around looking for
a scoop among the chaos, when all he, and the rest of the press had to do from the
beginning, was treat us with professional respect.

So I went up to the much-maligned mezzanine and talked to Sandra, who was relaxing
on a bedroll. I asked what brings her here and she said, “At first I was with the
occupation, but recently it’s got crazy, so I’m just here to sleep. I enjoyed the
meetings and signs and thought we were for something, then it became a big slumber
party and people came in to destroy the place, fight and do drugs. Everyone is just
kind of here.” I asked her how long she thinks this will continue. She said, “The
security comes out at 7 am yelling at everyone to move their stuff, and looks for
little things to hassle or arrest people. Even if you make a comment or refuse to
get up when they tell you, you will be arrested. One guy, who was sleeping on the
mezzanine every night, was arrested yesterday.” Sandra went on, “The city officials
are walking around looking disgusted and talking to the cops and are just trying to
run people like us off. We work with carnivals and our daughter needed money so we
couldn’t save enough this year, and here we are on the street, and I know cold
weather is coming. My husband is out right now looking for a job, but good luck with
that, you know?” There are so many people like Sandra, who’ve been hurt by the
system, and really want to work and contribute to society, but society has no place
for them. She was right about the suits walking around looking disgusted. You
couldn’t look across the plaza today without seeing at least one suit with a glum
face looking down its nose at us.

About that time, the plaza was flooded with a group of people protesting the body
scanners recently put in place at the Austin airport. There was a series of fiery
speeches by both men and women alike, and they brought along their own PA system.
They questioned why we can’t use some other less invasive means of checking for
bombs such as bomb-sniffing dogs rather than a photo of your naked body. This went
on until dusk, when I began to chat with a man in the crowd, about 55 years old,
named Dan. He was a right-wing talk-show fanatic who insisted “the Greeks, Jews,
Europeans and Americans all learned to write in the same year 6,000 years ago.” He
also claimed that we should put all Muslims in concentration camps like we did with the
“Japs” in WWII and that the Koran was the devil. He claimed that never in history
were people tortured or killed to force them into Christianity like in Islam, and
the bible is not a collection of stories passed down by word of mouth before people
knew how to read or write, it was written by God and it just appeared out of thin
air. I thought about how this man, who ordinarily would be a kind gentle soul, had
become a card-carrying member of the fascist propaganda machine because he, like us,
was afraid of his future and was looking for answers. But instead of finding the
truth, he had become a Frankenstein’s monster of the information age who espoused
every stillborn idea ever perpetuated by talk radio and Fox News. He had become a
fascist extraordinaire who would sit by and let an innocent man be strung from a
tree because Rush Limbaugh said it should be so.

Thankfully, the general assembly started and today was the first day I noticed a
sign language interpreter. The discussion was generally about how to get control of
the mezzanine from the undesirables. I thought about Sandra up there listening to
the young people, who all had homes to go to, discussing one more way to make her
life inconvenient or evict her from her spot in the universe. But we all know it’s
not Sandra we wanted out of there, it is the people who insist on disrupting
everything, like the no-talent asshole named Jackal who followed me around the
entire day banging on a drum every time he saw me trying to record an interview. I
have never heard such a bad drum player-even three year old kids have better rhythm
than that guy. And what was the point except to disrupt and be a jerk?

But that is what all the occupiers, with all their good intentions, are learning in
every camp across the country: Some people hanging around the Occupy movement just
need to clear out and find another place to go if they want to help the
movement. What some of us also didn’t know, and are now unfortunately finding out,
is how many people in our society are completely sane, but are incurably lazy
spoiled bullies that take up space someone more productive could easily fill. This
awakening is going on throughout the occupy movement. And it is causing us to fall
back on either time-tested means of control, like asking the police patrols we hate
so much for help, or doing what the fascists want to do to us, which is beat the
crap out of the ones taking up space and hope they go away. It is at this point
where Occupy is in danger of becoming a farce. That is because we are fighting
against a system of government we despise, but need its structure and protection to
survive. Then, throughout the movement, and especially in Austin, there is the same
political infighting and me-me-me crap that goes on in every organization. I see
people trying to gain power, be it from who is on top of the mezzanine to who is in
charge of the donation coffee can or the PA system.

A new and disruptive development is an influx of feminists exerting their muscle by
playing the victim at every turn to gain power. For example, one enormous and
spiritually malformed trouble-making feminist, who was new on the scene, was loudly
complaining that a gay man with a southern accent had called her “Sweetie” when he
asked if he could help her move a pile of wet brochures and newspapers. She was
proud that she and a couple of other women had now formed a women’s group and were
making YouTube videos not trashing our fascist enemy, but the men of occupy who they
felt were somehow a threat to every woman that ever lived. Their stated mission was
to, “loudly confront every nuance of sexism either in public or online.” And part of
their regular meetings were to be held in secret. So you can imagine the endless
possibilities to wreak havoc. All the men of Austin Occupy were so liberal, this was
a disturbing development. I never heard one misogynist statement the entire six
weeks the movement was in existence. I couldn’t in all reality figure out the reason
for the feminists’ hatred and intense desire to create havoc and split everyone
apart. They wanted the men on this side and the women on this side, then the women
and men they approved of on this side, and the men they didn’t like on that side.
Then, they began to spread rumors and innuendo to pit one group against the other.
And no one had done anything wrong. When I see new people like this come in and try
to kick Occupy Austin to pieces, I get discouraged. I thought about the words of the
famous Texan Sam Rayburn: “Any jackass can kick down a barn, but it takes a good
carpenter to build one.” What we lacked was a few good carpenters, because it was
becoming apparent we had an entire corral of jackasses.

The day ended with a march to the capitol followed by a candlelight vigil in support
of the Oakland protesters who were injured a few days before. And true to form,
there were provocateurs in the crowd, but it was a candlelight vigil and they
sounded stupid when they started to act out. Whoever had the idea for the
candlelight vigil was a genius. It was a beautiful and poignant moment and brought
us together one more time to fight one more day. And the real fight was on its way.

-Jim Gober-

Editor’s note: This is the eleventh in a series of excerpts from Jim Gober’s 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 sun came up on another October day in 2011, and the fascists in Oakland are blaming each other for what is unfolding into a public relations disaster, after an attack on the Oakland camp seriously injured an Iraq war vet. We know the fascists started it, and then over-reacted, of course, because the Oakland’s Democratic Mayor, Jean Quan, who rode into office on money from the white fascist elite, ordered the police to bust the occupiers’ heads in absolute total violation of their civil rights. Now she is finding herself in a mess because the occupation is pushing back and we still have a shred of public sympathy. Mayor Quan is backsliding so fast, she basically made a public apology today while the Oakland camp is quickly being reassembled, which shows the philosophy of this movement, whose tenacity in Oakland has not ceased to amaze me.

This display of arrogance and total disregard for our civil rights is proof the fascist criminal element has rotted the entire power structure of the US-and the world-from the bottom up. It starts with your friends, family members or neighbors who are so brain-washed by the unrelenting corporate media-fueled propaganda machine; they go to the polls and elect the fascists. And the fascists have one thing in mind-to get their palms greased and rub elbows with the thieves that are destroying the world’s economy, environment and financial system. Even people like Mayor Quan, who are empowered because they are backed by fascist filth from both sides of the political aisle, happily give orders to local constables and police to treat unarmed American citizens as if they were a threat to the entire world. Well, we are a threat to the fascists’ world, but the real world, where most people reside, is hopefully saying, “What the hell took everybody so long to stand up against these crooks and do something?”

But the worry about how to control us is not just on a local level. You can bet while President Obama is giving us lip service, he has his guys working on a way to kill the occupy movement before it gets any bigger, especially before we occupy the upcoming party conventions. We will not be defeated if we show up in the numbers expected and shut the conventions down until our demands are addressed. By the fall of 2012, our movement will be very strong, but we must stick to our principles of
non-violence and continue our intellectual debate. And we must not allow internal differences to split us apart, such as who is gay or straight, black or white, feminist or businessman, old or young, etc. And we must not allow egos to explode and blind the movement from its objectives. The world is watching, albeit with a jaundiced eye. In the previous two days, Obama threw out two milquetoast ideas that will go nowhere in his attempt to appease us. One was about helping homeowners underwater on their mortgages, if they have perfect credit, and another program to help those with student loans that is so stupid and obfuscated it doesn’t even require a comment or review. Both programs were designed specifically to appease the big banks and prevent a downtick in their murderous profit line.

Every Occupy camp in the country is now very agitated with developments over the last few days, which not only include the attack on the Oakland camp, but cities across the US. The timing and orchestration of the raids is suspect, and it would take an idiot to believe Homeland Security isn’t hot on our trail. In fact, DHS vehicles and personnel were spotted doing surveillance at several camps, including Los Angeles, and of course New York, according to a recent article by The Guardian’s Naomi Wolf, and DHS was on a conference call with mayors from 18 different cities before the Oakland raid. It is obvious no one is standing up for us, and why should they? We have become the enemy of the power elite. Our occupation is throwing a wrench in the gears of the fascists’ finely tuned machine of death and destruction, and they have the power to crush us at every turn. In fact, the police take classes to learn the latest method to destroy a “peaceful protest,” while many of the occupiers, at the Austin plaza anyway, have not seen a classroom since 9th grade. We are a total mismatch for their chicanery and under-handed tactics. Unfortunately, I am learning that in Austin, nearly all the remaining occupiers, for some reason or another, are simply outcasts from society upset because somewhere along the way, they didn’t get theirs, and they want it now. But what it was they wanted was becoming more and more difficult to define. The whole idea about fighting the influence of money in politics is degenerating into just fighting. It was like being on a desert island and watching a group of people without the mental capacity to function in any society, attempt to build a new one, while surrounded at all sides by a well-armed and sophisticated enemy. It was becoming a tragicomedy remake of ”Lord of the Flies.” By now, some of the occupiers had stopped organizing and were now on an active hunt for a scapegoat to alleviate their own sense of powerlessness. You could hear it in their murmured voices and see it in their accusatory stares.

Cracks were forming in my blinders of optimism, and the truth was blinding me. The winds of defeat and poverty were blowing through the Austin Occupy camp and many who stood with us at the beginning went back to their comfortable couches to watch us fall apart on TV. An unforeseen development in some of the camps, including Austin’s, is we are also being overrun with not just the homeless, but complete idiots in the filthiest of clothes, shouting out the goofiest things and acting weird, disruptive and dangerous. Where did these people come from and why are the police just standing around while these people are threatening us? It was like the Circus of the Macabre had come to town and somebody was paying them to perform. Somehow, we were trapped in a downward spiral of our own making yet orchestrated by powers beyond our control. It was enough to drive anyone mad, and if you were already there, well; the plaza is not the place for you. But like filthy lice-ridden survivors from a confederate battlefield, they continued to straggle into the camp. Of course, we are welcoming them with open arms while they eat the free food, flop and fight, totally unaware of our agenda, while slowly outnumbering us.

Apparently, watching us rot from the inside is an accepted form of crowd control and it is a valid way of letting us destroy ourselves, but to see the police step back and deny the protesters’ protection means they do not consider us American citizens, but something to be trampled on by not only the establishment, but the worst elements in our society. Somehow, we, not the fascist rats overrunning the ship, have become the enemy, and we are powerless to do anything about it. Dirty police
tricks are showing up to play on our weaknesses, poor organization and fear. For example, yesterday they told us to clear off the lawn so they could turn on the lawn sprinklers, which is in line with the Stage 2 watering schedule. But then, they didn’t turn it on. Then at dusk, we were told to clear off the lawn because they were going to turn on the lawn sprinklers. This time most people just stayed there and waited to see what would happen. They didn’t turn them on.

Then out of the blue, the police moved in and decided to arrest 3 or 4 people for what the police considered unruly behavior. But the arrest tactics were over the top and meant to show us what will happen if we insist on hanging around the plaza much
longer. In one of the arrests I witnessed, an unarmed African-American woman was being held down by a policeman who had his knee on the back of her neck, while her face was smashed into the hot cement. Another cop stood nearby, taser at hand. The other arrests were for one silly reason or another, and plenty of people were suddenly getting searched and hassled. One guy was targeted because a woman working in the City Hall claimed he tried to sell her drugs. He was clean, but I’m sure she
smugly watched the entire illegal search from the tinted windows of her office while sipping a $5.00 latte. Interestingly, not one of the members of the Circus of the Macabre was hassled. Not one. It was only the people who were veterans of the
occupation being harassed.

In the evening, the occupiers wanted to march down dirty 6th street to support the Oakland occupiers. My feeling was too many provocateurs were in the camp. It seemed the more the police harassed us, the more the provocateurs materialized. Strangely, the weirdoes weren’t there to protect us from the police, but were agitating and attacking us-not the enemy. The occupation was becoming occupied. We didn’t see that one coming either. I thought going on a night march was a bad idea because the fascists and trouble-makers surely weren’t marching and they can work under the cover of darkness. Plus, marching will leave our camp unprotected from the kooks. My thinking was once trouble starts, the fascists will isolate us on 6th Street; prevent us from returning, then clean out the camp. And why anyone would want to march down dirty 6th when it is full of drunks and assholes is beyond me. You have to hand it to the people who have organized the last few marches down there though, those folks are super-dedicated and I admire their moxie, for sure. But even though I was fearful, the march was held anyway and everyone returned safely to the disorganized camp. I decided to stay the night since we didn’t get back from the march until after 11 pm. But the camp was even rowdier than usual, with people partying, arguing, fighting and creating real havoc. By 4 am I couldn’t take it anymore and walked home. I could hear the same woman, who had run around the plaza screaming for her lost mind for the last two hours, still going at it as I crossed the Ann Richards Bridge over the inky Colorado River. A dove, roused from its sleep, fluttered in a tree as I walked through the park. I turned the key to my front door just as dawn was breaking. I shed my clothes as I walked toward the bedroom, fell into bed and slept until noon.

-Jim Gober-

Editor’s note: This is the tenth in a series of excerpts from Jim Gober’s 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.

By now, I had lost track of what day it was. The scene at the city hall plaza was very noisy. A man was using the PA to amplify his anger-filled speech that was becoming more obnoxious by the second. Most of the 200 or so people present were
wandering around aimlessly, and you could feel an enhanced sense of chaos. This was due to the constant onslaught of noise from the PA, the non-ending stream of pollution from the passing cars, drunken activity and general trashiness that gave
me a feeling the movement was being assaulted from all sides. The press was accusing us of every crime imaginable and deaths were being reported at various camps around the country from exposure and drug overdoses. There were hundreds of arrests in Orlando, Cincinnati, Chicago, New York, San Jose, Melbourne, and beyond over the last few days. The fascists were striking back hard. News reports from the propaganda machine said we were funded by Socialist billionaires like George Soros. When I heard that, I immediately thought about a recent general assembly meeting where everyone was angry that money was taken from the donation coffee can to buy dog food. I couldn’t shake how forlorn that coffee can looked sitting on the ground in the middle of the GA meeting. It was all taped up with a little slot left in the top so no one could stick their fingers in and pull out a few dimes. That pitiful excuse for a money source represented the lies perpetuated by the fascist propaganda machine being echoed ad nauseam throughout our country with the help of the brain-washed ignorant masses.

As predicted, this propaganda and balls-out fascist assault on our right to protest
and congregate in a public square was becoming a reality. Of course, no one, from
the President on down, stood up for us. And the corporate press is only printing the
bad news, and there is a lot of it. The crowd in the plaza seemed to be getting more
agitated by the minute, except for a group of about 15 doing yoga, which provided an
oasis of calm along the west side of the plaza. Decorum was undeniably breaking down
and once again, the God-damned PA, which had become an assault on the movement by
its sheer presence, was blaring out mindless bullshit, including an awful rendition
of Bob Dylan’s “The Times They are a-Changin” by an older man that would have
sounded much better without the PA. No one could concentrate or converse without
yelling at each other. Everyone was tired and we had not seen any progress over the
past 17 days except watching the descent of the plaza into a homeless camp with
plenty of drunks and speed freaks running amok. Just add a provocateur to this mess
and things will get uglier, if that is possible.

To be fair, plenty of us are still trying to get together for one interest or
another and the GA meetings are still being held among the din of confusion being
created by a crowd that tonight was totally out of control. Some younger hot shots
I’ve never seen are suddenly acting like they are in charge and running over the
old-timers like me. Magnets, those of us supposedly in charge of one thing or
another, that volunteered to do one thing last week, have abandoned their posts this
week. This was creating a chaotic scene where anything goes and all it needed was a
spark to put this night into a real downward spiral. And here it came walking up the
west side of the plaza. Three frat boys wearing khaki pants, blue blazers and red
ties walked out of the sunset with homemade poster board signs that read, “We are
the 1%” and “Get a Job.” I rushed toward them for an interview and stopped them on
the edge of the plaza. I positioned myself between them and the highly agitated and
intoxicated crowd, many of who wanted a piece of them.

When the boys-I say boys because these guys have never done anything to qualify
themselves as men-saw the aggressiveness of the crowd, they realized they had
suddenly jumped into some very deep water without their water wings. They rolled up
their signs and stood stock still, but still granted me the interview. I moved them
back further from the crowd. The trio consisted of a short guy about 5′ 6″, who will
never be any taller, named Chase, a 6′ tall leering half-Mexican with broad crooked
teeth and a touch of gingivitis named Justin, and a stone-faced boy with sharp
features and acne who stood a little over 6′ tall, named Cameron.

The interview was difficult because a Goth guy known around the camp as “Comrade”
kept pushing me out of the way as he was trying to stream the scene on his laptop,
and a young guy wearing those hipster Erkel glasses, named Nathan, who I had not
noticed the entire time I’ve been involved in the occupation, wanted to get in their
face. I told him to buzz off-that I had the interview-and he could talk to them in a
minute, and he screamed, “Who are you!” and “What are you doing here!” So apparently
Nathan didn’t believe anyone should be there but himself or have a right to say or
do anything. When he announced to the frats that his Dad worked at Chase bank and he
could have worked there if he wanted, I realized Nathan was no better than them, and
was exuding the spoiled brat ethic of mine-mine-mine that he was about to accuse his
college-attending counterparts of having. So now it had come to this, where someone
can come in and immediately start making their own rules, which in Nathan’s case
consisted of trying to indoctrinate a group of frightened frat boys into a chaotic
mess that was supposed to be a peaceful protest, but had descended into the image
the frat boys’ families (and the press) had handed them on a silver platter. But I
was still happy I got the scoop.

As it turned out, all three of the frat boys were freshmen at Texas A&M University,
which is where all the hicks in Texas with money and high enough high school grades
can go to college. It’s overwhelmingly white, and very conservative (GW’s daddy’s
presidential library is there.) It is located nearly two hours away, in College
Station, so the frat boys drove a long way just to agitate a few hippies. I wondered
what their conversation was like on the way there, and if they giggled like mean
little girls in anticipation of hurting someone they perceived as weaker than
themselves. I also wondered how brave they felt as they marched into the plaza
hoping to provide a beachhead for the next generation of right-wing doofuses.

I asked the boys what was in their heart that made them want to come down and do
this. Chase-the little one, said, “We are just concerned Aggies,” which is a slang
term for A&M students, “And were concerned why anyone would just want to sit around
and not have a job, not participate in the American dream, work hard and be at the
top of the totem pole when you are 50 or 60.” I thought, boy, did they get sold down
the river, but didn’t comment. So I asked, “Then you have a job?” Chase said he was
not working now. Justin said his first job will be as an intern this summer at an
oil and gas firm and Cameron worked as a lifeguard at a country club during the
summers during high school. So I confirmed that, “None of you has a job right now?”
and they all agreed.

Realizing they were already looking stupid, they begin to stammer while holding
tighter to their rolled up signs which were now the circumference of a nickel. They
said they were freshmen in college, so they didn’t need to work. The nauseating
smell of daddy’s money was emanating from their pores. It’s a familiar smell. It
comes out after spoiled kids get a few drinks in them. It is pervasive as patchouli
in Austin, and overwhelms the olfactory system such as when you witness a University
of Texas student who is not afraid of letting the cops know, “My daddy owns you!”
when he is being arrested because he is so drunk on daddy’s money he can’t stand up,
or when you are sitting at a downtown bench minding your own business, and a
hiccupping sorority girl, so drunk she’s lost one of her shoes, informs you that you
are scum and have no right to just sit there like that.

All the frat boy provocateurs agreed they were from wealthy families, and when I
asked, “So you’ve never had to really struggle for anything, have you?” They all
said no, but the little boy, Chase, said this was more of a symbol, “because the
protesters represent the 99% that doesn’t want to work, while we represent the 1%
that does.” I asked him, “So all these people out here make you sick, is that
right?” And he said, “Yes, for the most part,” as he eyed one of our women. This
sent the crowd around them into a feeding frenzy, and I had to yell the last few
questions and use my elbows to keep the crowd at bay.

Then I asked, “So when you get out of college, do you think you have a better chance
than other college graduates to get a job?” They all said, “Yes.” Then I established
that not one of them had any college debt and didn’t need it. They all claimed to
have some scholarship money, but it was the type daddy’s business friends swing your
way when you’re rich. I established that everything else came from daddy, they drove
there in the car daddy bought for them and they were wearing clothes daddy bought
too, and daddy’s money even bought the poster board and sharpies for them to come
all the way to Austin to show their ass. You know daddy was so proud. The insanity
of the whole fascist assault on the occupiers that was being played out in the press
could be explained in this little scene. None of these guys had a job or even needed
a job because their road was paved with daddy’s dollars as far as they could see and
their signs demanded that we, not them, “Get a Job!”

Sadly, the system is rigged for them. They won’t leave college in heavy debt, and
will have a leg up on everyone else because they got daddy’s money and no heart,
obviously. There is no reason these little pricks should have it better than anyone
else. None. Fuck them and their daddies and fuck the system that created those
little monsters.

The group surrounding them was out for blood at this point, and things were rapidly
breaking down. Nathan, with the Erkel glasses, wanted a dialogue that consisted of
him getting in my face and claiming that I surely must agree with them because I
wasn’t being aggressive enough in my interview. I told him to stop hassling them,
and me, and let them walk through the plaza if he really wanted to see some
fireworks, which Nathan refused to do. I said this is a still a free country, and
Nathan screamed, “Free Country? What do you mean?” His attempt to convince these
idiot frats who never had one trial in their short lives, to come over to our side
by screaming in their face and trying to create a pissing contest because, as Nathan
loudly pointed out before, “My daddy works at Chase,” was sickening to me. The funny
thing was this was literally an argument that a beer bust would quickly solve. And
to tell you the truth, I would rather have a few beers with the spoiled frat kids
than Nathan, who, in my opinion-was acting dumber than the frat rats.

Then I noticed a late straggler from the frat rat group who arrived with a young
lady. She was dressed for a Saturday night in Austin, not for this scene of
wild-eyed rag-tag protesters who’ve been living outside for over 2 weeks. Her hair
was already imploding and the look of disgust on her face for the shit-storm she had
found herself in was hilarious. I asked the guy with her, who stood just far enough
from his buddies so he wasn’t exactly with them, but still was because he had the
same uniform, “What is going on?” He said, “I ain’t really with these guys, we’re
just hanging around,” which he was taking pains to show, as he slouched a bit and
smoked a cigarette, in an attempt to slum with the hoi polloi. I asked if he agreed
with what his friends were doing and he said he didn’t really understand what all
the fuss was about and why the protesters were even here. I said, “All we want to do
is to diminish the power that money has in our political system so all Americans can
have a voice,” And get this-are your ready for his reply? Wait for it…here it is:
“You mean like Socialism?” I replied, “No, like Democracy.” And these are college
students who are supposed to be running the show in 20 years? Is this what we want?
If not, you might think about getting with the occupy movement right now, because
the propaganda machine is now crossing generations and you are about to get it in
the ass even worse than before if you don’t start working for change right now.
These guys do not have a soul or a heart, and this next generation of fascists will
make the current one look like a quilting bee.

Then I talked to Victor, a lively protester who has been there since day one and he
reminded me that the positive overwhelms the negative and that love will prevail. He
whipped out a nice crystal and waived it about, then lit piece of a shaman’s stick
known as Palo Santo, which is a natural wood incense used by the Incas to cleanse
the air and get rid of evil spirits. It has a divine citrus and frankincense smell,
and I really did feel better after talking to Victor and getting my air cleansed.
Plus I got a good hug from Victor, who is quite the character and a lot of fun to be
around, but doesn’t have much to say about the occupation other than it’s a lot fun
right now.

Then, to add to the chaos, a drunken homeless 23 year old pulled out a knife at the
food table about 8:30 pm to settle an old score with another homeless idiot, but was
quickly subdued after Turtle and Dimples kept him locked in the bathroom while the
man’s 200 pound girlfriend beat them around the head and face with her fists.
Although the police were within shouting distance, they sauntered over as if
enjoying this mess we had made of ourselves. While most don’t agree we need a strong
police presence, it would be nice to see a little more enthusiastic response to an
obvious life or death situation. As I looked around, I noticed there were much fewer
police than normal, even though this was becoming a wild night. Where did they all
go? Were they off planning their attack? This was a night they needed to be there to
do their jobs. To not only protect the occupiers from each other, but even those
idiot frat rats from A&M. If those boys would have arrived an hour later, I’m afraid
they wouldn’t be winning any beauty contests today.

-Jim Gober-

Editor’s note: This is the ninth in a series of excerpts from Jim Gober’s 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.

Today was Monday, and I hit the plaza early and refreshed. As I passed the literature table, I met a middle-aged gentleman named James. He gave me a paper that announced a meeting before the city council on Wednesday. The meeting was about removing fluoride from the city water supply. He explained that fluoride accumulates in the pineal gland located between the lobes of the brain. Once there, it makes people complacent so they cannot think for themselves or form their own thoughts, especially when it comes to standing up to authorities or taking action. He claimed fluoride in the water dulls the thoughts and emotional processes. He said now that people are drinking more water without fluoride, people are starting to wake up. He struggled with the claim, and I told him I would look it up to get more information.

It turns out the pineal gland regulates the hormone melatonin, which is responsible for sleep and affects the aging process. Some studies show fluoride accumulates in the pineal gland, interferes with melatonin production, and accelerates aging. For example, it is widely claimed that the reason girls are entering puberty at such a young age these days is because of the accumulation of fluoride in the pineal gland. I couldn’t find much about fluoride making us more complacent, but if it prevents the formation of melatonin, which is the hormone that makes us sleep, and if we are tired all the time, maybe James is on to something. When I don’t sleep, the last thing I want to do is complain about anything except how tired I am.

After chatting with James, I stopped to talk to Sergio, whose socialist worker pin and pair of chopsticks poked in the side of his cap above his left ear caught my eye. I asked him if he was a Socialist, and he said he belonged to the Former Maoist International Movement. I asked why it was called the former movement and he said it was defunct, and he’s only met one other member who may be dead by now. Sergio said that he upholds the Cultural Revolution that occurred in China in the 60′s as how far society has progressed, and that society has not progressed at all since then. He said Chairman Mao did good things like bringing China together and giving women equal rights. He had a different spin on the “Free Tibet” movement. He claimed that women and children are slaves to the Monk’s patriarchal hierarchy and should thank Mao for liberating them, so Tibet should stay as it is, under China’s rule. He said just because a bunch of monks are running a country doesn’t mean they are good. Monk doesn’t mean good any more than the Taliban means good. I asked Sergio if the Cultural Revolution was hard on shopkeepers and businessmen and he said it was mostly hard on landowners and landlords. I asked if he would recommend a cultural revolution in the US. He says it’s inevitable due to the way resources are manipulated. But the time is not now for armed revolt because we would get crushed. He went on to say, “The white radicals from the 60′s and 70′s have faded away and now this is the time for young people to find their voice.” After doing a lot of research on the subjects we covered, I’m not so sure Sergio had all his facts straight, but he was nice enough to talk to me, and although it wasn’t like spotting Bigfoot or the Loch Ness monster, he was the last remaining member of the Former Maoist International Movement.

After I shook Sergio’s hand and began wandering about, I saw a couple of older women digging through the sign tent, where the used signs are stored. One pulled out a sign that said “Eat the Rich,” and the other decided on a tattered sign that said “Occupy with Unconditional Love.” They were headed for the honk if yer horny line, so I ran to catch up with them. We chatted for a moment in the shade of a live oak tree that arched over the edge of the plaza. Their names were Joyce and Jane. Jane was 72 and Joyce was 78 1/2. They told me they drove all the way from Bartlett, which is way out in the country about an hour north of Austin. Jane said she came to the protest before, because she believes everyone should have a chance to share in the wealth. She said they are going through rough times because of the drought as she has a farm and Joyce lives on a ranch. But they know many folks are having a tougher time of it right now, so they formed a non-profit organization called, “Food for Friends,” to help out. They started feeding just a handful of folks in their little area last year and now they feed over 120 people. They get donations by word of mouth. Jane said everything in our economy is lopsided and she is for occupying everywhere. She said the previous weekend she was in San Antonio to support Occupy San Antonio and Indigenous Day, which she hopes one day will replace Columbus Day. She says we are all suffering needlessly and all the money going to corporations for war and bailouts has prevented any positive social change.

Joyce said 2 1/2 years ago, she and another friend, who is 87, went out into the countryside and were shocked at what is happening to people who spent their entire lives taking care of others or working in the fields. These people have little or no savings because they were paid in cash for 50 years or more. Minimum wage was non-existent when they were young. Joyce said the number of homes she and her friend visited with no electricity or running water was appalling. This is less than 100 miles from Austin, by the way, not in a third world country. She said, “These poor people were already mired in poverty but were getting by with help of extended family members until the economy went south, and now they are in dire straits.” So Joyce and Jane cook from scratch and deliver over 100 meals every Friday. They also deliver to Vietnam vets who have a whole other set of problems, including mental illness. Some of the vets haven’t signed anything since they were drafted, and have a deep mistrust for the government and anyone else for that matter. But the problem is not they refuse to get help, it’s the help they need is not there for them even if they wanted it.

One day, a man who has a business in Central Texas heard about Jane and Joyce and came by asking if he could help cook and deliver. About a week later he called Joyce and told her he would build her a brand new kitchen, which he did. She said, “I am very thankful for that, but it does not stop the injustice I see every day. When David Dewhurst gets on the TV and says Texas has the finest healthcare system, I say go to Salt Lake, the little section of town I serve, and take a look if you want to see Texas’ fine healthcare system at work.” Jane and Joyce also offer clothes, toothpaste and other things folks need. The recipients don’t have to sign anything and there are no questions asked. In fact, Joyce said, “If somebody is an alcoholic or on dope, we don’t care-they need a meal just like everyone else.”

Joyce had ankle supports on both her ankles and the two women helped each other over the limestone rocks by the sidewalk, that are difficult for even a young man to navigate, and stood in the honk if yer horny line for the next two hours until someone gave them a chair, and they remained for another two hours or more. These two women spend all week working for the poor and still have time to come out and make their voice known and show the world and our country that we must change to survive. They also believe we can no longer give all our resources to gamblers and thieves who are giving us the finger and laughing at us right now with the help of people so cruel, you can’t believe they are Americans. And right now, many of those people are trolling the Occupy Facebook pages and websites or driving by our protests just to call us names, mock us and waste our time. But Joyce and Jane hold on and help where they can despite being mocked, harassed and degraded by the right-wing fascist filth.

-Jim Gober-

Editor’s note: This is the eighth in a series of excerpts from Jim Gober’s 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.

It was Sunday, and I awoke to the news that on the previous day, hundreds of thousands of people had marched for the occupation in cities all over the world, and although 3000 to 5000 people marched in Austin, the local newspaper, The Austin American Statesman, covered it as if it was a minor car accident on the Travis County line. But we knew better because we were there.

Later in the day, The Austin American Statesman offered a few photographs on their website, and they were tastefully done. There was a picture of two children in a wagon holding balloons while being pulled through the Austin protest, which at least helped our image a bit. They were not like pictures from other news organizations cherry-picked to show the most downtrodden or bizarre characters because they think Americans will laugh or make fun of us. Fox News and a handful of other conservative news sites are doing their best to make us look like outlaws, but as anyone can see from looking at pictures of us from all over the country, we are all, simply and beautifully, Americans.

But the day before, the day of the mighty march, I was dressed loudly as possible and ready to go at the designated time. You are supposed to be colorful when you attend a peaceful protest. It helps lighten the mood, puts people at ease and hopefully, they’ll join us. If we all wore black, covered our faces and carried hammers, something tells me the mood would go sour rather quickly. I brought my tambourine, plenty of water, wore my favorite Grateful Dead tie dye given to me by my friend Erica, and a big hat. The crowd got mobilized in the plaza at 11:30 am sharp.

Our first stop was Chase Bank where a few protesters went in to close their accounts and move their money to local credit unions. On Friday, in New York, 30 protesters were allegedly arrested for trying to close their Citibank accounts. That’s right. Citibank, the company that used Robert Rubin to lobby President Clinton to implement the very tactics that brought down the economy, and took in almost 2 trillion dollars in bailout money, is now having people arrested for trying to flee from them with a few thousand dollars of their own money.

We made a lot of noise during the march. I gave a fiery speech on the corner where Chase Bank sits. In a booming angry voice, I shouted, “Look at the protection Chase now gets. Just look at all the police standing by the doors. This is after Chase and other New York banks stole trillions from you and brought down our economy. Where was our protection when Clinton, Bush and Obama opened the safe and dished out your money to them, and now these same banks want to kick you out of your home before they’ll lower your mortgage rates while they get their gambling money free? Now look at these fascist pigs standing behind me ready to throw you in jail because you are angry that you can’t pay your bills because of what these people have done to you. These pigs are protecting the fascist scum that is destroying our world. Who is protecting us now? Nobody! This is what fascism looks like! This is what a police state looks like!”

The crowd flowed around me like I was a rock in the middle of a fast-moving stream. Cameras and microphones came and went. I was giving the battle call to the troops as the cacophony and immensity of the protest swelled. I jumped back into the crowd and made it to another vantage point atop a planter box of some sort. “And for all the soldiers who are overseas giving their arms and legs for our country and even their lives, they aren’t fighting for you, they are fighting to keep the fascist war machine in power and keep you impoverished while your money is taken from schools, bridges and healthcare. This is what fascism looks like! Don’t be stupid! Join us! Join us!” I shouted at the gawkers on the other side of the street.

I hopped from one location to another and repeated variations of the speeches very loudly. By now I was losing my voice, but I managed to yell at an older man with his arms folded as he stood with a larger group of stalled pedestrians, “Folding your arms won’t protect you when freedom comes, because this is what America looks like-this is what democracy looks like-it does not look like the America the fascists are trying to paint for you. You’ve been living a lie. We are fighting for the America the fascists have promised you and never delivered! We are fighting for the small businessman, the house, yard, 2 kids and a dog, not for an America littered with the broken bodies of the fascist war machine!” That was a good one; I had to admit to myself. I was alive, liberated and in the mix. I didn’t feel the jackboot of oppression on my lifestyle or my political beliefs. It was all lifted away and carried over the tops of the buildings along with chants of “We are the 99%” and “You are the 99%” and “This is what Democracy Looks Like!” Occupy Austin had reached the peak of its power.

So, it goes without saying, everyone was exhausted when we got back to the plaza, but spirits were high. There were awesome fiery rallying speeches by the organizers, as they stood on the rocks near the sidewalk on the south side of the plaza, and the honk if yer horny line was in full bloom. Then, an angry young man arrested a few nights before during the power wash, who was now exiled to the sidewalk, was given the microphone. As he faced the crowd, he loudly complained about the police presence, even though the police could have cracked any of us over the head any second during the march, especially me, who was obviously antagonizing them the entire time. Then this odious jerk demanded we call out Joshua, the guy with the dreadlocks, who has worked his ass off for this campaign, because it was Joshua’s PA and Joshua had told the jerk he couldn’t use the PA to be an asshole to the police, although that was exactly what the jerk was doing.

When the idiot finally got off Joshua’s PA system, Joshua was standing near and the scene was like a high school fight about to happen with the dickhead’s few supporters standing near him, and Joshua’s supporters rallying around him. They included a babbling man with an Italian accent talking very close to Joshua’s face, as European’s often do when arguing politics, but the withering effect it was having on Joshua was obvious. There were a few other folks I haven’t seen hanging around, and me, standing between Joshua and the dickhead. The heat was oppressive. The small crowd gathering around the two was animated, standing very close together and highly agitated. Our most victorious day was being tainted by this sorry pitiful angry jerk, with so many ripe whiteheads decorating his face you has to stand back 3 paces just in case one went off, who really had one issue: he was angry he now had a jail record for standing in the way of a power washing machine, and we couldn’t do anything about it.

Joshua was nervous and had crumpled his empty water bottle to the point it looked like old chewing gum. I took it from him, threw it away, then found some fresh water and handed it to him. He was looking perturbed and of course, exhausted. I talked to the dickhead and asked him why he doesn’t channel his energy in the right direction, and then it occurred to me, he didn’t even know what that direction was. He was literally too stupid to know why we were even there. He was just a hothead with a lot of rage who probably would have been better off cooling his heels in jail for a few days and leaving us alone. I really hated that guy. It was then I saw my beautiful occupation movement had an ugly side, just like everything else in America, and just like everything in life, I suppose. A few cops, one with a bandage carefully taped over 5 or 6 bloody stitches above his left eye walked over and stood beside the dickhead to monitor the situation.

Then I talked to a young man named Alan standing near Joshua who appeared to have a grievance for Joshua. I decided to draw fire for the beleaguered Joshua who was melting in the heat and frustration of the moment. Alan said the community organizers, on the minority dominated east side of town, are saying their constituents are not comfortable coming to the rally because of the police presence. He went on to say the rally organizers, like Joshua, by coddling the police, are keeping some people away, the very people who are the most affected in our economy. I reminded Alan that Joshua was working hard and this isn’t a movement about us against each other, it is us against the past. The angry tones must go, we must forget about our differences and chill out so we can move forward. And there was no reason the minorities he spoke of couldn’t come to the plaza. Indeed, half our group’s spokespeople, or magnets as they are called, or of some minority group or another. I reiterated to Alan that most people in today’s America are so used to arguing and not listening they can’t get their head around how the democratic process is supposed to work. And then you’ve got a group of people with trillions of dollars that want us to go the hell away and make sure the system won’t work for us even if we did understand it. Alan agreed, and since things seemed to be cooling off, we shook hands and I moved along, spending the rest of the day and much of the evening drinking in the excitement and exhilaration of Occupy Austin’s crowning achievement: Our glorious and beautiful mighty march.

Late that night, while sitting on a polished piece of granite waiting for Father Time to deliver me a bus at Congress Avenue and Cesar Chavez, I felt myself becoming urban and gritty after spending so much time in the plaza with my comrades. Glaring out into the night, I imagined myself as a gargoyle sitting on a high ledge staring over the same sooty grey buildings for 100 years. I looked around to see what a gargoyle might see from his perch far above the city, although I was grounded by fate and the need for transportation. I looked toward the third floor of the Radisson Hotel and there was a couple getting it on with the curtains wide open. The room was directly over the intersection where the entire world could easily see them. She was on top for a while, then he was, and after a few minutes there was a spectacular missionary finish with all the bells and whistles and legs high in the air. After the show, he stood up, moved into the light of the room, and hastily put on his clothes. He stood near the door and talked for a moment while she sat cross-legged on the bed. Then he turned and abruptly left, his presence replaced with the impressive wooden door. The door was bare except for the oversized key card reader and the “Do Not Disturb” sign still hanging on the inside latch. She remained sitting on the bed with her legs crossed, and began pulling hairpins from her mouth as she put her hairdo back together from memory.

Editor’s note: This is the seventh in a series of excerpts from Jim Gober’s 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.

After writing most of the day, I left the house in the late afternoon. As I was locking my front door, I glanced over and saw my neighbor, Margret Hofman sitting in her driveway. She is known as Austin’s Original Tree Lady, because of her life-long work for Austin environmental concerns, especially when it comes to trees and tree planting. She is instrumental in implementing the city’s first tree preservation rules and created a registry of Austin’s largest trees. She served on the Austin city council in the 1970′s. Although wheelchair-bound and nearly 90, she is still very interested in what is happening beyond the confines of her home, including the Occupation, of which I am keeping her updated.

She waived me over, and when I told her where I was going, she asked me to check on what the protesters call “The Island” but is actually her namesake park, a small triangle-shaped grove of oak trees and landscaping with a large rock in the middle located across Cesar Chavez from City Hall. It was officially named the “Margret Hofman Oaks Park” less than a year ago to commemorate her work. The island is where most people congregated the night the plaza was power-washed and the arrests were made because a few people refused to move out of the way of the power-washers. It is also a place for the cops as well as the protesters to cool off under the impressive oaks. Margret was concerned it was being trampled by the cops and protesters. I told her I would check on it as soon as I arrived. And of course, it was the first thing I did, and everything was in good shape. The plaque with her picture and information was perfectly positioned on the biggest rock so the golden setting sun would highlight it every day.

While I was there, I noticed a lady standing alone on another rock holding a protest sign. Her name was Carmen. She was born in Puerto Rico, moved to Spanish Harlem, and then moved to Tacoma, Washington. She said the green lands in Washington were so beautiful and a shock after living in the concrete canyons of New York, and she fell in love with the natural spirit that is Mother Earth. At 20 years old, Carmen hopped on a plane and turned 21 on a beach in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico where she lived for several years. It was there she questioned integrity, common sense and humanity. She believes common sense is stolen from Americans at an early age by our standardized educational system and rigid conformity to useless, degrading and dehumanizing social mores. She sees a society that is so jaded and citified that people don’t even know they are in a daze. It frightens her to see humanity this way-so disconnected from each other.

Carmen was out of the country while the cell phone and PC culture hit in the 90′s and was shocked when she returned because of the human isolation, commercialization and “not one authentic thing coming from anyone.” It is the dehumanization that is going on and how we’ve become incapable of feeling for each other that disturbs her most. She said, “If we don’t have a heart, how do we care for each other?” Carmen went on, “Information is great, but it is only healthy if we can process it and who today can process all this information and still have time to care for humanity? If you have too much incoming information your mind goes mad. That is why we have dissent and stress. The corporations that constantly push out all this worthless information are the root of all this stress.” Carmen said she spends a lot of time in her apartment, or “The Grotto,” as she calls it, and as long as there is food there she can stay safe and happy. And I was guessing she was in her late sixties, but had the skin of a 25 year old. Her beauty glowed from within. A beauty built on a lifetime of awareness and a desire to help others, not a lifetime built on bullying other people, deriding those who she perceived were inferior or having her face stuck into an iPhone or a TV.

After we chatted for a while longer, I walked across the street to the plaza and met Larry. Larry is holding a silent vigil about 150 feet down the street from the honk if yer horny line. He is in his 50′s and after noticing him there every day, I decided to see exactly what he was up to. His sign is kind of hard to understand but the number $40,000,000 is fairly easy to see. So I asked for an interview. Larry is a veteran who had a tough life after the Vietnam War. He found God one day in church with the help of a lady he met a few years back. He prayed that day God would help him build a place for homeless veterans, with hot showers, meals and recreation areas. God also told him it would cost around 40 million dollars to build his dream, and that is what he is asking for by patiently holding his sign, praying and hoping. When Larry left church the day he found God, he looked on the ground and found a 20 dollar bill and thought it was surely a sign; the beginning of his journey. And he’s been on that path every since.

So there Larry stands every day, in the same place he will stand long after the occupation is gone, because he wants to open his heart and help someone else. Although he has nothing of material value, Larry is still trying to get something for his brothers and sisters who suffer so badly. Larry has emphysema, COPD and peripheral artery disease, but is confidant God will grace him with the money he needs for his mission before he dies.

At the end of the day, I looked toward the corner for Larry. He was sitting patiently on the short stone wall that lines the sidewalk, partially hidden in some native grasses under a small oak tree. He was barely visible in the faltering light of the evening, but I could make out his silvery short beard, his sunburned face and clean red button-up shirt. He stared straight ahead into the passing traffic as he could plainly see the clear-cut path to his destiny. His shoulders were erect as any soldier, but even from that distance you could see the exhaustion from pursuing his mission for his brothers and sisters on the hot pavement the entire day. A car, pedestrian or chatty young idealist on the way to the plaza passed him by. Then another, and another and Larry faded into the blue-gray ether of the evening until he was no longer visible from where I was standing.

I chatted with Gabe, who was in his early 20′s, and has a good job as a draftsman. He came out to make his voice heard because he doesn’t want his future consumed with corporate greed at the expense of everyone else. He had everything going for him: a job, good looks, and a heart. He was hardly the bum or wacko the corporate press is trying to make us all out to be. And he had a good point when he said politicians running for office now don’t need millions from corporations, they have a free social network to exploit. They don’t even have to go door to door anymore.

I talked to Zach, who has a PhD in Mathematics and is a teacher at the University. He was discouraged the best mathematical minds are not used to solve societal problems, but are instead hired by money managers and banks to figure out ways to screw people when they invest in the stock market. He was also dismayed that math is not taught as a theoretical problem-solving technique but rather as a series of standard problems, such as 2+2 =4, and if you get it right on the test, you don’t have to worry about math again the rest of your life. He said students aren’t being taught to think, they are being taught to follow.

Then there was a general meeting and time for speeches. I signed up for a short speech by talking to Kevin, a young man in charge of the speech queue, or stack, as it is known throughout the movement. There were quite of few of us gathered around to listen to the speeches and when my time came up I was nervous but grabbed the mike. Here it was:

“I just wanted to mention my neighbor, Margret Hofman. Now Margret came over from Germany after WWII where her Jewish mother died in a concentration camp. Margret was also in Dresden when the allies bombed it and even by a small count over 100,000 people were killed. So Margret knows a little about fascism and Margret knows a little about war, and Margret hates fascism and Margret hates war. And if she could, she would be right here with us right now.

But I wanted to tell you this: The little island across the street is named after her. Margret Hofman was a city councilwoman who was very important in creating the tree-loving environment we enjoy in Austin today. So when you look around, take a look at what Margret has done over the years with her activism and letter-writing campaigns and how even one person who is dedicated enough to a cause can make a difference. If you go over to the island and look at the big rock you will see a picture of her and a little information about Margret. The park is formally named Margret Hofman Oaks.

I just wanted to tell everyone to appreciate what Margret has given to us and let everyone know a little something about the place we call, “The Island.” Before I left today to come to the plaza, I told her I would check on her park and make sure it was OK. And if it wasn’t for that island, the police would have had everyone standing in the street the other night when they came to power wash the plaza. So I just wanted to say thank you Margret, and before I close, could I get a big hand for Margret and all she has done for us and this beautiful city?”

Everyone clapped and cheered and some yelled, “Thank you Margret!” And for the first time I got plenty of the good kind of sparkle fingers before I stepped down. I had just given a perfect speech. It was completely unrehearsed or thought about beforehand. I got up there simply because I loved someone who loved the whole world. A world that tried to destroy her time and again. But somehow, tonight, all of our hearts-Margret’s, mine and everyone’s at Occupy-for a perfect shining moment-had melded into one.

Although it was after midnight when I got home, I could see a dim blotch of light shining through Margret’s antique living room curtains. I gently tapped on the front window. The home healthcare lady that stays with her answered the door and there was Margret, wide awake in her rented hospital bed facing the door so she can see the sunrise every day. I told her everything at her little park was OK and that I gave a little speech about it and had recorded it for her.

As I played it she closed her eyes and listened to me speak as if she was listening to an orchestra inside the most beautiful concert hall in Europe, before the angst, destruction and terror of war and fascism had stolen her mother and engulfed her young and precious life. When it got to the part in the speech where I asked for the applause, Margret noticed it was loud and quite impressive. She opened her eyes and got the attention of her day-sitter who was ignoring the entire scene with her head buried in a newspaper. When the day-sitter looked up, Margret said with a smile, “Do you hear that? They are applauding for me.”

The above was written in October 2011 and just last week Margret took her last three breaths and passed into the garden. Today, I planted a small oak tree she had nurtured in a flower pot on her back stoop. Three weeks ago, Larry had emergency heart bypass surgery. Yesterday, I saw him standing on the corner by the deserted Occupy encampment which lies across the street from Margret’s park. His left hand was holding a wooden pole on which a huge American flag was mounted. It flapped unceremoniously in the chilly February breeze. In the other hand was his sign with the $40,000,000 still clearly visible. The traffic roared by.

Editor’s note: This is the sixth in a series of excerpts from Jim Gober’s 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.

Before I made it to the occupied plaza today, I had to wait for the bus as usual, and was entertained by an older man with a horrible limp who hobbled up to a pay phone situated between the two bus benches. It was one of those newer types that sits on a pole about 4 feet high. After he used it, he managed to make it over to my bench and sit down beside me. I looked closer at the pay phone and the price was 50 cents per call. And apparently you could call Mexico too. Although I couldn’t understand the writing on the little sun-bleached sign above the receiver, I could make out a beach scene crowned with a palm tree and a benevolent smiling sun reminiscent of Mexico’s golden days. It was scribbled over with gang graffiti.

I asked the man who sat beside me if the phone worked. He said it had a dial tone, but the number 3 was out and it took his 50 cents anyway. I mentioned how you don’t see many pay phones anymore. He said that’s what always happens before they invade-they take out all the pay phones-and he’s seen it happen plenty of times such as in Panama, Cuba, and then he started mumbling and I couldn’t get the full list. So I asked him who was going to invade and he said, “The Obamabush aliens.” He then announced they want to take over and bust your head if you don’t give them what they want, and they want your house and your money.

Now the similarity between what this poor old man, wracked with schizophrenia, was saying and what I say, when I am talking about the fascists, was not lost on me. But is it because our political situation in this country was so crazy and out of control that even the most severe of schizophrenics could smell it, or was I just another kook with something/nothing to say? All this had to be called into question. Was I crazy for believing big money from corporations and wealthy individuals had corrupted our government to the point they would take our homes and money to serve an ambitious agenda? But then again, isn’t that what they’ve been doing for years? I settled on the fact the whole country is collectively mentally ill. It’s out of control, neurotic, schizoid, over-medicated and brainwashed. Wherever I fit in, that is where I sit-in this crazy fucked-up place called the United States, still advertised as the best country in the world to live, by the fascists, of course, every time you complain about it in front of them.

It was obvious this guy, with one tooth, nowhere to go and now no way to make a phone call needed help. But that help was done away with in the 1980’s under the Father of Modern American Fascism, Ronald Reagan, and it’s never coming back. But schizophrenics, like this gentleman, have the power to see the world in its purest sense, without the numerous filters “normal” people paste over the truth to avoid pain and anger. That’s why political or social arguments coming from people like this man have a frightening ring of truth, because, although the presentation is lacking, they offer some insight into the real state of affairs without being tainted by the fascist controlled corporate propaganda machine. For example, it can be said that every sensible argument for positive change in this country made in the last 25 years has been discredited by powerful people who, through the use of the corporate media, make you believe you are crazy for going along with any solution that doesn’t include transferring more power to the fascists. Think climate change, the Iraq war and bank bailouts.

So here is this “crazy” gentleman, all alone with his thoughts of an impending invasion of the Obamabush aliens as he watches the pay phones disappear. But is he crazy? I thought of an album by singer Jeffrey Lewis entitled, “It’s the Ones Who’ve Cracked That the Light Shines Through.” Oddly, now that my bus stop brethren had brought it up, the disappearance of communication lines that cannot be switched off instantly or easily monitored by the government, the proliferation of cell phones, which hold our entire life history within them, and the increased control of one political party on all levels of government, is unsettling when looked at it as a whole. As I got on the bus and paid my fare with the last dollar in my pocket, I looked back and there he sat, ripped off for his last 50 cents, after a simple device he expected to work stole his money. The parallel with what is happening in America cannot be denied. You put your life, time, money and energy into this country expecting it to work like it always has, and the fascists steal it all. Meanwhile, the opportunities once available to everyone if you work hard and sacrifice are disappearing before our eyes. Where did they go? They were stolen by the Obamabush aliens.

I made it to the plaza just before sunset, and there wasn’t much going on, so I sat down to write about the scene and it wasn’t long before a very nervous woman took to the microphone and asked for supporters in the planning commission meeting being held in the city hall. She was trying to save a beautiful pecan tree from a developer who wanted to do what developers love to do to trees. You know trees-those stubborn things that keep you from dying in the Austin summer heat if you are not bathing in the luxury of a high-dollar condominium. There was some chaos as a motion had to be called by the occupiers and volunteers chosen to go. I was chosen, but since it wasn’t going to start for a while, I did other things to keep busy. I passed out food, picked up trash, straightened out some stuff and held up a sign for the passing cars until my arms got tired. I noticed Ron Paul supporters were coming into the scene. Even though Occupy Austin is a non-political movement, we needed bodies today, so nobody said anything. My favorite sign today was “TV News is FUBAR” which means, “Fucked up beyond all recognition.”

An elderly couple pulled up to the curb and hastily dropped off two boxes of fruit. There were lots of bananas and some huge apples. I carried it to the food station, took the wrapper off everything and handed a banana to a man named Bert. I made a lewd comment about the banana, which caused him to emit a nervous laugh. Then I asked Bert to tell me his story. Bert is a 64 year old homeless man sleeping every night in the plaza. He is retired and on disability. He claims the system is broken and that is why he is there. Bert gets enough disability to have money in his pocket or a home-but not both. He said he’s been homeless for a long time. Bert went on to say, “When I was younger, I was in Vietnam, I was a Navy Medic. After the service, I owned my own landscaping business but can no longer do that kind of work. I thought I had enough saved to retire but couldn’t keep health insurance. Medical bills piled up and I had to sell my home. I am on Medicaid and get $687 a month. I’m on a housing list but that is a 5 year wait. I take my showers at Barton Springs during the free swim time at 6-9 in the morning. I don’t stay in shelters because they are dirty and people are on top of each other. But I don’t think I am different than anyone else. As long as we all stick together we can make a change for the better.” I liked Bert. He was neat and clean, used a cane to walk and complained that sleeping on the plaza cement was giving his hips plenty of problems. But he was cool and happy to be with us. I had a feeling it had been a long time since he was surrounded by this much love. I offered a hug and he eagerly accepted.

Another great sign today: Real Eyes Realize Real Lies.

“Join us! Join us! Join us! Join us! Join us!” They chanted over and over in the honk-if-yer-horny line. I stood there again with my sign and watched the faces of the passers-by in their comfortable cars. The furiousness and hatred plastered across some of their faces was unsettling. How were we hurting them? I wondered. Why would they hate us so? Some didn’t even notice we were there, but most honked, waived or pumped their fist in support of Occupy Austin.

I thought about how in any war, you have your warriors and those that stay home and pray for victory, and we have our share of both. But in this war, you don’t see cheesy “pray for our troops” spam on Facebook or preachers telling their congregations to pray for us or little yellow ribbons around an oak tree, even though we are fighting for America too. And ironically, it’s the ideal America where everyone has a house, a job, 2 kids and a dog we are fighting for-the one the fascist right is always dangling in your face so you will vote for their ilk. But they never deliver. Never. The America our soldiers are fighting for overseas is an America taken over by the industrial-military complex that sucks up every penny that should be used for housing, healthcare and job creation. Those soldiers are fighting for an America that feeds on human blood, arms and legs and the suffering of others. Who in their right mind would pray for that? Well, just go to church or get on any social network and take a look. It seems like everybody is-and you thought the guy back at the bus stop was crazy. We are just fighting so Americans can live in peace.

Eventually, it was time for the meeting about the tree, so I went into the civic center and signed up to speak, but got cold feet because it wasn’t really an emotional issue as much as a technical one, and I was going to look the fool trying to talk about the technicalities of this potential building permit and a tree I never saw. But I hung around for moral support. And guess what? The planning commission denied the request for the developer to cut down the tree.

As I left the plaza and meandered through the sign-waivers and horn-honkers and animated speakers, I was happy. I looked over Austin’s lush green hills and felt all the trees were happy too because one of them had been saved from the fascist jerks that don’t give a shit about anything beautiful or kind unless they own it. I thought how happy we would all be if we worked harder to save people we will never know from the pain of losing their home, from not having affordable healthcare and from the life and soul-destroying war machine. Then I thought how mankind-now at the absolute peak of its existence, has decided the few, who are just like us, somehow have the right to more than the many, whose only mistake is they trusted the few.