This is the fifth 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.

“Beauty awakens the soul to act” -Dante

It was Monday, Columbus Day, and I hitched a ride to Occupy from my neighbor who was heading downtown. I quickly found myself at 2nd and Congress and walked the few blocks to the plaza. There is really no reason for me to stay every night on the plaza like some of the occupiers. I live 20 blocks away and spent the better part of 2001 living in a tent with no electricity or running water, and 1989-91 running the streets of Austin and San Francisco, so I’ve made my sacrifice to the gods of homelessness. These folks at the plaza got it made. Food and water is being delivered non-stop due to a healthy stream of donations, and they have toilets and running water. They can brush their teeth 10 times a day if they like, and don’t have to cook and eat with filthy hands. And hard-core drugs like heroin, crack or meth are readily available, which is really bad news for Occupy Austin, but when you roll out the welcome mat…

The thick clouds left over from the weekend storms were beginning to clear as I approached the plaza. I was surprised to see only 100 people or so there, and most were in a large circle doing yoga. The speakers were playing a recording of yoga sounds over the PA that went,”Ohmmmmmmmm, ohmmmmmmm,” and the vibe was most excellent. Everyone was very still, evenly spaced and casting long shadows on the plaza in the hazy golden Indian summer sun that was breaking through the clouds. The yogis looked like monoliths planted years ago by an ancient and mystical religion. I took off my backpack and sat down next to a garbage can adorned with a recycled protest sign that read, “Recycle Here.” I got into my yoga pose, following the lead of the yoga leader, who, according to his demeanor, was well into yoga land. Then I looked up and noticed the clouds had completely blown away, leaving a brilliant blue rain-washed sky. It was the kind of sky I had not seen in months of dusty drought. I could see a sparkling white airliner blazing toward the sunset 35,000 feet in the air. At a lower altitude, a small private plane hummed. Then beneath that a helicopter chopped by and then a flurry of white-winged doves-which are everywhere in Austin-flew over the treetops.

Was this a metaphor for how far we are willing to go with our movement? Are we going to soar with the highest jet airliner? Or will we just simply flutter above the treetops? Or maybe I was looking at the different levels of consciousness and understanding that only comes through meditation and peace? Who knows? But one thing I know for sure is that was one sparkling blue and pretty sky and I was optimistic as ever. A fire truck came by along with a police car and all the honking and sirens failed to dislodge the ohhmmmmers, but I found it hard to concentrate on my own ohm, and since I am a writer, this was not the time to gaze inward, so I started poking around for a story.

I noticed the plaza was straightened up and was beginning to look like a place we could stay long-term without sitting in something gross. Things were arranged neatly. There was even a big “Do Not Litter” sign posted. A sign by the restroom asked people not to write on the walls, because someone went into the most awesome restrooms you could ever ask for at a protest and scribbled anarchy stuff. Was it an agent provocateur? Maybe. Was it an asshole? Bingo.

Then there was some excitement as the bulk of the protesters were returning from a protest march on Christopher Columbus Street (which I couldn’t find on the Google map) and I didn’t understand the reason, so I didn’t go, even though it was Columbus Day, and I think it had to do with Indians. But Anglo-Europeans protesting against Columbus for the Indians seemed lame. What happened 600 years ago stays 600 years ago, if you ask me. My name ain’t on that one. I live in the now and now we have problems we have to solve now. When the marchers poured back into the plaza, everyone was in high spirits and blowing on flutes, banging drums and chanting things like, “Power to the family,” which I never heard before, but it sounded gay, so I was down with it. Some of the bigger marchers were sweating a lot and needed water. All the new racket was annoying the yoga people for a minute or two until the yogis got their ohmmmmmmm back and everything settled down a bit.

I changed my mind and decided to really participate in the yoga scene, just so I could take in more of this beautiful sight. I watched some of the young hippie girls looking so awesome in their beautiful natural selves. No makeup, no trashy high heels, nothing making them look like prostitutes, even though they were showing plenty of skin. Their hair is naturally sun-bleached, curly or straight. Their tan is not sprayed on, and they are just dealing with what their maker gave them instead of trying to cover it up with handfuls of chemicals or worse. As we all know, we live in a society that tells women of all ages they are ugly unless they do something-anything-to hide their real selves. Could it be by the time some of them are adults, they don’t know who they are anymore? Is that why so many young women are so insecure they’re ready to claw each other’s eyes out any second? Who knows? But all you had to do this afternoon was look at the young woman meditating by the yoga master in her tattered homemade dress as she captured the last rays of the day along with the essence of all creation. Her eyes were closed, and she held her hand over her heart as if she had discovered something breathtakingly beautiful and pure. I held my hand over my heart too, but just to be sure it was still beating.

Then I saw a guy I started calling “Ask Me” wandering around the plaza. He wore a little yellow sign on his shirt that said “Ask Me,” so at first I thought he must be there as an information source. But all he did was walk around and aggressively ask people for change and cigarettes. He was heading for me, so I got up and started looking busy, as I was out of both. About then, the yogis gave out three long ahhhhhhhhssss, which are much different from ohmmmmmmmms, and the yoga part was over-for now. A Mexican kid sat down beside me with a sign that said “Columbus-destroying our home since 1492.” Of all the people who had a genuine gripe about European “Explorers,” his was probably the most authentic. After all, Mexico has seen its share of marauding invaders over the years and all the goodies they brought along with them such as smallpox, cholera and the plague. Of course, Mexico sent the explorers back home with syphilis, but who’s counting.

As the day wound down, new age music continued to play from somewhere. The PA mike had been left on and was picking up the crowd chatter. The word “reality” came through loud enough to discern. A dog was barking. The mood was carnival-like. The Chief of Police, Art Acevedo, and his entourage, made the scene without raising any eyebrows. Then something occurred to me as I watched everything working together for a moment or two. With all our technology and advances in healthcare and our ability to really care for each other-we could have a perfect and amazing world, why are we not working as a planet to move into that space? The worldwide occupy movement is not just a movement for change in the political process, it is an awakening. It is awareness that if we do not change, we are all-and I mean every one of us-rich and poor-are going to die a hideous and completely unavoidable death.

Listening to the left-wing pundits on TV yelling about the Republicans and vice-versa makes me realize these folks don’t have a clue either. It’s time to stop yelling at each other. The world is changing-we don’t have peace and happiness because too many are making money on death and destruction. We are arguing too damn much rather than working on any reconciliation. But many of us are becoming aware of this sea change whether we like it or not, as one Government after another is stripped of its lies, greed and deceit. No matter what the fascists want you to believe, the children of the sun are beginning to awake. This occupation isn’t about us against them; it’s us against the past. You can feel it in the air. Someone turned the page on us. All the fascist batons and pepper spray will not make it go away. We are moving forward into the light and out of the darkness. Do not be afraid. You must join the change that is sweeping the world.

Then I spotted my best friend at the protest from a few days ago, John, and he was glad to see me. He was talking to Joshua, the Trustafarian, who I couldn’t look in the eye because I betrayed him by thinking bad thoughts about him a day or two before. I felt ashamed, because he turned out not to be such a bad guy for one, and two-why would I be negative about my brother in arms? The sunset was truly spectacular and perfect and I thought about my friends who haven’t talked to me since I’ve been involved in the occupation, and why even people you respect the most can fail to see the beauty in the mundane, which is the only way you can truly see the light that radiates from us all-even the plants and the lowliest of creatures. A brown-skinned man of Middle Eastern descent gathered his things that were piled next to me. He was wearing traditional clothes from his country. I closed my eyes as I slowly inhaled his scent. The smell of sandalwood combined with an exquisite touch of body odor sent me thousands of years back to the cradle of civilization. It was a beautiful peaceful place with colorful cluttered streets lined with shop barkers and the finest artisans displaying their wares. In my mind, I could hear people from an exotic faraway land going about their business, the sound of their activities undiluted by the electronic and mechanical hum of modern life.

I was brought back to nowadays by a lady who was telling everyone to go into the City Hall to see democracy in action. That was where the “Signs and Other Eyesores Approval Department” was having a hearing. I went in and sat down. There was an older man, around 70, named Peter, who was arguing against a new sign for a grocery store and strip mall on a scenic road near where he lives. After he made his point, a young woman walked to the podium. She was dressed down for the occasion, but was obviously a sleazebag, because she wanted to put up the ugliest damn signage you ever saw for the development she represented in total violation of the scenic highway ordinance. At first, the commissioners seemed sympathetic, until they read the fine print on the application, because she actually wanted to build four of the eyesores. Since it looked like she was trying to deceive everyone, her application was denied because of the domino effect of approving her sign, then another, then another, according to one of the commissioners. Interestingly, the three women on the panel voted for it and the four men against. And that sign was the ultimate eyesore. If you could distill ugly from a chunk of cement-that would be that sign.

As I was leaving, I chatted with Peter and congratulated him and asked if he was a retired engineer. He laughed and asked if it showed that much. It did-but that’s what was needed to fight a developer who was wanting to ugly up the highway. Education was needed-that is why we must fund education and why the fascists are constantly at war against anything to do with education, unless it’s so expensive only their children can attend school and the classes are taught with a religious bent. As long as people are educated and enlightened the fascists cannot control us-or at least put up ugly signs where you don’t want them.

As Peter and I walked out into the plaza among the protesters I asked Peter’s opinion about the protest and he was happy things were peaceful. He said he talked to the Police Chief the day it started and asked why there were so many police, paddy wagons and police cars for so few protesters. The Police Chief said he would rather be over-prepared than under-prepared. Then I said that’s what happened when the fascists took over America, we were under-prepared. Peter and I laughed and parted ways. Then it struck me how our Police Chief had to be over-prepared for people to exercise their right for assembly and free speech in a public plaza.

After dark, John and I had an excellent vegetable medley put together by Food Not Bombs. I asked the server her name because John wanted to talk to her earlier but forgot he had mentioned it. So I gave him an unexpected gift. Her name was Ramen. I introduced her to him and they chatted for a while. Before I left, I gave John a hug and made my way to the bus stop. There was an African-American couple sitting next to the only seat, which I gingerly took. She was in her twenties, but he was much older and was the clappiest looking man I’d ever seen. Although he was sniffling and coughing, they were still pulling tongue and she had her hand around his dick which you could see clearly through his pants. You only needed one look. Their making out was making some serious slobbering noises that was making the Food Not Bombs vegetable medley do flips in my stomach. Then her phone rang. She said she had to get it in case it was her mamma. I could hear her wrestling the phone out of somewhere.

Then she started chastising the person who called her by yelling, “Why you talking crack on the phone.” Ain’t nobody supposed to be talking crack on this phone.” Then clappy coughed my way for the tenth time, so I got up and stood close to the front by the bus driver. I asked the driver if he ever got lost with a bus full of people and he said yes, when he first started. He said he found himself lost in a neighborhood of narrow streets and had the hardest time turning around after pulling in somebody’s driveway. He said the people who owned the home were sitting outside, and you should have seen their faces when that city bus full of angry people, who were all yelling directions, pulled up. So we had a good laugh. I told him thanks for his patience and hard work then jumped off at my stop.

This is the fourth 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 Sunday, and since it had rained the previous night, the trees, so desperate for rain after a year of drought, were engorged with water and the hills beyond the occupied city hall plaza were a deep luscious green. The urban forest for which Austin depends to protect itself from the tortuous summer heat was at peace. The balmy air felt nice as I arrived at the occupation. As I prepared to cross the street to enter the plaza, a young man handed me a flyer reiterating the latest Occupy Wall Street demands.

I positioned myself along a limestone wall behind what I now call the “Honk if Yer Horny” line. That’s where the sign-holding folks stand on the curb inciting everyone to honk if they agree to what their sign might say. For example, there was: We Need You, Get Corporations out of our Government, We Love You, If You Are Thinking-You Are Winning, Stop Being A Battery for the 1%, and my favorite: Watching TV is Like Taking Black Spray Paint to Your Third Eye. Somebody rented a stretch Humvee limo to continuously circle the block to irritate the protesters, and it was becoming a source of - well, irritation. It must have cost 100 dollars or more an hour to rent, but I guess someone thought irritating desperate people was a better idea than buying schools supplies or helping the food bank.

Earlier in the day, a redneck driving a type of diesel pick-up truck called a dooly in Texas, because it has dual tires on each side of the back axle, downshifted and with one foot on the brake and another on the gas, drove slowly along the honk if yer horny line spewing thick black smoke over the protesters. The black carbon waste obliterated the entire occupation. It was looking like the real threat was beginning to come from folks who think they are the rich ones, but are up to their ass in debt and worry. Putting a face on their misery is getting us spit on, cursed at or worse. Although the truth hurts and is often ugly, somebody needs to be a representative of truth in our world. The lies are too great for a counterbalance to not appear. And here the truth was - right in everyone’s face.

One may ask, “Why would anyone hate to think someone might be trying to throw people lifeline?” Maybe it’s because it’s so easy to ignore suffering in America. Most everyone believes they’ll never need help-that death is an option, until one day they can’t stop coughing or that nagging pain doesn’t seem to go away and they can’t go to work or the Doctor, or even wipe their ass. Maybe they’ll have a handicapped child, or they’ll wreck their car in a fit of road rage and end up disabled for life. Or they just get old. Then they will bury their face in their hands and wonder why they are being forsaken by a system they worked so hard to support all these years. The answer is because they worked for the system rather than fighting so the system will work for them. The system is not infallible. People change every day to accommodate the system, such as adhering to some ridiculous new law that inconveniences them or costs them money. Isn’t it time the system changed to accommodate the people? Look at all the laws that have us in a straitjacket now. Just think what the next 20 years will bring.

After a while, I walked over to meet two 35-40 year old women sitting in a two-seater canvas lawn chair with an American flag draped on the back. One of them was holding a sign that said, “We want our Country Back.” Their names were Kazel and Shea, and we talked a little about why they were there.

Then out of nowhere, a couple in their 50’s strutted up to Kazel as she was reclining, chatting and minding her own business. The man stood over her with his crotch one inch from her face and angrily asked, “Take back your country from whom?” And she said, “The corporations.” Then he angrily proclaimed, “The corporations have given you everything,” and stormed off with his wife. This less than lovely pair, disheveled from drinking too much, looked like they were originally out for a nice afternoon, but decided to make a special trip through the plaza to blow off some steam. I fell in behind them as they huffed and puffed through the plaza. I shouted, “Can I ask you a few questions?” I pulled out my pen and pad as they turned to speak. My assumption about the drinking was correct because they reeked of alcohol and they were obviously a couple of mean drunks who haven’t fucked each other in years. I decided to draw them out.

“What do you mean corporations give you everything?” I asked. “Well, they do!” he answered. He became nervous when he saw me scribbling down his response, as if I was a major news organization and he was finally going to tell the world his position-or show the world how to be an asshole. I could sense he was choosing the latter, so I pressed. “Everything?” I asked. “What about life, happiness or love?” He replied, “Well, not that.” And I said, “So without corporations that would be all you have? He said, “Yes, that’s right.” So I asked, “Does it look something like this?” I stepped back so he could get a clear view of the plaza and protesters who were laughing, dancing, visiting and obviously working to make others happy.

“NO!” the woman suddenly screamed. When I looked at her, her half-crossed drunken eyes set in a bird’s nest of premature wrinkles surrounded by a curly mass of dyed jet-black hair startled me. Not because of how she looked, but because of the sheer ugliness and meanness that exuded from her persona. “These people are all on drugs!” she yelled. “They have to be! Just look at them! These are not normal people. What are they doing?” “Just living and loving,” I replied. She shut up and fumed. So I asked the man, who had bags of worry under his eyes, “You are a small business owner right?” I asked him that because unemployed Republicans are always “small business owners” while unemployed liberals are just losers or bums. And of course he said he was a “small business owner.” In reality, he was a dead-ringer for the long-term unemployed who had eaten through his savings and was now becoming desperate as society cast him aside.

So I asked, “How many times do you hear politicians talk about helping the small business owner, all the time-right?” And he agreed. Then I asked, “And how many times did that talk turn out to be crap while the big corporations that compete with you got all the breaks?” And he answered, “All the time.” Then, I stated, “That’s why we are here. To stop that behavior and give people like you a chance.” That made him angry; because I trapped him into agreeing, which is so easy to do with conservatives it shouldn’t be considered a sport. So to finish him off I asked him, “Is it fair the American taxpayer pays for bad corporate decisions while the corporations enjoy all the benefits when they win? For example, should we offer tax breaks when an oil company drills a dry hole or if an investment bank makes a bad investment? Is that fair to the taxpayer or the small business?” He became confused, “That’s a hard one to figure out,” he replied. He was quiet for a few seconds then suddenly became angry. I obviously short-circuited something in his head. His wife, noticing her husband’s retreat in order to grope for more mental ammo, decided to draw fire and reiterated the occupiers were crazy, on drugs and needed to be at work. I said, “It’s Sunday, for one and two, why are you talking about drugs when both of you are stinking drunk? She screamed, “We just had a couple of glasses of wine for dinner!” And the smell of strong liquor poured from her maw that glowed with the embers of hatred, years of disappointment, frustration and anger.

“I guess you want to fight about it,” said the man, who was so vulnerable to a smashing fist in the middle of his drunken pallid face it took everything I had not to pull the trigger. Then, a young guy, maybe 19 years old, named Brighton, had overheard the situation-and rushed over with his eyes aglow and asked if we were working on “common ground.” Which of course we were, but it was making the drunk very angry to know he was one of us and was now standing on common ground whether he liked it or not. I asked the man, “Do you really want to go to jail for fighting?” and he said, “Hell yeah!” and stumbled backwards as if he was already suffering from a TKO. Then I asked his battle axe if she wanted her husband to go to jail tonight, and she timidly agreed that, “Yes, it would be OK,” as though only a fragment of the meaning of my question had entered her besotted brain. I just shook my head and walked away because for one, going to jail would throw my schedule way off and ban me from the plaza, and two, today was not the day. So, they teetered off, deflated, to the land of drunken meanness, and I moved on through the crowded plaza.

Suddenly there was a commotion from a small parade of Latin Americans who were representing the Worker Defense Project which protects construction workers from accidents. It’s a problem where immigrants are hired and the general contractors give them crap equipment to do their jobs. Occasionally, they fall a really long way to their deaths or get hurt and spend the rest of their days paralyzed on a dirt floor in a poverty-stricken village. Of course, in America it’s not an outrage if they work under substandard conditions-because they’re illegals, of course. But these guys knew how to make a lot of noise with a little bit, and they had a great banner. After a few laps around the plaza they walked north on Lavaca and their chants were swallowed up by the sounds of the big modern city. A city they built with their tough brown hands, under dangerous conditions, with no overtime pay while undoubtedly trying to make each other laugh the entire time.

While I was listening to a lecture about alternative currency from a young man, who looked like a Coblynau, I spotted an old girlfriend of mine from college named Wendy. She seemed a little disjointed and frazzled, but she still had her contagious smile and beautiful mane of thick blonde hair. She had spent the day prepping and serving food for the charity, Food Not Bombs. I worked with them in San Francisco, so I know she worked brutally hard that day. We hung out together for quite a while and I gave her some water and we caught up a bit. She was at the plaza because she works with autistic and severely handicapped children in their home. It’s mostly charity work because there is not a state agency to help and the medical expenses for families are so high, they can barely afford to pay her. Wendy is very frail herself and complained about fibromyalgia. You could see the chronic pain taking its toll on her thin body. But still, this hero for those who literally do not have a voice, was there, not for herself, but to talk about help for the severely disabled. This was what I saw all around me. This was not a selfish exercise; most everyone at the plaza was there was because someone they knew needed help and did not have a voice.

I invited Wendy over to spend the evening and meet my partner, Frank. Once we got home-I drove her car as she was so exhausted-I noticed her inspection sticker was expired two months ago. We drank a few beers and I learned she had been through a terrible ordeal after college, when a man broke into her apartment one night. Then her mother died two months before the trial. And sweet Wendy, with the entire world before her the last time we parted, had struggled with this disaster for 25 years along with debilitating chronic pain while helping the most helpless people in our society. I was heartbroken, because she was always so happy-but I still got her to laugh a few times because of course, I still love her. Who wouldn’t?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This is the second 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 Thursday, October 6, 2011, the day the occupation officially started at the Austin City Hall Plaza. City Hall faces south on busy Cesar Chavez Street, which runs east to west through downtown Austin. South First Street, which runs north to south, dead ends into Cesar Chavez directly in front of the City Hall Plaza, so it makes the plaza a highly visible location for the occupation. So far, the rules set forth by the APD did not allow tents, so Austin was going to need a few adjustments, I could see that straightaway.

I spent the afternoon trying to rally support from my my partner, Frank, and our friends hanging around the house, who were very apprehensive about going, and didn’t share my view of the state of affairs, even though they could see I was super-excited about going and desperately wanted to see a real protest in action. I even wrote a speech airing my grievances I was determined to give the minute I arrived. I imagined myself as Winston Churchill, FDR or even Cesar Chavez himself. I thought about the adoring and heady applause and the look of wonderment on the enraptured crowd. I was going to make everyone stop and listen to me! I alone would lead the people of Occupy Austin out of the woods and single-handedly save the world with my obvious stroke of genius that no one present could deny.

As the time to go arrived, and I became more excited and animated, everyone became more tense and apprehensive. I think they were afraid I was going to give my speech and create a cascade of social unrest that would get us all beaten and arrested. For nearly an hour I tried to convince someone to come along with me. I just wanted to get my freak flag on and give my damn speech. Humanity needed me.

I called David, who was scared to come over and go to the protest once he learned I wanted to give a speech. Another friend, Tom, finally decided to go along with me, although he was surrounded by an air of apprehension about just what was going to go down, and asked pointed questions about my presentation to be sure it was not inflammatory in any way. I tried to reassure him no one was going to throw a Molotov cocktail at us or anyone else for that matter. Finally Tom and I left, and within five minutes were parking haphazardly in a tow-away zone by the South First Street Bridge that spans the Colorado River.

We walked north over the pedestrian bridge and by the time we got halfway across you could see Austin City Hall, a postmodern building with a token solar panel over the front. And best of all, there was the glorious Occupy Austin protest in full bloom. More than 2500 noisy and impassioned people were present. My head was dizzy with love, excitement and revolution.

As we entered the plaza, the police were standing around looking bored and there were-get ready for it-SPEECHES going on! One guy, dressed like Luke Skywalker, got in the speaker’s zone, which was on the first wide step that led up to the mezzanine from the plaza. He had a laser toy thing and closed his speech with, “May the force be with you-Nanu Nanu.” You would think he was a wet blanket, but he talked about love and light, and although few people were listening, it sounded pretty cool, especially the mixing of Mork and Mindy and Star Wars-since they were kind of from the same era and each one about as senseless as the other.

Then a blue-jeaned lesbian got up on the steps and gave a great rallying speech as if she had done it a million times. She reminded me of that masculine cheerleader everyone likes in high school, who no one suspects is a lesbian even though she acts like Don Rickles when she’s drunk. At the end of her speech, she yelled, “Unite! Unite! Unite!” and everyone went for it and yelled it too. She was so electric, I completely forgot about giving my speech. And by just looking around I could see occupy was not about me, it was all about us.

Ringing the speech zone were all kinds of people with home-made protest signs scratched with feeble attempts at original slogans. I’ll put it this way-if the saying was on Facebook last week it isn’t original today. Remember this one: “I’ll agree Corporations are people when Texas executes one?” That was so 10 days ago. But I did see one sign that was new to me. It said, “When we get screwed, we multiply.” I liked that one. The rest of the crowd was mostly younger with some older hippies around for spice and even tourists - some elderly - strolling through the places where less people were congregated.

A group of twenty or so yoga heads was sitting in lotus position while patchouli flavored kids, some with dread-locked hair extensions, stepped over and around them. One young woman, spectacularly pregnant, stepped through the yoga heads and somehow managed to become entangled in their crossed legs, which caused quite a stir before she was unceremoniously ejected.

Even though it was only hours old, you could see people driving by the protest giving the sign-holders standing along the sidewalk the middle finger and thumbs down. But here’s a little nugget for the people making fun of the those protesting the greed and corruption in our government: You will get any benefit that happens because the protesters put their necks on the line without you ever knowing how much work it takes to organize events like this. Sure it’s a little naïve. I mean-get rid of capitalism? Come on, get real. One young woman had a sign that said, “Capitalism is a Disease,” which was doubly hilarious because not too long ago I found a pamphlet from 1960 that my Goldwater Republican father was passing around in those days that said, “Communism is a disease.” But regardless, people are protesting being out of work-because they are out of work. They are protesting getting screwed by the system-because they were screwed by the system.

There were large numbers of handicapped people, veterans and everyday people at the protest that lost everything, because they fell into one financial trap or another set by huge corporations, who used every trick ever invented to pull them in and spit them out. Every road in the American experience now leads to poverty and the system is rigged against the middle class. Just because someone has managed to sidestep disaster so far, doesn’t mean it won’t happen.

My friend Tom, who is a successful something-to-do-with-computers person, made it a point to talk to the policemen and say things like, “You won’t have any trouble,” and “Pretty docile crowd, eh?” But, I think Tom was getting on the cops’ nerves by acting so friendly, and I had this unsettling feeling he was trying to show me how many cops were in attendance so I wouldn’t do anything stupid - like give my little speech. Tom doesn’t know that acting too friendly weirds cops out too, but I didn’t say anything. While the cops were being all nicey-nicey now, I say let’s wait about two weeks when the cops and the protesters start getting tired of staring each other down. The cops were already ringing the rooftops and taking pictures of every single person there because they know this. But hey-it’s all peaceful. Right?

Tom finally decided he was bored and insisted on driving me home, but I didn’t want to go. I was like the rare kid who goes to the circus and isn’t interested in just going to the circus. I wanted to join the circus. But after he implored me to leave with him, I left. But the call of occupy was ringing in my ears all night, and I was more determined than ever to return the next day and help occupy our space

This is the first 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 first truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism—ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power.” Franklin D. Roosevelt, April 29, 1938.

Chapter 1 The Thinking Tree

It was a blistering hot afternoon at the end of September, 2011, and I convinced a long-time friend named David to give me a ride to my first Occupy Austin planning meeting. It was taking place under a huge pecan tree in Austin’s Zilker Park, near the famed Barton Springs. We brought along a cooler filled with ice and a twelve-pack of Pabst Blue Ribbon to drink while waiting for the meeting to begin. As the Occupy Austin contingent arrived, they disturbed a handful of grossly intoxicated homeless men seeking refuge in the shade of this massive pecan tree, now known as The Thinking Tree by the occupiers.

Thankfully, the summer of 2011 was drawing to a close. It had not been a typical Austin summer. With no rain for almost a year and daily temperatures well over 100 degrees, the city looked like an overcooked cheese pizza. As the 50 or so occupiers settled in, they sat cross-legged or lounged on fresh blankets among the bewildered and bedraggled homeless. The occupiers appeared very optimistic, as if they were the super-warriors who were finally going to slay the fire-breathing hydra of Corporatism, Fascism, Oligarchism and Plutocracy that not only ate their future, but the lives and fortunes of millions of others throughout history.

So on this screaming hot September afternoon, the Occupy Austin arm of the Occupy Wall Street movement was born, for me anyway, although there was an earlier meeting at the La Zona Rosa coffee shop a few days before. The occupy group was as serious as any I’d ever seen, and true to Austin’s form, the homeless alcoholics who peppered the crowd were being surly and uncooperative. When a list went around for people to sign up and speak, a shirtless bum named Tommy signed up, but when his name was called to speak-at least five times-he awoke from a drunken slumber, and then slowly and clumsily sat upright. He wiped the slobber off his chin with the back of his hand and mumbled, “You gonna have to give me a minute,” then he fell back and passed out again. His hairless white beer belly was aglow in the slanting afternoon sun. He looked like a dead goldfish floating belly-up in an old fish bowl, dusty and forgotten on the bottom shelf of humanity.

I watched the Occupiers, mostly young people in their 20’s and 30’s, get things arranged to suit them. A recording device had to be put in the right place. Then they had to make sure the sun wasn’t in their eyes, so they could see the person speaking, play with Facebook or text somebody on their iPhones while the speeches were being done.

Then a dreadlocked mediator started with the hand signal thing that would be pervasive throughout the occupation. Today was mostly an introduction to the sparkle fingers. That’s where you wiggle your fingers above your head if you like something, at waist level when you are neutral, and down low when you don’t like something.

A discussion began about how we intended to post pictures and record everything on Facebook. This went on for 10 minutes, and I suddenly lost my patience and shouted out of turn. I loudly stated it was ludicrous to feed all your personal information into Facebook, a giant corporation, while using a device made in a sweatshop in China for another giant corporation, Apple. This outburst was met by a shirtless man, refreshed from a dip in the springs, who yelled, “Well, you’re drinking a beer!” I replied, “Well at least this beer’s not taking all my personal information and storing it for the fascists we are trying to fight in this movement to use against us.” That was met with plenty of down-low sparkle fingers. Was I missing something here? A fat young man, with an impressive Jew-fro, ran over and attempted to calm me down. He was very nice as he tried to find “common ground,” and I apologized for floating such a far-out idea and for being a little drunk myself.

While the older radicals, like myself, would have given up right there, I swore I was going to see this thing through and record the lives of these people. To dig deeper and see what motivates them, and maybe find out more about myself in the process. And of course, there is something to be said about what you can learn from seeing a society develop from the ground up. Maybe we can find something we missed the first time around. And I also knew the story of Occupy Austin would have an end, just like it had a beginning.

David and I became frustrated with the slow pace and irony of everything the group talked about, and the fact we hadn’t experienced this type of ordered meeting since grade school-so we were out, for that day anyway. On the way home, I told David regardless of how things went today, I believed in what the Occupy Austin people are trying to accomplish and wanted to be part of it.

David screamed, “You’re crazy, you know that! You are fucking insane!” Then we made fun of a few of the characters we saw so he would settle down and stop calling me crazy. But in my heart, I knew there was something more to the movement than just a few drunks and posers. I knew there were people with a lot of passion involved and this was serious business for plenty of folks, not just in Austin, but around the world.

The fact is, our world is in crisis and the occupy movement is like a festering boil. At some point, it will make the fascists uncomfortable and will have to be removed by any means possible. But on this late-summer day, and seared by the Texas sun, I was as optimistic as any of the occupiers, and as happily drunk as my homeless counterparts. I was ready to roll.

-Jim Gober-

This is the first 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 - We had heard for about a week that this might be coming. There was a document that was released that seemed to be an attempt to limit the presence of Occupy Austin under the guise of health and safety concerns. It had been a common tactic in many cities. It has been cited in police literature that an effective way to “handle” protesters is “through psychological pressure and ambiguous interpretation of the law.”

We had heard reports all day of minor skirmishes such as police collecting sleeping bags of protesters involved in a march. There was what seemed a constant flow of conflicting reports. People were becoming increasingly paranoid and a call to action had been given around 9pm as the police had told some of the GA that they were going to take the food and clear the plaza at 10.

We got our things together and got there at 9:30. We did not see anything unusual other than an increased police presence but still not many more than usual. We held signs till midnight. At one point a nice woman asked us a lot of personal questions that seemed friendly. She asked our level of involvement and commitment to the movement explaining she was new and wanted very much to understand everything.

Everything seemed okay and we left. I don’t remember how long I was home but we continued to follow reports at one point hearing that 50 police officers were in the lower deck, but they had wanted the occupiers not to be concerned as they were using City Hall as a substation to process Halloween arrests.

We were feeling better. I took the dog for a walk. I got back around 1am. Angela was waiting for me. “They are arresting people. The number is around 17. They took the food table. It’s done now but they expect more trouble at 2am. They are going to tell people to move for the pressure washing. The people on live stream are angry. A lot of them say they will not move.”

In efforts to cooperate with city workers this had never been a problem. Tonight it had become something else. The police were making it a threat, an act of intimidation. People were angry. It seemed orchestrated even then but regardless it seemed to many to not be a time to back done.

I got there at about 1:30. There were arguments being made on both sides. Many did not want arrests over “pressure washing” but about as many saw it as a bigger issue. It seemed clear to some of us that if we began to back down there would be no end to Austin PD attempts at intimidation. There could be no consensus made. As always we were in the end encouraged to follow our conscious. They had me at “what do you think they would do in Oakland, in Atlanta?” At that point someone said, “I’m done moving.” I sat next to him.

The rest starts at about 10:18 in the video. You can see me there. I am trying real hard to look unafraid. There was a reporter asking me questions just seconds before.

“What are your long term goals here?”

“Seriously, you are asking me that at this moment?”

“Ok sure, well are you as scared as I am?” she shows me a trembling hand.

I don’t show her my hand. I just say, “I am about to get arrested, I think.”

You don’t see my arrest. I am between the first and third of this part. There is a great close up of Bryce, he is the third one. You can’t hear it but he is reciting the United States constitution at one point, most of which he knows by heart. Aside from my own son I cannot think of another human being that ever filled me with as much pride.

I heard later that they had begun to hand pick people from the crowd. After the five of us who sat down were arrested, other people were arrested for asking about our arrests. At one point the police were walking with a woman who was standing with us. That nice woman with the questions was now helping the police hand pick the people who the Austin PD chief would later describe as “trouble makers who had infiltrated the protest.” I remember most of them as people who were actively involved. Many of those arrested at the end were the same who begged us to not get arrested. I remember a Navy veteran who was so concerned for our safety he had plead with us till the end. They made a point to break his dog tags when they arrested him. He had not resisted. I was in a prison bus at this point. I have been told the rest by multiple sources and by the people with me later on the bus and in the jail. There were 38 all together by then and two more later that morning. The Austin PD detained 27 other people that night in a halloween drunk driving crackdown that occurs every year. They arrested 49 the year before.

The rest you heard from my mouth. Though this explains more fully why I may not be available to work next Monday. I am told that the police are using the prior arrest as a means to limit my involvement. By law I am not allowed back on the City Hall plaza and they will arrest me if I set foot anywhere in the immediate area. I cannot use the sidewalk I walk my dog every day on or I may be arrested. I guess they will as I cannot accept this.

Please share this note. This is not TV news. This is not propaganda. I was there and this is what happened. It is fact. It is history. Leave your homes and we will change the world.

“expect us.”

http://www.kutnews.org/post/video-occupy-austin-arrests

This is a note I sent to my supervisor in an effort to explain why I was arranging emergency coverage for days I “might miss.”

-Anonymous-