NEW YORK, NY–Showing up at Zuccotti looking for an angle to a story for a film was not easy. There was movement. Tension. Too many TV news and reporters jockeying. All I noticed were lenses. Press passes and mikes. News trucks and generators and satellite dishes.  Everyone seemed important. A lot of talk. Yelling, intensity, and of course a ton of politics. This was great–unless, like me, you are looking for a story to tell. There was too much politics to figure out how to begin. All the meeting s with the GA’s seemed too intense, and how do you film that? Stand there for a long time…

I noticed people running around near the main stream media–live streamers. I started asking questions: who are you? Why are you filming? Where does your work go? Lorenzo Serna explained that he was streaming. This grabbed my attention.  Then, Bill Boggs at the press tent handling PR was loaded with intensity. Then Hero Vincent was doing some kind if Skype chat. I started asking all of them questions. This led to meeting Justin Wedes and Priscilla Grim and Flux and Haywood Carey–and Tim Poole. Of course, Jesse Lagreca made a splash with the Fox News people. I knew this was the angle for my film: the media people. They had  a job to do. Help drive a story. Whether it was filming, editing, getting out a press release or a newspaper, this was new, exciting, living media happening from Zuccotti in the rain, snow. Anybody getting out a story to the world with this feverish energy was exciting, and to me, the first time in a long while in New York City that media wasn’t old, stale and redundant!

I made a 40 minute film that was almost live. I made some good friends and they shared with me some great video that I couldn’t film alone. I needed a team of 5  camera people 24/7 .

I made a film that mirrored the days and nights of Zuccotti. Raw, fast and real, I wanted the sound rough. The shaky camera from when I was shoved. Zuccotti was not a glossed-over filtered fantasy. I am a hard New Yorker, and this energy was real. The OWS media team is brilliant. From the Direct Action to the graphic artists to Sophia writing the Spanish paper, I tell  the story of many people. Personal, yet showing their commitment to OWS media, I filmed it.

This is new journalism. They don’t need press passes and insignias to get out a story. This is greatness in action. I’m happy they trusted me to tell the story. And, regardless of criticism, they know how to create a story, and they work hard.

It was a once in a lifetime event in New York. Finally people said “Enough with the bullshit. We are citizen journalists. This is what we do. We will tell our own story.”

I used my energy to capture it.

-Kevin Breslin-

Editor’s Note: You may view #WhileWeWatch in its entirety here at SnagFilms.

Editor’s Note: In the run-up to what promises to be a May Day to remember, we are collecting stories from the people who are pouring their soul into making it happen. Are you involved in planning for May Day in your occupation? Have you been to any of the actions building toward the general strike? Tell us about it! You can find a collection of our May Day stories here.

NEW YORK, NY–Waiting for fellow Occupiers outside of the courthouse at 100 Centre Street in lower Manhattan, Justin Young explained the role of the OWS Street Medics, also known as the Red and Black Cross, and updated us on how they’re preparing for May Day.

Click PLAY to hear Caroline’s interview with OWS Street Medic Justin Young

-Caroline Lewis-

Editor’s Note: A version of this story originally appeared at the Portland Occupier.

Seeking love and affection any way I could, I found myself pregnant at 15. Knowing I did not have the parenting skills necessary to raise a child, I gave her up for adoption. Then I went on a drive to prove to the world that I was a good human being. With no help from my family, I got myself through college, and, eventually, with the help of my husband, graduated with an MBA. My goal: to be vice president of a Fortune 500 company. Why? This was the ultimate measure of success for a woman in this country. I worked hard, stuffed my feelings far down into my soul, and started climbing the corporate ladder.

As I climbed, I noticed that the difference in pay between myself and the people reporting to me got bigger and bigger. This made no sense to me. These people were working just as hard as me, and had specialized skills I didn’t have. I couldn’t even DO some of their jobs! At one point I asked the human resources people if I could give some of my pay to my team. That suggestion was met with disbelief, and the response was that the HR department was working to increase the disparity, in order to provide people a greater incentive for for working their way up. I kept silent.

Eventually I reached the point where the VPs started inviting me to their homes on the weekends. I knew what that meant. They were seeing if I would fit into the tight social circle which exists at that level. I talked antiques and gardening with the wives, and golfing and global economics with their corporate husbands. I listened to them discuss their homes in Florida, their fishing and golfing trips, their travels to Europe and the Caribbean.

It became clear to me that they only socialized with others at their level within the corporation – tightly held in their carefully constructed bubble of safety and ignorance. I realized that if I actually reached my long-held and hard-fought goal, these people would be “my friends”, my social circle. It sickened me. I realized that if I actually reached my goal, I would be desperately unhappy, and would have to muzzle my voice and my life 24/7. I saw that the huge salaries were part of an ego game, to which everything was sacrificed. Nothing else mattered. I toyed with the idea of going along with the game, and changing the corporation from within. But I would have been alone in my efforts, and it would have been overwhelming.

So I quit. I quit the company, and ended up quitting my 20-year marriage and my country, and I moved to New Zealand to start a new life. I became an independent business consultant and focused on helping New Zealand entrepreneurs and small businesses succeed. Then 5 years ago, I moved into the gift economy – giving my time and skills to individuals and small nonprofits around the world who were dedicated to serving the poorest of the poor. I had no home, no car, and no worries. A year spent volunteering for people with disabilities in Kashmir, the most militarized place on earth, was the beginning of my activism.

Then, while volunteering for the Catholic Worker movement here in the US, Occupy was born. Now here was a cause that could handle everything I had to offer, and more. I had a plane ticket to take me back to Geneva in March 2012. I cancelled it. There is nowhere else on earth I can do the most good to help the world than right here in the U.S., in the heart of the beast. But this time I am not alone. I am surrounded with like-hearted people. Together, we will create the world we dream of. A world of acceptance, shared values, integrity, transparency, meaning, affection, love, and community. Everything I sought after since childhood is wrapped up in this package called Occupy.

-Diane Emerson-

Editor’s note: Last fall, in solidarity with Occupy Wall Street, a group of concerned citizens in a rural town in Eastern Oregon began to organize to show their solidarity. The community sent us this inspiring video last month. Below, Occupy Halfway shares their plans for continuing their movement this spring.

HALFWAY, OR–We slowed down a bit in winter to retrench and discuss what we really felt was important to this community. We live in a mostly conservative ranching town. We wanted to find issues and a focus which would likely bring the people in town together. After a great deal of thoughtful conversation and research we have decided to focus our efforts on http://www.movetoamend.org and resolutionsweek.org. Both are addressing the SCOTUS decision that allowed corporations to flood our political system with un-transparent, unlimited money.

We’ve created a flier covering Citizen’s United, SuperPACs and the problem with corporate personhood. We plan on tabling and running discussions during the spring in hopes of creating common ground and building trust across the red/blue chasm. When we talk to people it’s not hard to find agreement about corporatism and crony capitalism. This is very important to us as we are a community that relies on each other. These bonds are important to us. How we get along is more important to many than politics. So we’ll be tabling and talking and hoping to translate occupy to folks here.

There are occupy groups popping up throughout Eastern Oregon. Many are discussing whether or not to call themselves occupy at all, as the imagery that most people see out here is very unflattering. It’s rather hard to compete with what people are exposed to—which is obviously a very distorted picture coming from the mainstream media. Hopefully, we can help show the diversity of the movement. It is important that people understand how wide and deep it is. I hope that people in occupy keep talking across those lines that divide with respect at the center of all we do.

We also have a community member who has arrived fresh from the fight in Wisconsin—so he is very fired up!

Most people in the group are over 50—so we are not going to be camping out. Old bones don’t like that. But we will be doing what we can!

Onward!

-Liz McLellan-

19 September 2011, New York–A group of people, no more than one hundred, had congregated in Zuccotti Park two days before amidst the almost total indifference of people passing by.

No journalists, no television, no microphones—only their voices and faces.

These portraits bear witness to the beginning of Occupy Wall Street in Zuccotti Park. They regard dreamers who believe in an idea.

No one could have imagined that in the space of a few weeks, those involved in Occupy Wall Street would have entered people’s homes all over the world through newspapers and television.

–Daniele Corsini, photographer

View a selection of images on our Flickr page, or the full photo series at Corsini’s website.

Editor’s note: This story was originally published at thisiswhyioccupy.tumblr.com, and is republished here with the author’s consent. Read the original post.

One Step Back

It is only when we stop seeing each other solely as our roles or affiliated Working Groups – Facilitator, Kitchen, POC, Direct Action, whatever – and start to see each other as people with backgrounds, with histories, with stories – that empathy will prevail over judgment and we’ll begin in solidarity to get some real work done.

And, through our own storytelling and understanding of our histories and what brought us to this moment, this movement, we understand our place within it and possibly where our efforts should lie.

As the saying goes, “If this isn’t deeply personal for you, it won’t stay political for long.”

This is the beginning of my effort to define for why this is personal for me. For me to identify at the root, the heart of things, why I occupy.

Defining Home

Home is not a place, or a building, or even shelter. Home is not defined by where I live or where I keep my things. Home is a feeling, something I understand intuitively through the people I am surrounded by.

Growing up, home was my family – my parents and my older brother.

We moved houses three times between the time I was 12 and 16. I had lived in the first for 12 years, and about for three in the second two. None felt more like home than the others.

I liked the houses we lived in, but moving always kind of felt like an adventure, and I relished in the ability to shed old skins and redefine myself in new spaces.

Moving at age 12 allowed me to replace the bunk bed I had been using since I was very little, the top bunk populated with toys and stuffed animals. In our new house my room was gradually covered, wall to wall, every inch, with magazine cutouts, posters, and music lyrics written on masking tape.

The space became defined by my teenage angst. This room was defined by me, not me by it. It was my room, but it wasn’t my home.

Home was still determined by the people in the space with me.

Leaving

When I left for college in August of 2001 that feeling of home stayed with me. And for the first couple years, that feeling drew me back to Chicago and my family. There was a part of me that thought I might move back there.
When my brother moved to LA the summer before my senior year, the feeling evolved and I started planning a post-graduation move to the West Coast.

But spring break of senior year, in LA with my parents visiting my brother, changed nearly everything for me.

Every concept I had of what it meant to be family – everything I thought I understood of my family – came crashing down around me.

I learned a lot about how priorities, transparency, honesty, money, and love affected my family, and our relationships.

I found out my future was being mortgaged to sustain an unsustainable present.

Only now do I understand that my family was most likely working class, not middle class, as I had always assumed.

I learned that a dramatic explosive event is never where a story begins – there is always something, an action, an event, building up to this reaction. This is a symptom of some other root cause.

And I’ve learned that treating symptoms only delays an eventual relapse.  Root causes must always be the focus of restorative, or better yet, transformative action.

A lesson learned on this trip, and in the months that followed, would be reaffirmed nearly six years later – love alone isn’t enough.

Without mutual effort, trust, compassion – what I now might call solidarity – a relationship cannot be sustained on love alone.

Two Steps Forward

In the years following the trip with my parents, and the months following my breakup, home was defined by my circle of friends who not only helped me weather the storm, but also made it all worthwhile.

And then Occupy Wall Street came along.

I can make a direct connection to how all this is relevant and applicable to OWS and my activism work. But I think for now it’s enough to have put all this out there.

I know that it comes from a place of privilege to talk about home in an emotional sense, without the fear or concern regarding actual shelter that so many people in this nation, and across the world, have on a daily basis, not to mention the actual struggles for basic needs that I will probably never know.

I will be moving forward from this point – acknowledging this is my reality, putting it on the table, with a desire to learn and grow and evolve – knowing this is all just a tiny fragment of why I occupy.

Brett Goldberg | @poweredbycats

Deep in the Heart of Occupy Austin: Chapter 7

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

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.

Margret Hofman, Austin's "Tree Lady" Photo: Jim Gober

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.

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

“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.

Intensity in Tent City

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Our supporters.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

- Spurgeon Thompson