Editor’s note: This is the final installment of a 14 part series of excerpts from Jim Gober’s book titled “Deep in the Heart of Occupy Austin.”
“The illusion of freedom [in America] will continue as long as it’s profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theater.” Frank Zappa
Today was the Saturday before Halloween and we planned a 4 pm march to the capitol
building that continued down dirty 6th street then back to the plaza. As people
gathered about the plaza in preparation for the march, I went around and talked to
my friends I met along the way. Only the most clueless could not smell the coming
fascist assault. I told my young friend Kendall how proud I was of him and all he’s
learned, I thanked Carlos for his sense of humor and unbelievable spirit along the
way, I talked to Larry and hoped he someday finds the money he needs for his dream
of a veterans’ shelter for the homeless, and then I spotted Brighton, standing on
the curb holding a protest sign. Young beautiful peaceful Brighton, who broke up the
argument between the drunken instigator and me weeks before, who had put his soul
into the movement, and now stood there for the last time, his eyes still aglow with
the optimism of a young person who believes all you need is to be on the right side
of the argument, and you will win in this world. I told Brighton how impressed I was
with his bravery and dedication and how much I admired him and all his hard work. My
heart was so full, and the pain was so great, I began to cry unashamed because these
were my people, my friends, and my family, and I loved them. And with each of these
people I talked to, I asked, “How long do you think we have?” And the answer was the
same. Hours.
The march began and went off without a hitch, but when we made the turn down dirty
6th, I noticed the police had abandoned us and were hot-footing it back to the
plaza. It was then I knew the end of the movement as we knew it was nigh. When we
arrived back at the plaza our belongings were being rifled through and piled
willy-nilly to anger and disorient us. As the sun set, the plaza seemed to groan in
pain as rumors flew like leaves in the fall breeze and people confusedly planned
their next move. There were a few speeches to rally the troops, but most were
hunkering down waiting for the impending invasion. The murmurings of the occupiers
began to sound like a family praying over a dying relative. We were just waiting for
the police to come and pull the plug.
About 10 pm, the blue monsters began massing in the parking garage beneath the city
hall and another group formed a solid line along the western side of the plaza. You
could walk right up to the line, get inches from their face and look deep into their
eyes. It was breathtaking to see the entire history of the world’s oppression
encapsulated in their emotionless orbs. The steady stream of Halloween revelers that
passed through our camp on the way to the bars downtown appeared as grotesques while
we awaited our execution. As another line of police formed on the east side of the
plaza, I looked at the protesters. I watched fear turn to courage, then courage to
solidarity. I can only hope one day everyone experiences the part of the human
condition when everyone sticks together armed with only their faith, while
surrounded by the enemy armed with guns, tasers, mace, and batons ready to hurt,
imprison or possibly kill them. And to see all the brave women in the mix was
unbelievable. It was a deeply religious experience. I witnessed the shimmering
beauty of God in all its glory. Once people walk into this realm, they will not go
back until justice is served. Maybe, that is what the fascists are really afraid of.
That once we form the solidarity only seen in a battlefield, solidarity so strong
even death cannot destroy it, the fascists will be doomed. Fear not, my brothers and
sisters, for we have seen the light and the light cannot be extinguished by the dark
blue uniforms of the fascist machine.
There were a few more discussions on whether to move the food table as requested in
the rules passed out by the Police Chief the day before, but after a while it was
obvious the food table was going to be our Raison D’être and wasn’t going anywhere.
There was a short standoff about midnight as the pigs got into a “V” formation, then
at 12:30, they moved in from both the east and west sides of the plaza. The cries
and sound of breaking hearts was so deafening you had to cover your ears so it
wouldn’t overwhelm your sense of judgment and make you attack the pigs with your
fists, feet or whatever weapon you could find. Our core supporters and leaders
locked arms around the food table, but they were quickly subdued and bound with
plastic handcuffs. “Why?” everyone asked. “Why are you doing this to us?” There were
cries of “Shame” and “The whole world is watching,” but the fascists were
undeterred. As the table was dismantled and carried away, the pigs walked into the
crowd and grabbed people they had identified as leaders of the movement weeks
before, who were not doing anything but what the rules had told them to do. When it
was over, 18 of our people were taken down. About 3 hours later, the power washing
crew came in fronted by a another police line that grabbed 20 more people who either
refused to move or were still disoriented from the first raid. By then, I had
already moved on to take a walk and cool off. The plaza was not a place to be
another minute for someone with my temper. And the sight of seeing people I loved
being demoralized and carried away because a bunch of fascist pigs decided a picnic
table should be over here instead of over there made me nauseous.
The ridiculous display of overwhelming might used to wrest a picnic table from a
bunch of rag-tag folks who are trying to tell the world, “This is what democracy
looks like,” kept playing over and over in my head, and although it was about 2:00
a.m. and the bars were closing, I decided to stroll down dirty 6th street to lose my
thoughts in the Halloween celebration. What I saw was shocking. When I entered dirty
6th from Congress Avenue, the entire street was completely occupied with stumbling
drunks and humans behaving at their worst. I saw indecent exposure, public
urination, fighting, slick piles of pink, orange and green vomit, people treating
each other terribly, plenty of illegal drug use and needed to only glance down an
alleyway to see a sex act performed by two men in the wide open. It was all there
and ignored by mounted police whose tongues were hanging out as they looked only at
the women’s skimpy Halloween costumes. As I walked through the crowd, I laughed
openly and loudly while tears ran down my face. Was this a dream? Did I just witness
100 policeman destroy a tiny group of committed sober adults who were making a
statement about the theft of our country from the powerful fascist machine by
arresting them over an 8 by 2 foot food table? Did I just walk five blocks east and
see a hundred thousand people doing everything we were accused of, and getting away
with it, because their mission was to get intoxicated and find somebody to fuck
while pissing and vomiting all over everything? Oh that’s right-they were spending
lots and lots of money. And when you spend lots of money you get away with
everything-even the murder of thousands of innocent people. So here was the bare
truth in all its painful glory. This is what we’ve become. This is how America
really works. An old food table used to feed the poor and unarmed equals bad.
Reprehensible behavior while you spend lots of money equals good. And if it takes a
billy club to beat that idea into your head, so be it. This is America God damn it
and that is how it operates. Any questions?
I went back to the plaza and tried to sleep between a boulder and the bricks of the
city hall. I could hear the voices of lonely men and abandoned women as they
gathered under street lights somewhere in the distance trying to make a final deal
before dawn. Zero-eyed people rolling on ecstasy or geeking on stimulants walked by
looking deep into my eyes to see if I had anything to offer. I had a fitful sleep
and was up as soon as I saw the first sign of dawn. I rolled a cigarette, and
watched life begin to stir among the tattered battle scene as the sun rose over the
plaza. The survivors began rebuilding the camp straight away, but this time it had
an air of Austin funkiness, because everything was broken and had to be patched
together. Unfortunately, most of the core supporters and strategists of Occupy
Austin were now not only in jail, but banned from the plaza for at least a year.
While this was an unmitigated setback for the Austin occupation, it gives others the
chance to step up and hopefully get the movement going in another direction. As I
walked around the plaza asking questions about the state of affairs, you could see
many in shock from what happened the previous night, but also plenty of street
people waiting around for a cigarette or slice of pizza to arrive, oblivious to the
disaster that had befallen our camp.
I stood back and looked at the remaining occupiers. What I saw was many of the bums
that gave us a bad name in the first place, who avoided jail by just laying there,
the same way they avoided everything else in life, and many of the people who worked
very hard to make the movement work, but were now packing things up and milling
around waiting for rides to somewhere-anywhere but the plaza. By mid-morning, the
plaza had the look of a busy bus station or the last day of summer camp, where
everyone is saying farewell and waiting for the winds of fate to scatter them hither
and yon.
By noon, the police presence was once again gaining steam. It occurred to me the
protesters inhabiting the camps throughout the US, who are now completely surrounded
by uniformed fascists, have actually built their own prisons in which they will
suffer mightily in the coming months. Since I am interested in fund-raising and
public relations for the group, I asked around and finally found someone who might
know a little about the financial side of the movement. I asked her where the money
we raised would best be spent. She said to get more food and water for the occupiers
at the plaza. At first I thought, you have to be kidding me? Aren’t we done here?
Then I thought, yeah, we can rebuild, and we will rebuild. Are we going to fail
because the fascists thought we would go away because they stole a broken down food
table? Hell, no.
Yes, we all felt like frogs in a cauldron, where the fire was turned up so slowly we
didn’t know we were cooked until it was too late. But we learned about the
psychological control of an angry mob by the fascists, and as the saying goes, “We
won’t be fooled again.” But we have a choice; we can fight them like dogs, or work
within a system that unfortunately favors them. But as I said before, we must be
smart enough to take the fight to them on their own turf. We sat in the plaza for
four weeks and allowed the fascists to bring the fight to us, while we became an
easy target for their horrid and demeaning tactics. They have everything they need
on their side to keep us under their thumb, we know that. So we have to work smarter
and be tougher in order to win this fight. At this point we have two choices, go to
jail, or freeze to death, of which neither of those am I interested. But I am very
interested in promoting the core beliefs of the occupation movement and will never
stop fighting for what I strongly believe. And if some of our brothers and sisters
want to tough it out on the plaza until we see change, then I will support them to
the end. But myself, I am going to work on getting somebody with money involved in
the movement so we are no longer a broke-ass joke. And if that somebody happens to
be a liberal billionaire, so be it. When it comes to beating or pepper-spraying
billionaires, the fascists tend to freeze up. They are funny that way.
That Sunday afternoon, Police Chief Acevedo, true to his passive-aggressive form of
mind-fucking, made a statement quoting Gandhi and MLK before releasing the
protesters, who cannot reenter the plaza for two years. I went with a small group of
angry and passionate survivors marching from the plaza to the police station to
welcome the prisoner release, but most folks didn’t want anything to do with the
cops, and especially didn’t want to go stand around the police station. The release
was still an emotional moment for those who went. While I recognized some of the
folks being released, some of them must have shown up Saturday night for no other
reason but to create chaos and get arrested, because they were completely new faces,
to me anyway. Meanwhile, back at the plaza, the police presence had become
overpowering. By Sunday night they outnumbered the remaining protesters 2 to 1.
I thought about the speech I wanted to give on day one, when I wanted so badly to
express my thoughts and exercise my freedom of speech in a public plaza to a group
of like-minded people hungry for change. Now I know, if I stood in that plaza right
now and gave that speech, in which I implored the police to stand with us instead of
against us, I would be immediately arrested, and indeed there was an arrest of a
young man who attempted a rallying speech in the late afternoon. Over 5000 people
across the country now have police records from this nationwide protest, and not one
of the war criminals, war profiteers, investment banks CEO’s or hedge fund managers
that caused the financial collapse in this country and the deaths of hundreds of
thousands of people have gone to jail. Obviously, this is a fascist police state we
are now living in. To some of us, it’s plain as the nose on our face, while others
just don’t “have time to think about these things.” Or maybe they don’t understand
what freedom of speech means. It is the ignorant people who taunt and laugh at those
attempting to exercise one of the basic tenets of our democracy that frighten me the
most. While they talk about our troops overseas fighting for our freedom, they don’t
have the slightest clue what freedom really is because they are imprisoned by the
straight-jacket of fascism and corporatism.
I thought back on Saturday’s march to the Capitol, before the camp was raided. While
marching down Congress Avenue, I caught up with my friend Carmen, who I met on the
island only a few weeks before. When I spotted her, she was trying to manage two
large cardboard signs while clutching a list of protest chants she had written in
blue ink on a scrap of folded notebook paper. They read, “Whose water? Our water!
Whose food? Our food! Whose land? Our land! Are we afraid? Nooooooooo, we are not
afraid.” She was trying to get the few protesters at the back of the line to go
along with them, but was frustrated because her small voice, with its beautiful
Puerto Rican accent, was not being heard, and the tall folks in front of her, many
in Halloween costumes, had relegated her to the back of the line.
I hollered, “Carmen!” and she was happy to see me and thanked me for the profile I
had written about her on my blog. I asked her what was going on and she explained
her disappointment that she couldn’t get anyone to chant her demands. So I took a
look at them, gave her a big smile, and then Carmen and I chanted in the loudest
voice we could muster, “Whose water? Our water! Whose food? Our food! Whose land?
Our land! Are we afraid? Nooooooooo, we are not afraid!” We chanted the lines over
and over and louder and louder and let the voice of freedom ring out and echo
against the glass and granite of the downtown buildings. Our cadence rang down the
hollow side streets and the alleyways where the downtrodden sleep and newspapers
blow on cold and lonely blue-gray dawns. It rang over the capitol building, where
the Lady of Liberty looks over manicured avenues where the mentally ill wander
aimlessly in search of help, and it rang over the din of expensive cars and city
buses filled with those too blind to see. It was freedom ringing and it was ringing
for us, for you and for all the folks in this fight who are jailed, shot,
humiliated, tasered, beaten and maced because, like Carmen chanted, “Are we afraid?
Nooooooo, we are not afraid.”
At one point, Carmen was confident enough to stand in front of a group of bewildered
diners sitting at a sidewalk cafe while she chanted her list of demands. I was
immensely proud of her. After we made it a few blocks, and were out of breath from
exercising our First Amendment rights to such an extent, Carmen looked at me with
her beautiful face so full of life, kindness and excitement. The bright autumn
afternoon sun slanting into her exquisite brown skin made a tear in the corner of
her eye glint like the most spectacular topaz ever seen. She joyfully exclaimed,
“Boy, did that make me feel good! Thank you, Jim!” And I hugged the tiny fragile
body of this beautiful woman, whose only mission on earth is to express love for her
fellow man, and replied, “Thank you, Carmen.”
Afterthoughts:
What you just read was a true first-person account of the birth of the occupy
movement in Austin, Texas. Although it flows in fits and starts, the movement is by
no means over and will continue as long as dedicated people see the truth and stop
believing in the lie America has become. Because I am proud to be part of the
movement and a passionate believer in the cause, I encourage everyone with a voice
to stand up, get involved and be heard. We are the 99%! Carry on brothers and
sisters. I love you all more than you know. We aren’t perfect, but we will prevail.
For more information on Austin Occupy, please visit: occupyaustin.org
In Solidarity,
Jim Gober
