icarus | Entries tagged with occupy

Occupy Wall Street is outperforming the Red Cross and FEMA in their response to hurricane Sandy. They've been fast, scarily competent, and flexible, and gone to the hardest hit areas FEMA has ignored.

They receive high praise, and in the hard hit areas like Rockaways, volunteers from Occupy are the only help they've seen. Occupy members say that they feel capitalism is broken, and so they've stepped up to attend to community needs.

I'm totally pro-Obama, you know that, but this disaster has disappeared too quickly from the news cycle. From what I've heard, I'm getting the sense that there's too much crowd control going on, and not enough help.

The word is that it's really bad up there. People have lost everything, absolutely everything, and in the rubble -- with no infrastructure even -- must somehow rebuild their lives from scratch.

Cleaning the stupa with Pockets* from Occupy last weekend:

( Whoa, these pics are bigger than I thought! Sorry, flisters. )

I drove out to Occupy's Peace House, thinking I was late. Met a prospective VP candidate hanging outside (I won't be voting for him; he was rude about my Obama t-shirt and clearly lacked political skill if he managed to annoy me in minutes). He informed me that I wouldn't be waking anyone up: there'd been a party the night before and everyone was hungover. Huh.

Rang the doorbell and set the dog (Wally) barking. I bet all the hangovers loved that. Inside, one guy and his girlfriend cuddled up on the couch, snoozing. Another guy sprawled limp in the window seat. The blinds were all drawn, and those who were up and about moved slowly, begrudgingly. About ten people live at Peace House.

Not a single one of the folks I'd come to pick up were actually going. One, well, no one knew where she was at first. Cell phones tracked her down as I drank a glass of water and looked around in utter amusement. It turned out she had been stuck at the Occupy vigil all night when someone hadn't shown (due to the party). Two others were way too hung over to do much more than shuffle.

It was starting to look like I'd wasted a trip, although really? This sight alone was worth it. I get stuck in such a groove that I need breaks in my routine, bad.

Their chaos was a breath of fresh air.

The guy with the girlfriend kicked the guy in the window seat. "Hey, Pockets. You're going to the temple."

"Hrnmph?" Pockets said. He wasn't on the list. "Okay...."

So I ended up spending the day with Pockets, picking spiders off the stupa so we could clean it. Yes, I am covered in spider bites, why do you ask?

* One of the nuns asked Pockets how he got the name. The name Pockets comes from a time when he and a friend were stopped by the police. The officer was going to search them (probably for marijuana). Pockets had a pair of pants on that he'd sewn himself. He explained, "Okay, but I have over two hundred pockets in these." The officer turned around, got back in his car, and left. Pockets' buddy turned to him and said, "From now on, your name is Pockets."

Pockets didn't realize that the nun he was talking to was an ex-cop. So the day was entertaining on many levels. She didn't explain either.

Last week I told Ani Drolkar (you'll recall the meandering way I found out she was in charge) that I'd heard the DC Occupy group had tapered off,* so I wanted to focus more on our food bank. Buying canned goods is cheaper than buying supplies for sandwiches, for one thing. Plus we have a couple of families relying on it.

Well, guess what?

Come’n’ get it!
"I’m pleased to say we have dry and canned goods at KPC for locals that need it. All can take for their families and selves and give what they can. You need not go hungry or eat fast food. We do have dry beans etc with recipies on the bag. It’s not hard, I wish we could give more but law goes against spoilable foods. Ideas anyone? You needn’t be Buddhist, just hungry. Ordained first s best. Their ability to make money is limited. Come’n’ get it!"

Ha! I knew the trend before it was a trend.

So. Know anyone in Maryland who's scraping to get by?

* The police scored a deep hit against the movement when someone fell asleep in their information tent and the police used that as an excuse to take it down. Occupy attempted a consolidation of the McPhearson Square and Freedom Plaza groups, but the two camps were distinctly different and didn't really get along. I also suspect that Occupy was hanging in there till spring, expecting an influx of people. But after they'd withstood the winter, the summer influx never happened. My weather sense suggests that there's an indrawing around the president. Democrats don't want to tacitly criticize president Obama in an election year. No one wants Mitt Romney. ETA: Okay, Occupy's still there, they have an office, but they don't need food now. Looks like a shift in strategy to me.

Well, that was ridiculously complicated.

So Thursday's the day I make sandwiches. A lot of sandwiches. 50? 60? I make towers of them while I chat with Ani Samla or John. They get taken to the OccupyDC folks and any extra get shared among the homeless.

This Thursday I had to go into work early. No problem, I'll just do the sandwiches early, right?

Um. Except this time I was making them at home, and with less space it took more time and ... uh-oh.

So I contact the cook who (apparently) used to be in charge of food (Me: "I'm going to be late, how can we coordinate this?" -- "I told you several times I don't do this any more" -- Me: "Sometimes I don't listen?" I have no memory of her telling me). She directs me to the person who took over from her. I can't reach that person, so I contact John in the gift store, and the person who's delivering the sandwiches that evening. Find out from them that someone else has taken over the food. Seems that since the Occupy kitchen was taken down, we haven't needed a cook, just a coordinator.

John handles it. He finds the (new) coordinator and hands her his cell with me still on it. She suggests I take the sandwiches to my work and they'll see if they can manage to find someone who can pick them up. At work -- with the sandwiches -- I contact John again. He's got his partner Chris to drive all the way out and pick them up. (Also, we discover that I probably should've left them at my house, since I live only blocks from where Chris is and my aunt is home, but oh well.)

Somewhere around six pm, midway through my tutoring sessions, Chris turns up, gets the sandwiches (which I'd given to our office assistant), takes them alllll the way back to the temple where one of the nuns took them to OccupyDC.

How much you wanna bet that the nun who took them down to DC lives or works ten minutes from my office? Because, it was that kind of day.

Okay, off to the temple to make food for the Occupy DC folks.

They've combined the two camps (Freedom Plaza and McPhearson Square) but I'm not sure how well that'll go.

The Freedom Plaza guys were a older, more mainstream. The McPhearson Square guys were young, tattooed, pierced, and as wild as Burning Man celebrants.

I just can't picture the two groups mixing very well. Not that they won't get along, but rather they attract different crowds and might mutually detract from each other.

I wanted to take off for the May 1st protest, but I ended up getting sick instead. Um. Is calling in sick the week before May 1st a protest? *hack* *cough*

No?

Churches, including my temple, have been bringing food to the Occupy movement in DC. The Occupiers have stood fast despite the Superbowl weekend raid.

Now the new tactic is infiltration.

When temple members brought food, they were met with some guy in dreadlocks who's new to the movement. That guy did all he could to convince us to leave, the Occupy movement's now got drugs and gang members blah-blah-blah, he said.

To the people who were delivering food. Uh-huh. Trying to scare off the folks who are feeding you?

Of course, we know the Occupy. We have delivered food five days a week for months now to the same people. It's the same core people. (Dreadlocks!guy is new, of course.)

A reporter was there (a fellow working on his Master's). Noted the dreadlocks!guy and said, yep: infiltrator.

Oh! I met several of the Occupy DC people in person last week (I mostly help with making sandwiches and shopping at the temple).

Wow.

These are some noble people. I mean, there's an air about them that's really impressive. They had the manner of what I imagine the original Christians to have been like, back when they were regularly getting thrown to the lions: calm, determined, clear-eyed ... if a bit tired and worn, physically run down.

Meeting them, I was so heartened. We have such people as this in the world today.

Occupy DC Violently dispersed, protesters forced against fence with batons.

The National Park Service has been concerned about first amendment rights.

"Americans expect to be able to exercise their right of freedom of speech in national parks in the nation's capital," Peggy O'Dell, the Park Service's deputy director of operations, wrote. "Courts too have recognized that 'the right to use public parks for expression of ideas is of special importance to the District of Columbia' where 'the general concepts of First Amendment freedoms are given added impetus as to speech and peaceful demonstration in Washington, D.C., by the clause of the Constitution which assures citizens of their right to assemble peaceably at the seat of government and present grievances."

However, House Republicans blasted them and threatened them with subpoenas in January -- and now the Republican controlled House is getting its way.

Today National Park Service police began slowly dismantling the Occupy DC encampment at McPherson Square on K Street early Saturday morning. Over the course of several hours, cops asked protesters to leave while authorities in hazmat suits combed the park and removed tents.

Despite protesters insisting that the temporary structures were in compliance with the latest regulations imposed on the demonstrators, the cops continued to clear out the park throughout the course of the day. With only a small section of McPherson still spared by late afternoon, authorities eventually moved in and used force to clear the rest of the park. Protesters, passersby and journalists alike were assaulted as cops clad in riot gear stormed into the crowd and attacked anyone on the scene.

Here cops are showing forcing a group of people out of the park with plastic shields and batons, only for them to fall into the mud and be crammed into a fence that prevented them from easily vacating the premises. Several arrests were reported, including one photojournalist, and many others were injured in the raid, including one RT cameraman. (Filmed by RT)