SF OccuPride 2012

SF Pride is next Sunday, and there is going to be a rather robust Radical Queer presence at the SF Pride parade. We’ve got a Coalition of groups and individuals all lined up and now we’re just in the final stages of outreach, getting as many people on board, especially those groups typically left out of Pride.

There are going to be several actions during the parade and a victory rally at the site of the Compton’s Cafeteria Riots after the parade. If you are in the SF Bay Area, please come to this event! Bring your friends and family, bring pots and pans for a casserole in solidarity with Quebec, bring banners, signs, your angst and rage at the state of the Queer Community, but most importantly, bring your smile and your hope. This action is going to show people that there is still a Queer Resistance and we’re pushing back against the commercialization and exploitation of our community!

This is the link to the website: http://bayoccupride.com/ And here’s a direct link to the event flyer: http://bayoccupride.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/NEW-FLIER.png

* masks are OK (especially if pink and/or glittery!)

* please keep in mind, it’s a parade with a heavy police presence. there will be direct actions involving banks and other groups and we will have more info for the more ‘proactive’ members of our community at the rally point that morning (security concerns). we’ve consensed to keep the actual parade bloc a family friendly zone (no smashy smashy please).

We’re assembling at 10am at Mission and Main, and leaving at 10:30am SHARP. Please spread the word far and wide! Good luck and hope to see you there! <3

EDIT: the event is going to be livestreamed. we’ve got @pixplz, @punkboyinsf and others, so tune in 10:30am PST on Sunday 6/24 if you’re not in the Bay Area and you want to see some Radical Queers in action! <3

Here I sit, once again, writing another blog. I don’t have a structure and don’t have a goal, I’m just going to write ‘from the hip’ again, and see what happens. Much like our movement, this format seems to work best for me.

Today is May 21, 2012. Day 248 of the Occupation of Wall Street. 8 months and 5 days ago, we came together; some for the Revolution, others for the free food, shelter and community. Many knew the first nights of relative safety and security for the first time in years, and others knew their first real taste of what those who have the least deal with on a day to day basis. We all came to it from our many walks of life, with our endless and deeply personal lists of grievances and opportunities for change and improvement in our lives, communities and society. We all know this. This is just a formality for those readers who are new or somehow unacquainted with all things Occupy. 

In the last few months, I’ve come to realize EXACTLY why the camps were evicted. Many of us have never known such a sustained flurry of radical and revolutionary networking and organizing in our lives. Think about the people we’ve met, the things we’ve done and the experiences we’ve lived through. How many of us thought we’d ever see another General Strike in this country, let alone two of them? The camps were engines of dissent, bringing disparate groups and causes together and making them far more effective in this ad hoc unity than many of them ever have been otherwise. 

I still remember when it hit me that the camps were definitely done for. It was towards the end of November and OccupySF held a large Bradley Manning rally and march. As the march was returning to camp, it joined up with an Egyptian solidarity rally, and there was an enthusiastic and really strange union of the two rallies as the organizers of the Egypt rally invited the Bradley Manning rally to participate in their march because, and i’m paraphrasing from memory here, “we’re all one. it’s all the same struggle.” And with a cheer and a lot of really pissed off looks from the cops, the now doubled march went back out into downtown San Francisco. At that moment, which seems ages ago, I knew the Government could never tolerate these camps, and that the clock was ticking on those camps which still remained. 

Here we are months later, and we’re still going, still alive and kicking. But it’s different now. In the aftermath of the camps, we’ve strayed into many different directions and groups. Some have disbanded, others gone to ground and some still struggle on under their tattered and frayed “Occupy” banners. While I personally believe that “Occupy” as a movement, is ‘dead’, I in no way shape or form believe that the movement is dead. Things have changed but the fire still burns, deep into the falling night. And that fire is a warning beacon for the troubled times ahead. We’re in dangerous waters these days, and the ship of state is barely kept afloat but through force of arms, apathy and ignorance, and even that’s not enough these days. 

We live in a civilization that priortizes and fetishizes security, capital, property and violence and disregards important things like community, cooperation, health and basic needs for the people. The United States is now a homeland that is bursting at the seams with empty houses, yet millions of people go to sleep at night with no home! We’re taking away lunch for children so millionaires and billionaires can catch an extra tax break. We can’t fund social services that people desperately need, but we can fund missiles to blow up families in Yemen, Pakistan and Afghanistan. I haven’t even started on health care or schools. There’s no need, as even if you’re not in Occupy, I’m preaching to the choir. You know this. These problems scream to you every time you turn on the news, open a newspaper or use your internet browser. 

Our Government knows these problems, and instead of helping us, they hindered us. Instead of serving the people, the government orchestrated an effort to suppress, disrupt and destroy us. Our government used our local police forces to harass and arrest and brutalize us. The dance between protester and police turned the focus of our movement from economic and social justice into a battle over freedom of speech - something that is a human right and should not be in question! The enmity this bred between police and protesters alienates them from each other, keeping the police dependent on the rich and the banks and opposed from their natural allies. This is a global, concerted effort and it ensures it will be some time before the Cossacks open the granaries. 

If someone lies to you, steals from you, and beats on you, that is typically considered abuse and one is urged to remove themselves from that situation as soon as possible, or to stand up and fight back even! Today, in the United States and across the world, our governments abuse us and count on us not resisting. How many people are victims of Stockholm Syndrome, empathizing with their abusers? Look at the rage and anger and disgust directed against protesters! Look at the people cackling with glee at the sight of a woman getting a police baton to her face, or some guy getting his teeth knocked out. Governments no longer exist by and for the people, they exist by force of arms and terror, and for big business and banks. Their rule is not by divine nor popular consent, it’s through violence and coercion. In a manner of speaking, it’s rape. Our governments don’t just ‘fuck’ us, they rape us, they break us, and they demonize us so that we’re too broken to band together, too alone to remember what we have in common, too powerless to effectively fight back. 

Except thats not working anymore. The camps were amazing because they were a conversation, a space where people from all walks of life met and mingled and networked. White liberals learned to talk and interact with their natural allies in communities of color. It’s not perfect, and this is a crash course cliff notes version of what should have been done in the United States from the start. For many people, this is going to be a lifelong journey of learning about privilege and unlearning old prejudices and misconceptions. What gives me hope is that even in the middle of the most heated arguments over race and privilege, all the differences are pushed aside when the riot police show up. America is learning about Solidarity again. Not just solidarity for white liberals or people of color from the inner city, this solidarity crosses all lines. It’s solidarity borne out of true oppression. 

The government made a severe error when it ordered riot police in to bust up our camps. Not only did tens of thousands of people lose their fear of riot police, thus eliminating one of the state’s best weapons against revolution, but it showed people how to lead and bleed and fight and stand alongside each other. Not just temporary solidarity destined to fade after an action, but long haul, sustainable solidarity that only brothers and sisters in arms can understand. We’ve been gassed and pepper sprayed beyond count. Thousands of us have been arrested. None of this means anything anymore. It’s a temporary inconvenience. It’s a paper hassle, but those papers aren’t going to mean anything much longer. 

People realize now that by being silent and complacent, we are complicit in the violence and crimes of our system. After working with our brothers and sisters of color, how can we be silent when police murder an innocent black child? Schools and libraries are closing everywhere, and towns turn off their lights and cancel the fireworks we’re so used to. Little things. It’s always the little things. You throw enough pebbles in the sea and you’ve got a tsunami on your hands. The Empire is in decline and the Emperor wears no clothes and we’re not afraid to shout that out. 

The Government had its chance to do things right. They could have done their job and duty and served the people, but instead they sold us out and shit on us. As America moves into a pre-revolutionary society, I remind them that they’ll reap what they sow. The old lies, the misinformation and propaganda no longer work. People are waking up, and every raised truncheon, every livestreamed police attack radicalizes further numbers for formerly passive, cowed observers. The white collar worker is organizing with the poor and the homeless. The white male is stepping aside for women and people of color and the gays ain’t taking no more shit and are not going to wait passively for our equality any longer.

Remember when you turn on your television, that Kim Kardashian isn’t going to make your student loans go away. No matter how many times you mash those xbox buttons, someone you know and love with cancer is going to have to fight tooth and nail with their insurance company at a time they can ill afford to. No matter how many times you click like on a facebook activism group, your Government hates you and actively works against you. These are the days in which we must live. We are the Revolution Generation. Instead of waiting for ‘someone’ to fix the world’s problems, remember you ARE someone. You have more power than you’ve been led to believe, and your voice is louder than you think. These are the days in which we must speak out, no matter how our voices shake. 

We’re change, we’re new ideas. We cannot be evicted, we cannot be stopped, no matter how many riot cops.

I love you and I’ll see you all in the streets. 

Hey everyone. 

There has been a lot fallout from the April 30th violence in the Mission. After being interviewed by a number of press outlets and my interactions, both online and in meatspace with people affected by it, I wanted to write a blog and try to bring to light some of the motivations of the ‘anti-gentrification’ element that is partially responsible for the actions that night. My intent with this is not to offend, but to illuminate. Not to alienate, but to educate. I’m not an expert, just a big fat gay guy who watches a lot of cat videos on the internet. 

First off, evidence has come forth that there were specific groups involved in this that had nothing to do with OccupySF. Our attempts to denounce the action have divided OccupySF so deeply that as of right now, we have split into two groups, a group which is for ‘diversity of tactics’ and a group which is decidedly non-violent and against property destruction and vandalism. Secondly, despite knowledge of groups involved, I still maintain my assertion that there is bacon in that sandwich, for reasons I’ve already gone into in my last post. 

After posting my last blog, I was questioned and even attacked by some for perceived assaults on their person. Most of these people somehow intimated that I was attacking them for being affluent whites, or that i was attacking them for being rich and successful, when in fact, I made no such call to violence and no such accusations against anyone. 

I live in the Mission at Valencia and Duboce. My street was ravaged by these attacks and I had to walk home across piles of broken glass from places I have shopped at. I support local businesses and I support local communities, and this hurt. Now here comes the rough part: while I support my community, I understand the message and motivation behind the anti-gentrification efforts, though I vigorously disagree on tactics and targets. 

Before we go further, a little about myself. I’m poor. I live in a living room that I have turned into a ‘bedroom’ by hanging 2 sheets. It’s the only way I can afford to live in the city that I fell in love with when I had nothing and no one else. I have a few nice things that I have worked tirelessly for, and I have no problem having them. We’re all allowed nice things. I’m white, I’m gay and I’m elbows deep in activism of an anti-capitalist and social justice tilt. I live and love in the Mission and I plan to for as long as it will have me and just like my years in Oakland, I’ll never forget the time and memories Mission has given me. 

With that said, let’s talk about that word, “gentrification” and why it inspired individuals to smash your windows and cars. First off, I want to steer anyone unfamiliar towards the wikipedia article on gentrification for some background reading: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gentrification it’s really good and not a hard read, I promise. As the definition states, “it is the result of wealthy people acquire or rent property in lower income and working class communities.” That right there is the genesis of the problem and where this all gets difficult. As I’m going forward, please remember I’m not trying to make a villain out of anyone, I am trying to let you understand why there was an attack, and what you can do to help prevent the conditions that cause attack friendly sentiment to rise. 

Imagine that you are the first person who moves into a neighborhood full of lower income people and you rent an apartment and open a business. *pop* goes a little bubble in the middle of this neighborhood. Nobody is saying you’ve had an easy time of it or you intentionally are doing this, but suddenly, another affluent family moves in and they open a business right next to yours. *pop* that bubble gets a little bigger. A few more follow over the next few years. Now this is where the friction and the snowballing starts. Some enterprising real estate agencies recognize a trend and raise the market value of properties in this area. Landlords follow suit (and some cities don’t have rental laws like SF and landlords can raise rent drastically within a year) and suddenly, families that have lived in this community for years and decades can no longer afford to rent their homes. If it’s an ethnic or minority community, new members cannot afford to live in this neighborhood and people leave. Additional numbers of affluent people, perhaps your customers, perhaps people who drove through and saw how “charming” the neighborhood was, decide to move here. And thus the bubble grows. As it grows, it uproots and displaces dozens, hundreds and eventually thousands of people who formerly were able to live in that neighborhood. This is a pattern that is repeated throughout history, and is part of the insipid, sneaky structural and institutional violence that is built into the capitalist model. I say that not because I have some agenda to convert you to anti-capitalist causes (although that would be fucking awesome!), but because this is an intrinsic part of capitalism: markets, supply and demand, survival of the fittest/fattest wallet. 

This is where friction starts, both in the local community and from external forces, such as those who engaged in a show of force on April 30th. I am aware of my privilege, as a white male and a gay male in San Francisco, that I am sitting in a gay bar on Church street writing this. As white Americans, we cannot deny our history hasn’t been kind to those unlike us. I’m not going into an essay on privilege here, but merely highlighting that I am aware of mine. I’m well aware that we have displaced and marginalized an active and vibrant culture already existing on this continent when we settled here, and I’m well aware my own people, predominantly single white gay males, gentrified many neighborhoods in San Francisco in the past, repeating the cycle of uproot and destruction. Some people want to throw around words like ethnic cleansing and economic warfare and imply that there’s a deliberate effort to do this. I disagree. I do not think a bunch of merchants and real estate agents sit around a table and discuss how they can dissect and capitalize on killing an already existing community (see the note at the bottom for an update on this sentiment!). Instead, I think it just comes down to the ignorance, greed and ambition instilled in each of us by our economic paradigm. 

I’m going to confess something here, so that way we’re equal. I’m highlighting a vulnerability on your end, so I’ll go ahead and throw something out there from my end. This way, we’re equal and maybe, just maybe a few of you will understand how earnestly I want this to be taken seriously and how desperately I want this to inspire meaningful changes in our community. So here goes. 

It was not too long ago that I was a proponent of gentrification. I can clearly remember, in my ignorance, sitting in a diner in Allentown, Pennsylvania in 2002 or so, excited at the prospect that the neighborhood would be ‘cleaned up’. That’s actually really painful for me to confess because I understand now that there’s an untold Human element to all this ‘cleaning up’, and it is heartbreaking and these people, already marginalized, are made to suffer in silence as everything they know is uprooted and they are made to feel aliens in their own communities. I couldn’t wait for the nice new office buildings and condos to go up, and the new coffee shops to open up, it would be so neat, wouldn’t it? It would look so nice, wouldn’t it?

Well, I’ve come a long way since then. I understand now that when downtown Allentown was revitalized, it displaced untold hundreds of Black and largely Puerto Rican residents. These people were then forced into new neighborhoods that did not afford them the same opportunities that their former homes did: already existing cultural infrastructure, proximity to mass transit, proximity to downtown core and shopping corridors and thus good jobs. No, these people were forced into neighborhoods that became known as the “ghetto” and the “hood”. People turned to crime because they had no opportunities for success, because now there’s a shiny new office building where the old Carniceria and Bodegas and Produce Markets used to be. There’s condos where affordable housing used to be and a hockey arena going up soon, further gentrifying an already ravaged neighborhood. Obviously I’m generalizing here, and there’s even more I haven’t covered and there are additional factors to many of these things, but gentrification exacerbates many social ills that do not need any more intensity. 

I could go on at length here about quite a variety of things such as the racism inherent in gentrification, or how insulting it is that city governments deign to offer former residents a set percentage of low income housing units, as though that’s supposed to assuage their collective grief. “Oh, I’ll forgive this because at least 25% of the units in that one building are low income!” “Oh I can get over this grief because the city is offering special mortgages to help affluent members of my community afford to live here.” 

In America, we’ve not been encouraged to take accountability for our actions and or presence. The meme of ‘manifest destiny’ has colonized every aspect of our culture and our minds and we very much have a “what, me worry?” attitude at the world. We wring our hands at broken windows while denying the reality, the misery and the pain that our lifestyle brings, both to our neighbors and to the ‘global south’. We get angry for vandalized luxury cars, but we care nothing for the literal holocaust that American and European economic and foreign policies wreak on our own people and our brother nations. I’m not in any way, shape or form telling you to pack up and go back to wherever you came from. It’s too late for that. You have your nice things, you’ve earned them (and ssssh anti-capitalist friends, i’m not writing this to debate the legitimacy of the capitalist paradigm. this isn’t for us.) I’m writing this so we can talk about moving forward and where we go next. It sucks and I empathize with you greatly that this sudden burden is on your lap, but we’ve lived too long disregarding the cost of our footprint. We’ve lived too long thinking everything we do and have is a right, when it’s really a gift, and one that we must share if we’re going to succeed. I believe in the future, and the only way we’re going to get there is together. So let’s talk about that.

This situation is not hopeless. In fact, there is much hope to be found here. The potential in this situation is unparalleled because we’ve got a chance to do amazing things here. Valencia Street. Mission District. San Francisco. I am challenging you to set a precedent here. Remember when you used to do that? Remember the summer of love? Well in that spirit, let’s have another one, but this time, let it be the Summer of Community. I’m going to provide links to some worthy organizations that I’d love to see you contact. I’d love to see dialogue and progress and real, meaningful progress in our community. 

San Francisco Community Land Trust

http://www.sfclt.org/

People Organizing to Demand Environmental & Economic Rights

http://www.podersf.org/node/5

POWER

http://www.peopleorganized.org/

Now what you do with this blog entry and these resources are your decision. I’m not in a position where I can offer anything but my heart and a hug or some counsel. I understand how alienating it can be to find out that despite doing what you think is right, it’s actually causing harm. I understand how confusing and how shocking all of this might be. I’m writing this because I love people and I care about my community. It’s why I gave up the last 6 months of my life to OccupySF and Occupy Oakland, because I believe we all deserve a just and equitable life, free of many of the fears we have today. I care enough about people that I don’t want to see windows smashed and I don’t ever want to see the looks of pain and confusion on the faces of my neighbors ever again. And this is also a warning. You cannot deny the reality of the times we life in. More and more people are growing uneasy and are falling through the cracks. We’ll keep politics out of this for now. Look around you. If you think Monday night was an isolated or unique incident, I’ve got a bridge on the bay to sell you. Think of the night of April 30th as a wakeup call and think of those that did this as a symptom of a vast and nigh incomprehensible sickness. A sickness that is getting worse as time goes on. 

I hope this helped bring some measure of understanding and opened a few doors that would otherwise not have opened. These are strange days we find ourselves in, and we’re all waking up to an interesting world. We have every chance to reverse course on a lot of destructive activities and I certainly hope this helps you do the right thing, not by Occupy, not by me, but by you, your neighbors, and your community. I’m going to close this out with a bible verse that’s relevant here. I’m not a Christian by any means, but it’s certainly applicable:

“And you are to love those who are aliens, for you yourselves were aliens in Egypt.” - Deuteronomy 10:19

Thank you for reading.

Scott

EDIT: I’m actually having some interesting conversations with some activists in the Bayview neighborhood of San Francisco and it turns out that there apparently ARE some merchants and landlords and real estate agents conspiring to make gentrification happen. FUCKING DESPICABLE. Don’t be an asshole like that. In fact, that’s not even asshole behavior, that’s Imperialist, Classist, Racist, Colonialist whatever you want to call it, it’s profoundly fucked up and good people everywhere should condemn that behavior! :( 

Hey everyone! Sorry for the long interval between updates. I’m sort of juggling two different blog entries tonight, so I’m going to do some creative typing and try to unify them. I’m still dealing with a lot of stuff from January 28, or as I’m calling it, the Night of the Long Batons. I saw too many of those in use that night and I don’t ever want to see that again, although I’m not going to hold my breath on that one. I don’t want to be an armchair psychologist and self diagnose myself, but I’ve definitely got some issues I need sorted out big time. I need to act on it because it has overcome my ability to manage and has exhausted any and all self care attempts. I am not really one to give things like this any power, but sometimes you have to call in the cavalry.

And that’s another thing to get over: SHAME. I’m generally super self reliant and more of the rock in the eye of the storm type person. Not being able to get over this is driving me nuts. I’m wracked with shame: shame that my experiences that night were nothing like others, that I shouldn’t be so messed up; shame that I’m ‘not right’ anymore; guilt that I didn’t and couldn’t do anything to try to help people I saw getting hurt by the police; guilt and shame that I’m sitting here typing in my macbook in a goddamn coffee shop all sorts of fucked up from a comparative few incidents with the police, and yet People of Color who have been dealing with this for their entire lives shoulder on and suffer in silence because nobody ever listened. Well, we hear you loud and clear now and I’m sorry that I allowed the media and the inundation of meaningless and irrelevant things distract me. Never again.

I’m blogging this to help myself heal, but also to bring this to light from my perspective. As I’ve mentioned in previous blogs, I’m not a stranger to the ‘idea’ of police brutality, but being subject to the reality of it is something else entirely. And it must end. Even when I’m gumplestiltskin, I consider myself a very loving, caring, empathic person. I cannot deal with this shit. It breaks my heart seeing this. People who honestly and earnestly want to make a better world for everyone getting gassed and getting their faces crunched into the pavement. The Police and the City blatantly lying to the so called “free press”, and many of the journalists accepting it without question. It’s a Pavlovian response on a cultural level: we’ve been indoctrinated from birth to accept authority; accept its purity and honestly and perfection. Bad politicians, no matter how indicative of greater roots of corruption, are just ‘bad apples’; bad protesters indicate a movement that must be annihilated with the utmost force, urgency and suspension of truth and justice. 

The state uses force and physical and structural violence to keep us cowed and compliant; to keep us disempowered and alone and huddled in our warrens, hugging our force fed paradigm and thanking and loving it. Those cherished constructs of the kind and benevolent police officers, while true in some cases, are largely evaporated in displays of ultraviolence like we have seen in Oakland, and like many communities have known for decades. It’s a bitter pill to swallow. Nobody likes their world to stop spinning, and woe if that world stops spinning and the curtain parts and you see the Serpent in the Garden. 

Republicans and the Tea Party campaign with slogans of “taking back America” and “Rebuilding the American Dream”; they hold “Restoring Honor” rallies; they talk a good game through their forked tongues. The problem is that it isn’t a motherfucking game, it’s real life. The policies instituted by Republicans and complicit, craven Democrats, are responsible for the decrepit social and economic conditions we find ourselves in. Just like Iraq, they have a plan to rebuild a country they destroyed, a people they shell shocked and made destitute; a plan that costs a lot of money and makes a lot of old white men richer than their wildest dreams. They have to ‘Rebuild America’ and ‘Restore Honor’ because in some twist of fate out of Mercutio’s lips, when we destroyed our alleged enemy’s House, we found the pox on our house too. 

Occupy is but a symptom of a greater, deeper and more powerful dissent. It’s this ur-tsunami of rage, bubbling and churning and growing more indignant and radical and militant. Our leadership could have maintained their power, they could have come to us in the beginning before we started to get organized, before we started throwing our bodies on the gears. But it’s too late now. Where we could have been accommodated, negotiated with and placated with a few changes back in the autumn, we now have 3 months of rage and injustices, wounded friends, night terrors, that smell of teargas permanently burned into our noses - it’s too late to go back now. I can’t go back now. You can’t go back now. Maybe we can turn away from the movement, but we’ve forever been rewired by hardship, siege and street fighting; by community and empowerment and direct democracy. It’s bigger than Occupy now, it’s a movement, and it’s a meme and it’s alive and self aware and that feeling of rightness and wellness, wholeness and justice is sitting in our heartspaces waiting for the spring. 

And just what will spring bring, dear Government? I have no idea. What happens when March rolls around and people stop huddling and start rocking the boat again? What happens when people realize that despite all the amazing things that happened this fall, a bunch of people got gassed and beat, and our elected leaders gave us silence and unspoken platitudes? Implicitly shaming us, despite the fact that many of us still looked to you for help and simple reassurances, through our cynicism and profound disappointment. This isn’t Rome, we have the internet and we’re all angry everywhere, so you can fuck right off with your Bread and Circus bullshit. And while we’re at it, you can stop the Smoke and Mirrors bullshit too. Nobody believes the lies anymore: whether it’s Mayor Quan spitting out ‘don’t recall me i’m a good mayor’ and deceits from whatever side of her mouth her hand isn’t leaned against to prop up her bored ass head, or President Obama pretending that he’s going to care about us now that he’s probably going to be reelected to a second term. 

What happens in Chicago when tens of thousands of G8 and NATO protesters face off against Rahm Emmanuel’s beefed up and crackdown encouraged police force? It’s not a game or a picnic. Our government has made that abundantly clear to us of late. Rahm’s ass just left the Obama White House! I think there’s a big disconnect between us on the ground and the government in that i think they think we’re not that serious. A leftist revolt under a democratic administration? Impossible you say? Try me. You’re already preparing your strategies for massive counter insurgency operations despite the protests being declared as peaceful, non-violent assemblies. We’ve seen how the police have treated protests in the last few months, let alone during the major convergences like the G8, WTO, and other big groups. Once again, the state is bringing violence to a non-violent protest, except this time, we’ve got months of notice. It’s not going to be like in Oakland on #j28 where a few people brought shields. It’s different now. The state has destroyed any vestiges of goodwill we once had for it and they’ve exhausted whatever moral pretensions and justifications they had for remaining in power. This isn’t Seattle. It’s bigger than Seattle ever could be, and bigger than Chicago ever will be. There’s a collective consciousness now, a groupthink. An assault on one of us is an assault on all of us. We don’t need trite, hollow slogans “we are all Oakland” or “we are all Scott Olson” this time because we are all angry. The most peaceful, loving, non-violent members of our movement are still mad as hell and we aren’t going to take it anymore. 

To borrow a quote from my favorite author Jeanette Winterson, ‘Walls protect and walls limit. It is in the nature of walls, that they should fall. That walls should fall is the consequence of blowing your own trumpet.” Well, we heard your clarion call loud and clear. We heard it in the sirens echoing through our streets, we heard it in the sound of batons striking flesh and bone, and we heard it in your dispersal orders and in the sound of ripping tents. You’ve built yourself a mighty fortress around yourselves, with your green zones and your closed door summits deciding the fate of nations. Just as those walls protect you, they limit you too. You don’t hear the cries of the people, and you are blind to them. The human mind has a funny way of downplaying tragedy when it’s just numbers and statistics, and those walls you’ve built within and without, be it a wall of barbed wire or a wall of officious, indifferent bureaucrats and flunkies, will be your undoing. 

It’s a new year and it’s a year which finds people wanting and demanding change; true, lasting and meaningful change. We tried doing things the right way, and you met us with violence, intimidation and used many of the resources at your disposal that would have best been not used on peaceful, extremely well networked and motivated protesters. We’ve learned from this. All these attacks did was make us bolder, smarter and more radical. I guess all I’m saying from this is that while your moves against us have hurt and traumatized us, it has not stopped us. It’s 2012. It’s the year of the motherfucking dragon and we will have change. We will no longer tolerate debate whether a woman has access to abortions or can make her own reproductive decisions; we will no longer tolerate social and economic injustice; we will no longer tolerate police brutality and repression; we will no longer tolerate racism and classism and other -isms. We don’t subscribe to ideologies, we are full of idea-ologies. You can evict our tents and you can arrest our persons, but you cannot evict an idea that is rooted in the hearts and minds of the People. It’s 2012 and we stopped pressing snooze, we stopped being meek and broken and disempowered. It’s 2012, we’re here, we’re not going away and we’re going to win. 

A MODEST PROPOSAL

Occupy, as a movement, succeeds wildly when we use creativity, humor and optimism to confront the extremely grave and heartbreaking inequalities in our society. The ‘Perfect Storm’ of socio-economic conditions that allowed our movement to get our foot in the door is often too frightening; too intimidating; too hopeless seeming for the average person to think of confronting. We are waging a struggle against centuries of entrenched violence, oppression and exploitation. Instead of drawing in a trickle of people who have long girded and steeled themselves for protracted street fighting and insurrection, let us try for a tsunami of people who confront the worst evils we have ever known with a smile on their faces and perhaps the first twinkle of hope they have ever known in their eyes. 

I don’t know that the old way of #oo and #osf (and perhaps even #ows altogether) are working in the post-camp environment. Let’s shake it up a bit, be creative, and be what the powers that be do not want and can not afford us to be. There will be plenty of time for street fighting and such when the tanks are in the streets. Right now, let’s concentrate on getting the streets filled with people! 

And so, I propose a #catbloc. It doesn’t have to just be cats, but let’s make it funny, creative, and amazing! keep it upbeat and humorous in spite of the crushing despair or blinding rage that fills us when examining some of the things we face. We can be violent, and we can resort to property destruction; we know we can, it’s easy. The point is, let’s take that higher road while we still can - let’s reach out to our oppressed brothers and sisters in other parts of town - let’s reach out to our forlorn brothers and sisters in the suburbs - let’s reach out and do it with smiles and optimism. We are the light that people are looking for in their lives right now. We stood up and stood fast against terrible opposition this fall and winter. Let’s be the spring that this nation and this planet deserves. CAN WE JUST TRY IT PLEASE? 

Paint your shields with cats. Print out and make funny cat face protest signs. Let’s fuck with the police and fuck with the powers that be with humor! It is our greatest weapon and really shows our contempt for them that we’re not even going to get angry anymore. We’re going to laugh and the whole world will watch and laugh with us!

I love you all! Let’s do this!

Scott 

OccupySF 

EDIT: Here’s the tweet that started it all - https://twitter.com/scottanansi/statuses/167515846154010624

And we’re on Facebook here: http://www.facebook.com/protest.catbloc