Notes from an Occupation 19: Writing from the Hip

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. 

Notes from an Occupation 18: Confessions from a former Gentrification Fan

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! :( 

Declaration from Occupy San Francisco General Assembly

sfideawar:

It has been well-established in declaration and law that all people are endowed with  inalienable rights, among them life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, freedom of expression, and freedom of assembly. We, and our descendants, share common human needs — a sustainable global ecology, adequate food, shelter, health, education, and equal opportunity to fulfill our potential.

Through a deliberate series of attacks, these rights and basic necessities are being stolen from us by the economic elite in Washington, London, Wall Street and other centers where money and power consolidate.  

We have no redress from our government, as it is busy ensuring the health, prosperity, and security of corporations and financial institutions while ignoring and actively working against the basic needs of the People. In light of this, a call was made to occupy Wall Street on the 17th of September, 2011. From Liberty Square in New York City to the Financial District in San Francisco, we answered that call, occupying with determination and solidarity.  

To reclaim our rights, we collectively confront a monolithic government, a parasitic financial system, and a military industrial juggernaut, all of which command overwhelming economic power and seemingly insurmountable physical and legal force. We confront these entities with courageous nonviolent civil disobedience. By occupying public space, mobilizing people, and transforming public discourse, we shine the light of truth on the situation at hand.

Financial institutions have become parasites of the economic system.  Instead of functioning as a buttress for the economy, they have constructed mechanisms that allow them to plunder the world’s wealth and divert it directly into their pockets. By abusing the money creation powers of the Federal Reserve, manipulating domestic and international financial markets, and creating risky, deceptive, and dangerous investment products, they accumulate staggering wealth and power, leaving in their wake global economic devastation.

Multi-national corporations are equally guilty.  Under the guise of fair competition, they take an unfair proportion of produced wealth.  When true competition threatens their power, they crush it.  They achieve global hegemony by using our armed forces as personal enforcers and looting the public treasury to fund their empires.  They befoul and contaminate the air we breathe, the waters we drink, and the soil that gives us life. The Earth’s resources are destroyed and depleted for their insatiable avarice.

To continue accumulating obscene wealth, these culprits commit horrendous economic, political, and environmental crimes.  To perpetuate these crimes and escape accountability, they deploy their vast ill-gotten wealth to buy control of our society and government at all levels, undermining the tools and abilities we have available to us to resist effectively.

• They buy the loyalty and votes of politicians through lobbying and corruption to create laws and regulations favoring the financial and corporate interests at the People’s expense.
• They influence the judicial system to interpret and enforce those laws and regulations primarily to their benefit, even going so far as to grant corporations the rights of people.
• They buy or neutralize government regulatory bodies tasked with protecting the People’s and economy’s health.
• They buy university curricula and research, particularly in science and economics, to advance their agenda.
• They influence the creation of, and even draft, anti-Constitutional legislation that punishes or inhibits those who publicly protest their misdeeds.
• They buy and consolidate the print and broadcast media to inhibit diversity of ideas and opinions and ensure mass media conformity to their agenda.
• They manipulate the political process and the media, demonizing our differences in ethnicity, skin color, gender, age, sexual orientation, nationality, political affiliation, and religion to separate us from our natural allies.
• They seek Internet censorship laws to eliminate the last bastion of free media and organizational tools for the People.
• They fabricate pretexts to divert excessive public resources into wars of choice, and the weapons and personnel to wage them.
• And they inflict debt slavery on the people of other nations by using the IMF and World Bank as their foreign arms of operation.

Because these financial institutions and multinational corporations have committed these crimes, the government, the corporate media, and the prevailing ideology no longer represent the People.

We, the People, are left to suffer the staggering costs that these financial institutions and multinational corporations inflict — on the economy, political process, and the environment.

• We suffer from a shrinking middle class, rising unemployment, insecure jobs, diminishing wages, retirement plans looted by Wall Street, a decline of living conditions, and a slide toward poverty.
• We suffer from millions of fraudulent home foreclosures and evictions that have devastated our communities and families.
• We suffer the costs of fighting and financing unnecessary wars, and the inadequate support our government provides for veterans.
• We suffer from an exorbitantly expensive and inefficient health care system, leaving us at the mercy of employers and insurance companies who can arbitrarily deny, or prohibitively price, the coverage our very lives depend on.
• We suffer from decimated lands and imperiled wildlife caused by the unsustainable rape of the environment.
• We suffer from food and water supplies laced with poisonous runoff and unhealthy additives, due to woefully inadequate government regulation.
• We suffer from an increasingly inaccessible college education system that results in decades of crushing student debt and extremely limited job prospects after graduation.
• We suffer from a brutal austerity regimen resulting in ever-worsening K-12 education, imploding social services, and crumbling infrastructure.
• We suffer incalculable personal and community devastation due to the reckless privatization of public necessities, including education, healthcare, and even prisons.
• And we suffer from a broken political system where moneyed interests are represented, but the People and communities are not.

We, the People, are fed up with this unwarranted suffering. We can no longer idly stand by, with indifference and apathy, watching our rights, our economic security and our shared environmental heritage being torn from us.  We answered the call to Occupy because all of us can agree that these profound wrongs must be righted.

Occupy is both the conversation and the space to make meaningful change happen. Occupy is a big tent and all are welcome to help us create the solutions for a better world. Whether it’s removing money from politics, transforming the economic system, or advocating for a more just and equitable society,  we have the energy and we have the ideas, but the most important thing we need is your passion! You have more power than you’ve been led to believe, and your voice is more needed than you think. These are the days when we must speak out, no matter how our voices shake.

As we grow, the criminal financial institutions, multinational corporations, and their government lackeys will continue to attempt to silence us.  But our resolve and purpose will only grow stronger.  They can tear down a tent, they can eject a body, but they cannot evict an idea once it is rooted in the hearts and minds of a People.  We are an expression of hope and solidarity for a better tomorrow. We are the cry that has found a voice, and that is the voice of the People. We invite you to join your voice with ours. Let us stand together and let it be known that we we will not go quietly into the night. We are Occupy!

Note: This declaration was unanimously passed at the OccupySF General Assembly on 5 April 2012. It is an official document of Occupy San Francisco. It was authored through consensus by the OccupySF Ideological Liberation working group (formerly OccupySF Research and OccupySF Ideological Warfare). Although this is presented in text format, it is intended for wide distribution via flier, pamphlet, and other electronic means. We invite other Occupations to adopt this document wholly or edit as they see fit and use it as the seed for your own homegrown declaration. Please spread far and wide!

i had the pleasure of helping write and editing this document. i’ve spent the last month working and politicking to get this document into something that people would consense on and i’m happy that it was. this is definitely a challenge, but a fun one. making a document from start to finish via consensus caused many gray hairs but also gave me a lot of respect for my working group members as we all worked feverishly to make sure that everyone’s essence remained in the final document even though our individual contributions may have been edited several times. i’m really proud of this and i’m not sure that this could have been completed any other way than how we did it. :)

please spread far and wide! <3

OccupySF Street Medics: Looking cute and looking after you! <3 

LOL

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

Notes from an Occupation 15: How I learned to stop loving the motherfucking Police and start loving Oakland Part 2

I’ve been trying to write this blog for a few days now but it’s just been too difficult. Too many tears have been cried, too many times I’ve had to stop because it just got too much. The entry I wrote Saturday night was so easy to write because I was still full of anger and adrenaline from the things I saw and experienced in Oakland that night (#j28). Since Monday, it’s just been grief, sadness, trauma, fear … you name it. Much like after the OccupySF eviction from Justin Herman Plaza on December 7, I resorted to my old nemesis compulsive overeating to try to fill that void in my heartspace. Typically, I ignore that little whisper of the addiction talking, but I just gave in this time. The pain was too great and I just wanted to feel good and have some goodness take over. I can’t get caught in the same self destructive cycle again and again and again. That’s what ‘they’ want. We’re supposed to be cowed and broken and intimidated by the violence. That’s why it’s used against us, and used so freely and indiscriminately with little accountability by those that order and act out the violence. 

I can’t pinpoint what exactly is causing me to feel this way. Is it the mass arrest outside of the YMCA and knowing that 400 people who are trying to fight for a better world were going to be in jail for an unknown period of time? Is it that between 40 and 50 of them are people I know either directly, part of my Occupy Tribe, or indirectly via Twitter and occasional face to face meetings at events? Was it the police brutality I saw: the beatings, the knees on faces and necks, the pushing of people to the ground by cops two, three even four times their size? Or was it that the police tried to arrest me 3 times, one of which I believe resulted in the possible injury and arrest of two other protesters? Is it worth it to probe? Does it matter? Should I just concentrate on the psychological and spiritual components of the damage and stop trying to dig out the causes? 

These are questions I have that need answers. This is why I’m seeking professional help. I get triggered easily and I have panic attacks, or I’ll just burst into tears. Sometimes sounds make me remember things from that night or even all the way back to the OccupySF eviction. I was helping a friend move on Wednesday morning and a situation happened and I felt helpless and it brought me right back to that moment when I caught up with the march only to see the police closing around them. That utter helplessness knowing all those people need help and I was powerless to do anything. Seeing that kid get hit by a police baton after he had been knocked to the ground, but realizing the officer was too far away to get a badge # and being thankful that it wasn’t me or anyone I knew and that I couldn’t hear him scream.

A lot of new feelings and experiences like survivor’s guilt. Or this weird shame and victim blaming where it’s like “i shouldn’t be upset by police brutality or mass arrest. We’re breaking the law.” Right now, i’m like “fuck that shit, fuck the law and fuck the police. It’s wrong.” But I wasn’t always feeling that these last few days, and sometimes i go back and forth, or sometimes i think we deserved to go through this retroactively because of the city hall break in. There’s a grief aspect to it too. Doubt. Vulnerability. There’s a bit of shame and feeling that i’m a coward because i didn’t charge through those cops to try to rescue the kid, or charge through the cops to try to break people out of the police cordon, despite the rational part of me knowing that would have been futile, felonious and possibly injurious. The mass arrest really is bothering me too. The uncertainty of it all. The knowledge that a lot of people probably would be mistreated and people would just brush it off to a few “bad apple cops” when in reality that whole ship is rotten. There’s so much more. The more I look, the deeper the rabbit hole seems to go into new unplumbed levels of sadness and rage and impotence. I feel so small inside and so weak and when i start crying (which happens a lot) i feel even worse, despite knowing damn well that I shouldn’t. I feel awful that people in communities of color have been dealing with this for decades and we white people just left them to rot and deal with it for so long and brushed off their complaints and the reports, or if we did hear it we didn’t listen and just attributed it again to those “bad apples”. I’ve worked against police brutality in the past, I’ve read about it but none of that prepared me for actually seeing it and almost being subject to it and I cannot emphasize that enough. I cannot emphasize enough about how jarring it is to see that childhood myth shattered with every baton swing. They aren’t even supposed to swing their fucking batons! The blatant disregard for their own departmental guidelines, let alone state and federal guidelines. 

There is absolutely nothing wrong with feeling these things. The state uses violence to keep us in line. It keeps people at home, it keeps them from marching, from striking, from daring to think or dream that this world could be different. Violence, humiliation, despair, austerity cuts, banker bonuses, all violence. Apathy is violence. Poverty is violence. Social and economic injustice is violence. Smashing a window or throwing rocks and bottles at the cops, while not violent, is useless. It’s masturbation and a few peacock feathers to show off during mating season and all it serves is the ever present, thunderous media narratives on the violent ravaging ‘other’. Real weapons are empowerment, education, outreach, alliance building, liberated hearts and minds. You can really ‘fuck the police’ by presenting them with a well motivated, educated and excited show of numbers that just doesn’t give a fuck about them. Aquapy! Chalkupy! Bubble Bloc! Dance parties! Book Clubs! We’ve got a world to change, but if we continue to get caught up in a cat and mouse game of back and forth skirmishes, they will win because they have a better PR machine, better logistics, and they have fear and violence and uncertainty to keep people in front of their televisions cursing you for intruding into their little bubble. 

Part of me wants to go into a tangent on race and class and talk about poverty, police brutality and empowerment versus the illusion of empowerment, but I think I’ll save that for when I’m in a better head and heartspace, and I’ll just continue to sort of air out my thoughts and my heart and soul here. I’m doing this because it is important. I am extremely privileged to have people from all walks of life, from all areas of the political spectrum, and from all of the classes in American society in my life. I have a unique ability to get this out there, to show people the realities that people of color have been living with for decades in cities like Oakland, and really, all over the country. This is not just ‘a few bad apples’. It’s a few bad apples if there’s one or two incidents of abuse across the whole country and they are vigorously pursued and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. This a systemic problem and it’s an epidemic. Where previously it was largely meted out ot people of color, and a problem that was not readily understandible or visible to middle and lower class whites in the United States (yay propaganda!), it is now an epidemic of state violence being used against a population that is waking up. We are waking up to the disgusting and intolerable blasphemies of our socioeconomic system. We don’t need and aren’t accepting of racism in our lives anymore. We aren’t scared of some dark skinner ‘other’; some bogeyman who is going to tip toe into our house and steal our television and our blonde haired and blue eyed daughters; the immigrant come to steal our jobs; the infidel come to fly a plane into our buildings. Those lies don’t work anymore. The insidious and subtle efforts of the state to ensure racial divides are failing, especially as the Decolonization movement and the various anti-oppression working groups rise out of the occupations and flood onto the internet. Suffering the same injustices, feeling the same bite of poverty and need and the callousness and unwillingness of our government to help any of us out are really helping dissolve those lines. It’s not perfect and there are speed bumps to this process, but we’re finding out that we all bleed the same when being beaten by police, we all cheer when YMCA opens its doors and lets us through. For the first time in a long time, maybe even ever, white people are learning about privilege and people of color are willing to listen and to teach. There’s old hurts that need to be healed, but it’s happening, and in the face of police brutality we’re learning what comrade, community, tribe, solidarity, cooperation and safety mean. 

I got involved with Occupy Wall Street because I have been waiting for this my entire life! I came for the Revolution. I didn’t go down to OccupySF to protest for 45 minutes and then go home. This is a long struggle. It’s the right struggle because this world isn’t working anymore and we deserve better. It is 2012 and children are starving to death or eating cookies made of clay because their food is sent elsewhere so fat Americans and Euros who are dying from overeating can have bananas for a dollar. It’s 2012 and we’re still fighting over the color of someone’s skin or what invisible sky grandpa they may or may not worship. Christ, we’re fighting over where someone sticks his dick or her tongue and whether that’s right or they deserve equality. This movement is the first and best and maybe last chance to get things right for all of us. I joined it because it was the right thing for me and gives me the best chance at having a world I could be confident bringing children into and I could fight for those who couldn’t fight for themselves. 

The media would have you believe that Occupy is doing you a disservice that the movement has evolved into a battle with the police over the first amendment, but is that not important? Don’t you see the trick there? Either we fight for social and economic justice, or we fight for free speech. We cannot have both? We must rob Peter to pay Paul and the media is exceptionally skilled at making you think we only have one thing to choose from. I’m not going to be cowed by this violence. I will continue peacefully assembling, marching, agitating, organizing and inspiring. I will continue in my duties as a medic and I will continue networking and empowering. We’re responding to the violence and the disproporational use of force this past Saturday the 28th with a General Strike on May 1st, with increased resolve, increased organization, and increased communication between the various Occupations. You cannot keep us down. You cannot evict an idea once it is rooted in the hearts and minds of a people. You cannot win. I, and others like me, will not succumb to this terror in the way you wish. These attacks make us more radical, these attacks make our bonds stronger and these attacks make us fight harder and longer for a better world. 

Winter is here, but Spring is coming. 

NOTE: if you want to read my ‘notes from an occupation’ series, just click on the tag to the left. it will let you read all 15 of them plus the little extras that i grouped in. <3 Part 1 of this blog can be found here: http://scottrossi.tumblr.com/post/16693276441/notes-from-an-occupation-14-shock-and-awe-or-how-i <3

Notes from an Occupation 14: Shock and Awe! Or: How I learned to stop loving the motherfucking Police and start loving Oakland (part 1?)

First off, as I said on facebook, the only way I can really start this out is by saying “Fuck the Police!” And I well and truly mean it. I know many of you who have known me for years, and even a lot of my brothers and sisters in the Occupy movement, who have only known me for a few months, will probably be shocked that I’m at this point, and frankly, I am too. I’m torn up about it. I might laugh when I say it, but it’s that uncomfortable “Oh God.” laugh, because I’m really split about it.

I’m very much in the nonviolence/no property destruction camp, and I was also one of those Occupiers who would argue “but the police are our friends!” and I was one of their first defenders, “oh they’ve got such a shitty job!” or “oh they’re caught between a rock and a hard place.” Hell, I’m sure I’ve tweeted and blogged about it in the past at some point. I still believe that right now, but at the same time, fuck that bullshit. Really. There comes a time when your orders are so wrong, so unjust, so ill conceived, poisonous and odious that you must refuse. You have to do it, for yourself, and for those people who you are about to cause harm to. That point has come and gone, more times in just the last few months during the police vs. occupy movement alone, setting aside, for a moment, all the decades of police brutality and oppression in certain neighborhoods and against certain races in our cities. Today, these Oakland cops were batshit insane, and were going buck wild all over town. Good people were hurt, good people were arrested, and many innocent people, both marchers and pedestrians, were put in harm’s way, for no justifiable reason.

It’s not like I’m “new” to police brutality or I didn’t know it happens. I’ve read about it, written about it, and been an activist against it in the past. That said, there’s a distinct and jarring difference between seeing and knowing it on paper, and seeing people ridden down by motorcycle cops, or seeing people get their heads smashed into the pavement and all the other lovely, grisly things police like to do to assert the little power they’re given. I mean, sure, we can dress it all up nicely and call it “training” and “tactics” and whatnot, but really, Police are just a gang. A gang employed by the state, but a gang nonetheless. Enforcing laws, regardless of whether that law is right or not, and using their force of arms and the backing of the criminal justice system to keep us in line and make sure we follow our marching orders. 

How many times have police officers said to us Occupiers something akin to “I’d love to let you camp here but the law is the law.”? They’ll let the homeless sleep in an alley or a doorway in a grimy part of town that isn’t yet gentrified enough to warrant anti-homeless sweeps, because those people are ‘out of sight, out of mind’. They’re suffering in silence and invisible and overlooked and they should just go lay down in their doorway and be lucky it’s not some other city, or some other officer isn’t on this beat or there’d be hell to pay. 

And that’s the thing about this. You’re supposed to suffer in silence. If the police are arresting you, or shooting tear gas at you, you’re obviously doing something wrong, right? You’ve obviously committed some crime and deserve the treatment you’re receiving, right? WRONG. This is what I learned dealing with some of the issues that started cropping up, because I had to get over that hurdle, I had to let that myth about Police and Law shatter. Sometimes, in fact, many times, the Law is wrong. The law is the law because it’s there to protect protect property and privilege of the few, and maybe the rest of us too. It facilitates an order that perpetuates these cycles of hatred we find ourselves in. And you’re supposed to take it and like it and suffer in quiet. Suffer in quiet in a jail cell if you run afoul of it, or stay home and suffer and watch your family die because some back tricked you in to a shady mortgage or your job went overseas or your business imploded because a few bankers (who, historically, do not often run afoul of the law in comparison with lower class people). DO NOT GO OCCUPY. STAY HOME AND WATCH THE KARDASHIAN SHORE AND LIVE IN YOUR CAR AND BE QUIET AND GO AWAY IF SHIT IS FUCKED UP.

Well you know what? I’m not going to be quiet. I’m not going to cry at night or have to run to the bathroom half pissing myself in terror because I had a flashback from the camp eviction or a memory of seeing someone I care about be pulled from the sidewalk and tossed into the street on their side. I am not going to be quiet while I see Police fire tear gas and fucking flashbangs at a peaceful march, which had elders and children in attendance. I am not going to be quiet, I am not going to go home and I am not going to let you get away with this. You see, with Occupy, but especially Occupy Oakland, a police attack is like dripping water on a Gremlin (to steal a twitter quote from someone I can’t find right now!) they multiply. And not only that, you make moderate people more radical. You make peacenik people more radical. Notice I didn’t say more violent or more property destructioney - but more radical. 

Mayor Quan, Dual +5 Broadsword of Capitalism wielding Serpent Queen Santana and whoever the hell is Oakland’s Police Chief this week, your ‘shock and awe’ campaign you keep trying to run is a) going to get the feds to take over your police department, and b) not going to clear Occupy Oakland. Your suggestions of organizations as “alternatives” to Occupy Oakland are laughable when your ‘little oppressors in blue’ have arrested many people from these very organizations and previously condemned them as criminal. But wait, where is the “WOE IS ME” letter from the Police Union this time about flip flopping or whatever bullshit they tried to spin to place the blame for their uncalled for hyper violence last time? Oh yeah, you’re full of shit and are having a hard time lying fast enough to keep up the pace. Don’t try to deny it, whether it’s the Police Union, the rank and file or the Police Chief himself, we all know the truth is not something commonly found at the Oakland Police Department ( http://www.ktvu.com/news/news/emails-exchanged-between-oakland-opd-reveal-tensio/nGMkF/ ). In short, you’re scum and we’re coming for you. Wether it’s a recall, or we elect the first candidate who promises to toss you out on your asses, those of us who still vote have long memories, especially when the howls of our teargassed and wounded brothers and sisters comes back to haunt us in the middle of the night. 

Tonight was a fucking massacre. I’m trying to remain calm, and collect myself, but it’s so difficult. I saw a lot of awful things tonight and a lot of good people that I care about deeply are in some black hole East Bay jail and I have no idea when they’ll be getting out or in what condition. I wasn’t even going to come over to Oakland, I promised my bf I wouldn’t go and I promised my friend Jill I’d celebrate our friend Breanna’s birthday with her and then I’d go dancing at my other friend’s club party. Once I saw pixplz’ stream of the crowd getting teargassed, and the constant, staccato popping of the rubber bullets hitting shields and legs and furniture, I knew where I had to be tonight. It was not my night to spend with my friends or out being a dancy faggot. 

As a quick aside, I want to commend the “black bloc” for one of the most amazing and inspiring things I have ever seen in my life. Those shields, the defense of the medic treating the wounded protester, and then that slow, hoplite turtle crawl you did when you tried advancing on the police line was fucking fantastic. This is where we can solve the friction over diversity of tactics. Aggressive defense. And you know what? When the cops let loose and go buck wild like they did today, gassing a crowd with kids and old ladies in it, I think you’d be hard pressed to find any large number of people telling you to stop throwing rocks and bottles. The other cool thing is that you were right up front and not throwing bottles from behind and running away. Please keep doing these things and we can all be friends and heal this fake ass divide in our ranks. That was some amazing, heroic work out there today. 

Anyway, back to my narrative about tonight. This is getting tl;dr, so I’m going to make it shorter and sweeter than I intended as I’d like to get some sleep tonight also. I got to Oakland to link up with one of my former partners on Welcome Committee, Kevin. As I was getting off the train, two older OccupySF people saw me and hugged me and teary eyed asked me “not to go out there.” and that the police were “going crazy on us.” I ran into two more coming down the escalator, who pretty much told the same tale, so I was not expecting a picnic by a long shot. 

What I did not expect to see was several hundred Occupiers being kettled in front of the YMCA. The ring had closed on them just minutes before I got there and had I not stopped a few minutes to talk to my fleeing OSF comrades, I’d have been behind those lines and probably sitting and rotting in Santa Rita prison or wherever they would have sent me to. 

What I expected to see, in light of recent history, was police roughing up protesters, violating their policies, beating people, but knowing that, again, is different from seeing it. Thankfully, what I did see was from far away and I didn’t hear the screams. It’s always the screams that stay with me. There’s absolutely nothing so world destroying as someone sworn to protect and serving you, someone sworn to help protect your rights and facilitate expression thereof, being the shit out of someone else. Hitting them with their clubs, not pushing and prodding as instructed. Or several cops jump on top of a scrawny young protester, one smashing his knees into the protesters face, and then that face covered in blood and rocks as he’s lifted off the pavement. For what? We haven’t even gotten to the “Fuck the Police” march yet. These people still had signs and were making a second attempt at establishing a reoccupation, a community center to replace so much of what Oakland has gutted, and are threatening to cut even more in the immediate future. 

I’m not going to get into the debate about the legality of occupying an abandoned building. There’s historical precedents and nobody who would criticize Occupy Oakland for doing so is criticizing the banks for their shady foreclosures or for destroying communities, neighborhoods and families in their rapacious pursuit of wealth. It was “illegal”, but so is unilateral military action and that hasn’t stopped us in the past. Instead of destroying a community, or helping cut the safety net, Occupy Oakland was trying to help rebuild our tattered and frayed way of life. Instead of letting it happen in some ‘great experiment’, the city responds with overwhelming force, double speak, and the MSM helps them with their usual ‘spin’ and half or quarter truths. 

How about we talk about the fact that every goddamn occupy medic was arrested tonight, and rumor has it some were even beaten? We’re humanitarian workers. The only reason I wasn’t arrested was sheer luck and possibly that the Universal Aggregate was looking out for me. 

Umm, I’m pretty much done. I have to stop crying and I have to go to sleep because I work in 3 hours. I don’t care if this convinces you or not. I just hope and maybe even pray that you don’t see and hear and smell the things I did tonight. Some of them I’m not yet comfortable writing about, but I’ll wait for my support group to deal with that. 

EDIT: as always, and especially with the things being discussed here, feel free to share this widely. it’s not my best piece by a long shot, but i’m sleep deprived and i need about 30 good cries. i don’t normally pepper my stuff with profanity unless it’s strategic and i’m not going to go back and edit the piece because it’s perfect just the way it is. 

OH MY GOD MRS. BOOEY! She’s from OccupySF! She claims she’s got dementia and would go from being extremely warm and loving and lucid to just … wow. This basically. The first time I met her I got blasted with a tirade of every sexual, fat and racial slur against white people I ever heard and then some. 

We made a lot of inroads in helping her out, but it just got too much and I’m not sure what happened exactly, but she got 5150’d by the SFPD for attacking someone violently in the middle of the night. :(

(Source: av-revolution)

Notes from an Occupation 11: Storming of the Barricades

Umm. So tonight, 12/1, something weird happened with the SFPD. I’m not sure of everything behind it, and I know I only have a partial picture, but I’m going to relay what I know, what I saw and what was relayed to me by other Occupiers which has formed a more complete picture of things. I have filtered out the junk, the speculation and the crazy talk from this. This is important because it is part of our story and also an indication of the turmoil we had heard tell of in the rank and file of the SFPD. 

So tonight, the SFPD showed up at OccupySF and nobody is really sure what the hell the objective was, why they were there or who ordered them there. Basically, 30 or 40 officers showed up during rush hour and started putting barricades around the perimeter of the camp without talking to anyone. This, after we had supposedly had a noon order of dispersal from the city and were already anxious. The police barricaded the entire perimeter of the park in, and people panicked, stormed the barricades and knocked them over. The police officer that was injured was running trying to stop a bunch of barricades from falling over domino style and he tripped and fell into the Embarcadero and his hand was run over by a car. That isn’t a joke, a number of people saw it happen in front of them. Another of our people was hurt in the melee. The asshole that hit, or tried to hit a cop? Well, fuck him, he can rot in jail. We’re a non-violent movement and I won’t have that upstaged because you want bragging rights. Anyway, so the barricades around Justin Herman Plaza were torn down and the police retreated towards 101 Market and the Federal Reserve. 

The General Assembly met and blockaded Market Street in front of the Federal Reserve, while dozens of people trickled in until there were several hundred people basically surrounding the SFPD and their barricades. This is where I arrived on the scene and saw the SFPD begin tearing them down themselves and tossing everything in the back of SFPD trucks. 

This is also where it gets interesting, because it’s the first time I had observed any of the rumored infighting myself. Over the last few weeks, several Occupiers had seen SFPD officers in heated arguments about what they thought should be done with us, with most of the SFPD allegedly siding with us being left alone. Since I hadn’t seen it, I made sure to tell people it was only rumored or that I had heard it from other people. But tonight I saw it with my own eyes, and 5 other people told me the same thing! 

Here’s what I saw: I was heading to Walgreen’s on California and Drumm to get batteries for my megaphone and there was 5 SFPD throwing barriers into the back of a pickup truck and they were having a loud conversation. As I got closer this is what I heard:

Officer #1: “I don’t understand what the fuck we’re doing here. Why are we here?”

Officer #2: “Just shut the fuck up, OK?”

Officer #3: “Why don’t we just arrest them all?” (mind you, GA was being held in the middle of the street and our facilitator was inviting the Riot Police at the Fed to come on stack and talk to us, hahaha)

Officer #2: “Listen, just shut the fuck up ok?”

So yeah, nothing major, except for the fact that their voices were raised and they had none of the professionalism you typically see with SFPD. Nothing too crazy though. It wasn’t until the other reports of similar scenes started coming in that I was starting to see a pattern. One story, observed by 2 different people, really stuck out to me. 

After the SFPD had cleared the barricades from in front of the Federal Reserve and 1 Market, they were grouped around Justin Herman Plaza and were clearing the piles of barricades there. Two officers/commanders were observed in a heated argument that went something like this:

Commander #1: “Are you questioning my orders?” A hush on the gathered SFPD people. 

Commander #2: “No, but we don’t have the morale or the manpower for this anymore.” 

And the first officer pulled the second through the gathered throng of police and out into the middle of the street where I’m told they continued a heated conversation at length. In front of the police and Occupiers and even some press. 

What really bothered me personally, was the looks on the officers’ faces this whole time. They looked lost and sad and just generally upset. Their entire operation was a clusterfuck, the Chief of Police was allegedly on the news changing his story left and right, saying at first that we were “too paranoid about a raid” and then telling another news station he needed to deploy the barricades to “contain the violence”. Several Occupiers heard police officers remark to the effect of “we were supposed to gain ground, but instead we lost it!” 

And indeed, they had lost it. 101 Market and 1 Market had previously been occupied by the SFPD with a labyrinth of barricades deployed as an area denial tactic after cleaning the camps 2 weeks ago. Not only did our “pop up Occupation” immediately retake their former stomping grounds at 101 Market outside the Federal Reserve, but we immediately called for a victory dance party and some random person brought us hot pizza after hearing about what had happened. 

I dunno. It was really weird. I am going to need to let tonight’s events marinate and I’m interested in seeing the city’s attempts at damage control, since it looks like this whole shit was mismanaged and I’m not even sure half of them knew what they were supposed to be doing out there. 

One thing that is cool is we took all the plastic bands that were holding the barricades together and made bracelets from them. It’s sort of a symbol of the “101 Market Tribe” and our bond with each other and a symbol of this weird weird weird weird night. 

Was tonight a victory? Is it a sign that the SFPD might be the first police department to “break” and stop doing beastly things that they’re told to do only to get the ire of the working classes and poor? San Francisco has its asshole cops, like those guys that were stealing poor people’s valuables in those SROs, but I have to say, out of all the cities I’ve lived in, all the protests I’ve seen or been a part of, San Francisco also has some of the best goddamn cops I’ve ever seen, and I think that’s going to work in our favor as a movement. 

I dunno, like I said, I’ve got to let this night marinate quite a bit. I’m not sure what the hell happened, and I’m not even sure how I feel about it. Jubilant, yes. Happy that my 101 Tribe peeps got their homebase back. But really, something isn’t right about this thing with the SFPD and I need to think on that and do some homework. 

Anyway, just telling our story the best I can.

Love and Solidarity,

Scott

OccupySF Welcome Committee and Committee of Correspondence

@scottanansi on twitter

Here’s the bracelet we made out of the zipties the SFPD was using to secure the barricades. HURRAH! ^___^

Whack A Mole Revolution: A guide to Pop Up Occupations

Whack A Mole Revolution: A guide to Pop Up Occupations

Version 1.0 12/1/11 OccupySF Committee of Correspondence and 101 Tribe Affinity Group

In the past few months, we have seen our Occupations rise and fall in the face of police raids and eviction actions. The political environment has become increasingly hostile to our presence, even as we gain support and new members from the 99%. This generally translates into the removal of our Occupations as a permanent presence, the mass arrest of dozens of Occupiers and the confiscation and destruction of much of our personal property. Setting aside debates and questions on the legality and constitutional backing for our actions, this requires a change in tactics. 

Maintaining a presence and offering educational and outreach experiences is extremely vital in this stage of our movement. We in OccupySF, specifically an affinity group known as the “101 Tribe”, have come up with a novel and fun tactic we want to share with Occupiers everywhere. We call this the “Pop Up Occupation”. 

The idea of a Pop Up Occupation, is centered around several core concepts: mobility, visibility, novelty, and creativity. Pop Ups are mobile and are a barebones Occupation, with a tiny kitchen (mostly sandwiches and snacks), mobile library, info table and a first aid kit (unless you’re lucky enough to have a street medic in your affinity group). The mobile and small nature of the Pop Up allows you to be present in high traffic areas where it wouldn’t typically be possible to have a presence aside from a few members of your Outreach team or on the occasion of larger protest actions. The final two core concepts go hand in hand: novelty and creativity. The response to the OccupySF Pop Up Occupation has been overwhelmingly positive. People see a bunch of happy, motivated, passionate and informed protesters with fun signs and chalk drawings on the sidewalk and they approach with a smile, buy us coffee, and most importantly, have great conversations that they can take home to their friends and families and coworkers.

Pop Ups present a great face to the world for your Occupation and the movement as a whole, without vilifying or detracting from the main site. They also throw the police departments off balance, especially if there’s more than one Pop Up in action. Generally, we’re expected to have a permanent encampment and settle in an area and start erecting tents and other structures, and then satellite encampments. This throws a monkey wrench into their assumptions and response plans, as it’s just a table, some storage bins, and a bunch of sleeping bags and blankets at night, and we change spaces every few days to a new protest site. Aside from educating the public at large, it also serves to educate Occupiers on the predations and abuses of the various banks and corporations we find in our communities. 

The following page is a reproduction of the 101 Tribe’s “Tips on How to Start and Maintain a ‘Pop Up’ Occupation/Affinity Group” sheet that was passed out today at the OccupySF General Assembly. Please read, reproduce and distribute this information to Occupations everywhere! This is part of the #O2 Occupy 2.0 movement. Love and Solidarity! 

101 Tribe’s Tips on How to Start and Maintain a “Pop Up” Occupation/Affinity Group

Foster trust between people in your affinity group.

a) Take the time to personally get to know each other and build trust

b) Build trust by proving reliability and communicating with each other

Come together and establish a working set of guidelines that all adhere to and consent upon

a) These guidelines are naturally unspoken rules and ideals that everyone in the affinity group follows on a daily basis, but discussing and writing them down is helpful in maintaining order and welcoming and integrating new Occupiers. 

i. for example: the 101 Tribe created and consensed on guidelines in one meeting. The three guidelines are: 

1. When present, all Occupiers in this affinity group with participate and engage in a minimum amount of protesting (flying, making signs, manning the info table, engaging the public through think tank discussions, cleaning, etc)

2. maintaining a tolerable level of hygiene (if you can smell yourself, we probably can too!)

3. No drugs or alcohol on site and no sloppy behavior

Know your 1st Amendment Rights to assemble and free speech

a) Groups are allowed a non wooden table for information

b) Signs and sign making materials are freedom of speech

c) Vandalism of property is different than chalk and signs

d) Be aware of site lie law and what police can choose to enforce

Civil Disobedience

a) 101 Tribe recommends being as mobile as possible, which involves keeping belongings in sight and keeping on site storage to a minimum.

b) Different affinity groups may have different goals as far as specific occupation site stability but be aware that if tents are erected, police will most likely commandeer property and area.

Have established daily or nightly meetings with your affinity group

a) set a time that works best for the majority of the group and discuss long term and short term plans. 

Establish and set a mission and goals

a) Be realistic about goals when setting concrete long and short term goals

b) Affinity groups should be in line with Occupation goals, but can be focused on a specific mission.

Dealing with violence

a) All affinity groups should declare with redundant accessibility that NON- VIOLENCE is of the primary values of this Occupation movement. Likewise, all and any members of an affinity group displaying any violent temperament or aggressive behavioral patterns, should be reminded by those not exhibiting such characteristics, that violence and aggression are not believed to be the best, or even favorable mode for addressing issues. While also reminding any such individuals displaying such behavior that they hold the ultimate dictate of their current state of able self maintenance as well that groups and people exist who specialize in aiding such self development. Should no responsive progress in their behavioral patterns be apparent, the next suggested action is to remind such people that all who hold contrast to such contexts are fully willing to expose such behavior. The next step is getting peacekeepers involved. 

Note: it is 4:16am and i should have gone to bed hours ago. i’ve been at OccupySF all day and most of the night. please forgive any spelling/punctuation/grammar errors. we’re sans scanner, so the second half of this was typed word for word via hard copy. 

Notes from an Occupation 10: November 30 Update

Hello, my name is Scott Rossi. In case you haven’t figured out already, I’m an Occupier. No, I don’t sleep out on the streets very often, but that doesn’t mean I am any less important or valid to the movement than those out on the concrete. I put in my time everyday after work at Justin Herman Plaza, 101 Market and now the new “Pop Up Occupation” at Wells Fargo on Market and Drumm, and I am generally there until I am ready to drop from exhaustion. My diet consists of lots of carbs, liberally dashed with coffee and other caffeinated products, as well as fistfuls of vitamins and other supplements to make sure I’m getting around 100% or more of the things I need to keep going. I don’t have time to stop. None of us do. 

The Occupation is in a critical stage. We’re changing and growing, even as our Police departments come down on us and evict us from our homebases. Before the November 15th raid on Zuccotti Park in New York City, you could have made the argument that the Occupation was imploding. OccupySF was a perfect example of that. We were besieged by the violent homeless, so set in their ‘Lord of the Flies’ mentality, the mentally ill, and those with substance abuse issues. We were losing amazing people in unbelievable numbers. And then Mayor Bloomberg decided to act like the little pocket tyrant he really is, and began this transition period we find ourselves in. We’re asking the right questions of ourselves and our fellow Occupiers. We’re taking the right steps in fixing a lot of the problems that have dogged us since we became a light in the dark to society’s most vulnerable and traumatized populations. We’re finding ourselves and our souls down this path and it’s amazing! Are there problems? Fuck yeah there are! We’re amateurs. I work customer service for a goddamn porn company, I don’t know how to deal with violence deescalation or substance abuse issues. Christ, some of this shit has triggered my conquered compulsive overeating, which was an unwelcome surprise, but also cause for a look inward and outward.

Many of the larger Occupations are gone. In fact, with the eviction of OccupyLA and OccupyPhilly tonight, there’s only 3 ‘major’ Occupations left: OccupyBoston, OccupySF and OccupySeattle. There’s still over a thousand smaller Occupations and all of the major ones are just one the move now. None of these Occupations is any less important. We’re all everyday heroes, doing heroic things. In a sense, we’ve already won. We’ve changed the conversation at dinner. We’ve made it so those that are ‘mad as hell’ about all the shit we’re subjected to, no longer feel as though they’re the only ones who feel this way. Our little bands of everybodies and anybodies have stood up and slowed down the world. The global narrative was moving inexorably onward: AUSTERITY. BAILOUTS. MANAGED DECLINED. DEFICIT REDUCTION. CUTS CUTS CUTS. And then along came the Occupation, which was the period that brought that to a halt. NO. Now, we must work on the upstroke and make it an exclamation point. NO! NOT ONE MORE STEP INTO THAT NIGHT. WE ARE HERE. WE WILL NOT GO QUIETLY BACK TO OUR HOMES. SEE US! HEAR US ROAR!

The Occupation isn’t for everyone. We’re just surfing on the front edge of a tsunami of rage and indignation. There will be other movements and they might absorb us or rise up alongside us. That said, I love it. At first, I thought it was a very vulgar and horrible choice of words for what we were trying to do. An ‘Occupation’ to end corporate hegemony, corporate money in politics, malfeasance misfeasance nonfeasance of government, austerity cuts at a time when people need more social services than ever? What the fuck? Who the hell chose that? Occupations are extremely terrible things: Iraq and Afghanistan, for starters. Or look in our own backyards and how the Police occupy various cities like Oakland, Detroit, Harlem and Compton? Why would we choose that? It’s like dropping a rusty, fucked up old car in a beautifully flowered meadow with trees and butterflies and shit. And then the ‘decolonize’ movement rose within the Occupation and the unintended brilliance and elegance of ‘Occupy’ hit me. It’s the era of ‘Free Speech Zones” and free speech only being applicable during business hours. I don’t fucking think so. Free speech is 24/7/365 in the USA. Again with the beauty of the word ‘Occupy’ - we had to occupy a public space in order to secure our right to free speech and assembly. Examples of the accidental serendipity that seems so commonplace with this movement. 

If it wasn’t for the Occupation, there wouldn’t be the ‘Decolonization’ movement, and we wouldn’t have such an amazing, unprecedented opportunity to teach priviliged white people like myself about our privilege. I always thought of myself as aware and considerate and educated to things like White Privilege. And then I attended a Multicultural Issues workshop and was humbled by my ignorance of just how badly my people don’t understand and get angry about it. We’ve clearly got a lot of work to do as an Occupation and as a Society when all this shit is done and over with. Another day, I happened upon a Decolonization talk at OccupySF and learned about how subtly oppressive language can be. How the phrase “you guys” immediately diminishes the presence of women and transgender people. It’s really insidious and just one example of many. It’s been quite an interesting personal journey trying to use more uplifting, empowering and neutral language in my everyday talk and be conscious of privilege when dealing with others. And that was just one single meeting of each of those groups I was lucky enough to attend. There’s been so many incredible things I’ve learned and it’s hard to quantify them all. It all just sort of blends into this amazing ur-feeling and it’s filling a void within that I didn’t even know I had! For that victory alone, for me, the Occupation has already won. And I’m just one of tens of thousands of Occupiers who are going through similar awakenings. 

I’ve also learned a lot about Victim Blaming and that’s not something I’ve been a stranger to. As a Gay man, I remember being told in high school to ‘act more masculine’ and people would stop bullying me. I’ve learned that “get a job!” hurts someone who is down and out just as much as “she shouldn’t have worn that skirt.” I’ve seen people cry when heckled by someone from a passing car with just that little phrase. And trust me, I know the whole “words are wind” thing, but when you’re already feeling vulnerable and facing arrest and now the spectre of indefinite detention after finally finding the courage to stand up for yourself, it really fucking kills you inside. 

Living on the streets is not easy. Humans are neurobiologically wired for connection, community, love and acceptance, and you sure as hell don’t get that on the streets. When you don’t get those deep needs met, you medicate, you get addictions, you go insane. It’s as simple as that. We do it in our own lives with Ben and Jerry’s or Pizza or Wine. The Homeless will find their grog or their high so they don’t care as much when all the ‘good spots’ are taken, or they’re forced to sleep in some random doorway in the middle of the night. There’s rarely shelter beds for these people, and even when there is, it’s still the same hostile, unforgiving environment, just behind closed doors and well and truly out of sight and out of mind for the rest of society. They’re still surrounded by all their failures, both of personal choices and those imposed on them by the indifference and institutional cruelty of society. The Government likes to play that game that there’s always housing options available, that there’s always somewhere to go, even when there clearly isn’t. Major cities are ridiculously short on shelter for their homeless, and it’s getting worse each year with budget cuts. I’ve had North Beach WASP types and Tea Baggers confront me and say that “these people” should look to charity for help, if the cities can’t help them. But that’s exactly what the Occupation is doing! Aside from the whole political aspect, we’re supporting these people out of the goodness and kindness of our hearts. We are empowering others to do the same. When we get donations, people frequently remark that this is the first time they’ve ever donated anything in their lives, and that they know that it’s going to a good cause, because they can fucking see it!

I get really angry with self identified ‘liberals’ and ‘christians’ saying they can’t be a part of the movement because of the homeless, the mentally ill and those with substance abuse issues. These people are us! Most of us are only a few paychecks away from living a life on the streets. You can’t just go get welfare or public housing and foodstamps and have a good quality of life. You’ll survive, but you cannot thrive. I’m fond of the saying “this is our only life and we should be living the shit out of it.” Everyone deserves that chance. Everyone should fight like hell for themselves, and even harder for those that can’t and haven’t yet come into this world. The people you hate on and victim blame are the very people we should be fighting for most vigorously. They don’t have computers and beds and couches and televisions, and for most of them, it’s not their fault and there’s no way out except that which the Occupation provides. 

I’ve said it before and said it again, for many people, this is the first time in a long time that the light at the end of the tunnel is not an oncoming train. As we face the likely prospect of losing Bradley Manning/Justin Herman Plaza to an army of riot police, I’m faced with a very muddy brainspace and a very cloudy heartspace. I don’t know what these people are going to do when there’s no homebase for them to retreat to. I don’t know what our Pop Up Occupations are going to do when it’s raining and we’ve nowhere to go to stay dry. I don’t know how the police and mayor are going to be able to wake up every day, look at their children and wives, having done the monstrous, terrible evils they’re drawing up plans for right now. I’m not really the praying type, I typically just give thanks to the Universe for the bountiful, blessed and amazing life I live, but I’ve been doing a lot of praying lately. Praying for those of us that need this movement, as it’s all they have left; praying for the Mayor and the Police who are so misguided that they feel compelled to do these terrible things and follow these unconscionable orders; and praying for myself that I continue to have hope and fire in my heart, that my gift with words keeps flowing so that I can continue to inspire others to be greater and smarter and more amazing than I could ever hope to be. Frankly, I could use all your help and prayers and candles and whatever other bullshit you do every day to make your soul feel more whole. 

Love, 

Scott Rossi

my friend Carlos took this picture of me as we were setting up the “pop up Occupation” on market street in SF two nights ago. this is the type of glee and jubilation i get when we do amazing fun things like civil disobedience. :)

Notes from an Occupation 9: asdlkflak;sdfgjadslfgsdfgsdfgkjsldfg

Yes, that title means I just mashed the keyboard. I couldn’t think of a title, and I can’t think of what this post will be about right now. We’re so busy in OccupySF. We’ve been facing near nightly police raids for over a week now. Some have been called off at the last minute, only after we pulled down a few hundred supporters and held an impromptu dance party. We lost our original camp at 101 Market outside the Federal Reserve, and our “bridge” camp at 1 Market, which was the site of the former HQ of Southern Pacific Railroad. The very same Southern Pacific Railroad that is responsible for the supreme court decision establishing corporate personhood, arguably one of the biggest reasons the world is so fucked right now. 

People I know and care about have been arrested. People I know and care about have been hurt by the police. People I know and care about have left this movement in tears; tired of the constant state of siege, both by the police and the various factions and individuals that have come to populate our Occupation. Nobody ever said this movement was going to be a picnic, and I don’t think anyone really expected it. Facing a phalanx of riot police advancing on you is the scariest thing I have ever seen in my life and I’ve lived through flash floods, earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes and been menaced by the most gigantic spiders Mother Nature has seen fit to throw my way. 

Riot Police suck. But, it’s America in 2011. Free speech is relegated to “free speech zones” and they are only open to business during regular business hours. Pizza has been elevated to the status of a vegetable. That will sure help the obesity problem Ms. Obama has so vigorously been fighting. I wonder how many more vegetables our esteemed congress critters will ‘discover’ through fiat. Yay congress! Fiat Vegetable! 

We’re so traumatized as a culture that the same victim blaming that is thrown against rape victims (“she was asking for it with that dress.” etc) is being applied to protesters. We have a reasonable expectation that the police are not going to beat our asses or mace us down our throats for exercising our First Amendment rights. Unfortunately, words are wind and I’m at the point where I’m worried about my safety when I leave OccupySF at night. Despite making it abundantly clear that I’m pacifist and I’d not only leave the movement if it endorsed violence, but that I’d denounce it. Apparently, there’s a secret club where you only get in if you’ve been followed by some agent from some agency, be it corporate or government. It’s pretty disgusting and certainly no club I wanted to be a part of. 

I’ve never really had that “fuck the police!” attitude before, but after my involvement in this movement, I’d by lying if I said it wasn’t growing on me. Sure, most of the cops down at OccupySF are OK. It appears they’re cycling them out now every day or two, rather than let us develop relationships with them like we used to. It probably is a cause of much of the “command issues” we’re hearing about from our moles in the SFPD. And the heated argument we saw between two of the officersm, about whether we should be allowed to stay, was pretty amusing. All that said, again, they’re OK. I try to think of it as that Looney Tunes cartoon where the sheep dog and the wolf live together and are friends, until they punch in. Then they’re ‘enemies’. At the end of the day, we’re all human beings and we’re all worried about the future. I know the off duty cops are perfectly wonderful people, if the officer who hung out with some of us in Starbucks is any indication. We’re going to have to deal with this until we win the ‘war of attrition’ and outlast the city’s pocketbooks. This isn’t just a protest, it’s a social and political Movement and we’re here to stay, in it to win it.

Ugh, so as I said earlier, we’re super busy at OccupySF. While wading into the midst of various feuds and melees between various camp factions and individual residents, some of whom act like 28 days later rage zombies, we’ve published our first declaration, “Declaration from the Occupation” ( which you can read here: http://occupysf.com/news/121-a-declaration-from-the-occupation ) and we’ve been busy working on a lot of other little projects. Essentially, you want to think of this movement as an exclamation point. The Occupations were a period that brought the global narrative to a standstill, now it’s time to work on the upstroke. There’s a lot of interesting stuff being talked about, which can all be summed up into “plant seeds during the winter and get ready for the American Spring.” It’s so exciting to be doing this. I’ve never had so much fun in my entire life, even with the spectre of detention and surveillance and no fly lists and whatever other bullshit the Government wishes to throw my way.

This is totally not the entry I thought it would be. I’m going to blame lack of sleep for this and I’m going to save it and post it and promptly turn off my computron and get some sleep. I hope everyone stays safe and warm. Hug your friends and tell them you love them. Educate yourselves and learn to know what’s going on in the world and how it affects you and those less fortunate than you. Talk to others about what’s bothering you. Remember, the Occupation has started the conversation. Join it.

Love and Solidarity, 

Scott

OccupySF 

this is one of the most amazing pictures i have ever seen in my life. 

the beginning is near. 

OccupyEverywhere

notes from an Occupation 8: briefness