the Occupy Wall Street protest, as you probably know, has spawned its own support movements in cities around the US. while the message is generally the same – and still uniformly inchoate and somewhat incoherent – it’s been interesting noting the regional differences is response to the movement.
a friend involved in occupy atlanta told me, “this isn’t a campaign. it’s a movement.” which for me unfortunately has the linguistic connection to bowel movement. i mentioned this to a participant at occupy seattle a few nights ago. he laughed and said, ‘how else are we gonna pass this shit out?’
i’m still somewhat ambivalent about the occupy movement, i gotta admit. i agree with the core principles – corporate america definitely has a disproportionate influence over the political process, and clearly that is not in the best interest of at least 90% of america. (i’m not necessarily sure about 99%.) but because this is a movement, not a campaign with clearly outlined issues and goals, there are a lot of agendas floating around, and i’m not sure if i support all of them. in fact, there are several that i know i don’t support.
i stopped by westlake center downtown (where occupy seattle is headquartered) tuesday during my lunch break. protesters had put up tents because it is october in seattle and they didn’t want to get wet. the police had come to take them down – it being against city regulation to put up tents in a public park. i watched from the outskirts as a few cops calmly broke the human chain surrounding one of the tents.
“cops are the 1%!” the protesters chanted, alternating with, “pigs! murderers! cops!”
which, frankly, i had a few issues with. namely that cops really aren’t part of the 1%.
apparently a few WTO veterans hung around the park monday and tuesday nights, giving out advice to protesters in case they got arrested.
“if they start using pepper spray and you wear contacts, take them out and throw them away. that shit can fuck up your eyes permanently.”
the next night i helped a friend pass out pizza to some of the protesters. when walking to the park from where we parked, we passed a homeless guy camped out in the doorway of sherman & clay – the piano showroom that i pass on my way to work almost every day.
“pizza!” he exclaimed.
“you wanna slice?” my friend asked. ”it super sloppy.”
“but it’s warm,” the man said when we gave it to him.
when we arrived at westlake we found that someone had already delivered 5 boxes of pizza, so our gift wasn’t quite as appreciated as it might have been. but it was interesting, milling about the park, watching the protesters lined up on the curb go apeshit whenever a passing car honked in solidarity. we wound up talking to a photographer from kent for a while, who used the work ‘organic’ more times than i care to count.
‘this is democracy in action!’ he said.
which it is, i think. but the thing is, democracy isn’t and never has been an end in itself. i didn’t say that to him.
today i had the day off work and got a latte at a cafe on pine street. a bit before 4 i saw the protesters marching en masse east up pine, heading to cap hill. when i finished my drink i drifted in that direction. there were news helicopters overhead. police on bicycles rode slowly by the march that was heading back to westlake – checking the internet afterwards, i found out that a planned anti-war protest started at 4.30 at seattle central community college and was making its way back to westlake to join forces with occupy seattle.
i walked alongside of them on the sidewalk, taking pictures, mostly looking. i took the fliers that people handed to me.
there was some construction on pine heading into downtown. and i found that it was very easy to step off of the sidewalk and join the march.
“Afghanistan is the 99%! Iran is the 99%! Iraq is the 99%”
but not cops?
someone offered me a gummy animal to eat. i politely declined.
heading into the downtown shopping district the marchers focused on getting more people to join them. most of the people on the sidelines were taking pictures, like i had.
we banded together at westlake, at which point i found out that there was a planned ‘die-in’ to make a public demonstration that war makes people try to find a clean spot on the pavement and bundle their hoodies under their heads before lying down. i moved to the sidelines at that point. a woman carrying a sign lay down beside me. i could see that her bag had ‘kenneth cole’ embossed on it.
is kenneth cole part of the 99%?
let me be clear, or try to be. i do think that this movement is a step in the right direction. but at the same time, i don’t know if i agree with the assertion that all corporations are inherently evil. i don’t think that a lot of the protesters do either, even the ones carrying signs speaking otherwise. how many of them are carrying iphones? wearing keens from REI? hell, even tom’s shoes is a corporation. so we need to be clearer about what we are asking for.
i need more nuance before i can throw my support in wholeheartedly. but of course, nuance is hard to fit on a sign. it’s hard to chant through a megaphone. i both want a clear plan and automatically distrust any clear plan as being overly simplistic.
i have no clear feelings on this matter at all, except that i am interested in seeing what happens next.
