Occupy The Rum Diary

Went to see The Rum Diary with a friend.  Wasn't expecting to head to the theatre for it; wasn't expecting to like it.  Some of the dialogue is wickedly funny.  The references are fast and furious, and the cynicism refreshing. 

And...this is the car I want - Fiat 500 - with Johnny Depp driving, of course!

What suprised me most about it, though, was how timely it is.  Kemp's (Hunter S. Thompson's alter-ego played by Johnny Depp) crusade to expose entrenched corporate greed in Puerto Rico in 1960 is a screeching echo of the rage (no, not frustration) people are feeling right now in 2011.  The crisis is tailor-made for our lifetime - a few greedy men conspire to ruin beautiful beachfront property with massive hotels - stealing the landscape to make money.  Kemp is enlisted to help them sell it to the public.  His willingness to fight this corruption, bite the hand, and name it rage is not noble; it's necessary.

Hunter S. Thompson's social commentary and x-ray vision to ferret out hypocrisy is all over the script and the chewy dialogue.  The actors seem to have a good time delivering these lines and playing with each other. 

Go see it.  Remind yourself that this particular struggle has been going on for decades, really centuries.  There is a legacy, and we can learn from our losses.

Watch out for the 2D 3D

A day after marching with Occupy Wall Street and not too far from Occupy DC, we visited the Sculpture Garden at The National Mall.  There had been a lot of FB and Twitter debate about violence at the protests - police brutality and over-use of force.  Since we were there - we chimed in - and were told by people hundreds and thousands of miles away, that we were wrong.  A picture is worth a thousand words, but nobody ever said those thousand words had to be true.  Beware extrapolating the whole story from one frame.

As we walked through the garden, there was this house sculpture by Lichtenstein. 

When you walk, the perspective changes before your eyes - going from an inverted L-shape to a V-shape which looks like a real house.  It's a trompe l'oeil effect, very cleverly and beautifully used - also super-fun.  I decided to shoot it  - from different angles, as if I were walking along.  Of course, and I should have realized, the effect is totally lost in a two-dimensional image.

It is clear from my photos that I have changed perspective in relation to the sculpture, but the sculpture, effectively, remains a little house.

I turned to Mark and showed him the pictures.  "See," I said, "this is what happens when you try to interpret lfe from a picture."  "You get it all wrong," he said.  "You get it all wrong.  And that's the blog," I said.  "And that's the blog," he replied.

Always beware the 2-D 3-D.  Check your perspective.

Quote of the Week - Krugman

"They’re not John Galt; they’re not even Steve Jobs. They’re people who got rich by peddling complex financial schemes that, far from delivering clear benefits to the American people, helped push us into a crisis whose aftereffects continue to blight the lives of tens of millions of their fellow citizens"

- Paul Krugman

Well, if he's gonna do the segue for me - Ayn Rand and Steve Jobs - how can I not put up another quote this week?

Read the article here.

Democracy Is Dull

Pretty Highline

Ok, went to the March today.  Occupy Wall St. and all that.  Was with Practivist Mark Walton - visiting NYC and Keith, and Carlos. 

After a trip to the Highline, and my failed few attempts to begin operation "Occupy the Highline!" - we set off.  (Okay, just what is so wrong with occupying the Highline?  It's light and airy, has awesome seating, green space, great views.  Wall St. - dingy, sleazy, dirty, icky.)

We were fashionably late, but popped into the march right off the City Hall subway stop.

Confessions of a Bad Blogger/Liberal #1 - Forgot the camera.  For real.  So used to using my iPod, which was dead, and which I left behind, I didn't even bother to grab the camera.  (Uh-oh, dead iPod - sad symbol of today.)  Right - so no first-hand pictures.

Confessions of a Bad Blogger/Liberal #2 - I hate protests.  Rallies.  Marches.  I hate them.  Every time I'm persuaded to go, or that I should go, and then I go, I spend most of the time wondering what I am doing there.  I believe in activism, engagement, and the importance of participation in your own governance, but I've never understood the use of walking down the street, holding a sign, chanting something silly, and generally being in a bundle of people. 

I was reminded of francEyE several times today.  She demonstrated as long as she was still in LA.  She went downtown for an immigration protest one time.  We were in the car together sometime later and she was telling me about it.  She was most upset.  Most upset that she had NOT been arrested.  She felt quite strongly that she hadn't done her job at the protest if she hadn't been arrested.  She even worried that maybe the police were being nice to her because she was old, and might have arrested her were she younger.  I thought of that today, because, truth be told, I didn't want to be arrested, and truth be told, I'm not sure a protest is effective if it doesn't include that type of risk.  I loved francEyE for a lot of things - including beliefs she had that were very different from mine.  I loved her for showing up decade after decade for something I thought of as most likely futile.

Best sign of the day=amazing metal work- can't make that at home!

Confessions of a Bad Blogger/Liberal #3 - I still don't know what the Occupation is about.  I get the idea of creating a movement and the 99%.  I understand amped up frustration levels; I totally get that as a people we feel our leadership has left us adrift in a very leaky boat with no life jackets.  I see people of all ages and genres here, and it's a bit surprising.

The march ended abruptly and without fanfare - dumped us into the square that has been occupied since September 17th by activists.  We started talking to a girl there.  She's been there 5 nights - came up from Florida in order to be part of this.  She talked of food given out - mostly cold food - and work details - she didn't have one, but she helped.  We saw generators powering bloggers and tarps covering mini-campsites.  A couple of guys played and sang a little ditty about the 99% and I thought for sure I'd stumbled into the middle of an episode of Flight of the Conchords where they decide they can get chicks if they go to the protest march.  I feel like a tourist and in a way I am.  I'm looking for some answers and some energy flow that I'm just not feeling.  Overall, the energy is low, diffuse, comes in waves and is not common to the crowd as a whole, but lives in small pockets or groups of marchers.  This is good in some ways.  It makes us safer - too much energy scares cops and might make people do stupid things.  It is also sad - this should be all about energy.  Where is the tide?

Confessions of a Bad Blogger/Liberal #4 - I was bored.  Bored bored bored.  Walking in little shuffling steps - the 7 or 8 blocks took an hour.  In the same batch of people with the same signs and chants.  On the dull downtown streets.  I goaded Keith with Century 21 and almost succeeded in getting him to shop!  We made fun of ourselves for that while Mark took crowd video.   I pretend-interviewed Mark and Keith with a pretend-microphone asking them what their sign woudl read if they had one.  Mark's was "About f**king time."  My sign:  "Dear Police Officer:  Please don't beat me up.  I have no health insurance."

Here's the truth:  participation in your own representation can be incredibly slow-paced and tedious.  Vigilance is like a soccer match - you sit there for 3 hours watching carefully and closely and hope that someone does something interesting before time is called.  It's no wonder we hire other people (like Congressman and Senators) to represent us in this process --- and perhaps no wonder that  they try to make it more interesting for themselves at our expense.

Yes - democracy and its siblings are filled with long, boring patches.  Spurts of time we are used to being entertained out of.  Watching The Daily Show is not actually activism.  It's awesome, fun, life-affirming, but not activism.  Marching might not be either, per se, but it is putting your time, energy, effort, and safety on the line for the sake of being counted.  Voting is another one of these acts - perhaps time-consuming, perhaps futile - but another place we can show up to our own representation.  There are plenty more ways to do this - that's why I promote practivism and practivists here as much as possible. 

I don't have a stake in how the occupiers spend their time.  A leaderless movement can be a beautiful thing, but it can also go around in slow circles and burn everyone out.  Leaders emerge - sometimes they are proactive and sincere, sometimes they are nascent fascists, sometimes they are a combination.  Charismatic and fervent leaders can be dangerous.  So can aimlessness.  I don't have an answer.  I didn't get any today.  Only more questions.

I came back to find out that Steve Jobs had died.  The truth is life is short.  The truth is finding your passion is the only thing that makes life longer, nurutring it is what makes life liveable and following it purposefully is the only thing that makes life remarkable. 

The truth is that anesthetizing comes in many forms and disguises and is insidious.   Holding up signs threatening billionaires might be your passion - follow it.  Or, it might also be your anesthesia.  Beware. 

P.S.  We didn't see any violence.  We got the sense it might occur just as darkness was falling.  Police seemed to triple in number; police vehicles were in evidence, as were plastic cuffs.  We took the change in tone as our .cue to move on, and find Carlos, who'd been waiting for us and watching it all go by with a much more interesting view.  Judging from my googling, there were some incidents of violent interaction between the police and the crowd shortly after we decided to leave.

The Other 99% (A Too-Long Blog)

I've suffered a great deal of confusion in the days of this Occupy Wall St. campaign.  I want to support it, in theory, but I don't truly know what it is.  I don't know what to call it - protest, rally, sit-in, community action - and I don't know what it's for.

I could have saved myself a lot of confusion had I just said the last phrase aloud.

In our personal lives, we strain for positivity (not always the best way to achieve it)  We lip service  gratitude, abundance, goal-setting, self-esteem, growth.  We clutch The Secret like a new bible book discovered in a long-forgotten cave.  We prayed to Oprah at 3pm daily.

We have taught ourselves that we must focus on the positive in order to achieve it.  We have demonstrated this with our lives.  Eyes on the prize.

So where does this go when we take up a "cause"?

Occupy Wall St. feels very much like a fighting against.  I do not know what they are spending their very valuable time, energy and intellect on.  I know that they are frustrated and angry (although they seem to be the mellowest frustrated and angry people ever).  I just don't know what a positive outcome would be in the situation they are provoking.

What are they fighting FOR?

Nicholas Kristof has made some suggestions here, and they are good ones, pragmatic ones, yet I've no idea if he's putting words into the mouth of this movement.  Zestyverse has championed Practivism (pragmatic, proactive, promotable activism) and Occupy Wall St. as yet does not qualify.  They are not getting coverage (though they are, truthfully) becuase they simply don't have a message.  As street theatre, they are quite unremarkable in a city where every street is a stage, in a world where natural disasters sweep away houses in the Phillipines and  ice caps melt and break off, where nations are fighting each other and themselves to create some kind of structure.

I'm not a fan of Wall Street or the stock market.  However, as the largest collective delusion we share, and the one most capable of creating abundance from absolutely nothing but  belief, it bears serious study.  Wall Street is home to some of the most amazing conjurers since He Who Shall Not Be Named.  They create millions of dollars from the idea of value.  That's powerful.


The markets have been as volatile as the American psyche in the last month.  Yet, we can't eradicate them.  Sadly, much, if not all,  of the Western economy is based upon them.  Can we make the system more fair?  Make CEO's take lesser rewards, stop bailing them out?  Can we empower our government not to be held hostage by the market?

Maybe.  But the movements I know about that were truly successful were those that were for a specific change - every pro-Democracy movement, the Civil Rights movement, the end Apartheid movement. 

Maybe this is a groundswell, an unplanned uprising (that seems to be very well-planned).  Maybe it will be the spark that ignites other passions and discussion, and eventually, change.

I hope so.  Yet I fear that this is just making angry citizens angrier, people who feel powerless less empowered, and frustrated people more frustrated.  I fear that the protesters look absurd in the face of the enemy they've chosen. 

If Occupy Wall St. achieves only motivating the already disenfranchised, it runs the tremendous risk of souring those who might join in a struggle for true social and economic change.  For the movement to reach a tipping point, it must offer something to those who are complacent, but uneasy.  It cannot alienate its potential base.  What made the Arab Spring so resonant is that the youth rose up to give voice and legs to the unexpressed thoughts and desires of the generations who came before them, and that energy spread to people who would not normally take these kinds of risks - it was their involvement that created something that could not be ignored.

Watching the new PBS documentary Prohibition and listening to the arugments of Carrie Nation and her cohorts actually made me want to go out and get a drink.  The proselytizing, the demonizing, the grandiose presumptions seem absolutely ridiculous 100 years on.  And yet - Prohibition was enacted, much to the detriment of the American people, creating a black market, violent crime, being responsible for the income tax law being passed, and much much more.  Over-zealousness seems to be a hallmark of American activism, and it often has dangerous possible outcomes.

As activists, it is far too easy to forget our gratitude.  Let us remember, that despite its tremendous flaws, we live in a republic, with representation, and recourse.  There are people around the globe today who are risking life and limb to bring this type of government to their country.  Can we apply gratitude to our goals and our processes for change?  Can we be leaders in the next step for those who may win some form of democracy or increased rights in their own countries?

Occupy Yourself is something I have seen floating around on Facebook.  This is an interesting place to begin.  Become seated in yourself, bigger inside yourself, until you are truly ready to engage with others.  If we approach Wall St. as something bigger than us, then we will be small.  It is not bigger than us, it is from us, of us, it is a collective belief made real by the human beings inhabiting this earth.  If we approach it as ants, we will be crushed underfoot, absent-mindedly by those sipping champagne.

There are things here we need to know and learn - chief among them - that there are, and have always been, more of Us than there are of Them.  If we rise up in solidarity, then, yes, we can triumph.  However, there must by nature be more leaders than followers, and the masses are always made up of individuals - very hard to galvanize behind anything but a very specific cause.

If we believe we are the 99%, then we must believe that we are in charge.  If we don''t believe we are in charge, then we must protest mathematics, as some of its axioms are clearly untrue, or we must tussle with ourselves until we grow into this power.  But if we are the 99% then yes we can hire a lobbyist - just by pooling resources - we can hire lawyers to sift through the thousands of pages of legislation that gives corporations loopholes and tax breaks and looks at ways to change the situation.  We have that option.  But if we have that option, we also have so many more - like creating a serious mandate that our elected officials do this work themselves, as it is what they were elected to do.

Yelling about something, as any adolescent with a mother can tell you, is the quickest way to turn off your audience.  What seems largely missing from the American public forum is dialogue. There are great spaces for speechifying, and the mutual masturbation of discourse - alternating monologue.  However, what is absent here is listening.  Our vehement belief - ingrained somehow in all Americans whenever they got there, wherever they came from as if the rocks themselves held these Puritanical beliefs - is that there is one right answer.

Maybe it is our youth as a nation, but we seem so invested in how other people live their lives, and want to make demands that they live as we think is correct.  While we swear by our melting pot status, we also have no interest in anyone else's opinion.  If this movement, such as it is, can inspire true dialogue, then that would be a victory.

As a nation, we need to learn listening, and then deep listening, if we are to progress.  There is, in fact, room for all of us, with our differing backgrounds and lifestyles, if we would only stop trying to legislate each other into one small way of being.  It may even be true that there is enough wealth for all of us, yet, I think we will never know it if we just keep shouting at each other.

I can't help having the sneaking feeling that we are fighting wrong.  That we have chosen wrong methods, lack discipline and vision.  That we are creating friction instead of opening passageways.  Every cliche about fighting fire with fire leaps to mind, as does every quote from Bruce Lee I've ever held close.  Somewhere out there or deep inside, the other 99% exists - proactive, positive, practical - and most importantly, effective in non-violent ways.

I plan to go visit Occupy Wall St.  I'm hoping to be surprised and excited.  I'm hoping it's not just a collective longing for some kind of positive community choosing to demonize another community in order to achieve cohesion. 

This blog post is already too long, and I keep coming up with more to say.  Maybe there'll be a follow-up.  Maybe you'll tell me what you think.  Maybe I'll see you there.