THE OCCUPY WALL ST. MOVEMENT "The Aftermath"

    
     Well, since my last journal entry, a lot has happened with both the Occupy Wall Street movement and myself.
      The Occupy movement has not only gone national but global in over 2000 cities around the world.  Every major metropolis now has it's own Occupy chapter in some local park or another where human numbers can run from under a hundred in some locales to counting heads in the thousands in others. 
     The path is set. There are only three possible outcomes now: reform, revolution, or massacre.  Or to put it in historical precedents, this will either eventually be a reform victory like the civil rights movement, a second American Revolution, or (and most harrowing) our American version of Tiananmen Square.
      There is no fourth option of just going away because the motivating factors that served as catalyst, the poverty, unemployment and the overwhelming frustration with the ineffectiveness of our political leaders hasn't gone away.  In fact, it's only gotten worse and inspiring still other citizens to surge the movement daily.   Many of the planet-wide demonstrations on behalf of the poor and middle class have become violent or rather it is the jack-booted thugs called police who have become violent against us.  These aren't protesters rioting these are reactionary cops that are causing the trouble.
      Just two nights ago in Oakland, California, the cops tried to evacuate with force the park where the local Oakland Occupy chapter had been camped.  When the demonstrators refused to clear the area, the cops, wearing full riot gear, opened fire with less than lethal force of bean bag guns and tear gas.  One of the cops fired a teargas canister into the crowd which slammed into the forehead of a protester leaving him bleeding profusely and lying unconscious in the street.
       As 10 or 15 of the fallen man's fellow demonstrators rushed to him to encircle him to lend assistance, another loose cannon cop flung a flash bomb into the concerned throng which not only did the job of explosively dispersing the good Samaritans who were trying to help but the grenade detonated right next to the poor, unconscious man still lying on the ground. Bastard cops.  Footage of this outrageous incident was captured on cellphone and posted on the internet for all the world to see where it was picked up by all the major television news networks.  It turns out that the injured man (who ended up being rushed to the hospital in serious condition) turned out to be Sean Olsen, a soldier and veteran of two tours in Iraq. Whoopsy-daisy!  Even to the right wingers who consider it all well and good to push around the kids with the dreads and the noserings and the spacers in their earlobes are aghast at this action.  Even for them, when the cops put a peacefully protesting veteran in the hospital, a line has been crossed.
     Should Sean Olsen die, he will be the first unfortunate to do so in the entire Occupy Wall Street movement.  He will effectively become its first martyr.  It will be like the scene in FIGHT CLUB where Meatloaf's character, a member of a revolutionary group, is killed by police and in doing so he comes to represent the entire revolutionary army to his fellow soldiers.  They unite in his memory chanting, "His name was Robert Paulson."
     Hi name was Sean Olsen.
     I am further reminded of a quote from Alan Moore's prescient, revolutionary, graphic novel, V FOR VENDETTA.  When, in response to demonstrations versus police brutality, a character says, "I can guess [what happens now].  With so much chaos, someone will do something stupid.  And when they do, things will turn nasty.  And then [the authorities] will be forced to do the only thing they know how to do.  And then what happens when people without guns stand up to people WITH guns?"
     Apparently those without guns get their craniums cracked by a tear-gas-canister-projectile-fire from some psycho with a badge.
     Sympathy for Sean Olsen has already re-galvanized the movement.  Across the country there have been intensified marches held in solidarity with Oakland.  Even more have been arrested as a result as people react angrily to the draconian measures of the police over reaction.  The cops (who are paid by our taxpayer dollars) are wielding their power irresponsibly and criminally against the peaceful protest of American citizens exercising their first amendment rights.
      As for how things have changed for me since my last journal entry.  My stated goals then of my participation in the NYC protest were modest.  I only hoped that me and my little sign would attract the eyes of a few fence-sitters who would then maybe in turn join and keep the whole thing growing organically. 
      I'd say that happened.
      First, the very next morning after I returned to Baltimore from NYC, a friend of mine from my college days who lives in the New York area e-mailed me a link to an online New York magazine which had posted pics from the protest the day before.  In one of the photos me and my sign's call to "Join Us Save Our Republic" were clearly seen visible front and center in a crowd shot.  I admit, this alone had me over the moon.  Surely a good number of people would see that.  As Sting once sang, I had been "sendin' out an S.O.S." (or was it an S.O.U.S.A.?) and it had been picked up and carried further.  Folks had taken pictures of me and everybody else there about a gazillion times that day so I knew it would appear somewhere, or at least I'd hoped.  Well, here was irrefutable evidence of goal achieved. 
     I was even happier when I caught an image of myself on the "Ed Show" on MSNBC marching by in the procession.  Not only that but MSNBC had the footage on loop which meant that my message was seen over and over again on national cable television.  This was great.  Again, I had no chyron, no digital ticker tape crawl speeding by on the bottom of the screen to identify me.  I needed none.  I was happy to just to be one of the 99%.
     But the coup de grace, the completely insane, surreal brass ring of it all was that interview/debate I did at Zuccotti Park with Saturday-Night-Live-alum-cum-conservative-commentator Victoria Jackson.  I hadn't given Victoria any identifying information regarding myself either (again just wanting to be one of the vox populii) so I had no idea where or when this debate would be seen if at all.   A few days after I had returned, just on a lark out of curiosity, I googled, "Victoria Jackson" and "Occupy Wall Street" and was taken completely by surprised to see pages and pages of result links pop up.
     WTF?
      Apparently, Victoria Jackson had posted our debate on a conservative website.  It had been then subsequently picked up by nearly every single major (and minor) news, commentary and even celebrity gossip website.  I mean it was EVERYWHERE, Washington Post, CNN, Huffingtonpost, Perez Hilton and even on ultra right wing conservative pundit alarmist Glenn Beck's website (this was the only one that kinda worried me because that's the website where the irrational, fringe radicals converge to make their tin foil hats together, a site usually reserved for only the truly dedicated anti-occupy movement conspiracy theorists, the "wingnuts").
      I clicked on the YouTube link and I was amazed to find out that the video had truly gone viral (did this mean that I need a shot?) having already been viewed over 150,000 times in just a few days.
     Holy shite!
     Now, I've had my brushes with being (in)famous from my previous career, but to appear in a viral video, a political one at that was quite the mindfuck.  I clicked "play" on the video not really knowing what to expect.  I mean, we all remember just the jist of the interactions we have in our day to day lives.  Memory is not one hundred percent total in recall whereas recorded video shows it all as it actually happened.  Every conversational stumble I had was visually written in verbal ink forever and ever or at least as long as such things still exist.
      As I watched the video, I was surprised by the little discrepancies from my memory versus what was actually recorded.  For example, there was a point where the debate between myself and Victoria was (rudely) interrupted and hijacked by another OWS protestor who went on a rant of how he believed Obama to be a Republican which I'm sure made no headway with Victoria and her conservative viewership.  Now I would've bet my life that what I heard the guy say at the time was "Obama is a FUCKING Republican!" but upon review of the footage I found no actual profanity in the opening statement of his monologue.  Hmm.  Odd, that.  Not that that really changes the content of what he was saying but it is interesting how the TiVo/DVR in our mind's eye recalls the data of our senses imperfectly.
     When I had finished watching the interview I was mainly relieved that I hadn't made a complete ass out of myself.  And honestly, if it had been any other topic.  If they had asked me to ride a skateboard for example, I would've looked like some palsied village idiot, but as I said in my last blog entry, I wasn't there because I was "uninformed" (as Victoria referred to me in her YouTube description).  Au contraire. I was there because I knew too much NOT to be there.  So yeah, just about every other topic I probably would've sucked.  But politics?  I'm your fucking huckleberry.  And also, like I've said, I may not know politics on the level of a Bill Clinton or Ed Schultz or Paul Begalla or some other career policy wonk, but for your average citizen I do know enough to give logical, rational explanations that point the pathway I took to my beliefs.
      I started to sift through the thousands and thousands of comments left not only on the YouTube post but on nearly every single other website where it had been posted.  I was so glad to see that it was stimulating a national conversation.  Perfect.  A tear came to my eye because this was beyond my wildest, wildest aspirations for what I'd hoped to accomplish those two days I had spent there.  Imagine, dear reader, if for ten or so minutes you to got to present your political argument to an audience the size of which is tantamount to two fully packed  football stadiums of people (who are actually spread out over not just the continental U.S. but the entire world!).  How would that make YOU feel?  Talk about daunting!  You better have your shit thought out because video allows viewers to scrutinize and over analyze every syllable you utter, every movement, every visual and audio minute detail down to the nth degree, which it was.
      Some of the comments I read evidenced this in a puzzling fashion.  For example, there was a comment Victoria Jackson had asked me about a communist activist named Van Jones.  Now, hitherto that interview I wouldn't have been able to identify Van Jones if he was peeing on my foot and I told Victoria as much.  However, one of the comments left on one of the conservative websites referenced this moment and not only doubted the veracity of my Van Jones ignorance and this particular critic insisted that if you looked closely at my eyes when she asked the Van Jones question, that if you looked "behind [my] glasses" that you could see a suspicious (to him) shift in my eyes which proved that I was lying to dodge the question because I didn't want to concede to her the argument about Van Jones.  Wrong.  I really just didn't know who Van Jones was (but I do now as a result of this interview). 
       As I skimmed all the multitudes of additional comments, I saw that about half of the comments were filled with virulence and ad hominem attacks against Victoria Jackson which were really as cruel as the anonymity of the internet allows those types to be.  They attacked her for everything from her weight to her voice and I don't agree with that tactic at all.  You can debate logically and present substantiated arguments all you like but mean-spirited name-calling gets nobody nowhere.
     Another 25 percent of the comments across the web asserted that because Victoria Jackson speaks with a slow, high-pitched voice like a little girl and because she asked questions in a manner that could be construed in a less than erudite fashion, and because she posted this video for all the world to see even though it seemed by the general consensus that she had lost the debate, then she surely must, in fact, be doing "comic bit," something like the late Andy Kaufmann used to do where you pretend to be a character in order to lambaste yourself for meta, self-aware humor.  To wit: this one quarter of the comments left on the video all over the net was the question:  Is she putting us on? Are we being "punk'd"?
      The final 25 percent of the comments were largely directed at me with a smattering of a few talking about the other guys Victoria had also interviewed.  I was very touched by the bulk of what was written.  Most of them were of the opinion that I had "owned," "schooled," or otherwise "put the smack down" on Victoria in the debate.  Many pointed out how "polite" they said I had been with her which was surprising to me.  How else was I supposed to have acted?  When she asked me if I thought our President of the United States (whom I had voted for) was trying to start a "racial war," THAT was probably the most blood boiling question she had asked me and in responseI had called her question "inane."  If I would've been rude I guess that would've been the time.  But how else would anyone else have acted?  Curse words? Aggressive finger pointing?  Overt mocking?  I just see all that as counter-productive.  I don't have to do these things because I'm confident my side is right and as I said, I CAN tell you why AND without resorting to base maneuvers.
      A few other comments having to do with me remarked something along the lines of I had done my parents, my college, and Christians proud with my responses in the video.  That gave me a little glow I admit.  If I could have a lasting statement for the ages wherein I gave my position on the social issues of the day (that have faced society since society began) to be seen by the masses, one self-testament as to the type of person I like to think that I am inside AND to have this be available to be seen forever like it is on YouTube, then I'm glad that it is this one.
       On the flip side, it was amazing to me how the conservative types really took issue with my claiming Jesus for the left.  I'm sorry but I maintain that Jesus' central focus was about helping the poor and the sick.  That's general welfare and healthcare.  That sounds pretty lefty to me.  Both sides on the Jesus issue present passages from the Bible to back their claims on Christ but it seemed that all the right could really offer was "Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s" which is pretty general in my opinion especially when you compare it to the quote after quote attributed to Jesus where again and again he raises up the poor ("Blessed are the poor") and denigrates the rich ("It's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to get into heaven.")   That sounds pretty definitive to me as to which side Christ would be on.  What do you think?
     And finally, what was really amusing were the calls for me to lead the revolution, to run for President, and I even got three marriage proposals!  I ended up responding to some of my critics and compliment givers on both YouTube and Huffingtonpost and as a result I was friended by some new E-Friends who are really cool, like-minded folks.  Some of these I began corresponding with online were fellow protesters who were a little deeper involved in the Occupy movement than myself.
      As the number of views increased on the video by a thousand a day, I started wishing I had said a couple of things differently during the debate, hindsight, of course, being 20/20.  I had started off the video giving a fact that corporations and banks were sitting on two trillion dollars that they weren't re-investing in America.  I was wrong. It's not two trillion dollars that they aren't investing, it's THREE trillion dollars.  I had also forgotten the precise percentage of wealth of our country that is controlled by the top 400 billionaires.  According to Michael Moore, it’s FIFTY percent of our country's wealth that is controlled by only these 400 people.   At the time of this writing, the video has been viewed nearly 169,000 times with nearly a 1000 more hits a day and that's great but there is still so much more to do. 
      After a few days, some of the people leaving comments on the various websites had posted that they recognized me from my past career.  Understandable. That was bound to happen eventually.  That was fine but I just didn’t want it to distract from what I was saying.  Again, it’s not ME that matters, it’s the message.  I even got word that Stephen Colbert’s publicist had forwarded the video on to him for possible use on his show.  Since the Colbert Report is one of my favorite TV shows, I was a little jazzed by that.
      Some of the people who were more involved in the Occupy movement with whom I'd started corresponding were asking me when I was coming back up to NYC.  One comedienne who had found some success on the web herself by producing a parody of the Victoria Jackson video and posting it online had told me that when she filmed the comic piece that she had looked for me at Zuccotti Park.  One guy told me that he had spoke at the demonstration and that I should, too.  Now, don't get me wrong, ANYONE can speak there. I don't want to give the wrong impression like I'd just been especially invited to orate like at a commencement ceremony or something.  But to me, an admitted, slight agoraphobe, to stand on a proverbial (and perhaps literal) soapbox amongst thousands of my fellow OWS'ers going in all directions and then scream my truth at them and the general populace of undecided passersby like some modern day Robespierre or Che Guevara trying to motivate the unconverted to rise up, well, that was something I'd have to really think about.  Because if I was going to do something like that, I knew that I had better do it in a manner that was earnest and knowledgeable because otherwise you could end up looking like somewhat of a nut. To me, this would be an important speech, maybe even the most important speech of my life.
      As I considered this I poked around the other Occupy videos on the web.  One of them was a Ron Paul supporter who was ranting about returning our currency to the gold standard (which I don’t agree with as it allows wealth to be taken out of our country) but he was passionate and he you could tell he definitely believed what he said which I found compelling. Now I'm not a Ron Paul guy at all. Ron Paul is Pro Life, he wants to withdraw from the United Nations, he wants to abolish the federal minimum wage, wants to do away with OSHA and student loans.  But even though I disagreed with nearly everything this Ron Paul supporter said, I couldn't deny the effectiveness of his delivery, to just stand there holding a sign emblazoned with your central message right in the middle of the masses and speak.  It was so simple yet honestly, during my time at OWS I actually hadn't seen anything like that.
     So I figured that style was more immediate, more guerrilla, more effective than just speaking in front of the general assembly of OWS, which to me would be the moral equivalent of preaching to the choir. OK, I knew HOW I wanted to say it.  Now the question was what do I want to say?  What NEEDED to be said so badly that the words would just trumpet out of my mouth?
      As I had been perusing the web, reading, listening, and learning from different viewpoints and well-worded arguments, I started to jot down and cherry pick what I agreed with fundamentally.  Then it hit me.  As I looked back through my notes and research at all the salient, logical points and irrefutable facts I’d gathered, I realized that with a little arranging here and there flow-wise, this was my speech.
      I booked my ticket to return to New York City.

NEXT BLOG ENTRY:  I go back to speechify in NYC OWS and my reaction to how much that particular branch has changed in the two or so weeks since I'd been there last.