THE OCCUPY WALL STREET MOVEMENT - NOV. 24, 2011 "Holiday Zeitgeist and Police Brutality"

       “Preach, my dear Sir, a crusade against ignorance; establish and improve the law for educating the common people. Let our countrymen know that the people alone can protect us against these evils [of tyranny], and that the tax which will be paid for this purpose is not more than the thousandth part of what will be paid to kings, priests and nobles who will rise up against us if we leave the people in ignorance.” Thomas Jefferson.



       It’s Thanksgiving Day and when I think about what I am thankful for, in addition to the health and happiness of my family and friends, I am also thankful that I live in a society that is still free (enough) for me to be able to speak my mind, even if the content of my words are against my own government. With that said, when you turn on the nightly news these days, doesn’t a lot of footage seems interchangeable? I’m specifically referring to the populist uprisings happening now concurrently all over the world. We are truly living in historically significant times, my friends. It seems to be getting harder and harder to distinguish between video of uprisings against the authorities in Egypt, Greece, Syria, or yes, even here at home in Oakland, New York or UC Davis.
       Astonishingly, despite all of this Sturm und Drang in our streets, our political leaders, save for a few innocuous comments here and there, have been completely distant, unwilling to align themselves with anything that may hinder either their re-election prospects or furl the brows of their corporate donors. Particularly at the federal level, our government it seems, is completely disconnected from the concerns of the majority of Americans. What concerns? Well, since 1997, the top 400 incomes in America have tripled, while their taxes have been reduced by 40%. Where has this added wealth come from? The systemic squeezing of the middle class and the poor to critical levels.
       Wall Street has co-opted our democratic republic, corporate fascism reigns. Domestic protests have now become violent because corporate America, the super rich who are in control, the top one percent of wealthy in our country who will do anything to keep the profits flowing from their wars and their wall street and bank scams flowing into their greedy pockets have decided that these Occupy protests are not cost effective for their bottom lines. Frederick Douglas once said, “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.” The corporate powers that be and their media lapdogs (see Fox News) tried to kill the Occupy movement in it's infancy by ignoring and then mocking it and that failed. And now according to a major PR firm’s internal memo that recently surfaced, their next tactic is a campaign of professional defamation. Wall Street has made it clear that they will do whatever takes to prevail. They will not go down without a fight and before it's over they will utilize every tool their limitless money can buy to try to destroy the nascent Occupy movement, and this includes exploiting the undue influence and power of their bought politicians on both sides of the aisle.
       They’re getting a lot of help, too. Unfortunately, it’s from those who have somehow deluded themselves that they are on the same side as the richest one percent. Disturbingly, the super rich billionaires are also getting help from those who have sworn to “protect and serve” us. Who guards the guards when their power, too, can be bought? Recently the NYPD received a $4.6 million "gift" from Goldman Sachs to "help.” Help who? The corporations? Help what? Eradicate opposition? In 1998, the Giuliani administration created the first police "Paid Detail Unit" in the nation (other cities have since followed suit) which is a privately funded detail within the NYPD that permits the NYSE and other Wall Street institutions to order up a flank of the NYPD's finest upon request. These corporate behemoths pay an average of $37/hour (no benefits) for the services of an NYC officer who is paid directly from the City and then the corporations indemnify the city. These are the police you see in the white shirts (brown shirts?), it was from this detail that we got Officer Anthony “Tony” Bologna, the “peace officer” who pepper sprayed a group of young women who were all ready seated, secured and penned in during the initial days of the Occupy movement.
       That was just the beginning of the police abuses as it has turned out. About two or so weeks ago there was a surprise 1 a.m. raid on Occupy Wall Street's Zuccotti Park encampment by the NYPD. Mayor Bloomberg claimed this forced eviction was because the encampment had become "a health and fire safety hazard” and was “not safe for multiple reasons." As has been pointed out: does the city traditionally take care of "health and fire safety hazards" under cover of darkness? And if the mayor is so concerned about the hazards posed by people sleeping on the street and is prepared to use immense city resources to take care of it, then what about the over 3,000 homeless people that reportedly sleep on the streets of New York City every night?
        Perhaps one of the more disturbing aspects of this Zuccotti raid was the fact that not only were the media not allowed to report on it but many reporters were barricaded, blocked, manhandled and even arrested (Twenty-six so far. Freedom of the press, anyone?).   Reportedly, the first thing the police did was to clear out the journalists so that they could not see what was going on (just as they routinely do in totalitarian nations). Why did the cops do this at 1am and not during daylight?   Because the last time they tried to clear the park and give notice of eviction it was daytime and multitudes of protesters rushed to the park to stand together in a show of solidarity and thus made it impossible for the city to remove them without an embarrassing, politically damaging incident. Since the city wasn't going to let that happen again, they did the eviction when there would be the smallest chance of a repeat confrontation. And thought it worked in the short run, the park was cleared, it also had the unintended effect of galvanizing the movement.
       These shady, recent tactics of the police have just been the tip of the iceberg. In the last month, the incidents of abuse by the authorities have been steadily ratcheting up. In Oakland, two military veterans, Scott Olsen and Kayvan Sabehgi were both hospitalized, the former after being shot in the head with a teargas canister and the latter suffered a lacerated spleen after his police beating. Further, former US Poet Laureate Robert Hass, age 70, was beaten at a protest in Berkeley, Dorli Rainey, an 84 year old activist, was pepper sprayed in the face at a protest in Seattle, Jennifer Fox, a young pregnant woman who also attended a Seattle protest, miscarried several days after police pepper sprayed her and punched her in the stomach. It’s a total disgrace. Now, there are those who say it is their fault for being there in the first place, but in a free society, there shouldn’t have been any risk of anything that drastic occurring. None of these people put themselves "in the line of fire." They put themselves in a peaceful, Constitutionally protected demonstration.
        These egregious examples of police violence have proven two things: that those in authority have become unaccountable and that they have lost any sense of human connection to we the people. These police, whether willingly or unwillingly, have chosen sides in this Second American Revolution. These cops, like the Redcoats before them, have revealed themselves as the Praetorian Guard of the ruling class, the enforcers of a new aristocracy which desires to subdue us financially and destroy our way of life by trampling on our rights. Of course to the police, they are "just doing their job" which is actually a true statement because their job is to intimidate, coerce, and beat up anyone in the way of their check signer's agenda (but the “just following orders” excuse didn’t work in the Nuremburg Trials and it won’t work now).
        When these gun toting flunkies assault a protester, like for example, when recently those police officers at UC Davis casually and sadistically pepper sprayed those students who were sitting passively on the ground, exercising their Constitutionally protected freedom to peacefully assemble in protest, let's call what the cops did to them exactly what it really was: an assault under the color of authority. Where is it written that the government has the right to use violence against our own citizens who demonstrate the rights entitled to them by the Constitution of the United States? And since when is pepper spray a civilized and lawful crowd control method? Pepper spraying is violence and to use same against unarmed, nonviolent protesters is inexcusable.
       Did you know that under Article 1.5 of the Chemical Weapons Convention the use of pepper spray is banned in warfare (but it seems to be OK to use it on our own people)? Did you know that that California law classifies pepper spray as a weapon? Or that it is outlawed under international law? Did you also know that military grade pepper spray, the kind sprayed at point blank range repeatedly directly into the eyes, nose and throats of the students is actually not supposed to be sprayed from a distance of less than 20 feet toward the intended target? The definition of torture is: The action or practice of inflicting severe pain on someone as a punishment or in order to force them to do or say something. Why is pepper spray not considered torture? What those cops did was a criminal act that demands prosecution. The cops were the ones acting illegally not the students!
       And finally, these students who were quiet, peaceful, American citizens exercising their rights are not insects! You cannot spray them away, like mosquitoes or gnats. Their discipline and restraint was commendable. I would’ve went fucking apeshit and I really don’t know how that would’ve ended but I can guess. That’s why I’m always very careful when I go to the Occupy protests. I have family in Europe and if I fuck up my visa with arrests that would not be something I would want to happen. I greatly admire non-violent leaders but if that asshole would’ve sprayed me in the eyes with that shit…
       Anyway, this shouldn’t even be an issue. Doesn't the Bill of Rights allow for peaceful demonstration?  The First Amendment of our Constitution clearly states that, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
       So you see? This pepper spray attack wasn’t just an attack on the students but by violating guaranteed, fundamental rights it was an assault on our very democracy itself! These rights of speech, assembly and petition guaranteed by the Constitution were designed by our Founders to provide for exactly the kind of protests now happening with the modern Occupy movement. We are democracy in action. We Occupiers are fulfilling what the Founding Fathers envisioned. Their goal, what they fought and died for, was to get the colonies out from under the King's control, the multinationals of today are the modern equivalent of the King of England and they have taken away, through graft and bribery of our political leaders, our right to be heard and represented by our government, the people's government and they have done this illegally. We Occupiers are restoring not destroying.   
       Yes, critics pontificate about protesters getting their due because they didn't jump up on police order. Now I know that in virtually any state in the U.S., it is a crime, a misdemeanor to refuse to disperse when asked to do so by an officer of the law, regardless of the legitimacy of the order and that "failure to disperse" constitutes unlawful conduct, making the assembly an unlawful one, and thus subject to any force reasonable and necessary to compel compliance with the order to disperse, but consider this: do we actually have the rights to freedom of speech and assembly if "failure to disperse" can be used at whim as a catch-all rationalization to criminalize liberty?   The right to peacefully assemble as the students had done is a right that is guaranteed by the highest law in the land, the U.S. Constitution and Constitutional rights trump campus police orders - get it? And don’t give me that crap about the protesters were taking away from the rights of everybody else to walk where they were seated.   Nothing was blocked.  Walking around a dozen seated college kids talking about income inequality seems preferable to a situation where civil rights were violated.  As an aside, do you know who else acted illegally in this way in history?   Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, Harriet Tubman, Rosa Parks, MLK, Gandhi, Mandella. Martin Luther King, Jr marched without a permit down busy streets. Gandhi marched directly against the British government in India, as well as the Indian proxy government supported by the British. These rallies disrupted the lives of millions but it also brought the issues to the forefront and over time enacted real, necessary change.
        Americans seem to be ignorant of civil disobedience these days.  If a protesting group keeps out of everyone's way, then who will notice them and hear their protests? What then is the reason to perform civil disobedience? If you armlock yourself to somebody else on a sidewalk and people just walk around you all day and ignore you, you are basically being stupid. You are supposed to get ready for when the cops come to move you. You want the confrontation and the attention that arrest calls to your cause. Hear me CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX. What you have to say at that point (either spoken or by the obvious symbolism of your act) is practically the whole reason why you do it. That’s civil disobedience, non-violent protest designed to peaceably break the law in protest.
        Henry David Thoreau wrote about civil disobedience during the 1840’s. Inspired by our Founders, he said that it was handed down to us as a solemn duty. Thoreau warned that governments are always a little corrupt, and even inalienable rights can be restricted or abolished. When normal remedies fail, our conscience dictates objection. Thoreau’s wise council to us was to remain non-violent while resisting corruption when it tries to govern us (or we will become corrupt ourselves). These are high principles. And it has it’s costs. Non-violence is not always met with non-violence when the status quo comes to confront the objectors. In fact, history shows us too many instances where sacrifices were made in human life so that principles would not be compromised: the civil rights struggle in the South during the 1960’s, India (with Gandhi teaching that to strike back is to lose), Iran, Syria, Yemen, Tunisia, China, and countless places around the globe.
        In any event, who wouldn’t agree that this could’ve been handled with a lot less cost (in many ways) by simply picking the students up (yes, by physically pulling them apart) and removing them that way for arrest? These college kids, including some female, even if they were interlocking arms, posed no threat to these officers, themselves or anyone else. The spraying was not some desperate attempt by these police to protect themselves or others. It was clearly deliberate punishment, 1st amendment right denied and then punished. Those students could’ve been disengaged without these draconian and excessive measures.
        Seeing the extreme reactions of these police that we have seen reveals a festering cancer on our system. The police forces know how to deal with violence, that is what they trained for and are expecting to see but when they come upon a non-violent protest, they really do not know what to do so they have been trying to make it turn ugly. Thankfully, the protesters have not, for the most part, taken the bait. Thank God. If they had, then the police would be able to say they were justified in declaring martial law and respond with even more violence. But the protesters are "not cooperating" by returning the assault, so these police are looking bad and are being seen for what they really are, paid thugs. As long as the protesters are nonviolent, the police will not be able to justify brutal, martial law tactics.
        What’s wrong with these guys anyway? Did their Mothers not hug them enough? Where is the compassion for other people? Empathy is a human trait we need to survive. Without it, there’s no conscience to guide behavior and cruelty becomes easy. They remind me of the Stanford Prison Experiment. This phenomenon is called trickle-down tyranny, it’s a condition wherein ordinary people in positions of local power adopt tactics of tyrants. As of this writing, these would-be UC Davis Storm troopers have been placed on paid administrative leave and a commission is going to investigate what happened and why, etc. etc. etc. In a few weeks, if not sooner, all will be more than likely be forgotten and the jackbooted bullies will be back on the beat, terrorizing and brutalizing again to their heart's content. The people in charge will still be in charge, collecting their fat salaries (UC Davis President makes $400,000 a year) and bonuses. However I still have hope that this ends differently. I hope that the students sue the university and are granted the removal of the offending cops and their supervisors plus civil and punitive damages. I also understand that the Department of Justice is reviewing the police crime for possible federal civil rights violations.
        But we should beware of any government which assaults its citizens who are engaged in peaceful protest. Remember Kent State. Every time I see police/military, dressed and equipped to injure, confronting campus protests I am reminded that in less than 15 seconds over 50 rounds of deadly bullets were fired which left four dead about nine injured at Kent State University in Ohio in 1970. (But whereas the Kent State shooting was generated by fear of the protesters by the National Guard soldiers, the UC Davis cops were just being pricks because they could.)
       JFK said, “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible, make violent revolution inevitable." Until the police remember that they are also the 99%, you can expect more brutal attacks. This is further evidence of a government almost completely disconnected from those it purports to represent. And the more violent they become, the inevitable results will continue to escalate until we get into actual casualties and martyrs and then we will be on an entirely different level of revolution, one that could develop with violent rebel factions like Ireland had with the I.R.A. or Spain with E.T.A. 
        It’s inevitable as long as we have a government that is keeping the press out, ordering midnight raids, attacking peaceful demonstrators with batons, pepper spray, flashbang grenades and tear gas (How long before we see the police dogs and water cannons again?). If these tactics were done by any other country our political leaders would strongly pose and protest and then do what they do best - threaten! They would threaten the offending foreign country with this sanction and that one until the proverbial cows came home. And the reason things here look like a totalitarian government repressing their citizens is because that's exactly what this has become. We are indeed living in a surreptitious police state just like George Orwell predicted. (If you don’t believe me, just cross the line and find out for yourself because today it seems as though crossing that line is as simple as peacefully protesting while sitting on the ground.) Even Ron Paul, whom I generally don’t agree with but he’s spot on here, said, “You can prevent crimes by becoming a police state. You might prevent a crime but the crime then will be against the American people.” Hear, hear.
         And as long as the majority of citizens go along with the charade and accept lower wages, more unemployment, dysfunctional healthcare, disappearing pensions, corrupt politicians and outrageous corporate profits, then everything is "fine.” Many "good" people don't speak up when injustice occurs or even cast a vote because of the diffusion of responsibility. They think its someone else's duty to do the right thing. That's why Martin Luther King, Jr.’s words ring prophetically true decades later, he said, "History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people.”
         But if you dare to speak out and actually try to use your First Amendment rights, now it seems we have a problem. Suddenly as evidenced, groups of peaceful citizens exercising these rights are now considered "mobs" that must be beaten, pepper sprayed and arrested.   George Washington said, "If the freedom of speech is taken away then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter."
       But for every pepper spray canister they have, we have at least ten cameras. And that's why we'll win in the long run. This despite the fact state and local governments are arresting people for videotaping police brutality now. There is even a specific clause in the upcoming SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) legislation that prohibits and criminalizes the filming of law enforcement officials in this bill that is now being discussed and will come to a vote soon. It has broad support by both Democrats and Republicans alike yet how close is this to fascism? Google the bill and read more. (Speaking of Google, they alone are standing against this bill and deserve credit.) But it’s ridiculous anyway. You can hide a tiny camera anywhere these days, the footage of police abusing the citizenry will always get out.
        But why is it only "Class Warfare" when we fight back? Why isn’t class warfare what the super rich have been doing to us? Is this how its going to be then? Anyone standing up against the establishment is met with violence? This is outrageous! What country do we really live in? But you know what? The one percent never learn their history lessons. Such terrorist actions didn't stop the civil rights movement and it won't stop this one.    
       RISE UP!


“America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves,”

Abraham Lincoln

THE OCCUPY WALL STREET MOVEMENT OCT. 25, 2011 "OCCUPY D.C."

      Having decided that the real fight, the real protest must take place in Washington D.C. where policy is made to have any real effect, I marked two days where I had a bit of a window to take part in the Occupy movement in our nation's capital.  It is with no pride that I admit that I failed to make it that first day because well, it was raining.  Somewhere a little voice inside my head (one of many) said, "How serious are you if you don't show up because of a little rain?"  That's a valid point.  Does it mean I believe any less in the movement than some guy who was cold in his tent at the D.C. park?  I don't know. Maybe.  Now in my defense, I was also kinda confused as to exactly where the protest in D.C. was being held exactly.  My research turned up two separate, possible areas where encamped demonstrations were being held simultaneously a little under a mile apart from each other. 
      The second day, however, the clouds were gone.  The sun came out and I knew exactly where I was going, McPherson Square on the corner of 14th and K St. in Northwest D.C.  I figured I'd check out this one first and then see what was up with the other.  I unfurled my "RISE UP" sign that I'd used the week before (recycling, kids!) in New York City.  It was a little beat up from being handled all day in the windswept streets of lower Manhattan but then again, so was I.   After all, one of the reasons I was in D.C. instead of New York was because I had been a little put off by the commercialization, the money-grubbing, the freak show and what I saw as the transmogrification there of a pure, honest rebellion in its infancy into something bigger but somehow less, and thenI came to the understanding of the necessity of such vulgarities that develop with growth and size. 
      But this was Washington, D.C.!
      This was the very brain, heart and soul of American politics, a city designed for the sole purpose of legislation and governance of the we, the people.  This would surely be where I  could get back to the roots of what had compelled me to join in the first place.  I set off on foot through the streets of downtown D.C. by the mall.  It was a crisp, clear Fall day, perfect for a nice walk.  Ever since climate change got out of control it seems we don't get many of these types of days anymore.  We get maybe two weeks at best of both Autumn and Spring before Mother Nature runs to the extremes at either end of the thermometer.
      Did you know that they don't allow skyscrapers in D.C.? And that they probably never will?  They don't want anything to distract from the the beauty and grandeur of our American monuments.  I am in complete agreement.  As foot hit the pavement, I was really taken by the spectacle of it all.  Orange and brown leaves either blew wistfully in the gentle breeze or cascaded from outstretched limbs to line the walkway like so many Autumn flower pedals to cushion and crunch with every step.  When the chilly D.C. air entered your lungs it made you feel, I don't know the word, cleaner?  More alive?  There was a definite contrast between the energy of this city and that of Manhattan.  When lightning and neutrinos brag amongst themselves as to is faster, "I'm like a New York minute," is the ultimate in their braggadocio.  By contrast, D.C. was like a deep, tranquil reverence.  Around the mall is probably as close as anyone has come to making an entire area of a city feel like a church (but then I've never been to the Vatican).  In any event, the entire panorama was coming together to add to my excitement of taking part in Occupy D.C., a new voyage of discovery.
      I passed busload after busload of tourists and school students of all ages coming to take in the sights and history and I wondered if I shouldn't already have my sign out.  I decided against this because I figured that neither the foreign tourists nor the students could take part in our American political system and therefore couldn't do anything even if they wanted.  Besides, I wasn't yet at the park where the protest was permitted by the city.  That's a funny oxymoron; that one would either need or even want a piece of written permission to protest the very institutions that are requiring and issuing the permits.  It is a testament, I suppose, that our system still in some ways works.  Historically, citizens protesting in the U.S. are as American as apple pie.  The day we aren't allowed to protest is the day our democracy dies and that's when we will need to protest the most of all.
       As I arrived at McPherson Square I recognized immediately the small, familiar sea of multi-colored tents, tarps, and tattered tee pees like a domestic refugee camp, or perhaps a better analogy would be to the Hoovervilles, the homeless camps that popped up across the country during the Great Depression of the 1930's.    Any second now, I expected to see all the protesters everywhere.  But.  As I made my way towards the center of the square where a statue of ol' General James Birdseye McPherson of the Union Army from the Civil War era stood, I didn't see a soul.   The tents were here, there and everywhere.  The protest signs were neatly stacked against the circular stone podium of the statue but where the fuck was everybody?
      It was a little after 10:00 a.m. around the same time I'd gotten to Zuccotti Park for Occupy Wall Street but by this time on those days up North, the park was teeming with populace.  This by comparison, literally looked like one of those movies like NIGHT OF THE COMET or I AM LEGEND where some global misfortune takes place leaving one man alone in an empty people-less world.  Curiouser and curiouser, said Alice.
       I found a medical tent close by.  Inside, a lone, young, black man was seated looking absolutely miserable to be there, like he'd drawn the shortest straw to get this shitty shift.
      "Hey, man," I said.
      "Hey," he responded, barely alive.
       "I've come from the Occupy Wall Street protests in New York," I offered.  He looked at me with a slight interest.
       "How's it goin' up there?" He asked almost with a hint of "Why are you here and not up there?" tone to his voice.
       "It's pretty crazy up there," I replied.  He nodded but said nothing.  There was an awkward, somnambulant pause big enough to drive a truck through that passed between us.
        "Um, where is everybody?"  I asked.
         "It's early yet.  Plus, it's a weekday," he said.  Early?  A weekday?  This was ridiculous as at this precise instant in Zuccotti Park I was sure that the goings on were in full tilt by now.  I started notice others milling about like listless nomads.  There was a small kitchen tent and table where it appeared the few workers were setting up for lunch (or tearing down from breakfast?).  I could see a small pocket of the dread locked, ear-spacer wearing, twenty-somethings gathered around some bearded guy speaking who was tall and gangly and looked kinda like the lead singer of the 90's groove rock band, the Spin Doctors.  OK, well I had identified the local Bonnaroo contingent but where were the rest?  The masses?  The looky-loos?  Hell, where were the freaks?  But what I REALLY wanted to know was: where the fuck were all the REAL activists I thought I'd find here, dammit! 
       This was most disappointing.
       I just sort of walked around for a little bit trying to take it all in.  Was I missing something?  Suddenly, as if they had just gotten off of the same bus or something, there seemed to be an influx of press.   It was funny to watch the dozen or so of them walking around desperate to find an interesting shot.  It seemed inappropriate for me to suddenly hold up my sign... all by myself...  It felt kinda like that high school dance feeling when it's still early and nobody wanted to be the first on the dance floor.  I think there were as many press as there were milling Occupy D.C.'ers.  If the New York City version of the Occupy movement was a full-on, cardiac arrest, cocaine heart attack, then D.C.'s was little more than a flutter, a palpatation.  This protest it seemed was more representative than active, meaning just by virtue of the fact that it actually existed at all (and by that I mean the people were camping here) well, THAT was about the thrust of their version.   That was the protest.
       Now, I'm not what you would call a camping kinda guy but the mood in the Square seemed to be exactly like what I imagined it must be early Sunday morning at a campground just after dawn when people are just starting to rouse with the overall idea being that any level of noise would be disturbing to the still sleeping occupants (if not down right rude).   But this was no campground, it was a fucking protest!  This was where I had hoped to find pure, intellectual discourse.  Here was I had hoped to find the undiluted spirit of the revolution!
      Well, shit.
      I was trying my best to not feel disheartened.  If I was there to protest, well, dammit, nobody was stopping me.  This area was permitted for this.  Go ahead and protest, I told myself.
      I wasn't just going to stand there by the statue and only be seen by the waking campers and the ten or so passersby who were dressed in business attire and created a steady trickle of folks crossing through the park every minute. I tip-toed through the tent city, careful not to break my neck tripping on any of the barely visible support cables and I took my sign to the far Northwest corner of K and 14 St. (the former, of course, being THE main lobbyist drag here in D.C.).  It is no accident this chapter is based here.  After all, THIS was the true belly of the beast and not Wall Street.  I figured with the very busy intersection of congested downtown traffic going in all directions, this would be the best place to maximize a prime viewing vantage point.  I observed the thick, mechanical, viscosity of all the automobiles cruising by and figured that a little around fifty motorists a minute passed this point (not to mention the frequent fully loaded city buses that would not only drive slowly by but also come to complete stops in front of me at the light. 
       With the backdrop of tentville behind me, it was no question what cause I was a part of.  To wit: I didn't look like a lone nut.  I unfurled my "RISE UP" sign and held it high.  I was at the farthest point you could be, as close as I could be to the passing traffic, while still being legally inside the park.  I figured, if what the guy in the medical tent had said was true, that it was just "early," then I wanted to stick around and see for myself and I would give it at least a good two or three hours to see if anything changed.  I didn't want to be too hasty in judgment.
       So. There I stood.  By myself.  That was fine with me.  I didn't need anyone else to do my thing.  I wasn't involved with this demonstration because I was just some joiner or because I wanted to play hackeysack with the urban, tribal kids.  I was there because like the guy in the movie NETWORK famously said, "I [was] mad as hell and I [wasn't] going to take it anymore!"  I was mad at about our elected government leading us to hell in order to keep stuffing the truckloads of cash into the gaping maws of the insatiably, obscenely gluttonous super-rich with tax breaks and bail outs.
      As I stood there, I got the usual passersby taking pictures ("Can I take a picture of you for my facebook?")  I got a few little, old ladies of different races stop by and thank me for what I was doing and all three ended their conversations the same by saying that they were going to bring food down for everybody. Ahh, patriotic Grandma's.  I got quite a few horn honks and thumbs up from guys driving through.  I was representing them as well and they appreciated it.   Of course I also got a couple of bad responses as well.  One guy in a van (of all things) yelled at me, "Get a job!"  Yeah, 23 million Americans unemployed should all "get a job."  Where were they to be had?  This wasn't about some kind of laziness this was about the deliberate, systemic, unfair, illegal and immoral manipulation of the political system for financial gain of the super richin order with the devious intent of squeezing every last dime our of the poor and middle class through record profit price gouging, shady banking practices, and investment in foreign manufacturing.  The U.S. unemployment crisis is just the obvious result. 
       Another guy, a balding, white, pudgy man rode by on his bike and flipped me off as he said, "This is what I think of Occupy Wall Street!" 
      Coward.
      "Yeah, fuck you, too, buddy," I called after him much to the delight of two young guys passing by.  Two twenty-something girls with dark hair and eyes (again, think Jersey) then walked by in pantsuits and of them upon seeing me remarked,
       "What's this?" 
       "It's the Occupy Wall Street thing," her friend responded.
        "Oh, my, Gawd. Is this STILL going on?" The first girl said, rolling her eyes then walked on by.
         Next,  a young couple swathed in all black from head to toe like D.C. hardcore punk attire circa mid-1980's replete with combat boots, bondage pants, suspenders, hoodies and backpacks with every inch of space on the clothing either taken up with safety pins or the names of their favorite bands written on them walked towards me.  As they passed me they had expressions of almost dumbfoundedness. 
        I noticed a similar reaction from the full buses filled with largely people of color of all ages.  To the older generation, I noticed them regard my sign with almost a sense of faint recognition to an earlier era of the 1960's civil rights movement, a whispered memory in the core, a forgotten populist power.  To the younger folks on the buses I would describe the reactions first as surprise mixed with astonishment followed by a giddy realization that such things could exist as a fellow citizen with an encamped movement of civil disobedience behind him who was encouraging everyone to, "RISE UP."  (Or maybe they were just amused to see the lone nut at Campy Sleepaway.) 
        Another couple walked by, an older woman and a skinny, middle-aged guy in a matching fitness outfit who set off my gaydar from twenty paces.  As they approached he appeared to be explaining to her what was going on in the park.  As they passed, he looked up at my sign and read it aloud which for some reason coming from the way he quickly said it, "riseup!" sounded almost like he was reading baking instructions.
      An Asian guy in his thirties sporting a goatee came up and took about five different pictures of me from five different angles.  He turned to walk into the park and behind him I noticed a young man and woman dressed in business attire like they worked in the area.  The interesting thing about this new couple was that they were also wearing those Groucho Marx disguises, the ones with the fake glasses, nose and moustache (yes, even the girl).  Odd, that. Were they there to observe or participate?  Were they hiding their identities or making fun of the movement?  Right behind them, I saw the guy from ealier, the one who looked like the lead singer of the Spin Doctors entering the park.  He was now wearing Kurt Cobain style, large, fly-like sunglasses and he was walking into the park like some Don of the Burning Man underworld, flanked by two youngish, crunchy, hippy guys like sycophant, 'yes' men, er, dudes.
      "Howzitgoin'?"  He said to me, as if he was recognizing one of his subjects.
      "Good, man, how 'bout you?" I smiled politely.
      He simply nodded in response and made in his way by me on the walkway with the other two guys.  In fact, I now took notice that actually quite a few people were entering the park now.  Did they know something I did not?   I turned to look into the center of the park and holy shit!  Where there had been only the barest minimum of people two or three hours before, there was now a crowd of a few hundred going hither and yon.
      Well, how about that?  It really had been "early" and now, later, there was an actual crowd presence.  I had been so fixated on the busy traffic corner that I hadn't noticed the slow build up, but there it was nonetheless.  I was pleased.  This was much better.
      I walked back into the center of the park to see what was going on.  I was still holding my sign as I walked around and I was getting a lot of curious looks from what I figured out to be the people who had all been sleeping in the tents earlier, the regulars.  I got the feeling that the D.C. chapter was so small that they actually knew who was not a regular.    Among them I saw the punk rock couple from earlier.  I guess they were regulars, too.  They were all standing around the Spin Doctors guy who was giving instructions that I couldn't really here. Yes, there was actually that much going on by then.  Even the media presence had been stepped up the later it got in the day.  They were in full force, photographing, interviewing, videoing, you name it.
      I feel I should mention here, Dear Reader, that much unlike my earlier days in the protest in NYC, and even in contrast (to a much lesser extent) my recent NYC experiences, I didn't see a single, solitary police officer.   Nope, not a one.  Surprised?  Me, too.  I overheard a couple of guys next to me remark the same thing and one of them suggested that if cops were here they were probably in plain clothes, disguised, hiding in plain view.  Of course my mind immediately went to the couple in the Groucho Marx disguises.  Too obvious maybe? 
      As it happened, I found myself standing next to the Asian photographer with the goatee who had shot me earlier.  He came up to me and handed me his business card. 
      "Hey, you should check this out.  This guy I shot wrote a protest song about the Occupy movement.  It's like a 60's acoustic kinda thing  He shot the video for it at Occupy Wall St. a couple of weeks ago."  That sounded familiar. Was he talking about the guy who had stood right next to me at Zuccotti Park?  God, that had been awful.  Of course I didn't say that as I took his card. 
      "I think I was actually standing right next to your friend while he shot that," I remarked.
      "Really?  You've been to Occupy Wall Street in New York?' He asked.
       "Yeah," I replied.
       "What brings you here" He continued.
       "New York was great as a catalyst and as a base but the real change has to come from here in D.C.," I explained.  He nodded in agreement.  I was thanking God inside that he hadn't asked me what I had thought of his friend's song.  What would I have said? "Actually, I found it dated and sucky and perhaps a touch opportunistic?" 
       "I'm glad there's this turnout," I shared.  "When I got here a few hours ago it was a little sparse. There's not nearly as much going on here as in New York."
       "What do you mean?" He asked.
       "Well, in New York, people were more active. You couldn't hardly find a place to even stand there."  My mind then went to Mr. Hergy Hergy, the "They're comin' for your kids!"guy, and the "Nothing to see here, folks" moustached Latino from my last trip to Manhattan.  "They were speaking out a lot more up there." 
        "You mean like a soapbox?"  He asked. 
         "Well, they do this thing they call the "People's Mic" up there and....nevermind.  I don't really see anyplace for something like that here,"  I said, drifting off.
        We both started to look around to see if anyone was speechifying but there was just a lot of milling with a mood akin to a librarian gardenparty.  Just then, a tall, clean cut white guy probably in his early thirties with short, reddish hair came up to us.  I noticed he was wearing some kind of overcoat that had different peace symbols and 99% slogans and whatnot written on it.  It looked as if he'd bought it at the "Rebel Hot Topic" in the mall.
       "You guys looking for something?" he asked.
       "Umm, yeah, I was just mentioning that I'd been to Occupy Wall Street a few times and when I came here, I don't know, I guess I was expecting a little more," I answered.
       "Well, I'm the guy who first started this chapter here in D.C.  I can tell you it's a weekday and we don't really have anything scheduled for today.  I think we are going to March around 5:00 p.m.  Plus we have people here who are the one who stay and we also have people who are sort of professionals at organizing and protesting and even they get fatigued," he offered.
        Weekday?  Fatigued?  Nobody said a revolution was going to be easy.  Of course I was a part timer.  I wasn't there 24/7.
        "How is the other protest?" I asked, referring to the simultaneous demonstration nearby.
         "That is a specific "End the War" protest.  We are here protesting for the same reason as Occupy Wall Street," the tall ginger spoke.
        "Is anybody going to be speaking?"  My new Asian friend asked who was eager for something to shoot I imagined.
        "I don't even see a place to speak,"  I added. 
        Suddenly the tall, red-haired guy grabbed two chairs and set them next to each other in front of the crowd and said to the Asian guy,
        "You want to speak?  Here you go," he said, meaning, climb on up.
        "Oh, I don't have anything I'm here to photograph," my new friend declined.
         "How about you?" He turned to me invitingly.  I thought of my speech.  I hadn't really planned on giving it here.  I didn't know if I'd remember it on the spot like this.  I turned and quickly scanned the two or three hundred that would be in front of me. This would've been my biggest crowd listening yet.  Fuck it.
        "Is it all right?" I asked.  It was silly asking this in retrospect because who was this guy as if he were the arbiter of who could speak at a protest?  But again, I could tell this was more of a tightknit community here and I didn't want to step on anybody's toes.
        "Yeah, like I said, I'm the guy who organized this chapter.  Do you want to speak?  Because I actually have a real job that I have to get back to here soon."  It was then that I realized that underneath his cloak of rebellion, he was dressed in business attire including a tie (!). I surmised that he had just thrown this cloak on over his business clothes and was now just checking in on his lunch break.  Very interesting.
       I shrugged my shoulders. Why not?  No time like the present.  I remembered that I hadn't any footage of giving my little stump speech in NYC.  Since I now knew it pretty much by heart and no longer needed my phone to bring up the text as a crutch.  I asked my new photographer buddy to help me out and up on to the chairs with my sign I went.
       "Hear ye, hear ye!" I yelled (because again no amplification is allowed by law).  I surprised myself that I had cribbed the "Hear ye" from Mr. Hergy Hergy in New York but it seemed like a good way of beginning before I really started in with it.  It worked because as soon as I stood up there and said that, all video and still cameras of the media pretty much turned on me as well as the focus of about the two or three hundred that were gathered.
      >Gulp<
      I gave my three and a half minute view on things with as much passion and intensity as I could.  Crowds think together in large, slow thoughts.  Divert from this knowledge at all and you lose them.  I ended up forgetting a line here and there and mixed a few things up from the written text again, but it was all there for the most part.
      To my surprise, when I finished by repeating the phrase, "RISE UP" with my sign above my head, members of the crowd here and there began yelling the same thing and that's what I heard as I climbed down off the two chair "soapbox."   No sooner had I stepped down then a small crowd formed around me, mostly of the media asking for my name to presumable include with the footage they'd taken.
      "I just want to be named as one of the ninety-nine percent," I insisted, a familiar mantra by now.   That was an acceptable answer for some but then a tall, well-dressed black man in his late thirties/early forties who'd been right upfront filming said to me.
       "I'm shooting for CNN.  They're going to want your name.  I can add that you are one of the ninety-nine percent if you like"
        Wow, CNN.  Umm, ok.  I thought in the half of a second alotted to me.  I guessed that would be all right and I gave him the necessary info.  A friend of his jumped up on the two chairs after me and invited everyone to the "Coffee Party" rally that was going to be happening on the steps of the Capitol the next day.  As the friend stepped down he made a beeline straight for me and handed me a flyer for said event.  Apparently, some folks were trying to start a left wing vesion of the Tea Party all call it yes, the "Coffee Party."  Groan. 
       "Hey, man, how would you like to be a featured speaker tomorrow on the Capitol steps?"  asked the Coffee Party guy, a warmly-dressed, bearded white guy in his early thirties.  "You'll be with all of your brothers and sisters in the movement."   He gave me his e-mail address as did his well-dressed colleague and told me that we'd set everything up later that night.  I went to shake his hand and he stopped me and said, "Sorry, man, I'm a hugger," to which he gave me a big shock of a squeeze.
       "It will be a much bigger turnout than this," he explained further waving his hand across the McPherson Square.  "We need people like you," he smiled.
       "Yeah, this turnout wasn't really what I was expecting for D.C.," I said.  To that, his well dressed friend explained,
       "Most people in this part of town have government jobs." I repeated the Upton Sinclair quote about it being very hard to get a man to accept a thing when his livelihood depends on him NOT accepting that thing. 
       "Exactly," the well-dressed man agreed.   "See you tomorrow?" he asked as they began to walk away.
       "Sure," I said but inside was a bit disappointed in the knowledge that I already had plans to travel that next day and that would preclude me from speaking on the Capitol steps like I'd been invited. But I really wanted to! Wouldn't that have been something! What an experience.
      As they walked away I called out to my new Brothers-In-Revolution,
      "As Che Guevarra said,'Hasta la..." 
      "'...victoria siempre!'" the tall, well-dressed man finished, knowing full well the quote.  These were my kind of people.  Finally, some intellectuals.
      That night I received an e-mail which included a link to the CNN website and when I clicked, there I was giving my speech.  Wow...
      I felt bad all night about not being able to give that speech on the steps of the Capitol.  Everything I'd done so far with this protest had led to something else like the viral YouTube clip (171,000 hits and counting so far), or getting on the front page of Huffingtonpost.com. and now even CNN.  I was really beating myself up over what next-step possibilities I was going to be missing out on by not being there tomorrow.  Opportunity knocks only so rarely. 
     The next day I arose and pulled the curtains back to greet the day still somewhat heavy hearted.  Suddenly, I had to start to laugh.  Because even if I had canceled my travel plans, knowing me, I probably still wouldn't have gone to the protest that day.  Why?  Because of the simple happenstance of life revealed to me when I opened the curtains. 
      It was pouring rain.

THE OCCUPY WALL STREET MOVEMENT - OCT. 18, 2011 "The Baby With the Bathwater"

THE OCCUPY WALL STREET MOVEMENT - OCT. 18, 2011

 "The Baby With the Bathwater"


      I had finished my speech the day before and spent that night and the next morning memorizing it (or so I thought, but more on that later).  I had my sign making materials in front of me, a large, white, poster board and magic markers.  Now all I had to do (again) was figure out what the hell I wanted to say.  I didn't want to repeat myself with "Join Us Save Our Republic" (though that still held true for me). Besides, it was time to ratchet up the message.  Even in the last two week the tone of these protests had changed into something more confrontational, more explosive (literally) and more global.
      I thought about making my sign something about the police.  Not in a "Fuck the Police" kinda way but something a bit more subtle.  My first idea was to put the average CEO salary (11.4 million/year) versus the average yearly salary of a cop (which is $56,000) and underneath both of those figures write something like, "Who Is More Important?" or "What's Wrong With This Picture?"  In my mind, as I've mentioned in previous journal entries is the idea that, historically, all successful revolutions eventual require the participation of both the police and the military.  There were more examples of the members of both these parties showing support of laten for in the last week or so, some Iraq War veterans had been causing quite a stir by joining in the demonstrations themselves much like their predecessors in the Vietnam era had done before them.  One video had even gone viral of one of these vets, a very, very, large black man clad in his military jacket with identifying accoutrements proving his legitimacy, heatedly berating a group of ten or so NYPD.  He dressed them down for fighting against their "own people" and how that wasn't "bravery" and if they wanted to fight people then they should join the military and go fight in the Middle East.  The cops were receiving the brow beating of their lives and didn't move a muscle to act against him but stood their in mute, embarrassed astonishment, shamed silence.  Powerful stuff.  Good for that soldier, thought I.
      So as I got to thinking again about my new sign and it's contents about CEO salaries vs. cop salaries, two tiny problems came to mind: first, it was a bit "wordy."   Like I've pointed out before, you've really only got a second at best for people to read and process what you've written, before they move on. Secondly, and also as I've mentioned  before, Ivy League professor Cornell West had gone to jail recently for protesting the cops' right to search any protester without probable cause (and I still had my, um, green medicine on me). My cop oriented sign might backfire and get me searched and then it would be off to jail for me for sure.
      I didn't mind letting go of the cop oriented sign idea because I wanted something more active anyway, something with more juice, something with more punch.  I started mulling over my speech in my head again and when I got to the end, that's when I figured out what I wanted.  My last words of my speech were "Rise up!"  RISE UP. Now, that was something I could literally and figuratively stand behind because that is my hope with all of this marching, chanting, blogging, YouTube-ing, etc.  I'm trying to get as many people involved in as many ways as possible from just simple awareness of a different point of view to (hopefully) actual involvement themselves.  I really believe that the current class war being waged by the super-rich against everyone else is actually a fight for the very tenets of our democracy, the inherent foundations of our country.  Plus, on a far less lofty note, I like the image of holding my sign high above my head while saying those words like Sally Fields with her "Union" sign in that movie NORMA RAE.
      I completed the sign with it's simple message of "RISE UP," rolled it up, took a puff (no, not the sign), and down to the streets of New York City to make my way to the Occupy Walls Street demonstration I went.  All along the way, I mumbled my speech over and over and I thought for a second that to everybody else I must've looked like some whacked out mental case who talked to himself.  Not that it mattered much here in The Big Apple.  Everybody is so wrapped up in themselves here (maybe even more so than Los Angeles and that's REALLY saying something) that you could walk down the street in a chicken mask and pink thong and nobody would even bat an eye.
     When I arrived at the park on Broadway and Liberty I was still overwhelmed by how much had changed since my first visit a couple of weeks before (and I thought it was busy then!).  This was nothing less than a human frenzy, a buzz saw-energy-refugee-camp centered in the busiest metropolis in the world.  Oh, the humanity!
     As I looked around I could see that the freak show contingent was again in full force that day.  Where should I begin?  Well, perhaps I should start by saying which freak WASN'T there.  If you read my last blog then you know all about my confrontation with that self-promoting tattoo face guy.  Strangely, he wasn't there at all.  (Had I gotten through to him?)
      But not to worry because instead of him there were plenty of new freaks, like the woman (yes, woman) dressed as, of all quixotic things, the Burger King himself, complete with a full beard, crown and robe.  I never really got what she was going for.  There was another guy dressed as Santa Claus in October.  I couldn't really catch his (snow)drift either.  Then there was a whole different class of freaks, the "arty freaks." There are a lot of artists and designer types in New York and they were definitely represented here as well.  In particular was this one fellow (who I'm guessing was a male but it was hard to tell by the costume) who was dressed in a stylized HazMat suit, a gas mask that completely hid his face, and topped off with a large, circular, Asian hat (like the kind you see those movies with farmers in rice paddies wearing).  This performer had also brought with him some dry ice or something that was creating this sickly, smoke effect around him as he he moved his long, black rubber gloved hands in an eerie fashion to some creepy instrumental music playing from an unseen boombox.  This was quite the spectacle.  I didn't really understand his gig either. Hopefully, he was protesting the amount of pollution in China and how off-the-charts-levels of smog and poison they pump into the sky and  the Earth. Or he could just be getting his freak on. At least he was entertaining for a few seconds.  That's more than could be said of the two well meaning, middle-aged, heavyset, hippy women, one with an acoustic guitar and the other with a tambourine-like something out of  Woodstock-who just kept playing "This land is your land, this land is my land," over and over again, ad infinitum.  I shit you not.
    Anyway, I knew I didn't want to stand next to any of these people.  I also knew that I didn't want to be at the opposite end of the park where the deafening calamity of the for-profit-drum-circle were bashing. I'd had enough of that the day before, thank you.
     I scanned the park for a spot and took a second to notice what a gorgeous Fall day it was in Manhattan, clear skies and a slightly brisk breeze married to a warmish (but never hot) sun.  Ahh, the American Autumn.  Outstanding.  I was also looking around for my online friends I had "e-met" after I responded to their congratulatory messages they'd sent after viewing my interview/debate with Victoria Jackson on YouTube.  I knew they were here somewhere but where?  There were thousands and thousands here and we hadn't really set up anything more specific than "I'll see you there." But where was "there" in this madness?  This was quite the kerfuffle. There were thousands here and they could be anywhere under this canopy of multi-colored tarps, this patchwork quilt of civil disobedience.  
     And where was this "soapbox" they'd mentioned to me? Or was it a non-specific type thing?  Meaning: there wasn't literally a soap box or any kind of box for that matter besides that which you made for yourself.  My question was answered when I heard a black woman's voice call out from the center of Zuccotti Park.
     "MIC CHECK!!"  She screamed.  Suddenly a couple of hundred people repeated her in unison.
     "MIC CHECK!!"  They screamed back.  They called this method of repetition "The People's Mic." This was how it was done here because in addition to humanitarian items like Port-o-Potties, no amplification of vocals were permitted by New York law.  That meant that no megaphones, no microphones with amps, nada, nothing, bupkiss were allowed.  The powers that be have learned from the rebellions of the past and have zeroed in on which tools, if taken away, hobble insurrections like this one.
     Seeing the woman speaking showed me the location of the proverbial 'soapbox.'  Well, that wasn't going to do at all, I thought.  For as I watched the black woman give her short speech (made overly long by the audience repeating not only every single line but sometimes merely phrases), when she finished, I noticed that not only was there that awful, polite smattering of applause, the kind one usually gets when one preaches to the choir, but that this "People's Mic" technique had pretty much rendered her speech instantly forgettable, as if it never happened.  The leader of the French Revolution, Robespierre himself, could've been ferociously orating here and because of the repetition and slow pacing of "The People's Mic" it still would've only elicited a similar, dismissively accordant, "Yeah, yeah..."  
      That wasn't enough for me.  I hadn't come hundreds of miles from Baltimore for that.  Not that I wanted applause, no, I wanted results.  I wanted recruitment.  I wanted cause and effect.  I wanted to launch verbal napalm directly into the hearts and minds of the NON-converts.  I know that may sound over-reaching  but if you are going to do something like this, what good then are half measures?  I've always been attracted to extremes anyway and in this instance, just to make the slightest of ripples you had to launch not pebbles into the pond but boulders.
      As I looked around I was glad to see that no one else was speechifying in the manner I intended. Oh, there were countless people holding signs but really, no one was saying a word.  This was good because it was going to be hard enough to be heard as it was when fighting against the ambient, urban, audio palette.  It seemed that where I was standing on Broadway and Liberty next to the stairway entrance to the park where I was planted was about as good as it was gonna get.
      I unfurled my sign and honestly, not five seconds after doing so, someone was already lining up to take a picture and then another and another.  I looked to my right and saw that I was actually standing a little too close  to the guy dressed as Santa Claus for my liking so I scooted over a bit next to a long table with pamphlets on it.  This hadn't been here when I was here two weeks ago.  Apparently, it was the general information table for the Occupy Wall Street movement.  It was a spot with lots of foot traffic all around it.  From the hundreds of people who were walking by just because it was another block in downtown New York, to the multitudes of the curious, to the Wall Street suits, to the Occupiers themselves walking in and out of the park, hell, even the tourist buses (the kind with open tops full of people) passing who had now made Zuccotti Park one of the sights to see in NYC had made this particular place in the park prime protest real estate for exposure to the hoi polloi. 
     It was now or never. 
     I had been memorizing my speech all night and rehearsing it all morning.  It timed somewhere between 3:30 and 4:00 minutes depending on the delivery.  When you speak loudly you almost have to speak very slowly because you have to take a lot of breaths and fill your lungs with enough air to really bellow.  I thought for about a half of a second about doing that silly, "Mic check!" thing but after seeing how the repetition while functional still robbed the speaker's words of momentum, cadence and ultimately, power, I decided to forgo all of that.  I wanted to do it a more traditional way. 
     I couldn't believe I was going to do this. I think that bespeaks of how much this movement meant to me, that if I, an admitted misanthrope with a touch of subsequent agoraphobia was going to speechify in front of a steady flux of multitudinous strangers, then you knew of the importance that I regarded all this.  What actually made this doable for me was the challenge, the actually getting in the trenches, the almost punk rock immediacy of it all, that's what compelled me onward.
     Unfortunately, I had counted my chickens before they hatched.  Because as I cleared my throat, made ready the use of all my theatre training and years of experience in voice projection as a singer in loud rock bands, I opened my mouth, ready to speak truth to power when...
     >gulp<
     Nothing came out.  I totally froze.  I suddenly couldn't remember a word.  I was too distracted by the million different things going on around me to concentrate.   And though during my mid-morning walk to the park I had my speech down pat, now, suddenly faced with the masses, I went up.  I couldn't remember a single word, not even the first.  Damn it.
      I pulled out my Iphone to look at my copy of my text that I had sent to myself for just such an occurrence.  I did this action behind my sign as surreptitiously as possible because I didn't want anyone to get a photo of me at an anti-corporate rally, holding my sign of rebellious encouragement with the ironic juxtaposition of holding a fucking Iphone.  Now I've explained in earlier journal entries why I feel the argument that the Occupy Wall Street movement shouldn't use such devices so I'll not go in to it again here except to say, Dear Reader, isn't it exceptional to be able to use the machines against their very makers?  I pulled up my speech, read it quietly once or twice, enough to get it back in my head.  I decided to keep the page open on my phone in my pocket for quick reference.  This was great except that the only drawback being that I couldn't then hand it to someone to shoot footage.  I did manage to get a fellow OWS protester to take a few, quick stills but no video.  I don't mean to say that I wasn't videoed because there were plenty of others recording me, just none using my phone.  I'd already posted the text of my speech online, that was the important part to me, personally owned footage of me actually saying it would just have to wait until the following week when I participated in the Occupy D.C. Demonstration (details in my next journal entry).
      I started to give my speech and this time, thankfully, the words just came pouring out. What I tried to keep in mind was that I wasn't trying to be an actor reciting some monologue, that this was a message that I, personally, wanted to get across just as surely as I would have as if in a conversation.  The first time I said it (yes, I did it more than once), I drew a small crowd but not much because I was still a bit hesitant.  Though there weren't many in that first crowd, those who were there were all holding video cameras and in this digital, information age you have no idea how far a reach this could actually have depending on where it was posted.
      I was emboldened when a middle-aged white guy with glasses and a moustache (think Ned Flanders from The Simpsons but with a smaller build) came up to me afterwards and said,
      "I want to thank you for what you are doing here.  I agreed with every word that you said.  I'm an ex-Pat living in Switzerland and I brought my son here because I wanted to see what was going on."  I looked to his side and there was a wide-eyed young boy of about twelve with long, blond hair who stood silently trying to take it all in.
     His Dad shook my hand as he walked away and I said, "Well, if I can reach just one guy..."  I didn't get to finish this thought because the guy heard me say this, spun around quickly and grabbed me by the arm though not in an aggressive way, mind you, more like, "Hey, I really want you to know I'm meaning what I say" kinda way.
     "No, it's not just 'one guy,'" he insisted, "What you are all doing here is going out all over the world.  This is real what you are doing." He held on to me and looked into my eyes for a long second until he was sure I got his point.  I did.
     "Thank you," I said, genuinely grateful.  He gave me a pat on the shoulder and disappeared into the crowded park with his Nordic son by his side.
       I stood there for awhile holding my sign like a silent sentry.  When I saw that is was all fresh, new faces (and ears) around me, I started the speech again, this time an even larger crowd stopped to listen.  I was growing in confidence, my flow and inflection was improving.  Speaking like that in front of people leaves you feeling somewhere between Teddy Roosevelt and a carnival barker.  The politics make it Teddy, that fact you don't have a rapt audience is the carnival barker part.  As I began talking, I noticed two guys in particular were hanging on my every word.  One was a silver haired older guy with a matching silver moustache who was carrying his bicycle and the other was a youngish, short,white guy with his black baseball hat turned backwards to compliment his matching black tracksuit.  When I finished this time, the white-haired guy with the moustache and bicycle approached me.
      "Where does it go from here?" He asked me.
      "Well, we have to get the numbers.  Eventually you get so many people together that they have to make reforms," I replied. 
      "Not without violence," he responded.
      "Completely without violence," I countered.  (What was his angle?)  "Civil disobedience," I continued, "Just like Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr."
      "Martin Luther King, Jr. WAS violent," the white-haired guy said which really set off an alarm for me.  Martin Luther King, Jr. was violent?  What it really felt like was this guy was wanting to play the devil's advocate and couldn't because he didn't know what the fuck he was talking about.
      "No, man, Dr. King was about non-violent demonstration.  You need to check that again.  Dr. King was about civil disobedience," I explained.  Checkmated and revealed in his ignorance, the white-haired guy nodded his head as if to be following what I was saying.  There was then an awkward silence as he just sort of lifted his bike again and slinked away.
      By now, a whole new crowd had formed and I began my speech again.  As I got to the part where I proclaim that 'we are not anarchists,' some ginger fuck dressed in all black walked by me with with a similarly dressed friend.
      "Hey, man, I'm an anarchist." I ignored him and just continued until he said to me in an even louder tone, "Hey, man, I'm an anarchist," he repeated, dickishly.  My first inclination was to turn to the guy and say, "Really? So once we have anarchy and somebody steals all your shit and rapes your sister at gunpoint, who are you going to call?  There are no law enforcement officers because in an anarchists' world there are no laws.  The same would go for prisons which would then have to be emptied because again, if there are no laws, then there are no laws to break."  Fucking idiot.  These misinformed "anarchists" think that being one just means being against the status quo, wearing all black and smashing Starbucks' windows.  This guy was just being a douche.  I turned to him for a split second.
      "Good for you," I said staring him in the eye with a "you really wanna take this farther?" look.  He got the hint, he and his friend moved on and I resumed what I'd come to do which wasn't suffering fools like these gladly.  I continued my speech and at the end of my last line, I saw that I had drawn a nice size crowd of about fifty or so pairs of new ears and I was just about to wrap up with my "big finish"  RISE UP line when the hip hop kid in the black track suit I mentioned earlier, the one who had been listening to me go through my piece so intently multiple times with the white-haired guy, suddenly leapt in front of me to be in front of all the cameras that were aimed at me and he says to them in total non sequitur,
      "It's OK, folks, because everyone knows that the Tea Party is owned by the Koch brothers."
      WTF?
      This was just this guy being jealous of the attention that I was getting and thought that he'd steal my thunder, so to speak.  And although, I agreed with what he had to say what he had just done was damn rude.  If you've got something to say, hey, this park is big enough for everybody but don't just cherry pick photo-ops with pedantic one-liners that he probably heard someone else saying.  I let it go.
       I noticed that the two guys at the Occupy Wall Street information table were looking at me.  One was a younger, white guy with glasses and the other was an older, hippy-type white guy with long, silver hair.
       "Hey guys," I said.  "Sorry if you've had to hear my stump speech a few times," I laughed, my voice starting to grow hoarse from yelling multiple times over the beeps and the white noise interference of the living city. The younger guy with glasses said,
       "It's OK. You've drowned us out a few times [from speaking at our table], but you've been on message, so it's cool."
       "Yeah, great speech," the older guy opined.  "I've been seeing a lot of people video you.  That's definitely gonna be all over YouTube." 
       "You want some water?" asked the younger OWS guy with glasses as he offered me his thermos.  Now ordinarily I NEVER drink after anyone else for obvious germ-awareness reasons but this was more than just a swig for a parched throat.  This was a loving cup.  It meant that he recognized me as a brother of the revolution and in this inclusion we looked out for one another even in the simplest of gestures like a drink of tap water shared from a thermos for a raspy throat.
       I took a quick break and checked my speech text again on my phone.  I kept forgetting a phrase here and there or rearranging parts.  I just wanted to really get it right.  Hello, OCD.  I cleaned my throat and began again and once more a crowd formed and video cameras were thrust in my face while other shutterbugs jockeyed for position all around me.  I got to the end, I was just about to give my finishing line when...
      "Hey, folks! It's cool because the Koch brothers control the Tea Party."
      MOTHERFUCKER!
       It was that same asshole shining my gig again.  Dear Reader, believe me when I tell you that I soooo did NOT want to get into a fight, but this individual was REALLY pushing my buttons.   Before I could say anything to that tracksuit kid, two guys came and stood right next to me.   One had a video camera and the other had an acoustic guitar.  They were standing uncomfortably close to me because they wanted the spot I was standing in because you could see the park's crowd behind this spot.  The guy with the acoustic guitar suddenly turned with his back to the park and the guy with the camera said,
      "OK, go!"
      The guy with the acoustic started strumming and singing this peppy, little ditty about the protest that sounded a little Bob Dylan-ish, "Johnny's in the basement mixin' up the medicine, I'm on the pavement talkin' about the government..." only not nearly as good.  Here was another Woodstock wannabe.  What year was this?  Just because something was cool and spoke to it's time forty years ago doesn't necessarily mean that it will be pertinent again.  I was waiting for them to finish because I didn't want to screw up their shoot but they ran through it like five times. That made me feel not so bad about the number of times the OWS information table guys had to hear me versus hearing this dated, throwback nonsense over and over. So I decided to just move. 
      I started walking to the other side of the park on the corner of Liberty and Broadway, nearly where the day before, I had gotten to that spat with tattoo face, the self-promoter. The irony was not lost on me.  Next to me was standing this white guy about college aged wearing a green, army jacket although I didn't get the impression he was a military guy, more like he'd picked the jacket up at a surplus store or thrift clothes shop.  He was holding a sign against the bank bail-outs.  Another even younger, white guy came and stood next to my right.  He was just the barest wisp of a thin twink with longish hair that he kept moving out of his face.  His sign read: I'm just trying to love the 100%" 
      Bitch, please.
      I mean, yeah, I agree in the broadest sense with his sentiment but we as a society are wayyy beyond that point of all of us of all classes joining hands and singing fucking Kumbaya together, not while the one percent are stealing our country dollar by billion dollars.  You can't make the super-rich stop their acts of wanton greed at all costs by simply "loving them."  Even Jesus threw the tables of the money changers in the Temple.   I wanted to tell the hippy twink, "Go tell the one percent how much you 'love' them. You know what they'll say? 'Aww, that's sweet.  Now gimme the rest of your fuckin' money! And your Granny's social security, too!"
     I started up my speech again from my new park spot and this time I drew the biggest crowd yet.   So much so that the police had to come and tell people not to block the sidewalk.  I don't know if I had timed it just perfect but it seemed like the largest lunchtime shift of the day had let out and the most people yet, who were going in both directions, suddenly stopped to hear what I had to say.  And just at that precise second, one of the fully loaded tour buses had to stop right in front of me because of congested traffic.  I was barely out of my first line of speaking and now there were people gathering even from behind me to see what was going one.  There were cameras everywhere.  This easily matched in numbers the two or three hundred I would've spoken to if I'd opted for speaking inside the park.  But this was so much better, more active, more productive, and not only was I suddenly speaking in the round but the fifty plus on top of the stopped tour bus who were all leaning over and also recording gave me a sort of balcony audience as well.  It was like everything came together at once.   This was it and it was the best it would be all that day.  The congested traffic even gave me the added benefit of making the traffic noise a barest minimum and for the next three or four minutes while I orated, in the heart of protestville in downtown Manhattan, I swore you could've heard a proverbial pin drop as I had the ear of all.  I even spotted in the crowd one of the actors from one of my favorite TV shows, BREAKING BAD who was dressed all in white and craning his neck to see.
      As I spoke, the crowd cheered and jeered in all the right spots in almost verbal choreography and when I by repeating, "Rise up!" they began chanting "Rise up!" with me and the tourist bus cheered as they finally pulled away.  If I'd had a genuine Henry V's St. Crispin's Day speech moment, that was it.
      When I finished, a woman and her cameraman who had been shooting me came up and asked my name, I didn't want to be rude so I said,
      "My name is [S] Fitzgerald. but I really only would like to be known as one of the 99 percent." She asked me a few questions then they asked a few of the kid next to me in the green, army jacket.  When they asked him his name, he parroted my response and said, "Yeah, like he said, I just want to be known as one of the 99 percent."  I felt proud.   They asked us both if we could foresee a militant wing of this movement forming.
    I said, "No, this is a peaceful protest.  The only way something like that would happen would be if they did something first, like if they kill a protester."  I thought of that moment when recently I heard in the news that not one but two Iraq-war-veterans-turned-protesters had been put in the hospital by cops in riot gear, I think sometimes that it won't be much longer, unfortunately, until that dark threshold is crossed.  The kid in the army jacket agreed. As the woman walked away, I heard a voice from behind me say,
      "Hey, man, great job. You really know your stuff."    I turned behind me to see a guy who looked like Shaggy from Scooby-Doo except with a full beard and wearing one of those knit hats that guys with long dreadlocks wear.  He had been standing really close to my back, listening both to my speech and my interview afterwards.
     "Thanks, man.," I said and shook his hand.
      "Just..." he continued, "If I can give you some pointers..." He offered.
      Um, what? We're in the middle of protest pandemonium, barely restrained chaos, and he wants to give me notes??  Who the fuck was this Gertrude Stein of Zuccotti Park?
       "Yeah, just try to keep it positive," he told me though I hadn't agreed at all to hearing out his "pointers" yet.  I thought what I was saying was very positive if you were in agreement with me.  Was he referring to the part where I said that if you thought living as a slave to the one percent was preferable to dying for the dream of America of our Founding Fathers then you were the worst kind of traitor: complacent and apathetic?  Was that what had gotten his panties in a bunch?  Well, tough shit, dude.  I imagined for a second this guy being around the members of the American Revolution of the 1700's.
      "Um, guys, do we really have to say, 'Give me liberty or give me death?' Can't we... you know... keep it positive?"   Then it dawned on me.  This guy was from the Occupy Wall Street inner circle and was basically telling me to tone it down.  My immediate reaction was to turn to him and say,
      "Hey, man, you exercise your right to free speech the way you want to and I'll exercise mine the way I want to. Capiche?"
      It was really bugging me that OWS actually had their own version of thought police to keep people in line. But who asked them?  Then I remembered that line from George Orwell's ANIMAL FARM again, "All animals are equal (but some animals are more equal than others).  Bullshit.
      Now don't get me wrong.  I can see the need for keeping an eye out.  There have been some anti-Semitic lone crazies who've been caught espousing their racist filth at this rally and giving a skeptical eye to the whole movement itself.  Bur free speech is free speech.  This is a big tent.  And to protect the best, unfortunately you must defend the worst.  I may personally be revolted and sickened by what garbage comes out of some peoples' mouths but we must defend to the death their right to say it or we do not possess a truly free society.  I didn't end up answering the OWS guy.  My fifteen years spent living in Los Angeles taught me useful tools in situations like this.  I know how to "freeze out" people I don't want anything to do with.  Shaggy of OWS got this message pretty quickly because picking up on that I wasn't being receptive to his critique, he quickly said,
     "But you're a really great speaker, man.  You really know your shit," he repeated.  I said nothing, freeze out being in full effect.  He got wise and disappeared.
      I started up my speech again and who do I see in the crowd again?  That motherfucking guy in the black tracksuit who kept interrupting me before.  He'd followed me over to the other side of the park. He was standing in the back, closest to the street, leaning against the police barricade.  A smartly-dressed middle-aged white woman with dark features (think Jersey) was standing near him against the barricade as well.  Both were listening intently. 
     As I was speaking, it caught my eye that the tracksuit guy was now trying to chat up the smartly dressed woman who kept politely nodding at him but she was trying to pay attention to what I was saying.  It soon became clear to him that she wasn't going to give him the time of day.  When I reached the end, another small group of photographers and documentarians were shooting me when...
      "It's cool folks, because the Tea Party is owned by the Koch brothers!"
       Dick!  He did it again!
       You could see the frustration on the on the faces of the people doing the recording and hear their audible groans as this guy had just ruined their whole shot. He may not have had tattoos on his face or been wearing a gas mask, but this tracksuit guy was just as guilty of being a useless attention whore.  Here was somebody else who had nothing really to add but was trying to steal all he could.  I had enough. I tapped him on the shoulder.  He turned around and I immediately smelled alcohol all over him.
       "Hey, man," I said sternly, "Get your own thing."
       "Huh?" he asked dumbfounded.   The kid in the army jacket next to me had seen what tracksuit guy had just done and was in agreement with me.
        "That's like the third time you've done that to me.  Get your own thing, man." I repeated.  He tried to step up to me in a confrontational manner but it was comical.  Now I'm not even what you would call a large man but I stood a full head taller than this twerp.
        "Man, I'll push you in that hole!" he threatened.  Hole? What hole?  What the fuck was he talking about?  I figured out he must've meant the pit of protesters behind me as from where I was standing, you descended the steps to enter the part of the park that was below street level.
        I lowered my sign ready to drop it if shit was gonna go down.  It seemed that was the first time that he actually saw the fact that I was twice his size.  He changed his tune real quick.
       "Yeah, well," he stammered.  "I'll go because you can't handle that I'm so much more awesome than you."  He actually said that.  God, his breath wreaked.  Whatever, dude.  Like Motley Crue once sang, "Don't go away mad, just go away."  And away he went, mercifully, never to be seen again, at least not by my eyes.  The kid in the army jacket shook his head and looked at me like, "What the fuck was THAT guy's deal?"  There was a rampart just to the left of us where people were standing up on.  Someone got down and a space opened up.  The kid in the army jacket was closest but he offered it to me.  Respect. That was cool of him.  I climbed on up to the much better vantage point and as soon as I got up there I realized...  Holy shit!  This was the exact spot that tattoo face had stood the day before.  Again, this point was not lost on me.  In my opinion, this was THE best spot to protest in the park. If Zuccotti was a monopoly game, this was Boardwalk AND Park Place.  I was determined to put it to better use than that shameless self-promoter from the day before.
      I gave the speech from this higher up position.  It was easier to address people from up there but this area came with it's own problems.  Now I admit, I was inspired to speak in this manner with the sign from the Ron Paul guy I'd seen doing the same thing on YouTube (albeit with a much different message) but I hadn't seen anyone actually doing that at the park neither today nor any of the other days I had been there previously demonstrating.   Now when I put my version together, I also took from that Ron Paul guy the idea of the confidence of preparation.  People may disagree with you but you have to know what you are talking about, in your mind you have to believe what you are saying and have it make sense wholeheartedly, to be compelling.  I had thought about what I wanted to say for a long time, I had done research, I had arranged ideas, I had memorized.  There was very little ad hoc about what I was doing.
      Unfortunately, after I gave my speech from my new loftier vantage point, this delivery style suddenly caught fire around me.  It seemed like where previously there had been five or six guys up there with me silently holding their signs but it after hearing my recitation, they suddenly found their tongues and began loudly um, 'orating' themselves, if it could be called as such.  And oh, Dear Reader, what a cavalcade of crap came out of their mouths.   It was like they had suddenly realized, "Wow, you can do that?"  They suddenly took child-like joy in the finding of their own voices. And rude!  They had no respect for me or even for each other speaking.  Somebody would start speaking and then somebody else would just start shouting over the top of them til the whole thing sounded like an unintelligible mess, the shoutfest equivalent of the drum circle dissonance. And what were these bon mots, these nuggets of wisdom they decided just had to be heard?
      Well there was the middle-aged long haired, mustachioed Latino man who was standing street level directly in front of us.  He was holding a sign that said something about Obama sold us out to the corporations.  (So much for the myth that all the protesters at Occupy Wall Street were pro Obama.)  I had observed this particular guy being asked once or twice by the police to keep the sidewalk clear.  So after that, all this budding Juan Adams had to say (at top voice and in a thick Latin accent) to all passersby was basically a mockery of what the officers had just said to him which was (in a sarcastic tone),
      "Nothing to see here, folks!  [Mayor] Bloomberg wants the sidewalk clear.  Keep moving.  Nothing to see here.  Just a bunch of hipsters..."  Now to him, I'm sure he thought his sarcasm and defiance was clear but in actuality he only ended up doing the work of the cops for them.  Because most of the people he encountered responded by doing exactly what he was telling them to do which was "keep moving."  Nobody was staying to listen to anybody now.  If there were actually any of the rumored FBI agents here, this guy would've gotten my vote as his spiel would've been both covert and effective. 
      Next was a short, older man with white hair peaking out from under his ball cap and white moustache who suddenly felt the urge to tell every passerby at full voice that,
      "The next war they'll be coming for your kids, folks!"  People don't respond to sound-bite-shock-blurbs like this.  All they hear is "threat to my kids, what?" and they want to get out of that situation as quickly as possible which they would then be encouraged to do by the large, Latino man, "Keep it moving!"  But I must've been interrupted by the short guy yelling this at least four or five times.
      Then there was the guy who replaced the Shaggy-from-Scooby-Doo-OWS-overseer-guy who was standing behind me.  He was a rough n' tumble sort clad all in denim.  If 'grizzled,' had a poster child then it was this guy.  I was surprised when out of nowhere, he'd jump up beside me and, reading from a piece of paper, he'd yell (so quickly that I'm sure no one understood a word he said),
      "Guesswhatfolks?  ThomasJeffersonisonOURside. Hesaid, 'Iseenogreaterstandingarmy asgreatathreattoourcountryasbanks!'"
      What?  Now this was a great point to bring up, but completely lost in his delivery.  I turned to look at him and seemed to be looking to me for approval.
      "Man, you got me all fired up!" He said.  (He'd listened to me say my piece a few times).  I mean, yes, I was glad to be encouraging people to escalate their level of participation but good God, man, put some prep time into what you were doing.  I did take note from this guy who was reading from his piece of paper, that I'd been correct in my assessment that this type of downward delivery into a piece of paper to a passing crowd was the equivalent of pissing in the wind, utterly useless.  His heart was in the right place, but I could see that I wasn't going to be able to continue communicating from this position. My voice was nearly completely gone by this point anyway.
      I was able to give my speech one last time in completion and when I was done, the smartly dressed woman who'd I'd noticed earlier with the black tracksuit guy (yep, she was still there), came sauntering up to me with all the swagger of a girl interested in meeting a guy at a bar. 
     "Hi," she said to me demurely, not really sure of herself and where she wanted to take this.
     "I've been listening to you and I agree with most of what you've been saying, but OK, what happens next?"  This seemed to be the general question of the day.  Great, you're here. Great, you've got our attention. Great, we agree with you. Now what?  What was funny was the different ways this question was posed to me throughout the day.  This woman, for example, the way she was asking me was not so much like a reporter but more like we were sharing an after-work cocktail at some swanky happy hour.  I answered her (with as much voice as I could still muster) the same answer I gave everyone else,
      "Well, it's all about numbers.  If we can get an overwhelming participation from people who feel the same, then the powers that be will have to recognize us and institute reform.  But it's all about recruitment at this point." 
      In response, she just sort of drifted off mulling over my words.  I had answered her question and she now seemed to be waiting for me to ask her to coffee or something to discuss it further.  But, no, I was here for a definite purpose and my head just wasn't in that frame of mind. 
      "Thank you," she said, awkwardly with a smile and she slowly drifted back into the flowing river of people and disappeared.  I didn't have long to think about what had happened because then, the Granddaddy of the all the new bellowers, a very rotund, middle-aged white man wearing denim overalls, white hillbilly hat, horn-rimmed glasses and a red handkerchief tied around his face (like he was about to go rob a stagecoach) started up next to me.  It was funny to see him try to yell through his handkerchief, presumably to hide his identity, until he eventually just pulled it down altogether in frustration.
       This particular guy would start off his pronouncements with "Hergy! Hergy! (a play off of Hear Ye, Hear Ye, I imagined).  Then he would unleash with,
      "Michelle Bachman, Eric 'the Crook' Canter, and John Boehner have made you all their bitch!"
      Wow, that was some knowledge smackdown there, bro.  The grizzled guy behind me thought that what the large, country-dressed man had said was the funniest thing in the world.  Me? Not so much.  It was too simplistic, too broad of a stroke.  He went on further.
      "Hergy!  Hergy! I drove 300 miles to here from Syracuse to tell you that the GOP has made you all their BITCH!"  Again, more hysterical laughter came from behind me where the Grizzled Guy was just eating it up.   Mr. Hergy Hergy was getting on my nerves.  His sign was bigger than he was and it kept spilling over on me and he was screaming right into my left ear whenever he turned in my direction.  He was also the worst one as far as interrupting other speakers with another yell of "Hergy! Hergy!"
       So between myself, the Latino man moving everyone along, the "They're coming for your kids!' guy, the mush-mouthed Grizzled Guy, and Mr. Hergy Hergy, ours was the noisiest ten feet on the block.  Now mind you, nobody was doing anything like this (speaking at the passersby), at least not these guys, until I started mine.  I had reminded them of their voices and now they were rendering me moot with them.  Mr. Hergy turned to me and asked,
       "Hey, what's the name of the that guy on Fox the tall, skinny doofus?"
       "Steve Ducey from Fox and Friends?"  I answered.
       "No, the one that's on at night." He added.
        "Bill O'Reilly?"  I offered.
        "That's him," then he turned excitedly back to the steady train of passersby and exclaimed, "Bill O'Reilly has mad you...."  (Wait for it..) "....HIS BITCH!"
       Oy, vey.
       "I've seen you before.  Were you that guy in that YouTube video with that airhead, Victoria Jackson?"  Mr. Hergy surprisingly asked me.  I was thankful that was the reason he had recognized me as I wasn't really interested in having a conversation about my previous profession in this particular medium.
        "Yeah, that was me," I smiled politely.  We started to chat a bit and I told him that this was probably my last time I was coming to this particular occupy chapter.  When he asked why, I gave my reasons, the attention whores, the for-profit drum circle, the begging for beer money guy, the in-fighting over money allocation.  We agreed on some points.  Why weren't the Occupy Wall Street movement using those donations to feed and clothe the poor?  Or at the very least the money should just be used to protest. Period.  Everything else should be about logistical support of keeping the protest going country-wide.  Keep it simple and universally replicable.  Utopian societies don't pop up in one month.  The message needs to coalesce around breaking the multinationals grip on our sovereign government.  All the other wildly varying issues can be solved once we the people, not we the corporations, have our representation restored.  Polls show that 54% of Americans support Occupy Wall Street not because it has the answers but because it asks the right questions and insists that the current political leaders provide the answers because that is what they were elected and paid to do. Mr. Hergy and I also agreed that trying to form some kind of functioning mini-society here at the park by the people living here was simply and quickly devolving into endless Animal Farm/Lord of the Flies analogies with the whole world watching.   That's not to say that this exercise was a failure.  What was important was that we not become distracted or discouraged by the inner workings of the movement's dissent and debate, after all, this is the essence of a democracy, sharing one's voice whether in solidarity or dissidence. Further, yes, this movement may be involving and taken advantage by a lot of homeless people but who is to say that they don't have just as much a legitimate reason to be there as anyone else?  Perhaps these unfortunates who have fallen through the cracks of society are the ones with the most at stake. 
      "I wouldn't let all the crap get you down," Mr. Hergy Hergy said.  "That's all gonna be here just because the press is here and there's nothing you can do about that.  But we need you here."  
      I couldn't believe it but I was actually moved by Mr. Hergy Hergy.  He was right, why throw the baby out with the bathwater?   Another point occurred to me: that the only reason I was able to come back two weeks after my first visit and protest again was because all of these other characters had, for whatever reason, stayed there.  Without their daily participation, I wouldn't have had a demonstration to return to.  Sometimes you really do have to tolerate the bad and focus on the common good.  I shook his hand and stepped off the rampart.  My voice had enough.  I couldn't or wouldn't compete with these other guys for volume.  I wasn't quite ready to leave yet.  I just didn't want to speechify anymore and I needed a change of scenery.
       I walked around the block and found myself back at the circular benches where I'd sat the day before, at the opposite end of the park, next to the overbearing drum circle.  On one of the benches stood an older white guy who was wearing a stars and stripes hat a la Uncle Sam.  Much like the others I observed that day he wore mostly denim and was also mustachioed.  He was also wearing black wayfarer style shades and held a sign which lambasted former President Bill Clinton for repealing the "Glass-Steagall" act which was once in place to prevent banks from doing exactly what they'd done to require billions in taxpayer bail outs.  This guy was really hamming it up for those taking pictures.  He was holding his sign in a manner so that with his right hand he actually held the sign and with his left he was giving his own sign the finger (presumably directed at Clinton but to what end besides the obvious I know not). Then every time he saw that someone was about to take a picture of him he'd stick his tongue out and strike a pose.
      Give me a fucking break, man.  It made me wonder.  There was a section of the park that been set aside to collect signs that people had made, used and then left behind for others to use, a protest sign graveyard, if you will, where basically anyone could pick any discarded sign and hold it.  I was beginning to suspect that that was what was going on here.  Maybe I was guilty of judging a book by it's cover but this guy just looked and acted too goofy to know what the hell a policy wonk issue like Glass-Steagall was about.  But there was a spot next to him up on the circular bench so there I went.  At my feet someone had placed a Halloween pumpkin which had written on it, "The Great Pumpkin Loves You."  Jeebus.  And then wouldn't you know it.  No sooner had I climbed up when the damn drum circle started up again. 
      Shit.
      So I stood there for an hour.  It was rush hour now and the foot traffic passed me seemed to swell to maximum occupancy.  As I stood there and saw the multitudes striding by I wondered why they weren't standing up here next to me.  How bad do things have to get before people finally wake up?  For a moment, I had a vision of those unconcerned as the walking dead, living zombies oblivious to all save their own endless quest for brraaaainnnnnsssss!   Only they didn't need brains to eat but brains for which to think.  I stood there for about an hour next to goofball until my legs started to hurt and I knew I needed to get going to catch my return bus home to Baltimore.  But what I saw during that hour made me want to leave even if my legs had been completely refreshed.
      From where I stood I had a pretty good vantage point of the drummers and could see how they just weren't even paying attention to each other, just independently bashing away.  On the opposite side of the drum circle, away from me there was a very skinny girl in her thirties on a raised rampart with a hula hoop.  Yes, a fucking hula hoop which she expertly enacted several difficult dance oriented moves with said child's toy. 
      Then I saw about six white people, five men and one woman, all dressed in black with the words of a porn website professionally printed on the front of their shirts.  They each held identical signs which "The only cheaters worse than Wall Street are the ones on [xxxwebsite].com".  Had it really come to this?  Media had chummed the waters and now every attention whore in town from hula hoopers to porn site promoters were now swarming in like sharks for a bite.
      The Glass-Steagall Uncle Sam guy jumped down after awhile and in his place came an older, heavyset white guy wearing a "Vietnam Vet" baseball hat.  Now where the Glass Steagall guy had been standing, to his right there was a small statue of a man sitting on the circular bench with an open briefcase.  This new Vietnam Vet guy sat next to the statue and very deliberately put his arm around it and with his free hand, raised a coffee cup to his face as if he and the statue guy were old buddies and he just froze like that.  Why? Because he was just another attention whore trying to be cutesy for the cameras.  Because he knew that people would take his picture while he did this stupid thing.  And they did.  One after the other focused their lenses on him while he sat completely motionless save for an idiotic grin on his face.  No sign, no message, no nothing, just looking to get his picture taken.   I tried not to pay any attention and just focus on what I was there to do as I was finishing up.  I got a lot of thumbs up and power to the people fist raising gestures in solidarity by people walking by but the attention vampires were getting me down.
      I looked over to my right and saw all the porn website party crashers were now standing in a group together on the outside of the park.  I'd like to think that at some point they'd grown a conscience and realized how ridiculous it was what they were doing.  I hoped that somehow inside they had realized that the issues being raised by this demonstration applied to them as well and maybe it should mean more than having a laugh and promoting a porn website at it's expense.  Whatever it was you could tell that their hearts had changed and they looked downright uncomfortable continuing their misguided promotion.  They left soon after not having been there more than thirty minutes.
      The drum circle eventually (and gratefully) stopped.  I was glad because in addition to hurting my ears they had drawn a crowd of individual 'protesters' who it seemed were trying to outdo each other with freaky dances and wild facial expressions to garner more focus from the small crowd of looky-loos who'd paused to catch the sideshow.  To me, it was an absurd, spectacle of pointlessness. 
      Ah, but there was a point. MONEY!
      "MIC CHECK!" screamed a thin, black male drummer in the center of the drum circle, presumably one of the leaders.  "MIC CHECK!" The rest of the drummers responded. 
      "We are Pulse!" said the leader.  "We are Pulse!" answered the drummers.  WTF?  They'd given themselves an identity beyond that of the 99%?   They were abusing the so-called "People's Mic?"  Yep, they sure were because the next thing out of the leader's mouth was requests for tips from the onlookers.  I knew from my earlier reading that they intended to keep every penny that was put into the donation buckets being passed around and not to contribute any of it to the cause. 
      This was bullshit.  This was for profit.  This was about these talentless assholes using the movement for their own financial gain.  Granted, it probably wasn't much, but nobody else was making pocket money off of this.  Why should they?  Besides, whoever said that a political demonstration needed a fucking drum circle anyway? 
      The Glass Steagall guy returned, struck his pose and out popped his tongue again.
      Jesus.  I'd had enough. 
      I asked Glass Steagall guy where the nearest subway entrance was and as he told me I noticed that he didn't have a single tooth in his mouth.  This guy had to be a homeless guy who had just grabbed a sign.  I mean, come on, he doesn't have any teeth in his head and I'm supposed to believe he knows anything about Glass-Steagall?  Horseshit.  It was time for me to exit.
      I tried to keep everything that I had discussed with Mr. Hergy Hergy about in mind, the whole not throwing the baby out with the bathwater but what I couldn't figure out was this:  was this a revolution of the intellectual left being crashed by the homeless, the disaffected youth and the attention whores or was it THEIR revolution being crashed by the lefty intellectuals.  Politics does indeed like the saying goes makes for strange bedfellows.
     I was determined that if I were to attend another protest it would be in Washington D.C.  That was where REAL change had to happen anyway.  Wall Street was as a good place to start and to base out of and I definitely wanted it to keep going, I just didn't feel like I was fitting in there.  I wanted more politics and less hey-world-look-at-me bullshit.
      As I caught the bus home to Baltimore, my head was spinning.  My experiences had been so wildly different from time to time that I was wondering about the identity of the movement and fearful of it's growing pains.  As Shakespeare wrote in MACBETH, "Such welcome and unwelcome things at once, 'tis hard to reconcile."  Had I really accomplished anything with this investment of time, energy, and money?  Or was I just pissing in the wind? 
     The next morning I awoke to find an e-mail from an old college friend telling me to "Wake up! You're on the front page of the Huffingtonpost.com website."  What? 
      I checked it out and there I was, holding my sign.  Unfortunately, there was nothing about my speech, just me and my "RISE UP" message.  That was OK, maybe that was enough.  Huffingtonpost.com has not only a national readership but one that was worldwide.  That's how far the reach of the message had possibly attained.  As I've said over and over, recruitment was my main goal.  Seeing the results of my hard work gave me another little glow that maybe, just maybe someone somewhere would see that and be encouraged to get involved.  And that's really all that I or anyone else can do. I was happy.  I still haven't seen any of the footage of the hundreds of video cameras I saw trained on me that day but that's OK, too. I know the text. It's not important that I hear it, it's just comforting to know that somewhere out there in the internets, the message is out there to be heard.  But the whole experience had left me with an unsatisfied feeling, an itch I couldn't scratch and in my head I was already formulating plans to participate in OCCUPY D.C. 
     Would I find what I was looking for there?

***Find out in my next blog entry when I attend the OCCUPY D.C. demonstration.