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.