THE OCCUPY WALL STREET MOVEMENT: Sat., Nov. 26, 2011 "Occupy Charlottesville Part Two"

***These webjournal entries are part of a book I am compiling about my experiences at the different Occupy chapters. Consider this a sneak peek. Enjoy.

        I woke up Saturday morning looking forward to my return visit to Occupy Charlottesville. The dawn arose and brought with it high hopes for our march that was to be held later that day. I was psyched!

        "Finally... some real, actionable activism!" I thought.
        Together, we were going to take our protest right to the general populace of this tiny, Southern, college town in Virginia. Now if you've read my previous webjournal entries (and you should) you know that for each different Occupy chapter that I've attended/supported, I've challenged myself to come up with a new sign idea. In the case of Charlottesville, I was actually going on my third sign message for this particular location (even though it was only my second day). Why three? Well, the day before, I had written on my signboard the Bible passage from Mark 10:25 ("It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of the needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of Heaven") and on the back I'd written, "Jesus Hates The Rich." So why did I now need a new sign? Was it because my elderly, Christian Aunt had read me the Riot Act (see last webjournal entry) over the provocative nature of the "Jesus Hates The Rich" message? Was it because her aforementioned admonishments were still clanging around in my head like de-tuned bells? Yeah... possibly. Then again, I also think that maybe I just kinda liked the idea of keeping things fresh for myself (and for you, Dear Reader).
        What WAS certain was that a different direction was needed.
         It was time for us Occupiers to focus our message sharper and the only way we were going to accomplish that (and take away the right wing's constant criticism that we didn't know what we wanted) was for our more common themes, the ones with the most consensus, to get pushed to the forefront. After all, what was more powerful: ten thousand people holding ten thousand signs with ten thousand themes or ten thousand people holding ten thousand signs of just a few themes? To further exemplify, picture the diffused energy of a broad, diversified, platform convention versus the laser-like intensity of a specific, single candidate, campaign rally. While both of these examples had their purpose and benefits, the Occupy movement needed the latter more now. So to that end, I thought I'd choose an already existing slogan (one that I could get behind) and in this commonality of usage do my part to help coalesce our movement. I ended up picking a saying that had been integral to Occupy since its inception:
         END THE WARS TAX THE RICH.
         It was active, it was positive, it could be quickly and easily understood and I agreed with it wholeheartedly. I wrote it really big on just one side of my new poster board. As for the actual message itself, which wars? Well, the U.S. currently had 104,000 troops fighting in Afghanistan, we still (as of this writing) had 50,000 troops in Iraq in "advisory roles" and we also had a War on Drugs that had been a one-trillion-dollar-forty-year-long-failure. Ending these would have been a great start.
         And why "Tax the Rich"? Because (and remember these facts) : the top 400 richest people in the U.S. had more wealth than the lower half of the rest of the country combined, these super rich fucks had not only completely recouped all of their losses from the 2008 banking crisis but were doing better than ever (so they could afford it), and finally, even some of the millionaires and billionaires (the ones with consciences), were AGREEING that they should pay more. So yeah, Tax the Rich, bitch.

        On my drive back East to Charlottesville from Stuarts Draft, it was another unseasonably warm day. So I rolled all of the windows down in my truck and was immediately stunned (again) by the arresting beauty and enchanting tableaus of the picturesque Blue Ridge Mountains. Occasionally, the curvature of the freeway I was driving on cut into the mountainside and would temporarily block my view of these grand sights but as I'd pass through, this natural obstruction would itself become like a great, green curtain and slowly pull aside to reveal once more the awesome storybook vistas of the Shenandoah Valley. Truly breathtaking. (If ever was needed another place to film the location for The Shire from the Lord of the Rings novels besides New Zealand, this little slice of heaven would've made a seamless replacement.)

        I had left around noon so that meant an arrival time at Occupy Charlottesville of about 1:00 p.m.-ish. Once there, I figured I'd go and do "the lone nut with a sign" thing for about an hour before attending the OC General Assembly at two o'clock. To pass the time in the truck, I started going over my mini speech again, just in case the opportunity should warrant later on. As I got closer to my destination, I noticed that there was a lot more traffic on the road than there had been the day before and this puzzled me because we were now into the weekend. So what was all this fuss about?

earbudsYe Olde Smokeable Foliage. It was gonna be a lonnnng day so I figured, "Why not?" I surreptitiously tucked my little veggie-verde away for future "In Case of Emergency Break Glass" purposes, grabbed my new sign, locked up my vehicle, put on my headphones, cranked up the Rage Against the Machine (my favorite musical accompaniment for this sort of activity) and off I went, on my merry way.

        A quick aside: wasn't it interesting how we compartmentalized our musical selections these days based on our accompanying activities? Nobody really put on their headphones and just lay there awash in the sound-drift anymore. Of course when it came to said compartmentalization I was just as guilty as anyone else. For example, I listened to hard rock when I trained with weights, techno when I did cardio, 70's disco or Beatles era sixties tunes when I drove long distances (I defy you to road rage while listening to 70's disco - the happiest music for adults ever made - it's just not possible), hip hop or pop when I went out clubbing, ambient when I tanned, and let's not forget, we all had our love making favorites, but for protesting the social and economic justices of our government and society? For me that was when it was all about Rage Against the Machine (though some Fugazi slipped in there occasionally, too).

        Anyway, on this sunny day, there were mucho Anglo Charlottesvillians everywhere like someone had busted open a white people pinata. As I walked towards the elevator in the garage, a family who looked like they just sprang out of the latest Land's End catalogue saw me, looked at my sign, then the parents brought their children in close and gave me a strange second glance (like they couldn't quite figure me out).

       Umm, ok. I took the stairs instead.

       On the walk to Lee Park, I saw a procession of brand new SUV's stuck on Market Street. in bumper to bumper traffic. They all seemed to be flying little, blue and maroon, sports flags which flapped and flicked from their windows like tiny, deep colored, felt tongues. Half of these auto-pennants I saw read University of Virgina and the other half, Virginia Tech. Of course it didn't take a fucking genius to figure out that there was some kind of big game going on that day.

        Oh, joy. Sports fans.

        Now, I was a huge Laker fan but other than that and the Super Bowl and say, the Olympics, that was about the extent of my interest in team sports. Every other team sport was either way too slow (see football, baseball) or way too low scoring (see soccer, ice hockey) to hold my interest. It just boooorrreed the tits off me, mate. In fact, if you went so far as to call me a "professional sports team bigot" you would not be wrong. So, ergo, this new glut of armchair-athlete-college-football-zealots driving all around me weren't really people with whom I could, y'know... relate.

         This made my first step off of the busy street and into the Occupy Charlottesville park feel like a huge sigh of relief, like that sudden warm wave of safety that washed over you when you were a child playing "Tag!" and you touched "base." Outside on the surrounding streets there may have been endless walls of vehicles filled with socially narcoleptic Americans who were (possibly) hostile to leftist, save-the-world-agendas, but here, inside this one block sized patch of Earth, among the drunks, the homeless, and the drunken homeless, there was also a temporary, autonomous zone of many intelligent, concerned, Patriotic citizens of shared conscience who were outraged by the corporate corruption in our politics, appalled by the wealth disparity in our country and who were driven by a common obligation of their civic duty to get off their butts and do something about it. Here at Lee Park, one could find the local oasis of intelligentsia and empathy struggling for survival in a surrounding desert of redneck "Fuck you! Get a job!" idiocy.

         Near the front of the South entrance, an Occupier had set up a chair for on-the-spot-five-dollar-buzz cuts. There was a customer already getting a portion of their head shaved and a small crowd had formed around him.  So THAT had been the source of all the shaved head looks I'd seen so en vogue around here the day before, I mused. The newly shorn patron popped up pleased with their plain pate and soon another was seated. This business venture was going to be a big hit here. Capitalism at work.

        As I was walking towards the center statue of Robert E. Lee (where I presumed the General Assembly was going to be held again), I was still enjoying the raucous rock of Rage that was blasting through my headphones, when just for a split second, in the briefest of sound gaps between the grinding guitars and demolition drums, I could've sworn I heard just the barest, muffled call of a group of people suddenly shouting my name in unison from across the park. I looked over to the far left of the public space where I thought the collective yell had originated and saw a meeting of sorts of about ten or fifteen Occupiers. It seemed like some of them were staring directly at me (?). I squinted my eyes to see better and thought I recognized a couple of them from the day before, the nouveau, hippy chick facilitator and the young, white woman with the short, curly brown hair and glasses. Had they just shouted, "Hello" and I had completely missed it because I was listening to my loud music? I was confused. I stopped walking and pulled out one of my earbuds to listen. Had I missed something?

         I looked at them. They looked at me. Had they shouted or not? Was I hearing things that weren't there or maybe they had they been shouting to somebody else altogether? They were still staring...

         Awkward!

         Umm, ok. What to do now? I gave a sort of half-hearted wave back (because I still wasn't sure what the hell was going on and I didn't want to be that idiot who thought someone was waving to him so he waved back and ended up looking like a giant asshole because it turned out to be some kind of communication mix up). But I took the risk, I did wave back, just a little one, just in case, because I didn't want to, y'know, be rude. But again.. no response.

         After that I did the only thing you really could do at that point: I smiled sheepishly, replaced my earbud and just kept walking, trying my best to play it off like nothing had happened. But Jesusfuckingchrist, I hadn't been there one minute and already things had started off weird.

         I spied some activity going on ahead of me at the foot of the statue. A tall, thickly built, African American woman who appeared to be in her 30's was busy setting up a table with various food dishes and fliers. I couldn't tell if she was with Occupy Charlottesville. I knew I didn't recognize her from the last night's General Assembly meeting, so I walked by just to see what she was promoting. She was accompanied by two young people, a teenaged girl and boy who were both dressed in all black in the height of leftist, progeny fashion - converse all-star sneakers, jeans, t-shirts and matching hoodies. They looked to be maybe half African American and half Latino and the way they were fluttering about the older woman definitely suggested that she had some sort of supervisory role over them (Mom?). I tried asking the older woman about her table but before she could answer, her teenaged, Blatina ward standing behind her suddenly blurted out quite sarcastically.

         "We're sponsored by Bank of America."

         Huh?

         Oh, I got it.  She was trying to be a total smart Alec (as kids her age were wont to do). What was odd was that in order to satisfy her teenage urge to stir shit up, the only way this alternachicklette could rail against her leftie, activist Mom/Supervisor was by (paradoxically) rebelling against the rebels. And since two negatives made a positive, this young girl (with both her outward appearance and her sarcastic demeanor all geared towards being the quintessential snot-nosed punk) found that the only way she could express her rebellion to rebels was by saying the most ridiculously contrarian things possible in this particular place and among this particular company... she espoused conservative rhetoric to me.

         Really? That's the best ya got, kid?

         Now I didn't think this teen had a clue as to the scope of what she was really saying nor did I think that she really meant her attitudinal words beyond anything more than amusing herself with her "oh, so bad disposition," but it did occur to me that this could be evidence to the disconnect that existed between the Occupy movement and many of the younger generation who couldn't seem to look up from their video games long enough to see how all this very much applied to them as well. (But it did.) The next election wasn't for another couple of years which meant that she could very well be of voting age by then and would be casting a ballot (whether she was informed enough to know just which side was truly deserving of her venomous wit or not).

         But I had bigger fish to fry and deciding that I just didn't have the wherewithal to trade quips with this little, smart ass, so I walked on Easterly through the park to where that meeting I'd seen earlier was still happening. When I got there I noticed that it was mainly women at this meeting with just one or two guys and the whole thing seemed to be wrapping up. The nouveau, hippy chick facilitator from last night, the one with the long, curly black hair parted down the center was indeed there as was the young, white woman with short, brown curly hair and glasses. I also saw Chelsea, the Justin-Bieber-as-a-girl (is that redundant?) cutie-clone I'd met the night before was also among this group as well. There was a general mood of everyone getting up to go when one of the guys in the group started to speak. He was someone I hadn't seen before, a tall, clean cut white guy in his early twenties with glasses (the style of which kinda reminded me of Sally Jesse Raphael ) and sporting a long, black, wool coat. It was obvious that everyone wanted to move on but he just kept talking and talking, going off-topic, meandering in non sequiturs and conversational cul de sacs. People in the group were chomping at the bit to skedaddle but they were just too polite to cut him off. The unfortunate soul who was facilitating this meeting and trying politely to get Mr.-Aimless-in-Sally-Jesse-Raphael-Glasses to wrap it up, was a middle aged white woman with long, flowy, light brown hair pulled back in the front who seemed to have somewhat of a speech impediment (or perhaps even a condition like cerebral palsy). She looked at me and smiled a most welcoming smile that emanated from her effortlessly with sublime warmth, a very lovely, soft, almost beatific presence about her.  Between my momentary enthrallment and the Sally Jesse Raphael glasses guy taking forever to get to his point, I wasn't really quite able to grasp what the hell this meeting was about at all.

         About a minute into this, another middle aged, white woman of average build, someone who had clearly just walked into the park, came up and stooped down next to me where I was kneeling. This new female attendee, probably in her mid-50's, wore her hair long and wispy with graying streaks in the front and was dressed in sensible, warm clothes in Fall colors.

         "Excuse me, could you tell me what is going on?" She asked me, referring to the meeting that was still trying to finish up.

         "I'm just catching the end myself," I smiled.

         "Do you know what happened at the City Council meeting?" She inquired.

         "Um, I think they got their permit," I answered. To this, the woman quickly clasped her hands together as if in prayer, closed her eyes and silently mouthed words of gratitude. To whom she prayed I had no idea but I nodded in agreement nonetheless as this was indeed good news. Then she curiously looked up at me, folded her arms, placed her finger to her lips like someone in deep consideration of something and asked,

         "Tell me... has anyone had anything to say about presentation?"

          Umm, what?

         "Presentation?" I repeated, "I don't follow."

         "Presentation.  About the people who speak to the press. Because, you know, it matters," she asserted.  What was she talking about? Did she mean the way the local Occupiers here looked? Was she meaning all the dreads, head shavings, squatterpunk chic, etc.?  "Because people 'round here...," she trailed off, referring to the NON-Occupier Charlottesville citizenry, "...if they see somebody like that, that y'know, looks different... that just creates an extra layer or boundary that they have to get through. There's people who believe in what you're doing but they can't relate to all that," she lamented.

         I was flabbergasted. Within two minutes of entering the park, this newbie wanted to suggest to all the Occupiers what they should look like when they spoke with the press as to be more palatable to the middle-of-the-road-average-Joes-of-local-TV Land? How rude! AND... (and this was a big "and") what made this woman's words especially ironic, was that this particular style critic, this would-be Anna Wintour of Lee Park, had absolutely no room to talk if truth be told. Because you see, Dear Reader, turnabout being fair play, I don't mind telling you that in my earlier description of her, (out of politeness) I had left out something of note but because she had been so mean and insulting with HER remarks towards others, I don't mind sharing with you now that the reason she shouldn't have said anything about the "presentation" of anyone else was because she herself (and again I'm only saying this because of what she had said), she had a face that was right out of Planet of the Apes. There, I said it. No shit.

         Total monkey face.

         In fact, when she had first talked to me I was actually shocked at just how freakishly simian in nature were this woman's facial features. I mean, for HER to be negatively commenting on how anyone else looked? That was too rich and clearly a case of someone residing in the proverbial glass house who was not only throwing stones but had fired off ICBM's. Not a good idea, lady. I couldn't believe the juxtaposition of what was happening; it was like a Saturday Night Live sketch.

         "Well, I think the idea is that you should be able to look however makes you happy," I explained. "It's the validity of your point that matters not how you choose to present yourself with your hair or clothes," I suggested.

         "Oh, no, don't get me wrong!" she insisted. "I'm all for individual expression and being a non-conformist but I'm just talking about if you are trying to win people over to your side, it's probably best to have people who are selected to represent the group who, y'know, don't have that wall there when you are trying to get across your position to people."

         I started to rethink things. Did she have a point? Or was it like I had originally thought: that it was more important to express your right of free speech as YOURSELF? It seemed like a push and pull situation though now that I re-examined it. On some level, this woman could actually be somewhat correct (however crass she may have put it), that the less mainstream the Occupier on TV looked, the harder it probably was for mainstream viewers to relate. People can, after all, be very closed minded (like her).

         But even if she was right, what do you do then? Do you ask Occupiers then to not look how they choose to look so that they can make someone else more comfortable? Tell them that the validity of their argument only counts for half? That they also have to say it while appearing pleasing to the mainstream eye? Does it come down to: do you want more acceptance for your cause that you'd possibly get with a cleaner cut representative or do you insist on the viewpoint that truth is truth and right is right no matter what you look like? I still sided with the Occupiers. In my opinion, just as long as they knew what the fuck they were talking about, I was happy. Beyond that? Whatever. But I wasn't closed-minded. Plus, the main concern of going in the direction she was suggesting of choosing photogenic talking heads, was where would that end? And who exactly got to decide who was camera friendly enough for prime time and who wasn't? Her?

         Before I could speak again, the nouveau, hippy chick came up to me and said hello. I noticed that she was now wearing a doo rag on the top of her head that she had folded into four corners like I'd once seen sported by Steve Jones of the Sex Pistols. Since it was warmer that day than it had been at the meeting last night, she was no longer wearing her faux leather, hippy friendly jacket but was instead now in a sleeveless shirt which revealed her unshaven armpits (which were perfectly in keeping with her style, just, y'know, not my thing). She introduced me to another young, mousy, small framed woman with short brown hair. The new, young woman was very friendly and we started to discuss the day's upcoming General Assembly and march. As I was listening to her I noticed that there was white food stuff between her teeth and gums like she had just eaten a white bread turkey sandwich. After that, I couldn't really take in the words she was speaking anymore because I was too distracted.

         But that was OK because suddenly the long-brunette haired, older woman with simian features (whom I had just been conversing with earlier) injected herself into our conversation. This older woman introduced herself to the younger and I noticed she took great, sensual care when she shook her hand with not one but two hands pressed together flatly and firmly against hers. There was a definite shift in tone that occurred between these two, almost flirtatious. It wouldn't have surprised me if both of these women were in the LGBT community because that was the energy that was suddenly being exuded. This left your loyal and humble narrator kinda on the outside looking in so I decided to get while the getting was good.

         I backed out slowly saying only the most cursory of goodbyes and headed back to where I had first entered the park to go hold my sign in the same highly visible spot where I had the day before. As I was leaving the meeting area, I heard the last bit of a conversation between two other Occupiers,

         "Yeah, it's the big rivalry game today...."

         Big rivalry game? I had figured earlier that must've been the explanation for all of the flags and extra people I had seen out and about when I'd first arrived. I was passing the statue of the Confederate General when I ran into the quick-quipped, park harlequin from yesterday, the little drunk guy with the light blue eyes. He was still wearing the same clothes and looked very preoccupied.

         "I'm drunk," he explained matter of factly, straight away. Shocker, thought I.

         "But I need to be drunker," he added. And though we were talking together, I could tell that only his body was there in presence, his alcoholic's desire for the spiked elixir was in full tilt mode and he was looking right through me, one step ahead in his mind, deducing where to get another delicious drink. I admit he made me chuckle at first because his comment was just so candid and unexpected (and yes, kinda sad) and I quickly tried to think of something to say to him to try to get his mind off of it and maybe do something positive instead, but before I could even formulate a sentence he said, "See ya later, man," and off he went in a flash, presumably to go hit the hooch.

         I shook my head and continued my walk towards putting in that day's "lone nut time," the time at these Occupations when it was just me standing by myself with only my sign, my headphones, and an uncontrollable desire to do the right thing. As I walked towards the sidewalk I noticed, off to my right, that some Occupiers had driven two metal stakes into the ground and were now playing the game "horseshoes." A small cloud of dust kicked up with a loud KERRANG! at every landing of each newly-tossed horseshoe.

         Sure, you guys play your game while I go protest...enjoy, I thought. And by the way, weren't those horseshoes going to tear up whatever was left of the public park's grass? If you couldn't tell, the whole thing annoyed me a little bit.

         I took a deep breath and let it go. I took comfort that at least there had been a definite increase in the amount of traffic passing where I was standing than the day before (which had been pretty steady itself). This flow was pretty much constant. Across from me at the bus stop, there was an old, chain smoking, withered, white woman who looked near homeless wearing a baseball hat and a dark, track suit. She was sitting next to a young, Latino guy who had a moustache and wore large headphones over his ears. With them both was an older African American man with very large black sunglasses like the kind you wear for cataracts. The funny thing about these three was that when I first stood there, none of them were speaking to each other at all but after the old woman saw me demonstrating with my sign, she started laughing and sprang to life. I could see then that she went out of her way to start a conversation with the other two with her there just so that she could trash talk about me with them. With seconds they were all having a grand ol' laugh at my expense. See, I was bringing people together...

         >Sigh<

         I expected this type of unpleasant reaction from the right wingers but these guys? They were just ignorant. They were definitely in the 99 percent and here I was taking up for them, too, but what was I getting in return? Just this bitter pill to swallow, o my brothers. But, hey, like the saying goes, "It's the pioneers who get the arrows," right? Anyway, it didn't really bother me because I knew that what they were really laughing about (unbeknownst to them) was that THEY felt so disconnected and helpless to affect any change in their government or surroundings that the sight of seeing someone else trying to do just that was something so out of the realm of their perspective that to them, yes, it was utterly ridiculous. Either that or they were just laughing at The Lone Nut.

         Thankfully, these three were soon shut up because as the dense traffic crawled by, my END THE WARS TAX THE RICH sign got lots of approving horn beeps and thumbs up which made me feel better because it showed that yeah, there WERE people out there I represented who not only got what I was doing but also agreed. I was glad that these shows of support from the general populace were in front of the three jokers at the bus stop. (No, fuck YOU guys.)

         And yes, just in case you were wondering, as I was standing there demonstrating with my liberal sign on the busy, red state street, more old, white men flipped me off. I was getting used to this. (Though I didn't know if that was for the better or worse.) In any event, these obscene gestures in my general direction just weren't emotionally involving me anymore like they had the when I'd first experienced them at the other Occupy chapters in different cities.

         I couldn't say the same about the one thing that did surprise me that day though. Because as I stood there, I also got my very first middle finger from a passing diver who was a female. This woman, a middle-aged, manicured, bleach blonde (who kinda reminded me of Sandra Bullock's character in The Blind Side - only, y'know, not the movie star upgrade but the real-life, local version - who looked like she could've starred on the Real Housewives of Charlottesville TV show (if such a thing existed). As she drove by, she looked at me, she looked at my sign, she looked at the multi-tented Occupy encampment in the park behind me, then she immediately snapped her middle digit to the fully upright and locked position and directed it towards me with all of the willful, indignant, defiance she could muster. I guess I should've known that was going to happen eventually but for some reason I just couldn't believe it. I was shocked, way more so than I'd been if it had been just another dude. Why did I feel differently about a woman flipping me off? I guess I expected more from women in this regard. We all know men can be pigs, women are supposed to be more empathic. And other than just a handful of horrific figures in history, namely, Queen Ranavalona I the Cruel of Madagasgar, Elena Ceauşescu of Romania, Countess Elizabeth Báthory of Hungary, Queen Mary of England who was called "Bloody Mary," and Jiang Qing, there has never really been a woman tyrant (at least nowhere near the scale of Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot), so, honestly, if it were up to me, women would rule the Earth because then I don't think that then there would be any wars. So you see, to be flipped off by the fairer sex? That was more that just a  bit of a bummer.

         Cater-corner to me was a shop that must've sold ice cream because two blond boys about 12 or 13 come out enjoying their cold, sugary treats.  They noticed me demonstrating from across the street then stood there staring at me the kind of stare of someone who was looking at something that they'd never seen before (and found it so curious that they would probably remember it for the rest of their lives). Eventually, their middle-aged white guy Dad, who was wearing his Virginia Tech hat, wayfarer sunglasses, thick moustache and a big belly, walked out of the store. I could see his boys ask him about me and inquire as to what I was doing. He too, then noticed me and started to give his explanation as they walked away. Now who knows what he said (around these parts, I'm guessing it was something negative) BUT at least it had triggered a conversation about politics and what was going on in the world. Like I had said earlier about the little smart Alec Blatina teenager in the park, this wasn't just about here and now but our future as well.

         To my surprise, two guys, a gay couple in their mid to late 40's came up to me. One of the guys was a larger, Randy Quaid looking fellow in dark, satin-y, paisley patterned shirt, and his partner was a little, Asian guy (who reminded me of the character "Cosmo" in that scene from the movie Boogie Nights). The little Asian guy was filming me with a small handicam while his partner began to interview me. Why was I there? What was the goal? Where did it go from here? The usual questions. I didn't get the feeling like they were filming for any kind of show they were doing but more like they were filming themselves out and about that day in Charlottesville and I just happened to be a part of their day's adventure. I didn't mind. At least, with these two standing there interviewing and filming me, I didn't look like such The Lone Nut. The little Asian guy put his camera down and said to me,

         "Well, I'm from China and I am all for what you guys are doing."

         "China? You guys have even more protests against the corporate control of your government than we do," I replied.

         "That because we believe in the rights of the people," he asserted. I was enjoying my conversation with the pair of them when across the street I noticed a very, very large clean-shaven white guy with a buzz cut (think Brock Lesnar) who was wearing a white polo and jeans. He was just standing by himself with this giant walking stick in his hands that he was randomly banging loudly on the pavement (?!). He looked very agitated and was glaring in our direction. What the fuck was THAT guy's deal?

         I went back to speaking to the friendly, gay couple who were very effusive in their support of the Occupy movement. The great thing about meeting these guys was that I would never have expected to find them here and to hear them say how much they backed what we were doing reassured me that even thought I joke about being The Lone Nut, that was never really the case. Because although I sometimes may have been out there standing by myself at these different Occupy Chapters, the polls showed that the greater numbers who agreed with this cause (who myself and others were representing in our protest), counted in the millions (25 percent of the country).  Plus, the encouraging horn beeps, enthusiastic thumbs up, and even the many random passersby (like this couple) who directly communicated their support, all provided irrefutable evidence that I was never really alone (at least never in terms of in spirit or even just in terms of the obvious encampments behind me).

         I said my good-byes to the gay couple and not one minute later up came the agitated Brock Lesnar with a big stick guy (who was obviously on steroids). Now I'm not one who is usually easily physically intimidated but every man should know his limits. And I knew that if this was going to become a physical confrontation, this Vanilla Gorilla in front of me was probably just a little bit beyond mine (he had a club!).

         "What gives you guys a right to just live in the park?!" he barked at me, angrily.

         Gulp.

         "Well, I don't live here but I think the idea is there's not really a place for the local homeless people to go and it's getting cold so by staying here it gives the homeless people a place to stay."

         "It gives'em a place to get drunk is more like it," He snapped. What was I going to say that? He was right and he was wrong. Was there a lot of drinking going on that park? Well, I had smelled alcohol on both homeless and protesters alike during my visit BUT there were also people there who WEREN'T imbibing and were there because of reasons of earnest concern.

        "Yeah, a lot of homeless people are afflicted," I admitted, "but we just can't ignore the people who have fallen through the cracks of our society," I countered.

        "So that means that my taxes have to pay for them to be able to live for free in the park?" He asked in full irritation as he banged his big stick on the ground, determined to pick a fight. Was he trying to be physically threatening? If so, I have to admit it was kinda working, but I still held my ground.

         "Maybe they shouldn't be living in the park. But where else could they go?" I postulated, keeping my cool.  He just shrugged indifferently.

         "They don't need to be living in the park in downtown C-ville. C-ville doesn't need this shit. Where they go after leave C-ville? That's not my problem." (He REALLY liked saying, "C-Ville.")  I took notice that I hadn't heard any of the regional Southern twang in his voice which meant he was definitely either a tourist or a transplant, no way was he a local.  So why was he acting like a park he probably never set foot in once was his own backyard?

         "It's everybody's problem if they have to start committing crimes to pay for their food and and their addictions," I spelled out.

         "Well, then their asses go to jail," he growled.

         "Yeah, where it costs even more to house and feed them AND give them healthcare. Think of it economically. You can either can pay in terms of the nominal costs of living in the park or you can pay in terms of property stolen and possible loss of lives while the crimes are committed and then you'd still have to pay for all their expenses in prison anyway which is even more expensive," I explained.

         "Believe me, I know a little more than you about the costs of incarceration," he said, intentionally cryptic and condescending.  This didn't matter anyway because his point was moot. I didn't have to a PhD in Penal System Economics to know that taking care of prisoners wasn't cheap. I took his last comment to also mean that he was telling me, in so many words, that he worked in law enforcement (or maybe a prison guard because as he spoke I could see that he was heavily tattooed underneath his polo).  So he was a cop?  Figured.

         "There needs to be a program that the homeless can go to get the treatment and training they needed to re-enter society," I explained.

         "Why would they ever leave this program if they had free room and board?" he asked.

         "Well, you would probably have to put some kind of time limits and goals on it," I answered.

         "Do they (the homeless) know that's what you want? To put them in some program? That's not what they want here. They wouldn't even do it. They'd go right back to getting high," he insisted.

         "That might be right. There probably would be a percentage that would regress but those that succeeded would be off of the streets, out of the parks and not committing crimes to support themselves or their habit OR ending up on the tax payer dollar in prison," I said, game, set and match.

         He had no reply to this. This was amusing. He had SOOO wanted to be Mr. Big Bad Angry Conservative Guy but my simple and honest logic had disarmed and frustrated him. Do you want to know what the icing on the cake was? While we were debating, some assholes were driving by yelling anti-Occupy stuff and because the Vanilla Gorilla with the Big Stick was standing out in front of the park there with me, it made HIM look like one of us "commie, pinko, Occupiers" as well. This was awesome because I could tell that this guilt-by-association was bothering the Vanilla Gorilla to no end.  And after a particularly loud insult was shouted at us ("Get a job, losers!"), I snickered as his eyes started to twitch and his jaw tightened in embarrassed anger. Being mistaken for an Occupier really pissed him off and you could tell he was definitely not acclamated to people yelling insults at him.  His  'roid rage boiled inside of him now and I half expected to see cartoon-like steam to blow out of his ears at any second.

         "They think you're with us," I laughed (right in his face).

         He ignored my remark. In fact, I noticed that he wouldn't look at me when I spoke and only looked at me while he was speaking (to which then I would look away). Total pissing contest. (And I was winning!) Suddenly, two young, white women in their mid to late 20's holding shopping bags came up and the way we were suddenly, accidentally grouped made it look like we were all friends hanging around. The Vanilla Gorilla with the Big Stick didn't like this new comfortability at all and quickly motioned to the girls to start walking away with him.  Before he left, he turned and shot back to me snidely,

         "Hey, make sure you tell the homeless what you want to do with them."

         "They already know it. They're at the meetings (lie). They live it (not lie). " And with that, the three of them walked off.

         Thank God.

         Soon it was nearly 2:00 p.m. and time to go to the General Assembly. When I reached the center of the park, there was a group of about fifty people already standing around. Though this was a 300 percent increase to the size of the group I'd seen the night before it was still a far cry from the 1-200 I'd been told to expect. Was it because it was a holiday weekend? Or were the Charlottesville Occupiers themselves at the "big game"? At the meeting, I saw most of the people that I had already mentioned previously - the nouveau, hippy chick; the Justin Bieber lookalike girl, Chelsea; the little drunk guy with light blue eyes (who presumably was now well on his way to hearing what Tennessee Williams once described for alcoholics as "the click"); the long haired, older, Todd Rundgren looking guy with the beret and soul patch; the older, grey haired, English accented guy with the dark beanie; the large, African American student; the schemagh scarf wearing army surplus punk with glasses (who was once again holding on to his dog); the New York accented guy with the basketball player physique who sported a black goatee and a black, knit hat pulled low; the hip hop styled African American guy with a beard, dreads and a backpack; the white guy in his mid-twenties also with a full dreads and an auburn beard; the scruffy Matt Damon looking white guy in his early twenties with his two dogs; the blond Mohawk guy with glasses, and of course, Ashley, the African American woman in her early twenties who had caused such rancor and bad feelings during the General Assembly meeting the day before, was present in her Fedora, sunglasses and trench coat.

         "How are you today, Ashley?" I asked. Was she better than the last time when she was unfairly lashing out at people at the meeting? It was a total loaded question.

         "I'M fine," she responded with a stress on the "I'm," like she knew exactly what I was referring to and was now acting like "Why on Earth should there be something wrong with ME? I haven't a care in the world." But I could tell she knew deep down that she had acted like an ass at the last General Assembly (not that she was the type to apologize nor was there any way in hell she was going to give away any sign of remorse no matter how warranted). She just took another drag on her cigarette and continued walking away with a somewhat indignant air, still on her warpath. The new meeting took place around the fire pit which was where it was the night before as well (so this must've been their regular spot). There were some new people I didn't recognize, a very nice, middle aged white woman wearing a doo rag and glasses whom I heard others call "Nancy;" a very pretty, slender, professionally dressed Indian woman; and facilitating this new General Assembly was a young, stocky, pleasant faced, white woman dressed in the height of Occupy Charlottesville Army Surplus chic.  This Punk Rock Girl kinda looked like Brittany Murphy but had a really hoarse-before-her-years voice like Lindsey Lohan. She was seated in front of the firepit like some modern version of Boudica, the ancient, warrior queen. The unlit fire pit itself had large, blackened logs in it, burnt to a crisp from the bonfire the night before

         The meeting was going well. I noticed that nobody was doing the "stack" thing from last night of standing on the box if you were going to speak (even though we were a much larger group). The older, English accented guy with his white hair locks peeking out from under his dark knit hat, spoke up and mentioned that Ashley had some points she had wanted to make from the last General Assembly. Here we go again, thought I. Ashley did not disappoint. She wasted no time rattling off her list of complaints similarly to how she had done at the previous meeting (only this time not drunk, or at least, not AS drunk). She argued again that other Occupiers weren't staying around at the meetings to listen to others speak after they themselves had spoken. She also expressed her anger that last night, a few people had stopped any major decisions from being made because they had deemed the meeting too small in attendance for such larger issues that were perhaps best to be tabled until the next, more attended General Assembly.

         "Some of us LIVE here and our opinions are just as important as everyone else's. So people who were there at the meetings (whenever that would be) should not be held back in making group decisions just because of the small size of the group at that time," she argued. She failed to see that her rationale was inherently flawed because not every Occupier could be there at EVERY General Assembly but that didn't mean that they weren't just as involved and so yeah, it might just be better to wait for a larger meeting to decide on the more important issues. If Ashley had her way, the people who lived at the park would then be in charge because all they would have to do is wait until there was a tiny attendance at the meeting and then vote in will nilly whatever changes THEY wanted. The nouveau, hippy chick immediately raised her hand to retort because she had been the facilitator at the meeting that Ashley was now complaining about and she was the Occupier whom Ashley had been primarily referring to.

         "Last night, I tried my best to maintain order and yes, I moved to table any big decision making until more regular members, or just more people than the fifteen that we had there at that time, were in attendance," she explained in her defense.  She continued to recount the meltdown of the last meeting and when she eventually came to the part of the story where Ashley had flipped out, refused to get off the soap box and (unbelievably) called everyone in attendance "white supremacists," the nouveau, hippy chick's voice became more and more agitated until she surprisingly snapped into full-on-pissed-off mode (or what passed for pissed off mode for her).  With her feet shoulder-length apart, her lips pursed stiffly, she violently stabbed towards the ground with her pointed index finger (to emphasize key words) as she angrilly barked,  

         "And I'm sorry but when we are all trying to be respectful and someone else isn't and is being disrespectful and disruptive that makes me very frustrated (finger-stab!) and very upset! (finger-stab!)" There was a slight quiver to her voice as she circled the group with her gaze. She looked at all of us, all of us except for the true recipient of her wrath, Ashley (who was still standing in the circle sucking on her cigarette in complete agitation but looking away into the distance of the Market Street traffic with icy detachment). When the nouveau, hippy chick had finished, there was an uncomfortable silence large enough to drive a truck through.

         "OK... how do we all feel about that?" asked the Punk Rock Girl facilitator.

         How do we all FEEL about that? What was this... Oprah? I suddenly imagined this Punk Rock Girl leading our first continental congress back in mid-1776.

         "So, OK, we've heard John Hancock's motion to declare our independence, how does everyone FEEL about that?"

        The Punk Rock Girl waited for an answer but everyone was still too suffering from Ashley fatigue to continue the conversation. It was a dead issue. That's not to say that Ashley perhaps didn't have a point but I could tell that everyone here really respected the nouveau, hippy chick and if SHE, Miss Peace-Love-and-Age-of-Aquarius herself, was this upset about something (or someone) than you knew Ashley had taken things too far. Ashley, the disgruntled Occupier, didn't say anything after that nor did she take any further part in the meeting. She just started pacing around the outskirts of the circle, smoking more cigarettes and just stewing.

         After about an hour it was decided that there would be both a march and a candlelight vigil for our fallen brothers and sister revolutionaries in Egypt.  I made the suggestion and it was accepted that we include Syria as well because the death toll there was over 3500 souls. Of course this show of solidarity with the Arab Spring meant my "End the Wars Tax the Rich" sign didn't fit in at all. I mentioned this but someone said that in a way it kinda did pertain (even though it mostly didn't but whatever). I was just going to have to be THAT guy with the off-topic sign for one march. Its message was still leftie and everyone who would be in the march seemed to agree with its sentiment so, no harm no foul. Now I wanted us to march directly after the meeting because it would still be daylight, there would still be maximum crowds milling around before the game and thus there would be more of a chance of getting press, a greater opportunity to get the message out.

         "This isn't about getting press," the older guy with the English accent countered. I couldn't disagree more. I mean, I admit he was right in that it wasn't about getting PERSONAL press but for the group I felt it was absolutely essential to attract media coverage to promote awareness on the largest scale possible. And wasn't this supposed to be about showing solidarity with the revolutionaries in Egypt and Syria? How were they supposed to know without press coverage? Smoke signals?

         "We don't need the press because the message will get out by posting it on the group's Facebook page," said the older guy with the English accent.  Facebook? That was it? That was preaching to the converted! Having a "social media only" internet-based system of announcement and promotion was only the most passive of outreach. What were they so afraid of? Why didn't they want to use the power of their local media? I was further dismayed when it was also decided in the group that we would have to delay the march until later because people wanted to make signs.

         "If anybody has a Smartphone that they could help me write something in Arabic that would be great," said the older guy with the English accent. Arabic? THAT was going to go over well here in the South. In its own way that was as risqué as my "Jesus Hates The Rich" sign for sure. Then I became really disheartened when it was decided that the march would not only be delayed but it would have to take place after the "Civil Disobedience -Resisting Arrest Class" which wasn't until 3:30 and was supposed to last for an hour (?!).

         Wereyoufuckingkiddingme?

         "What about losing daylight?" I asked.

         "Oh, there'll still be light, we'll be fine," answered the older guy with the English accent. Oh, really? That's not what I had seen just the day before when the sun set by five o'clock. Just then there was again the sound of dogs trying to kill each other from behind the statue.

         This new ruckus effectively ended the meeting. I wasn't feeling great about what had been decided but what could I do? That was the will of the majority and in a Democracy, majority rules. Anyway, I had to go shake the dew from my lily, so to speak, so I thought I'd go and brave the donated port-o-potties. I walked around the other side of the statue towards the back of the park (where we'd just heard the dogs fighting) and I saw the same three African American men who were in the park the day before with their dog (who was obviously problematic as this was his second huge fight in two days). I overheard these three guys saying things like,

         "I was gonna kill that motherfucker," "I almost smacked him upside his head," and, "Shiiit, that motherfucker was gonna be dead." I guessed that they were referring to whomever it was who owned the other dog that theirs was fighting. Ummm, ok. I found the restrooms but the turn knobs on the doors were kind of out of whack. Their locks didn't seem to work properly nor did their indicators seem to be correct as to whether or not one of these port-o-potties were um, occupied. So I knocked.

         "Let's try door number one," I said.

         "Yeah," a man's low voice answered.

         "Door number two?" I knocked on the second.

         "Yeah," a female voice came out which I recognized right away as the Punk Rock Girl who had been the facilitator at the meeting. Door number three turned out to be vacant so in I went. Now for an aforementioned OCD germaphobe like me, you can pretty much imagine that using this public john was my worst nightmare made reality. And I don't bring this part up to be gross but rather to illustrate a point and to draw attention to the fact that just because they had port o potties here - which granted was at least more than the other Occupy Chapters had been allowed to have - make no mistake about it, these were horrible living conditions, nonetheless, we're talking maybe just barely one step above a refugee camp. Plus, it was really weird going to the bathroom that was just divided by a terribly thin, blue plastic wall, knowing that you could be heard going by the opposite sex. Good grief!

         When I exited I practically bathed in my sanitizing lotion. I then came across the young, scruffy Matt Damon looking guy whose Pit Bulls were playing wildly close by while he was busy emptying out all of his possessions from his tent. I used to own this breed of dog myself in California and we spoke about our mutual admiration of these misunderstood, lovable pets. I asked him if he smoked, he said that he did and I shared with him my pipe. I warned him of the potency of my shrubbery but he assured me that he'd been there before. As we puffed puffed passed, he informed me that he needed to remove all of his items because somebody had peed in his tent. Somebody? Did he mean himself? Had he gotten too drunk and soiled his own place of rest? Suddenly the Punk Rock Girl came around the corner. She and the scruffy Matt Damon guy gave each other a little peck on the lips in a way which revealed that they were obviously a couple (love in the most unlikely of places).

         "I got everything out of the tent. It's all airing out," he told her. So she lived in that tent, too? Had SHE been the drunken person that had wet their tent? I wondered. He handed my bowl back to me, thanked me and took off with his dogs so she and I spoke a bit. I noticed that she looked a bit different from the last time I'd just seen her. Since then, she had gone to the park barber and gotten a side of her head freshly shaved. How had she gotten this done so quickly? After we chatted for a minute, I told her that I'd see both of them later at 4:30 for the march and off I left for Market Street to hold my sign again for a while.

         I was standing there by myself (again) when out of the blue, a woman and two guys appeared from the Western side of the block carrying signs of their own. They were a white, middle aged trio dressed in jeans, t-shirts and sensible, jackets (which were very functional for demonstrating). They explained that they were active in the Charlottesville chapter and that they were the ones who had created all of the professional signs I saw planted everywhere in the park. I told them that I had read where the right wing were claiming that these professionally made signs at Occupy demonstrations were proof that the billionaire George Soros was behind our movement. (Just because the Tea Party had the billionaire Koch Brothers behind them pulling their strings they thought that must be the case with Occupy as well. But whereas Occupy was a true grass roots movement, the Tea Party was artificially created AstroTurf). This new woman, who had a pretty face and long, straight brown hair with blue eyes, made it a point to right away say that one of the guys with her was her husband.

         Relax lady, I'd only barely said, 'Hello,' I thought.

         They told me that they had just been protesting in Washington D.C. as well. Their signs had anti-corporate slogans on them. Her husband's differed slightly in that his had a Thomas Jefferson quote on it (which I thought was not only too wordy but also the fancy font he had chosen for it was too difficult to be read by passing motorists. But hey, at least I wasn't The Lone Nut anymore). The addition of other protesters changed the dynamic on the street corner. Drivers going by now had too much to look at in too little time which meant nobody passing was really reading any of the signs anymore because of the information overload BUT this new small crowd aesthetic did make the Occupy Charlottesville chapter WAY more visible and made way more of a statement through our show of numbers (however limited it was still better than just one).

         This new woman and I had a good conversation about where things were politically. We discussed some points that I had heard a commentator on MSNBC say and we agreed with him that the wealthiest weren't being taxed enough. The current 35 percent top marginal income-tax rate was the lowest it had been since 1992. Fifteen percent of our national income was now being paid for war expenditures and interest payments on our national debt which meant all of the other things we needed from our government - education, helping our kids with tuition, environmental protection, rebuilding our infrastructure - there was no money for those things anymore. And if the Republicans refused to raise taxes on the wealthy, we weren't going to have government services in public investment anymore and then we weren't going to lose our functioning economy. The idea of a government for the people was disappearing before our eyes because the rich had gotten super rich and had done so by gaming the system and by buying our politicians. Corporate taxation levels were at their lowest levels in modern history because the companies were putting their profits in the Cayman Islands and Bermuda (with the permission of the IRS through transfer pricing). We talked about the need to correct these corporate tax rates rates NOT cut them. We also needed to end the abuse of the corporate tax loopholes which had allowed for a huge conglomerate like General Electric to not only not pay one penny in taxes but to actually get a governmental rebate! It all came back to the super rich who owned these multinationals. We needed to tax this top one percent on the NET WORTH of what they'd accumulated because in these recent times the super-rich had seen the greatest wealth accumulation for the very top EVER, in the history of all the world! And that was money that needed to help pay for our kids to stay in school, for our environment to be protected and for our roads to be rebuilt. That's not what we were doing and because of this "No Tax Pledge" there was now no money there to run the most basic services of government anymore. THAT was what was crushing the prosperity of the country and the big lie was that the top were being over-taxed. They super-rich had used every gimmick, one after another. "Trickle Down Economics," "Bush Tax Cuts for the Wealthy," "Job creators," (all bullshit) so that the richest people in this country had ended up paying only fifteen percent income taxation (because that was what the hedge funds got).

         This woman's husband came up to us and asked if we'd seen the Channel 19 News Car. I had seen it drive around the block about three times. There was an older white guy with his hair slicked back driving the car whom I guessed was the vindictive newscaster the Occupiers here had warned me about the day before. I never saw him outside of the car but we watched him drive by. Was he coming here now? Had he already been here? Why didn't he want to interview the four of us? I thought of the older, simian featured, long haired woman from the meeting earlier and her point about the importance of the "presentability" of the Occupiers. Well, here we were… her wet dream, looking every bit as "normal" as Joe and Jane Charlottesville AND we were knowledgeable.  So why didn't he want to interview us? A: Because we four "normal looking" folks didn't make for good television. We didn't fit the biased, anti-liberal narrative this local media guy was trying to slant (see Fox News). So, yeah, he drove by, we shrugged our shoulders. I then checked my phone and saw that it was nearly time for the march.

         Our quartet made our way up the steps into the park and walked up to where a majority of the Occupiers were still gathered at the foot of the center statue. I guessed this must've been the "Civil Disobedience-Resisting-Arrest Workshop" they had mentioned at the General Assembly. As I approached, I saw that the teacher, a very skinny, middle aged, white woman, with long, crazy curly, frizzy black hair accented with touches of grey streaking though, who was wearing chuck Taylor converse shoes, tye dyed leggings, t-shirt, denim jacket and thick, coke bottle glasses (and who reminded me of a thinner version of the Emma Thomson's character in the Harry Potter movies, Sybil Trelawney), was giving her lesson. In front of her, the white guy in his mid-twenties with the full beard and auburn dreads was seated on the ground. She asked for two volunteers to role play being the cops arresting him. Of course the little drunk guy with light blue eyes raised his hand immediately. When no one else volunteered she asked the large, African American student to help to which he objected,

         "You want me to be a cop? Awww, man!" Everyone laughed. He grabbed the bearded, white guy with dreads by the shoulders and the little drunk guy with light blue eyes hooked the supposed arrestee under each leg with an arm and they proceeded to carry him away with little trouble.

         "I know how to do this shit," said the little drunk with light blue eyes, "This is how they taught us in the service." Here we go again with the military stuff, I thought. Then the teacher told the bearded white guy with dreads to come back and sit in the same spot where he had begun. She then asked everyone (even we who were just watching) to close our eyes.

         Was she serious?

         Then she told us to find our center chakra and to place all of our energy there. It was getting very close to 4:30 with daylight fading and this class was showing no sign of wrapping up. I was getting antsy but I closed my eyes anyway. (I wanted to get one of those Bill N' Ted phone booth time machines to go back in history and get Thomas Jefferson, Robespierre, and Che Guevara here to see if they would've closed THEIR eyes for this fucking, New Age-y hocus pocus.)

         "OK," began the Teacher, "now I want you to try to pick him up again while he is focusing his energy to his center chakra." The role playing officers complied with her order only this time found no matter how hard they tried, they could not move the seated bearded white guy with dreads. The crowd was amazed like they just seen a magic trick performed. Now I'm not trying to piss on anybody's rainbow but it occurred to me that should shit really go down, some asshole cop was gonna pick up the bearded white guy with dreads with much more force than these two were attempting. And OK, chakras may help people find peace through meditation but to think this sort of thing was going to be in any way effective against the paid thugs of the one percent, as if it were some new age kryptonite against them, was just a fool's gambit at best. So to put it kindly, this was all moot, to put in a less politically correct manner, this was bullshit.

         Anyway, it was now past 4:30 and (just as it had yesterday around this time) the sun was setting and the traffic around the park had markedly died down. The "big game" was probably close to starting which meant we had missed our window of opportunity to get the maximum exposure for our message. This was exactly what I had warned about at the meeting. Why didn't these points matter to them? Were the Occupiers here in Charlottesville intimidated by the march?  Or was it marching in front of that particular sports crowd, the dumb jocks, that were making them uneasy? There was something strange about the way everyone reacted whenever I brought it up. The proposal for the mobile protest was always met with a weird tension that lived somewhere in the neighborhood of apprehension, sloth, and inexperience. I turned to the English accented older guy with white hair poking out from under his dark, blue knit hat and asked,

         "Hey, man, how do we, y'know, alert the group, when it's the agreed upon time we all said we were going to start the march?"  To which he furled his brow, and gruffed,

         "People are aware of it. She [the teacher] was just wrapping up now."

         It was nearly 4:45 and I was getting impatient, really impatient. Finally, the Teacher had everyone gather in a circle (again, even we who were just sort of standing around waiting for the group to end). Fine, I thought, anything if it would get things moving. When who should stand right next to me but the little drunk guy with the light blue eyes. He put his arm up on my back and my OCD germaphobe self was immediately singing secret hallelujahs on high that we hadn't had to hold hands.

         The Teacher gave a few more New Age bon mots of encouragement and then asked us all to go around and say a word or two of our own as to what we were feeling in that moment. (Ohforfuckssake!) Some of the people in this circle didn't get the meaning of "a word or two" and instead gave their own little mini-speeches. Tic tock tic tock went the clock as the sun continued its dip in the West. When they finally got to me I said the first thing that came to my mind. I had had great success at the Occupy Washington, D.C. chapter relating a well-known revolutionary quote to a fellow protester there.   In fact, he had been so familiar with this quote already that he had actually been able to finish saying it with me, so I thought I’d give that one another go.

         "Hasta la victoria siempre," I said, which was THE quintessential saying of Che Guevara, the martyred revolutionary, and translated as "Until the everlasting victory..." It was meant to be a rallying cry for that day we as a human race finally conquered greed and achieved equality for all. It was outreaching, it was knowledgeable, it was bonding.

         And it was too bad that it went over like the proverbial lead balloon when I said it.   Yup, total silence. Okeedokee…

         I realized in an instant that this collective, blank reaction I got, like a needle suddenly being scratched off of a playing record (Geez, I was really dating myself with THAT reference) meant that not only did these Southern folk speak zero Spanish (and thus were incapable of relating even on a purely translational level) but that sadly, maybe they were even somewhat clueless about Guevara as well.  I was feeling really stupid like I had just unintentionally tried too hard to impress but had actually only instead succeeded in looking like I was from outer space.  I took a small comfort in knowing that at least the brevity of my answer meant that now the focus could be quickly passed off of me and on to the little drunk guy with light blue eyes who was next, right? Right??  I turned to him to try to, y'know, get him to take over but he just stood there staring at me, speechless and transfixed.  It was like in his drunken haze, he was not only trying to figure out what the fuck I had just said but he was also stumped as to come up with anything for himself to say. I had sooo wanted to move on because time seemed to be stretching out forever in that embarrassing pause and the longer we waited, the more deafening was the silence that thundered in my ears, reminding me constantly of the complete connection failure that had just occurred. Anyway, this vertically challenged lush hadn’t shut the fuck up once the entire time I had been there and NOW he was being mute?!

         Speak, little drunk with light blue eyes! I thought, Speak, damn you!

         "Amore'!" he suddenly blurted out, the Italian word for love. The entire group immediately smiled, nodded their heads in unity and let out breathy sighs of agreement. Sonofabitch. The little bastard had not only riffed off my idea of saying something in a foreign tongue, but by knowing his audience, he even had done me one better! AND this still had the effect of kinda keeping the uncomfortable focus on me because he had built on my failure.  He now stood tall as the "Civil-Disobedience/Resisting-Arrest-Closing-Group-Comments-Champion!" Oh, the humanity...

         The Teacher wrapped up the meeting and said,

         "OK, I understand that you guys are about to do a march." (Finally!)

         "I still have to make my sign," whined the older guy with the English accent. Jesusfuckingchrist. What the fuck had he been doing all of this time? Oh yeah, learning how to use his nutsack chakra to delude himself into thinking that was going to make it any harder whatsoever for some out of control cops (who were already committing acts of abuse left and right) to snatch his ass right up.

         "I still need somebody to help me with the Arabic," he added, "Does anyone have a Smartphone so that we can get it off the internet?" I could not believe this. What was going on? Was this more stalling? Was this intentional? Just what were they afraid of? I was really getting upset because not only had we missed the daylight, not only had we missed the visibility of the large, pre-game crowd but now we were also violating our pre-approved starting time (a time that had been voted on unanimously through the most anal retentive and lengthy of parliamentary procedures).  As this guy was holding everything up, I start thinking about and missing Zuccotti Park in New York City.  I longed for how easy it had been there to grab like 300 protesters in an instant to do a mid-day, mid-week march and how all of those Occupiers had been so into that they even screamed louder than I did!  But here at Occupy Charlottesville?  This was somnambulism in comparison. I figured I had to somehow get them fired up. If we were going to do this march and make any kind of impact, then the Occupiers NEEDED to get fired up and anger was an energy (that’s anger, not violence).  And not only was there plenty in our society to be angry about but the general populace needed to be reminded that we could still fight back for what was right.

         So I jumped up on the box near the fire pit and I gave my mini-speech. Half of the gathered seemed a bit surprised and the other just scrambled to finish their signs.  As it turned out, I only ended up remembering about two thirds of what I usually orated but that was enough for me because their reaction as a whole, though encouraging, was really only one of just polite agreement.  And though I probably should've expected that from preaching to this particular choir, I was still disappointed because it seemed that no matter what was done or said, there was just no lighting a fire under this bunch. The passion that was always ready to serve on tap at Occupy Wall Street was only represented in the barest of drips here. So I got down off of the box and who immediately jumped up right after me? You guessed it…

         The fucking little drunk guy with light blue eyes!

         Sombitch was riffing off me again! Oh well, I laughed, at least I had inspired SOMEBODY. I didn't really hear what he was saying though because as he began to yell (and yes, he yelled) Nancy, the very sweet, middle aged, white woman with glasses and a doo rag, explained to me,

         "We're REALLY out of our comfort zone with this march."  She made a strong impression on me.  She was a very friendly, well-spoken woman who gave off the most welcoming of vibes.  If Occupy Charlottesville really needed a mainstream looking (see non-threatening) spokesperson to get their message across like (that simian featured, female critic from earlier had warned was necessary) then I thought that Nancy would've been the perfect solution to this conundrum (if indeed this conundrum existed at all).

          Back on the box, the little drunk guy with light blue eyes was really raging. The only problem was that it seemed that he had taken my statement that "anger was an energy" and mistakenly translated that in to turning his ire not on the deserving one percent but on the protesters who were actually in front of him as he complained about people not getting involved enough. This of course, was made ironically hilarious when directly after his mighty pro-activism diatribe, he himself disappeared somewhere in the dark park with zero intent of returning for the march whatsoever AND that was the last I ever saw of him. So much for "getting more involved," right?

         Alrighty, then.

         When we were all finally (!) ready to go it was pushing five o’clock and there was just the slightest vestiges of twilight left in the sky. The older guy with the English accent had at last brought over his Egypt/Syria solidarity sign (now in Arabic!) only to find that in the impending darkness it had become all but unreadable (despite its great size that required two people to carry). As the marchers loosely starting coming together, I heard a voice.

         "I'm not going... I'm protesting the group."

         It was Ashley.

         She was standing around smoking yet another cigarette. I looked down at her feet because although she had made a sign, she had subsequently dropped it on the ground in front of her where it now lay.   It read: Occupy Needs A Political Party. So instead of joining us in our march she was now announcing her intent to protest the protest group itself? Why was she even here? I wondered.

         So not only was Ashley not going but as I looked around I was dismayed at the small number that the group had dwindled down to for the march. Where there had been fifty or so at the General Assembly, and easily thirty for the "Resisting Arrest" seminar, I now counted us at only fifteen strong.  Where the fuck was everybody? Where was the scruffy Matt Damon guy and his Punk Rock Girl(friend)? Where was the nouveau hippy, chick? Where was the short, curly haired girl with glasses? Where was the tall, skinny, blond Mohawk guy? They had all been at the meeting that day, they had all made sure that they had gotten attention getting their opinions heard,  hell, they had all even VOTED on the subject and time of this exact march! But now that it was time to actually do the damn thing they didn't "feel" like it? This was kinda sad. When it came to actually doing some taking-it-to-the-streets-protesting, all of Occupy Charlottesville could muster was a grand total of 15?

         But Jesus, I have to admit…  As we collected ourselves together like a battalion of kind warriors going out on patrol in hostile territory, I was truly grateful for the presence and effort of every single one of them.

         We began the march.

         The long haired Todd Rundgren guy with the beret and the soul patch and older guy with the English accent carried the large solidarity with Egypt/Syria sign. These two were supposed to be in front but suddenly the twenty-something, schemagh scarf wearing squatterpunk with glasses and his dog, puzzlingly decided to jump out to the lead which blocked had the effect of blocking this sign, making it even more unreadable. But at least we were moving.

         "Where we going?" people were asking around. The general consensus was that we were going to walk from Lee Park to Main Street and then up to the University, wherever the hell those things were. I wasn't a local so I had no idea.  I was just trusting in the judgment of the group and those destinations sounded great to me. We were starting to chant slogans together. "We! Are! The 99 percent!" "Show me what democracy looks like!" This was great. We were actually doing it!  But unfortunately, sticking together as a unified procession became tougher and tougher because the schemagh scarf wearing squatterpunk guy with glasses out front was leading us at a blistering pace.  This meant that the two guys holding the large sign with both hands really had to hustle and those in the back, particularly the small-framed, Indian woman who was wearing her nice, business-casual attire (including heels) were valiantly struggling to keep up.  So between the schemagh scarf wearing squatterpunk with glasses striding like he was strutting to a prize fight and the small framed, Indian woman in heels doing the tip toe quickstep in the back, our small parade of fifteen was looking like a stretched out slinky dink. I remembered something that somebody had shouted when this exact problem had occurred during my first march at Occupy Wall Street and thought the advice would go well here, too.  So, I called out the genius instructions,

         "Keep it tight! Slow down up front, please!" This helped stall the strider upfront for all of about thirty seconds before I think his nervousness got the better of him and off to the races he went again. But at least we were, with all of our chanting and our signs, finally looking like something resembling a real protest.  Here was honest to God actionable activism.  Good for, Occupy Charlottesville!

         However as to our parade route itself, in retrospect as I sit here typing with the benefit of Google maps, I see what we should have done was hung a hard left down Market from the park for about five or six blocks then came back down Easterly the entire length of Main Street which would've made our endeavor about two miles in length and about a half an hour in time. Now, admittedly that wouldn't have been much of a demonstration but Main Street contained the highest concentration of people still around who hadn’t gone to the "big game” and we were only fifteen people.  So in my mind I thought it was probably best to keep our expectations somewhat modest.  Instead of this route, however, we puzzlingly cut straight to Main Street from Lee Park which effectively sliced in half our Main-Street-maximum-exposure-to-people-potential. We were just about to reach this main thoroughfare when suddenly everyone stopped chanting and for some reason got deadly silent.  It was nerves. This was no good. Sure, we could continue in silence if we absolutely had to and yes, we would still be seen but a quiet procession would not be nearly as effective nor as memorable in comparison to a group of angry marchers chanting in loud unison. Were my fellow Occupiers getting cold feet? We needed something new to chant stat but what? It had to be local so that people here could relate, it had to identify who we were and it had to also feature our message of solidarity with Egypt and Syria.  I remembered seeing some of the other Occupy signs that I had Googled which read, "Occupy Everything" and "Occupy Earth" and what this meant was not so much "occupy" as in to actually take up the space but "Occupy" as in the brand, to bring this left-wing-people-over-corporations-social-justice/economic-justice-mentality to wherever you were globally. With all of that in mind, I stuck my neck out and in the split second I had to come up with something, I proclaimed,

         "Occupy Charlottesville! Occupy the world!" Immediately, everyone in our line joined in. It was exactly what we all wanted to say in that moment and in that place.

         As for Main Street, Charlottesville, Dear Reader, picture a cross between the pristine, washed concrete of say, Disneyland with an upscale strip mall and whatever image that conjured for you wouldn’t be too far off for this locale.  No cars drove down this street, it was strictly for foot traffic. It reminded me of a gentrified, baby version of the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica, California (only not as busy and a little cleaner). This was the perfect place for us to be marching because this was where all of the non-football crazies were hanging out.  Here were the non-jock peeps who might've been actually able to get something out of what we were doing instead of being completely closed minded to it. Was I making the prejudgemental assumptions that most everyone at the Virginia/Virgina Tech college football game were more than like out-of-touch-conservative- armchair-athlete-douchebags? You betcha!

         As we walked by all the shoppers, the people dining and the outdoor coffee drinkers, it seemed like time stopped when we passed. All eyes were on us. Wherever we went, workers rushed from their shops to see the great commotion and excitement passing by their doors.   It was awesome. We were getting our message out. It may not have been under the best possible circumstances (we were only lit by streetlights and most of the crowds that had been abundant during the day were now gone), but I'd still say that the people who saw us there numbered in the several hundred.  And though that wasn't much when compared to say, New York City, but for Charlottesville, Virginia, on a Holiday weekend, we were doing pretty darn good. Then, as we left Main Street supposedly on our way to the University, the road suddenly became very barren like something out of Mad Max.

         We may have been on our way to the main campus but in between the two points, there wasn’t really anything but parking lots and businesses, no people. We started chanting other things but it got silly sometimes because we continued to pass through areas that were so population-scarce that we ended up only chanting for ourselves. I mean that was great to keep up our solidarity and spirit up but the human voice can only shout so much. The three, middle-aged, white protesters with the professional signs from earlier were among our fifteen marchers and the woman's husband was really concentrating all of his efforts on the passing traffic.  He was yelling at the drivers, pointing out his sign and trying to get them to beep or something.  After about five or ten minutes of this, a young, Latino couple walked by us. The college aged guy had his baseball hat turned to the side (hip hop style) and snidely remarked to us as we passed,

         "Yo, fuck the ninety-nine percent! Fuck Occupy Wall Street!" What an idiot. First of all, unless he was a multi-billionaire, he, too, was in the ninety-nine percent and thus he was cursing himself out now, too, and second, he wasn't even aware enough to know that this wasn't Occupy Wall Street, that it was Occupy Charlottesville because, y'know, Wall Street is like… in New York, yo.

         "I'm about my money!" He yelled. What money? He continued flapping his gums much to the chagrin of his obviously annoyed girlfriend. Given his age and the area we were in, it was probably not a bad guess that he was a student at the University of Virginia and granted, college ain't cheap, but no matter what comfy, cozy, sheltered cocoon his PARENTS had provided him, compared to the obscene wealth of the top one percent, he was nothing, less than nothing. What this guy didn't understand was that he thought the people he was defending were HIS people. When the truth was that was just him showing how really sad, egotistical, misinformed and deluded his worldview was.  This guy had obviously listened to too many rap records and watched too many episodes of MTV Cribs. And little did this would be "L'il Juan" (instead of Li'l Wayne, get it?) know, but he exemplified one of the quintessential problems of trying to get through to people these days. It was like what Brad Pitt's character had said in the movie, Fight Club,

         "We're raised to think that we are going to grow up to be rock stars and movie stars." Too many people in America think that it's only a matter of time before they become magically rich and famous and they want to protect the system that they think will be in place to similarly benefit them when they hope beyond hope to "hit it big."   This guy was the modern disease of false sense of entitlement and over-inflated self-worth made flesh.  He and everyone like him really needed to wake up and realize that the top one percent were their enemy.   Anyway, we left him behind and continued our march as our surroundings started looking more and more collegiate.

         "We're getting close," assured Nancy. We started passing more little businesses then all of a sudden we found ourselves crossing a major street. The traffic was pretty heavy.  As we passed through, I was worried that we might not be encountering any more people so maybe we should take advantage of this opportunity to do something bigger.

         "Hey, guys!" I said to the group. "Why don't we stop this intersection? Cars can go around the next block over. I'm not saying we get arrested but how about we block the street just long enough that the cops have to come and it makes the news!"

         In response I got crickets.

         Everyone either couldn't hear me because of the traffic rushing by us or they pretended like they couldn't because this idea fell on deaf ears and everyone just kept hurrying along. We came to a street that had some more shops on it and a little bit more life to them. Wherever we passed, we got more encouragement from both the employees and customers alike (mostly the women at these establishments). The working class were definitely identifying with us. And as someone who has actively participated in multiple Occupy demonstrations in multiple cities, I understood that not everybody can make time in their lives to juggle demonstrating with kids, job, etc., but when we protesters who WERE making it out received these encouragements from our like-minded brethren along the way, these little signals of approval from them meant a lot.  Unfortunately however, this goodwill high was too be short-lived as things were about to take a turn for the worse.

         Much worse.

         We had reached the stretch of the block where all of the college bars were.  Dun Dun Dunnn! It was a Saturday night of the biggest rivalry game of the year and these pubs were packed tighter than a sumo wrestler in a Speedo, or a more appropriate comparison would be tighter than a clown car.  As we passed these open air, college jock, dives, we could see that they were filled with the most, vile, white bread, vain, pukes of privilege, probable date rapist "students" that Virginia had to projectile vomit.  I will say this much for them, while the guys there were utter douchebags, the young women in these same bars, much to the credit of their gender, almost unanimously cheered us on when we passed and gave us much applause, whistles, and thumps up.  But while these co-eds whooped and hollered their support, their male-waste-of-sperm-and-egg-frat boy-counterparts were um, less than encouraging, to say the least.

         And as our tiny group of fifteen people who were only trying to care about their fellow human beings, who were only trying to help create awareness about the destruction our democracy is facing, who were only trying to be good people and concerned citizens, well, as we passed the last and the largest of these bars, a large mob of mooks drinking there suddenly and without provocation, verbally assaulted us, angrily shouting,

         "FUCK YOU!!" and

         "FAGGOTS!!" There were other various and sundry pejoratives thrown our way that I didn't quite catch but that was OK because eventually all the fucktards at the bars broke into a unison chorus of

         "NERDS! NERDS! NERDS!" which they had cribbed straight out of that old eighties movie, Revenge of the Nerds. (I guessed they hadn't seen the end of that same movie when the nerd ended up fucking and stealing the frat boy's girlfriend. Dumbasses.)   They kept chanting and the degree of their hatred towards us came as shock to me but I wasn't necessarily offended at all. How could I be?  I'm 41 years old.  If you were as old as I was and you could still be bothered by any names some moron aged 18-22 could throw at you, then the problem was more with you than them.  Now full disclosure here: a long time ago, in a moment of misguided curiosity, I myself had pledged the Sigma Alpha Epsilon frat back at the University of Maryland, College Park.  But I quickly saw how bullshit the entire Greek system was so I started skipping pledge meetings and mouthing off to the "brothers" to the point where I was effectively "blackballed," or kicked out. This “rejection” never bothered me one bit and in truth, after seeing their ilk here again here in the flesh, this frat boy, idiot community who was declaring their opposition to us vehemently, it reaffirmed for me that never having been one of them was a fact I should wear like a fucking badge of honor.

         But.

         This violence of words that the frat boys were bombarding us with was really shaking up other members of our group, particularly the guys. I was again proud of us though. The louder the mooks yelled their insults at us the louder we chanted our slogans back and shook our signs in their stupid faces. These lunkheads easily outnumbered us in the hundreds compared to our fifteen but we held our heads up and didn't let them intimidate us.

         To me, this, THIS, was what is was all about, getting right on the front line, stirring shit up and fighting for a different perspective and its right to be heard. In the smallest way, this was Dr. King stuff; this was Gandhi stuff, REAL activism. This was my favorite moment of my entire Occupy Charlottesville experience because I remembered what Nancy had told me about them being “out of our element" but they were still forging ahead nonetheless.  Occupy Charlottesville was no longer just an infighting group stuck in the park, this was real outreach! I was sure that many of those bar patrons recounted later the story of their encounter with us that night. And I'm sure many of the young women who had been yelling their cheers of support for us were disgusted and embarrassed by the actions of their brain-dead boyfriends. Whatever, the result was the same. Both of these outcomes meant that the Occupy brand and its message would be getting the word of mouth we were seeking. Whether they agreed or not, it was enough in these first two months of this nascent movement, just to be creating debate, injecting information wherever we could and influencing the national conversation.

         This had been one of the main victories of the Occupy Movement. Before Occupy Wall Street began the press only discussed the wealth disparity problem in America infrequently on the news, since then it was now being discussed regularly. This showed that what we were doing was WORKING! We Patriots, who were suffering these fools hurling their pedestrian insults at us, were only feeling the same rancor that all who historically have ever fought against social injustice had felt when facing similar opposition from those who benefited from (and thus sought to preserve) the unjust status quo. Like the Gandhi quote I've mentioned here before says,

         "First they ignore you, then they mock you, then they fight you, and then you win." Well, this was textbook stage two: mockery. And what were they REALLY saying with this? To me it was:

         "We don't understand what it is that you are protesting because we've all lived financially sheltered, white people lives and you don't look like us and we fear (yes, FEAR) whatever it was you were suggesting because we didn’t want anything (that we have been tricked by the right wing into believing) that we mistakenly saw as  jeopardizing the silver spoons we've had lodged up our collective asses since birth and therefore we will mock you, we will oppose you."

         They just didn't get it.

         It wasn't us versus them at all.  It was all of us vs. the super-rich and just like the earlier hip hop Latino guy, it didn’t matter many houses and horses and boats and new SUV's their Daddy owned, compared to the wealth of the super-rich billionaires, they didn't even existing in the same universe, not even close.  What these loudmouthed louts at the bars couldn't comprehend was that yeah, there is a target on your back of entitlement, but it's not from the Occupy movement (who are trying to save you and us), the threat to them, whether they want to believe it or not, was from the top one percent who sought only to squeeze every last bit of economic solvency out of everybody beneath them. And it was only a matter of time until they succeeded.  The latest data that had come out showed that the rich got super richer in the last thirty years while the poor and middle class got the shaft. People didn't tend to like these type of statistics though. Instead of charting the most likely predictable path to plutocracy this financial drain was going to take according to these statistics, many decided instead to bury their heads in the sand.  Some people just didn't want to believe this truth because this clandestine goal of the top one percent seemed too comic book villain evil to seem true (even though it absolutely was) and most of these uninformed folks would rather believe in the good of their fellow man and their government and delude themselves that rich were all generous, kind people who were benevolent towards humainty.

         But how could we afford to risk the danger to our Democracy with that kind of severely misguided ignorance?

         The lead schemagh scarf squatterpunk with glasses was really feeling his oats now.  He was all jazzed up on adrenalin from the bar encounter and was striding so quickly now that within just a few minutes we were far away from the aggressively heckling frat boy bars. Was he spooked? Had the assholes gotten to him? As I looked around that seemed like the general morale of the group. They were rattled but we did it!  Somewhere Thomas Jefferson was smiling.

         "I say we go back and stand right in front of that bar," said the long haired brunette woman with the professional sign. THAT'S the spirit! I thought.

         "I was thinking the same thing!" I agreed, and we stopped marching to see what the group consensus was on this matter.

         "I don't know, they were sounding really aggressive," warned the guy with the thick New York accent and basketball player build, one of our fifteen.

         "I thought they were going to try to fight us!" said the older guy with the English guy. It turned out that the woman who had suggested going back had more balls than all of the rest of the guys in our procession combined. They didn't want to go back. They didn't even want to talk about going back. This group, that had so loved to vote any other time (like when they had spent endless time voting on whether or not to vote before they voted) were now trying so hard to increase our distance from the frat bar that they couldn't even slow down to entertain putting the idea of going back to a tally, not for one second.

         What were they so afraid of? There were tons of witnesses. I, for one, would've been rolling with my phone video camera the entire time. Let them confront us! Let the police be called! Let's film them getting arrested! Let it involve the University apologizing for the behavior of their students on the national news! You wanna really piss these idiots off? Let our march become the top local story over their stupid football game. Let the footage of these incidents make the national news and go viral on YouTube!

         GET THE MESSAGE OUT.

         This was what civil disobedience was all about. Real revolution never came easy and it always involved risk. These were just a bunch of drunk dickheads in comparison to what our American Revolution and our Civil Rights Movement had to face, namely the brutality of the British and the lynchings of the KKK, this was nothing! Certainly, nothing to be so intimidated over. But what was I going to do? Onward we marched and the more we marched the more desolate and unpopulated the area became.

         We passed Fraternity Row and I was sure we were in for it again but this place too, was a practical ghost town. Some jerk really far away yelled something at us that because of the distance we couldn't understand at all so I yelled back,

         "Something unintelligible to you, too!!" This got a big laugh.

         We were out of there soon and on University grounds. Unfortunately though we may have now been on the campus, all of the students were at the game and so the place was utterly empty. After a few minutes it seemed obvious that we were in for another lonnnng stretch without seeing a soul and that's when (again) we were marching and chanting only for the benefit of ourselves.

         "If the game wasn't today, you'd see people everywhere around here," I was told. Yeah, but the game WAS today, and everybody knew it was today, so why hadn't this been taken into consideration by the local Occupiers in our group who were (very un-democratically) deciding on their own where to lead us? We walked for about another half hour and I swear the only people who saw us were the occasional passing motorists.  I was under the impression that this was the first Occupy Charlottesville march of this sort and so yeah, I understood that there was bound to be some adjustment time but I admit it, I was getting really frustrated. This marching-where-no one-could-see-us-bit was pointless. At one point, our sojourn got to a point so out of the way and devoid of life that I couldn't help but laugh at the ridiculousness of the situation.

         "Where the FUCK were we?" I asked in exasperation.  The long haired woman with the professional sign who was also feeling just as frustrated grabbed me by the forearm in a consoling manner and said,

         "I'm sorry, I'm sorry. We're not used to doing this."

         Our frontline still consisted of the schemagh scarf wearing squatterpunk with glasses (and his dog) and the two guys holding the giant solidarity sign. All three of them were completely ahead of the rest of us again. The schemagh scarf wearing squatterpunk with glasses was especially starting to annoy me because he just would not slow his pace no matter how many times this was repeatedly asked, he was deciding on his own where we were going AND to top it all off, he was now taking it upon himself to lead each and every chant (and decide by himself when we would change the chant and what the next one would be).   He was drunk with power.

         Just then there was a commotion at the back of the line.  I went back to see what had happened and found that the business-casual dressed Indian woman had totally just bit it and was now completely sprawled out face first onto the asphalt.  She had tried in vain to keep up but the combination of our overly-hurried pace and her improper marching footwear had finally come to its unfortunate but predictable conclusion.  And though she was a real trooper about it and got up right away, I could tell she was in a little pain.

         OK, now I was pissed.  I quickly made my way up to the front of the line.

         "You MUST slow down," I insisted firmly to the schemagh scarf wearing squatterpunk with glasses. "She's in HIGH HEELS," I stressed.  He uncomfortably acknowledged me but then it seemed that it all went in one ear and out the other because in no time he was back again in full strut.  I gave up.  I looked around us but we were still in no man's land. Why hadn't we just gone back the way we came? Why hadn't we hit that bar again and that busy section of main street? Ten minutes later when we were STILL in the middle of nowhere with nothing around us but like gas stations and Laundromats, I had finally had enough.

         "Can we PLEASE go to where people were? We've been walking for 35 minutes (since the bar) and we haven't seen a soul. The idea of a march is for people to SEE you. This is pointless!"

         Members of the group took great umbrage at my sudden criticism.

         "No, it's not," the New York accented guy snapped at me in a scolding tone.

         "It's not pointless," added the Indian woman in high heels. 

         "Yeah, well, it doesn't matter if anyone sees us because this is the first time the streets of Charlottesville have seen a revolution!" the schemagh scarf wearing squatterpunk with glasses shouted at the top of his lungs as a sort of barbaric yawp. What the fuck was that about? The 'streets' mattered but actual citizenry did not? Did he mean just because we were actually doing it? I almost suspected that the schemagh scarf wearing squatterpunk with glasses had led us into these barren parts because he was still shaken up from our unpleasant, frat boy dust up and so he had taken us places where that was sure not to happen again. The long haired lady with the professional sign saw my dissatisfaction and said,

         "Come back next week and we'll have a...."
          I cut her off.

         "Y’know thanks, but I think I'm good. I'm only here in the area for the holiday anyway." At that point, after marching nearly forty minutes by now without having seen hardly anyone, I had been drained of all the earlier pride that I had felt in this endeavor. Maybe I would feel differently about it later, but a march that had started out so promisingly had ended with such a bust.  There were a few like-minded people at this Occupy chapter that I could relate to, but Charlottesville was just not my speed. But that was OK. They were free to make it whatever they felt comfortable with and I had a right to protest where I felt most in sync (and that just wasn't there).

         We finally marched back down to the populated strip mall of main street (odd how we made it back there but without going back down anywhere near the bars). Then we marched back to Market Street and back to Lee Park. Out of our hour and a half march, we probably walked a good fifty minutes of it nearly by ourselves (save the occasional passing car).

         C’est la vie. 

         "Thank you Occupy Charlottesville for your warm welcome. Keep up the good fight!" I yelled in the general direction of the procession as they made their way back into the park and I walked back towards the garage.

         "Thank you for your help and support!" yelled back Nancy.

         As I drove home I thought that all in all, yes, I may have had my differences with them but I had meant what I had said at that first General Assembly, that I was glad that they were there, and that sentiment hadn’t changed.

         When I got home I saw that Occupy Charlottesville had indeed made the news except there was not a single mention about our march.  The cameras only showed Occupiers making their signs in the park for it (which ridiculously made them look like little kids playing with finger paints). Had we been marching during that time (like I'd lobbied for), THAT would've been the images that would've went out over the airwaves instead of this anarchist arts and crafts. At least the news anchor mentioned that the march was in solidarity with Egypt AND Syria. I had a little glow of a moment there when he mentioned "Syria" in particular because I knew it was because of my suggestion that that beleagured country had been mentioned. Now whether or not that meant anything to any of Virginians watching their televisions I could only hope, but at least I had done what I could.

         And a quick side note: As for this show of solidarity with Egypt and Syria (the primary focus of our march), I had yet to see anything about it on any of their (Occupy Charlottesville) websites.  Now maybe I missed it or maybe someone sent the Egyptians and Syrian protesters a pic to show them what we did for them, but the ONLY mention I saw of it, was on the news, the local media, which was what I had suggested we should’ve been aiming for the entire time.  What happened to the idea that we didn't need the press because we had the social media?

         There were some really decent, knowledgeable, good intentioned Patriots at Occupy Charlottesville and I totally appreciated their efforts but I was ready for a new day, a new experience, and a new Occupy Chapter. 

EPILOGUE

         Cut to less than a week later, I was doing some research online about Occupy Charlottesville for this last blog and I discovered that they'd been evicted from Lee Park (in yet another night time raid as has been the cowardly way of the thug police who don't want the evictions covered live on TV by the press). One Occupier had even gotten naked when she was arrested. Apparently, their permit had only been an extension. Fifteen of them had been arrested including some I had met and protested next to like Nancy; the guy with the New York accent; Chelsea; the nouveau, hippy chick; the beatific middle aged facilitator woman with the speech impediment, and even the schemagh scarf wearing squatterpunk with glasses. I was very proud of each and every one of them. No matter how I may have felt about the shortcomings of this chapter, it was like I said, sometimes the only real actionable activism I saw from the campers was when they were being arrested. Well, here they were and they were true Patriots.

         You know who I didn't see? Ashley; the little drunk guy with light, blue eyes; the tall, skinny blond Mohawk guy; the scruffy Matt Damon guy and his Punk Rock Girlfriend and others. (Take that for what you will but their absence spoke volumes to me.)  There were stories of police brutality during the arrest. (I wondered if the Occupiers were using the heavy center chakra technique from the workshop while they were being arrested.) Apparently the cops had used this arrest opportunity to practice their crowd removal techniques by hoisting each protester in a different, unique manner.  One of the women had even been placed in a chokehold with a sharp metal instrument used as a painful leveraging tool against the base of her skull.

         During the raid, while members of Occupy Charlottesville were getting pinched, apparently a crowd of local morons gathered to heckle them. One of the hecklers yelled, "Now you won't kill all the grass!" My mind immediately went to the game of horseshoes that I'd seen them playing at the park and how I'd had pretty much the same complaint.

         And for a curious end note: on the news clip, they had interviewed a female occupier who had facial hair that was not unlike a goatee (yes, you heard me). She was a white female protester with a goatee who was railing on the news against the Lee Park Occupy Charlottesville eviction, the police abuse that had occurred during it and vowing that Occupy Charlottesville would again be reborn. But as I watched her, the words of that earlier fashion critic, the simian featured Anna Wintour wanna be that I had spoken with earlier in that second day, the one who had been so alarmist about the need to prioritize the "presentation" of the Occupiers who spoke to the press, well, her words now echoed loudly through my head.  Because as I watched the facially hirsute Occupier being interviewed, I bet that all the conservative people in their homes who had watched this on TV could see (or discuss) was there was woman on their TV with a goatee.  And no matter how truthful were the words this Occupier was now speaking, in the thirty seconds the people at home watching had to take it all in, all that came across to them I bet was the shock of seeing a woman with a goatee.  Now should you be able to look however you want and say whatever you want and be judged solely on the merits of your deeds and words ad not appearance?  Yes, in an ideal world.  BUT.  What was more important: the message or the messenger?  The critical woman had been right, people might be open to some new ideas from the Occupy movement but (and I hate to say this) not even the independents were going to be receptive when these words were delivered by a woman who looked so differently from the mainstream. It was a sad fact about society but yes, unfortunately, the critic had been right.

         That meant that this movement did need its leaders and spokespeople, not just on a national level but also in each local chapters and yes, these people should be accessible to mainstream society. (It's like that chick in True Blood who was the main press agent for the Vampires -til she got killed.) Oh, and by the way, before you think I'm nominating or thinking about myself when I say this I'm not. With my past career it would be too much of a distraction that the right wing would try to use to undermine any argument I might present. Some people may have skeletons in their closets, I've got a whole graveyard (the only difference being my graveyard is out in the open). So you see there's something freaky about all of us, and not just Occupiers, ALL of us. Like I've said before, everyone is "normal" until you get to know them.  In our own way, we are all women with goatees. (Thousands of years of recorded civilization and I'd bet that last sentence I just typed has never been uttered once.)

         For the record, there are some politicians I've seen like Alan Grayson who would make a great spokesperson for Occupy.

Peace, Love and Empathy

SFitzgerald

NEXT BLOG: I'm going to try to start publishing this blog weekly. I'm shooting for a regular Sunday night posting time.  Thanks for reading.  See you soon.