I suffered a significant and highly personal loss recently.  It was the reason I did not write for a couple of weeks.  It was not the loss of a relative, a friendship, or even a favorite item.  It was a loss of a different kind, one that stole away more the promises of things to come than the presence of things existing.  Loss is a powerful thing.  It can be devastating if it isn’t eye opening.  There is beauty in it, however, in that through loss we can experience healing.

Often when I write, I bang the verbal gavel, ranting about the deformity of our political system and transformation we slept through.  I stoke the fires of independent thought, rude awakening, and the necessity of a focused drive on roads paved with subtle rage.  I play on your senses to bring you into “this” moment, the breaking point, the sucker punch of reality, to shake you up enough to experience a tingling in your toes that makes you want to march.  At least, this is what I am attempting to do.  Truth be told, however, I wonder if I often absent-mindedly omit the point.

True, the nation is a barn on fire.  True, we are to blame.  True, we need to rally ourselves in fashion of the torch carrying mobs of old who sought the beast that preyed upon our sheep.  That is a zest that we must have in order to overcome the great obstacles that stand between us and justice, but at the root of all things feisty and powerful Occupy has to be about healing.

The heart of the nation has been dealt a blow that not only offends, it hurts.  As the dialogue we have opened grows louder and more revealing, we learn that the crimes being committed and the social-assassins who write the laws decriminalizing them have created a situation that is not solely unjust.  It is a political and economic death sentence.  It is, however, supported and workable only through a much deeper social ill.  It is one we are all carriers of, with no one to blame for our contamination but ourselves, and one that only we can cure.

When Abraham Lincoln spoke of the days now upon us, he warned that the “money power would endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people” as it concentrated the wealth and destroyed the Republic.  It is the old divide-and-conquer tactic, and it is still working despite our efforts.  Like a dragon with too heads, we make our advances on the one that seems the most imminent threat while lashing at the second, more docile head only when we have the opportunity.  We must, however, understand which is the more dangerous of the two if we intend to put the beast down for good.

Occupy’s continued front that focuses on the issues is powerful and important.  It keeps us active in the political spectrum, pressures the powers that be, and supercharges us with the conductivity that motors us forward.  We must, however, balance our attack and engage the second head of the beast, the tactical head which undermine us as a people by playing upon our prejudices.  Being a beast of a different manner, we must fight it with a different weapon.  In this case, we must fight division with connection.

Now, before we go trooping off to fight the windmill, let’s take a minute to understand the problem.  Division, you see, is part of our human nature.  At an early age we begin to categorize ourselves and our existence, seeking out circles that share our values and interests.  It starts at birth with geography and spirituality, continues to whittle us into jocks and Mathletes around middle-school, and eventually we end up adults so divided that we can be mapped and color coded on political news shows.  The true continental divide is between red states and blue states, and while we are not a movement associated with either party, we are struggling to recruit from the right.  The question becomes: how do we bring 99% of the population onto the same page when we aren’t even on the same planet?

Recently, many of the Occupy groups have taken to the streets, but not with signs and megaphones.  Instead, they have walked into the quiet streets of broken communities with brooms, food, and helping hands.  Cleaning up vacant lots, pancake breakfast fundraisers, and garden planning are just a few of the outreach projects being carried out nationwide.  The continued anti-foreclosure events have also brought Occupy into better, more illuminating light with many communities.  But there are many more opportunities to reach even further.

Countless people, in areas far from the cities we occupy, need of the same types of outreach.  Moreover, they belong to populations that see themselves as politically opposite to the liberally painted Occupy movement.  They are typically Republican and influenced by powerful media sources that oppose the movement.  These rural dwellers often vote for the values they falsely believe are hailed by the fast-talking manipulators of Wall and K Streets, but those votes are unwittingly cast against their interests.  These areas, these people are the ones we need to work harder to connect with.

Whether it is organizing bus trips to town meeting and other events, getting involved in the unions common in rural areas, paying closer attention to the perils their schools face, finding local causes for which to fundraise or volunteer, or setting up small tables outside of area grocery stores with information and timely petitions, we must reach these people.  The large gaps that distance our cities are not voids.  They are filled with people who are among our 99%.  We must include them, hear them, and respect them.

It is only through directed effort that we will reach those outside our cities, only through practice that we will learn to hear through our differences, and only with open minds and outstretched hands that we will bridge the distance between us.  If we intend to cure the ills that plague us politically, we must start by curing that which ails us socially.  We must work through prejudice and unite ourselves with people who live outside our urban reality in a world unlike ours but not so far away.  This is how we collapse the tactic that truly dominates us.  This is how we unite the 99%.  This is how we heal the nation.

 

 

Anecdote: The Egg Man

I buy my eggs from a farmer who lives just over an hour from my perch on the rim of Philadelphia.  My two-year-old calls him “The Egg Man,” but his name is Bart.  Bart is burley man with a full white beard and rosy cheeks.  He is pleasant and good-humored, smart and polite, and unafraid to tell you what is on his mind, if you inquire.  He is open-minded, objective, and non-judgmental.  He is also a die-hard Republican.  He believes in hard work, conservative ideals, and letting business do its business.  That last part sounds like a campaign ad, right?  Except that when Bart says “hard work” he means earning a fair wage with fair work.  When he says “conservative,” he means conservation; and when he says “business” he means his eggs and my three bucks.

Bart is the middle-American Republican standard, and he’s a far cry from Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich.  He knows the Republicans in D.C. are not representing him and his interests, but he also knows that the left has not encouraged the values he is so firmly rooted in.  He is just as frustrated and despondent as we are, but he feels no connection to the movement because there is no one picketing outside his fence.  His only exposure to the movement is our bi-weekly chat.  He is leaning in favor of our ideology.  He sees the bigger picture but is skeptical because he doesn’t see the point of Occupy.  He doesn’t witness any impact from our efforts, and he is still getting his news from Fox.  So, how do we reach him?  How can we convince and engage Bart, “The Egg Man,” from rural Pennsylvania?

For homework, answer this question in outline format and implement it in a rural area near you.  Extra credit will go to Occupants who effectively drum up rural support.