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Community

/ JillArcangela / 2 Comments

My husband is a “t.v. guy.”  If it was up to me, I’d toss my television out a window and into the yard where I would proceed with large implements of destruction like an ax, a chainsaw, and possibly a wood chipper.  Everything about television from the violent and sudden changes in volume (particularly during commercials) to the garbage they are peddling as important to society (like who will be the next idol-in-the-pan and the Kardashians – who are famous for what, exactly?) annoys me on a basic level.  Yet, somehow, I married a person who watches incessantly.

In his recent tuning-ins, he’s been watching a show called Doomsday Preppers.  I have never been the doom-and-gloom type, and I don’t intend to start now.  However, we have to understand that, now more than ever, the chance of a societal meltdown is very real.  This is, in fact, part of what Occupy stands in the face of: the deconstruction of life as we know it, the collapse of a functioning social structure, an inevitable conclusion if the current unchecked economic power system stays in place.  Whether it is a food system failure, an environmental crisis, an economic collapse, or even civil or world war, we are suddenly standing at the brink of something.  Hopefully, it is greatness, but even steel is forged in fire…

Nevertheless, I suppose I should count my blessings that at least what my husband is watching is somewhat intellectually based and not of the TMZ variety, and admittedly, you can learn a lot about catastrophe survival from the borderline insane who are bracing for it at every moment.  Store items of basic necessity; learn how to procure food independently of the market; and be able to defend yourself because in every Doomsday prophecy there is the part where desperate people do desperate things.  This is the part the strikes me most.  We are keenly aware that in an emergency situation people will push for their individual survival, even if that means literally stepping on someone else.

Of course, when we look at people in emergency situations, as we are all glued to the footage from the Costa Concordia’s botched evacuation, we experience sympathy for them.  We can understand the pushing, the chaos, the fear, yet we often forget to measure in our basic human history and the thing that has been all but conditioned out of us.  Like modern chickens that have forgotten to sit on their own eggs or turkeys that are incapable of foraging for food, we have left behind the very thing that saved humanity from extinction thousands of years ago: community.

For those of you who passed Bio before science has revealed our true human history, or if you went to one of those schools run by geniuses who don’t believe in teaching evolution, there was – at one time – great variety in the human species.  In fact, it is believed that numerous types of human ancestors inhabited common spaces and literally fought one another for survival.  After centuries of natural selection weeding out the losers in this miraculous honing, only two species remained: Cro-Magnon Man and the Neanderthals.

It is now believed that Cro-Magnon Man and the Neanderthals were forced into one another’s territories by shrinking resources in an age of extreme cold, and that they may have even crossed paths with some regularity.  In fact, many scientists argue that the Neanderthals may not have died out completely.  They suggest that a small number of them acculturated and mated into Cro-Magnon populations as their less-adaptive kin died off because of their inability to learn the more sophisticated methods of communication and cooperation that defined Cro-Magnon Man.  Community made the difference.

Humans survived extraordinary odds, dangerous and terrible animals, extreme temperatures, and thousands upon thousands of years to evolve to the top of the food chain and the master of his realm because he was thinking, courageous, and calculating.  In the end, however, the thing that set us apart even from similar and familiar versions of ourselves was our ability to function in a community and to apply the strengths of this arrangement to our environment.  Community is the thing that saved us from extinction and that will continue to hold us together when all else fails.

In today’s society, absorbed with our own schedules, focused on our own families, and overwhelmed by the sheer size of our population, we have turned away from our sense of community.  Sure, there are exceptions to this.  Perhaps, we attend the neighbor’s holiday party; we chat with the other parents on the sidelines of soccer practice; we even exchange pleasantries with the mail carrier and the clerk at the grocery store, but we lack real connection and interaction with those around us.  In the event of a serious and widespread emergency, we would see most of the people in our community as potential threats to our security and the safety of our family, not as fellow humans with whom we can exchange resources and rely on for increased chances of survival.

Perhaps this is the natural consequence of a population that has simply rocketed beyond reasonable, or perhaps this is a modern social conditioning intended to realign the human loyalty to things instead of people.  Our market lifestyle sees resources as acquisitions available for purchase at an ever-increasing number of locations while they simultaneously become more difficult to obtain in any other fashion.  While we gear ourselves at break-neck speed toward a culture of technology and consumption, the market providers slowly hoard production resources and bloat their already swollen control over our basic necessities.

With profit margins the sole focus, they raise the price of everything from water to furniture, forcing us to commit more time and energy to earning the money we need so we can meet the increasing financial demands.  Driven by basic survival instinct, we put our shoulder to the grindstone, working longer hours, forgoing community activities, skipping vacations, and finally handing over our children to a new and highly lucrative daycare industry just to put them somewhere “safe” so we can apply both adults in our household to the duty of earning income and acquiring resources.

We have become slaves to a system that intentionally divides us, that breaks down the final piece of our human identity, and that robs us of our community as well as our families.  We struggle to keep our heads above the waterline.  For some, that line is as simple as heat and food.  For others, it is a McMansion and a luxury SUV.  In either case, we are all still slaves.

In looking at our own American history of slavery, we know that the last thing slave owners wanted was for their slaves to feel a sense of community.  It is why they broke up families, disallowed mothers from raising their own children even if they belonged to the same master, and refused slaves the rights of marriage and familial identification.  It is why slaves were whipped for singing in the fields, prohibited from socializing during their few non-working hours, and conditioned to fear the consequences of collaboration on anything other than focused, productive labor.  By stripping slaves of their community, slave owners could reduce the chance of uprising, increase productivity, and wield a psychological control over their subservient that was far more powerful a message than any number of stinging lashes.

Our society has become a modern interpretation of the vulgar and deranged human condition of slavery.  We have syphoned off every possible excess, trimmed every non-essential, and whittled down our existence to “making time for my family.”  Meanwhile, the market machine turns, gobbling up not only our tangible resources but our human ones as well.

In a crisis situation, according to the Doomsday preppers, you need weapons to ward off people who will try to invade your property and steal your resources.  All I can think is, “Yes, but what if he possesses a skill or knowledge you do not?  What if he has access to something you require?  Do you shoot first and ask questions later?  Or do you address this human and then put one between his eyes if he isn’t useful to you?  And how long do you think you can survive like that?  No doubt your tune will change when you run out of ammo.  What if you have to leave your space and look for help?  Is your survival instinct going to be so appreciated when someone else is shooting at you?”

Maybe instead of hoarding supplies and weapons, and worrying about the legions of animals that will surely become of some people in a crisis, we should be working on reuniting our families, rebuilding our communities, and pushing back against the slave drivers that intend to keep us apart.  Maybe we should be singing in the fields… or in the case of modern times, marching in the streets.  Oh, wait, that’s right!  We are!  Well then, I guess we better invite the neighbors… and by neighbors, I mean, everyone.

Open Wide

/ JillArcangela / 5 Comments

There are a thousand reasons to Occupy.  Some are purely economic.  Others center on human rights and social justice.  Then there are the reasons that focus on the quality of life we are able to live in a world of over-industrialization.  Capitalizing on the basic human need for survival, corporations have driven our most fundamental necessities and basic creature comforts into the toilet in the name of profit.  Everything from blankets to body wash, beef to bottled water have entered the new market format in some hardly recognizable, bastardized version of its former self, spreading disease, widening the income gap, and “brand-washing” the human mind.  None of these realities leaves as bad a taste in my mouth as industrial food.

If you know me personally, you know how seriously I take food.  My small household (which includes me, my husband – reformed from a Coco-Puff childhood, and my 2-year-old who rejects cookies but will clear a table of fruit and hummus in seconds flat) emphasizes food and eating not as a part of life but as a way of life.  We have dedicated every inch of soil in our itty-bitty yard to our garden and line our driveway with potted veggies.  What we can’t grow for ourselves, we walk to our farmers’ market for.  We order eggs, meats, and dairy items from those farmers all winter.  Even our bread comes from a local orchard and bakery that procures local, sustainable flours.  And, when basic geography stands between us and food, we investigate the origin and company history of every item we buy before it goes on the grocery list.  We understand that eating real food, “slow food,” non-industrial food is essential to our life and wellness, but eating sustainably raised food is also critical to the health and vitality of our economy, our nation, and our planet.

This week, one of our favorite farms, run by an Amish family in Lancaster County, closed for business.  The loss of this farm is tremendous to my family and the countless others it served.  The farmer and his family proudly and meticulously raised meat, eggs, and dairy items from their beautiful and relatively small acreage.  The animals were treated with dignity and respect.  They were given room to roam, kept outside (weather permitting), and were never given “feed.”  Instead, they foraged or grazed upon the green hillsides that sloped gently toward a collection of impeccable buildings used for housing, milking, slaughtering, and so forth.  The family even hosted picnics for their buyers and gave them tours of the property, promoting a connection between suburbia and its food source, between farmer and consumer.  It was an amazing place run by amazing people.

The farm did not close for financial reasons, health code infractions, or even safety concerns.  It closed because the farmer could no longer withstand the political pressures levied against it by agencies that are attempting to squeeze the life (and money) out of the slow-food movement.  After a two-year FDA investigation of a Maryland buyers’ collective that was obtaining raw milk from over state lines (from 20 miles away to be exact), the farmer was named as being one of many who supplied the collective with the milk which – in the great state of Maryland – is considered contraband.  No need to reread that.  I did indeed say that raw milk is contraband in Maryland.

Keeping in mind that the law is the law, even if the law is completely ridiculous, it still does not strike me as an offense that should cost a man his farm – or the taxpayers a two-year investigation culminating in armed raids.  What is so dangerous about unpasteurized milk that requires it being seized by government officials and the home of a farmer, his wife, and their seven children should be raided by men with black boots and semi-automatic weapons?

It isn’t the milk, at all actually.  Milk, as with almost everything edible, can safely be consumed raw if eaten in a timely enough fashion.  Many cultures eat raw meats, organs, and other animal products.  If fact, older hunting traditions in many parts of the world still call for the heart of an animal to be cut out and eaten while the animal is still warm.  The hunters eat it, love it, and live to tell.  Despite incontrovertible evidence that raw milk is safe for human consumption if kept correctly, our government attempts to limit access of this item, among others, to the public market, and it doesn’t take much digging to understand why.

Slow-food (sustainably grown, locally sourced, unprocessed food) is a growing movement in America.  Our years of blind consumption are catching up to us, made evident by the sharp rise in disease, obesity, and physical/mental disorders in both children and adults.  Simultaneously, the rising cost of healthcare pinches our pockets, forcing us to seek out cheaper food sources, and sending us deeper into the cyclical problem.  Driven by an instinctual self-preservation, an increasing number of people are beginning to look at and speak out about the garbage dump that has become of the American dinner table.

With only a handful of corporations controlling the vast majority of food production in the U.S., easily discernible patterns of abuse and mishandling begin to emerge.  Like recipes for disaster, corporations have invented an infinite number of ways to make food play on our bodies’ weaknesses, fueling our inherent biological craving for fat and satiating every urge ten times over.

They have managed to make food inexpensive to produce by bulking it up with highly processed and extremely cheap ingredients like the “meals,” “syrups,” and “oils” of corn and soy, crops that can be farmed on massive scales by an increasingly industrialized agricultural system.  Conversely, because they control such large portions of the market, they are able to sell this despicably cheap food at incredibly low prices, “helping” families who are struggling to make ends meet.  Heck, if you stay loyal to scanning the mid-week, mailbox junk pile, you can probably even clip yourself a coupon.  But what are we really getting in return for our $1.99?

Sick; and we are getting sicker by the generation.  We are trading our physical health and the health of our planet for brand loyalty and disconnection for the fragile system that feeds us.  While Americans toss their carts full of colorful boxes containing mostly things they can’t identify or even pronounce, the small farms and food systems that have supported humans for millennia are rotting.

Meanwhile, political appointees sworn to uphold a fair, healthy, and honest food system are being selected from the insider’s network of pigs and criminals that we are also suddenly all too aware of.  In fact, the man currently heading the FDA’s food policy department (writing the laws that “protect” American consumers from unsafe foods and food handling) is Michael R. Taylor, formerly one of Monsanto’s most successful lobbyists.  With agendas that aim not to protect the food supply but to exploit it, we tack our grocery list to the laundry list of corporate corrupted, politically manipulated systems spinning wildly out of control.

As a result of these corrupt food systems, farmers find themselves in the crosshairs, but not for distributing contaminated products, poisoning consumers with gross mishandling, polluting or exploiting natural resources near their farms, or even manipulating food products to the point of unhealthy for consumption (all things the industrial food systems does regularly).  They find themselves coming under fire for supporting simple, timeless ideologies about freedom and food going hand-in-hand, for rejecting participation in a food system that is ultimately unhealthy and destructive to all things earthly, and for promoting the idea that food can come from outside the market system.

Though my Amish friend may have chosen, no doubt for the safety of his family, to take himself out of the line of fire, there are thousands of farmers willing to stand and fight.  They fire up their tractors, day in and day out, in willful dissent of the developing status quo.  They sow the seeds of change, of resistance, of tomorrow, and occasionally even of broccoli.  Every time you walk into a grocery store, looking at mountainous heaps of colorful and grotesquely oversized fruits and veggies and examining beef that comes from a place you have never even thought about, remember these warriors in overalls.  They are plowing for your health, your economy, your future, and the future of our planet.

It is high time to Occupy more than our streets.  We need to Occupy our fields as well.  Now, go hug a farmer.

Worker Bees

/ JillArcangela / 7 Comments

It has long been said that ignorance is bliss and that what we don’t know won’t hurt us.  I’m not sure when or why such nonsense was concocted, but the propagation of these ideas stands at the center of human idiocy and today’s political strategies.  What’s more, the modern political-corporate agenda seeks to push stupidity and misinformation as a means of human and societal control.  It is a war on reason, and they are setting up base camps in our schools.

Before I was a full-time mother (and part-time blogger), I was a teacher in the public school system.  During my education and its subsequent professional years, I worked in every setting imaginable.  I deflected racial tensions and flying chairs in a north Philadelphia elementary school and enjoyed the finely tuned middle schools of the Mainline.  I taught in daycare, general education, Autistic Support, remedial Reading, and Gifted settings.  From English to Math to Drama Club, I’ve worked with kids from ages two to eighteen.  I have three degrees and numerous educational merits.  The most important thing I ever learned, however, was how our easily and cleanly our public educational system has been hijacked.

In 1994, the No Child Left Behind Act was signed, forcing a uniformity on education that is essentially unreasonable to the basic diversity of the American landscape and strapping schools with financial weights they struggle to bear.  Its recent reauthorization was lobbied for more than $22 million, and those pushing for it range from chemical companies to the Chamber of Commerce.  In fact, the only ones pushing against it were the parents and teachers.

In the few short years between college and parenthood (my “hiatus”), I have watched public education fall prey to the manipulations of corporations.  Like vultures hopping madly around a fresh carcass, corporations have poached the system for weaknesses and points of entry.  Ironically, though not accidentally, the most vulnerable place for schools is in the budget.  The mandating of standardized testing costs schools thousands of dollars in materials, preparation, and implementation, but with repeated cutbacks to their funding by the very agencies that require the costly tests, schools struggle to make up the difference.  Desperate to make ends meet, they turn to the vultures – willingly opening their veins in exchange handouts to help keep schools open and safe.

Like a Hollywood villain capitalizing on his victim’s “misfortune,” the very proponents of the rigid and fundamentally flawed standards reach charitably into their pockets, donating everything from lunchroom edibles to classroom read-ables.  These gifts, however, come at a price.

With the increasing and steady influx of corporate “donations” to public education, schools become the new frontier for corporate manipulation.  The quality of education our children receive is suffering, and the commercial messages they get are gaining frequency and potency.  Cafeteria lines pass under televisions playing advertisements for every gadget imaginable, and programming is sponsored by Disney.  Math lessons divide Hershey’s candy bars.  Libraries are heavy with books about cartoon characters and boy bands while older texts of more legitimate content rot away.  One company, in the late 90’s, even went so far as to trade computers for a lesson about the “benefits of clear cutting forests.”

Slowly the principles of education erode, replaced by commercial messages, hidden agendas, and blatant misinformation.  As teachers struggle to maintain testing standards, which completely ignore the impacts of local culture, student diversity, and home-school relationships, they begin to pass up on lessons less likely to produce ScanTron results.  History, science, and the arts all take their turns on the chopping block as students practice reading and rereading paragraph long passages from test sample packs.  Students with special needs are being told to stay home the day of the test, as there is no make-up date and no scoring adjustments that take their exceptionalities into account.  Skilled, trained teachers change their entire approach to education, throwing out beautiful, creative, powerful lesson plans to make way for the pre-fab curriculums enforced by administrations.  Students stress and struggle, spending hours in after-school tutoring working on their test-taking strategies, and walk into school shades of white and green on test day.

The standardized tests and the weight put on them have, in fact, changed the entire scope and focus of education in America.  The aim is no longer to hone critical thinking and nourish creative minds, to inspire children to see their world through their own open eyes, to encourage educated and active participation in the world, or even to provide them with a set of skills they can take forward into a career.  It isn’t about teaching exploration, examination, analysis, construction, and design.  Suddenly, the entire objective is to “pass the test,” a test – mind you – that focuses solely on the most basic reading and lower math skills.

The decimation of America’s schools is about more than opening target markets and pumping children full of brand-loyalty and grade D beef.  There is a larger, more malicious agenda at play.  It is what I refer to as my “worker bee” theory.

If anyone was still teaching science, we would spend time learning about the bees (and why they are going extinct – which is probably why Monsanto has their lobby dollars involved in NCLB).  Bees have one purpose in life: to reproduce.  To do this, they gather pollen, turn it into honey, and feed that honey to their young.  They do not venture out for a leisurely fly.  They do not deviate from the explicit directions wiggled fervently to them by their co-workers.  They don’t even actually stop to smell the flowers.  They fly, collect, produce, and die.  By way of extensive political manipulation, corporations are slowly turning our schools into hives and our citizens into narrow-minded, singularly oriented worker bees.

Through the manipulation of our public education system, corporations have found a way not only to begin early programming but to limit the potential of the human mind for the purpose of driving society deeper into the abyss of market servitude.

We simply need to pay closer attention to our schools.

Oh, and for crying out loud, pizza is not a vegetable.  I know it has tomato sauce on it, but tomatoes aren’t vegetables either.  They are fruits… something else we would know if we were still teaching science.

Whack-A-Mole

/ JillArcangela / 1 Comment

Ah yes, Whack-A-Mole.  Smack one and another pops up in seconds.  Once the thrill of a generation, now an archaic amusement, Whack-A-Mole seems to be the new political model for passing unpopular legislation.

A ski-ball queen personally, I never had the tenacity for Whack-A-Mole.  I found those glossy plastic faces with their buggy eyes and chipped paint visually disturbing, and that fact that I was ultimately unable to suppress them was downright frustrating.  In the case of the nation, however, throwing in the mallet and walking away from the buck-toothed buggers is not an option.

Just when we thought it was safe to breathe a sigh of relief, with the Keystone Pipeline checked off our list, up pops another of those sniveling little grins, but not a mole…  In Washington, we get weasels.

With the pipeline put on hold until the year 2013 for further investigation of its safety, routing possibilities, and so forth, the Koch gophers (pronounced: go-fors), also known as Sentorus Electedia, are burrowing through the walls of legality, morality, and basic human conscience to push forward with this highly unpopular project.  They are attempting to attach the pipeline bill to totally unrelated legislation, and their primary target for this maneuver is the bill to extend the Payroll Tax Cut to the middle class.

I’m sure you can guess who is behind this brilliant plan to hold the nation hostage for the benefit of two Canadian billionaires, but in case you’re struggling to come up with an answer I’ll give you a clue.  He’s invested hundreds of thousands of dollars into the project, and what he hasn’t sunk into its eventual capital gains he spends on spray tan.

If you guessed Republican Speaker of the House John Boehner, you’re paying attention.  Speaker Boehner, though he is the individual standing at the helm of this particular matter, is only 1/535th of the problem.  We have 534 other members of Congress who are not so unlike Speaker Boehner.  Granted, some may be more honest than others.  Heck, with Senators like Bernie Sanders as evidence, I’d even say there are some who act in what they believe is truly the best interest and in direct representation of their constituents.  The trouble is that they are largely outnumbered.

Without the party lines that separate them publicly, the vast majority of Congressional elects are no more different from one another than the moles in the machine.  Sure, they might have some distinguishing marks – a fracture here or there, a chip of paint, a splash of color.  And, yes, they may be popping up from different holes distinguishable by their “position.”  But under that reinforced façade of well varnished plastic, they are all driven by the same engine, guided in and out of position by the same mechanisms, and paid for on the same dime.

Like the infamous pests of hardworking toilers everywhere, these men and women dug into every recess of the nation, and designed for themselves a network of tunnels so intricate and so well concealed that they fancy themselves unbeatable.  All they have to do is screw on that artificial smile and pop up for a quick public appearance at the appropriate time and place, and then they are able to duck right back down into their covert bunkers and continue their work of hobnobbing and hoarding.

Now, without shame or even the courtesy of deception, these political vermin aim to manipulate our system, undermine the authority of the citizens whom they were elected by and to serve, and force upon our nation and its people an eventual environmental disaster the world has never known.  It is a brazen abuse of power, atrocious misconduct, and it spits in the face of every man, woman, and child who sits outside of the offices we have given them in good faith.

For far too long we have allowed the men and women who represent this nation to conduct their business as though they are in charge.  They are not.  We are.  And every passing moment that we are not taking direct action to engage these apostates, to threaten them with impeachment and legal consequences for that which is by definition treason, and to combat their systematic undermining of our ultimate authority is a moment that we fail to fulfill the responsibility handed down to us by our forefathers, responsibilities necessary to maintain the benefits of our democratic union.

For now, we are stuck playing Whack-A-Mole, beating them back one piece of legislation at a time.  Like smashing wildly at the heads of those incredibly elusive targets, we defeat one objective only to have another pop up within seconds.  The trick to winning the game?  Speed?  Accuracy?  Nah, grab some friends and some things to smash with.  There is a great advantage to team play.  The moles might consider it cheating, but I’m pretty sure the original rule book refers to it as “uniting.”

Keep smacking.  Guaranteed the machine breaks down before we do.

For more on Speaker Boehner’s personal investment in the Keystone Pipeline: http://politicalcorrection.org/blog/201201180005

Tardy

/ JillArcangela / 1 Comment

Tardiness: It is generally rude, often impossible to avoid, and – for many of us – a character trait we wrestle with daily.  Those kept waiting respond in tones varying from understanding one’s fashionable license to labeling the offender “completely unreliable.”  Being late is also something that, this week, the President and I have in common.

I had trouble writing this week.  My head was swirling with mixed messages and conflicting opinions.  This was, after all, a really big week in America.  Joe Paterno of Penn State fame passed away in the middle of a child abuse scandal that has the nation reeling.  The pro-life movement held their March for Life in Washington, D.C., firing up their supporters and the newsreel on Facebook with this endless, cyclical debate.  SOPA and PIPA were dropped off the Congressional tables, and the sound of these bills crashing against the floor nearly deafened us to the news that President Obama killed the Keystone XL Pipeline.  Then, in perfect timing – as though to top it all off, the President addressed the nation with his State of the Union speech.  So, how can I call this timing perfect if I have already accused the President of being late?  It’s all contextual, really.

While I didn’t agree with everything the President said in his address on Tuesday, there were a handful of times that I found myself nodding strongly and even feeling a sense of victory as he spoke.  Tuesday’s speech touched on topics I’ve heard very few politicians discuss publicly, much less the President, but yet there they were – being yanked from the depths of a hamper.  Washington’s dirty laundry aired out by the President himself.

Things like Congressional insider trading and mentions of the corrupting forces of corporate money in politics; calls for investigating certain banking practices and mandating the banks’ repayment of public trust by funding projects and lending money; even scolding the players for letting their petty games obstruct American progress.  The President said that we “think Washington is broken,” and then asked if Congress if they could blame us.

Hearing the President speak this way – as though to a room full of children – was thrilling, but also infuriating.  It creates, in my mind, a tremendous uncertainty about who this man is and what he is really endeavoring to do.  Where was this President a few short months ago when his people were being beaten in the streets?  Where was this President when the NDAA came across his desk?  How does this man, who dares to reason with Congress about right and wrong, justify his actions against Private Manning?  What does he stand for?

From the sound of things on Tuesday, this man may be the product of four years in – tired of the games played on the Hill, sick of the lobbyist/ lawyer dramas, fed up with the failures of shallow men (and women) ladling themselves hefty portions while they watch their constituents starve.  Maybe this is some tardy hero, or maybe this is just another really convincing wag of the dog.  It is, after all, an election year, and that which the nation is talking about is that which we, Occupy, have brought to their attention.  The issues this election year, though you’d never know it from watching the debacle that is the Republican primary, are our issues.  They are written in Sharpie on poster board and being carried up and down the streets of America.  If this President has any chance of being reelected, he’ll need to win over the newly enlightened, the recently riled, and the completely disenfranchised.

This is both a compliment and a problem for Occupy.  The message of our movement is a human message.  It is about people.  It is about the power, the rights, and the unity of those people.  It is as lacking in party affiliation as it is political, no easy feat.  The things that Occupy strives for aim to level the playing field, not to rig the game – something those who already have the game rigged propagate as our secret ploy.  It is a message that rings true in the hearts and ears of more people than the agenda of either party.  It is loud.  It is clear.  And it is getting louder and clearer.  Many of the points the President played upon are the grievances and messages we brought to light.  For hearing us, Mr. President, we thank you.

The problem comes in with the possibility of the coming election co-opting our message.  While the political rhetoric should center on our intensely important political issues, we do not want to be usurped as the movement of the Democratic Party, which is what will happen if the President keeps tossing his ball into our court.  As it is, we are heavily criticized by the Republicans and their media, creating difficult barriers for us to overcome in our mission to unite the nation (see last week’s “Healing”) and forcing our political profile toward the left when we really are quite centered.  It will be an important challenge to reach even further into and outward from our communities if we want to be sure that our message is distinguished from those of the coming campaign.

Whether the President’s intention is to finally take a stand (one many of us were hoping for three and a half years ago), or if he intends to talk the talk just long enough to get his contract renewed remains to be seen.  Personally, I’d love to see the gloves come off.  I would love to have a President who would go to war with the real terrorists and criminals of this world.  Sadly, the question of intention can only be answered in hindsight, when the vows are taken and the title bestowed.  If his rhetoric is real and the President does – in fact – pony up to the task, we will nod our heads at this late bloomer, saying that “it is better late than never.”  If he fails to deliver the one-two-punch of justice, we’ll shake our heads at just another politician and say he came up “a day late and a dollar short.”

I suppose that a great deal of how this will all turn out depends greatly on who the Republican candidate ends up being.  Right now it appears as though they’d have to beam someone in from Mars to get a candidate who is both qualified and close enough to the middle to even have a chance at preventing a reelection.  (Come to think of it, maybe beaming people in from Mars is what has put the Republican primary – and the whole party – in the shape it is in.)  As the circus cranks on, and a stage-full of millionaires and fear/hate-mongers argue non-issues like the whether or not God loves gays and what to do with established immigrants and their American born children, we roll our eyes and refocus on the real work; the work we’ve been busy doing: cleaning up streets, fighting foreclosures, and helping each other through the mess that keeps blaring away on the television.

Republican or Democrat doesn’t matter much to us.  It is, essentially, a shift in an artificial balance of power.  We have the real power here …changing the conversation, stopping the pipeline and internet censorship, terrifying the lobbyists… What we are aiming for is a newer, healthier nation that is the product of our reform, our rationale, and our democratic ideals.  The ideas that carry us into the future seem to rise high above the banter of politicians, even if they are taking their cues from our playbook.  Because of Occupy, the future of America is on our shoulders and not in their hands.  And that shift in the balance of power?  Well, it’s about time.

Healing

/ JillArcangela / Leave a comment

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.

Pardon My Absence

/ JillArcangela / 1 Comment

I just wanted to post a quick note that I have not been selected for a stay at Gitmo or fallen victim to any other ill fate. I am taking a short hiatus from the outside world as I have suffered a personal loss that is tampering with my inspiration and connection to all things external to my family. I appreciate your patience and readership, and I will be posting again next Wednesday.

Thank you. See you next week.

Resolution of a Revolution

/ JillArcangela / 1 Comment

Every year around this time, people start thinking about newness and promise.  We spend time cramming the holiday acquisitions into our lives, vowing to clean out that closet or the basement where the gifts of yesteryear seem to lay in eternal waiting for a repeat journey out of our domestic recesses.  We squeeze into our favorite jeans, promising to lay off the egg nog and cookies in these final festive days and make it to the gym more often next year.  We shiver in the blistering cold outside of malls and offices, catching a smoke while we revisit the idea of really making this the absolute last winter we’ll be fondling our impending doom in trembling, frigid fingers.  This is The Year, right?

How often we reinvest ourselves in personal goals that seem so important at the upstart, and how appropriate of us to embrace these undertakings at a time of reflection, projection, and transition.  The coming of a new year does this to us over and over again.  It makes the impossible seem possible, the daunting seem conquerable, and the overdue seem timely.  But how often do we keep these promises?  How many New Years have you spent looking back on a year of progress and a resolution met rather than swearing for the umpteenth time that “this is going to be The Year?”

In the moment, we have the best intentions so we buy into the hokey tradition of developing these “resolutions” for ourselves, empty promises made while half-lit and wearing some form of embarrassment on our head: oversized funny glasses with flashing lights or a cardboard and fake feather tiara that is digging staples into our scalp.  Rarely, however, do we stop to think about what a resolution really is, what it really means to have resolve, and what it takes to carry out said resolution to successful completion.

In the literal sense, we understand the word resolution as a state in which we are resolved or determined.  It is a point of firmness in our character that will give us the strength and focus we need to accomplish something that we have deemed important.  In cases in which our goals are earnest and dignified, resolve is a fine friend and a necessary ally.  It is something that we, those committed to changing the crash course of our nation, must have in preponderance.  It is one of the two most important things we can have.  The other is patience.

Resolve will hold us to our goal, keep our mission close to our hearts and in the forefront of our minds, but without patience we will grow weary and weak prematurely.  Like a marathon runner who is focused on finishing during the first 15 minutes, our excitement and foresight will carry our head far out in front of our feet and leave us crippled in fatigue and frustration before we reach mile marker eleven.  We cannot forget that Occupy is in its infancy and that progress takes considerable time.

Americans distinctly identify the date of our independence from the British Empire as July 4th, 1776, but few realize the true length of our revolutionary history.  Rumblings of “colonial alliance” started as early as the Albany Congress in June of 1754, an assembly intended to align Iroquois and Colonial forces to win the French and Indian War and to establish a newer, more independent form of government (designed by Benjamin Franklin).  Even the Boston Tea Party and the birth of the “intolerable acts” ideology that fueled our independence happened more than two and a half years before the signing of our most famous and formative document.  After the signing of the Declaration, it was not until September of 1783 that the Treaty of Paris was signed, and it was another four plus years before our Constitution was ratified by Delaware, the first state of a new nation.

We are, as the colonists were, being controlled by an empire that cares nothing for our human freedoms and personal well-beings.  The free market has become a vile life-form comprised of spooling numbers and hypothetical wealth.  Its far-reaching tentacles have wriggled and wormed their way into the deepest recesses of our government and our lives.  It feeds on money and breathes in the human souls of those it corrupts.  It sees us as exploitable resources prime for consumption.  Like the “medicine” it sells us, we became addicted to its products, misty-eyed and glazed over as we stared at the next big thing, silently and unwittingly pledging our servitude to its low-price, high-cost hijinks.  We allowed our lives to become cogs in its machine, only waking to its oppressive weight and control when the pressure of the system itself began to break our backs and our society.

Like the colonists, we face a daunting foe, pervasive, powerful, and bent on world domination.  Like the colonists, we understand that great reconstruction will follow our hard-fought battle for freedom.  Like the colonists, we will succeed through our concrete resolve and with unwavering patience.

So when someone in a plastic hat with a mini-lightshow glued to its brim leans over, with the momentary lack of balance characteristic of people planet-wide on this particular night, and asks you what your New Year’s Resolution is, take a moment to answer.  Remind yourself that this year is no different from any other year.  It isn’t The Year because it is only one of the many years it will take to solidify lasting change.  Remind yourself that resolve in not a yearly promise.  It is a lifetime of dedication.  It is fundamental change in our very way of being.  When you truly understand your answer, tell him that this year you are only resolving to be far more patient in your resolve, and then suggest that he pay closer attention to his drink which he is pouring all over the shoes your Aunt Tilly gave you last week.

Happy New Year, everyone.

The Gifts of Occupy

/ JillArcangela / 1 Comment

With the holiday season in full swing, I thought it would be nice to reflect with gratitude on the gifts of Occupy.  Fluffy, right?  I know, but ‘tis the season so let’s fluff it up this letter.  Consider this your holiday card from me.  I’ve even included a picture of my adorable kid, just to make it warm and cozy.

As we move toward the new year, a winter in which to hunker down indoors and get some real work done, and the spring of promise which most Occupations are busy planning for already, it is important to pause and make thankful acknowledgements of the things that we – as a movement – are undoubtedly blessed to have, gifts that warm us with the same excitement and delight as a warm mug of hot cocoa after a day of snow fun.

Each Other:  The people who have stood with Occupy, in body or in spirit, in words or in action, are our most fundamental gift.  As with each strand of thread, red, white, and blue, that holds fast together, woven in intricate detail, and waves proudly over our nation, we are the fabric of Occupy.  We hail from all walks of life, with all types of histories, and all kinds of motivators.  We each wear (or one day will wear) the map of our personal journey on our aging faces; our hearts both heavy and light with the many stories of our lives.  We all began somewhere individually unique, and we will all end the same way, but we find ourselves sharing the here and now.

In this moment, we are writing the same story at the same time in history.  We walk together on this path, giving ourselves and allowing others to give themselves to us, stripped of all the barriers that previously separated us, and pledging our strength and loyalty to one another – out of nothing more than a shared ideal, a vision of freedom and equality that trumps all other ideologies, so much so that we employ all our talents, resources, and courage to secure it.  We are the single brushstrokes, and the resulting image is that which bring us together.

Our Vision:  Though our ideas are not original to us, instead handed down on parchment in ink, they are the single lens through which we view the necessity for what we do.  The simple ideas of freedom and equality, etched more than two centuries ago our hearts and minds, are rights that are entitled to all people, regardless of any categorically defining characteristic.  There is nothing, anywhere that stands as a reasonable excuse to deny any person any such bestowment.  The right to live, the right to work, the right to be treated fairly, the chance to fulfill your potential, the chance to chase your dream, and the chance to write your own story.

We know we cannot guarantee everyone success.  We know that we cannot create a society that rewards the lazy and apathetic.  We also know, however, that when the diligent, the determined, the focused, and the dedicated are applying themselves earnestly and is still managing to lose everything, something has gone awry.  We see the road to success has somehow become a hamster wheel of debt and market servitude.

We see ourselves and our world as a place where people have the choice, the opportunity, to succeed or to fail.  We believe that one’s success or failure should be a direct result of their application of self, and that their labors should not be made more or less arduous or rewarding by any predetermined circumstance.  We believe that ethic and effort should yield positive results and that those who manipulate the fates of others and capitalize on the deck they stack should be penalized for their exploitation.  What’s more, we believe that this world is possible.  It is in this belief, so deep and so true, that we find the resolve to push forward.

Our Resolve:  Together with one another, and with our vision so clear in its motive, we know beyond a shadow of any doubt, that we can win this.  We can change our world.  We have seen it time and time again in our human history.  From defeating the cold of an ice age to surviving the winter of a Cold War, we have seen the best of mankind rise up and triumph over tremendous odds and powerful adversity.  We do not, even for a moment, perceive this cause as lost or this task as insurmountable.  We can see the future.  Though we may not yet know how we will meet this victory, our tactical maneuvers improvised daily, we know that if we just keep putting one foot in front of the other, we will arrive at our destiny.

In the mayhem of the moment, the intensity of the fight, the filtering of emails, and the general hustle and bustle of the revolution, let us not overlook the real treasures of the season, the season of change and unity.  We should take a moment to cherish each other and the inspiration and drive we offer one another, to stand in awe of the vision drafted by our forefathers and still glistening in our grasp, and to bow our heads in reverence of the human spirit, its unfaltering propensity toward goodness and hope, and its unstoppable pursuit of justice.  Carry these appreciations with you, and let them adorn your spirit throughout the holidays and the entire revolution.

 

Work In Progress

/ JillArcangela / 4 Comments

Critics and naysayers love to ask the “tough questions” about Occupy, striving to stump or embarrass us.  What they fail to realize, and what was incredibly apparent during this past weekend’s Northeast Regional Meeting, is that no one is asking tougher questions about Occupy than the Occupiers.

Walking into the meeting, I saw surprised at the incredible mix of people there.  I’ve marched with Occupy in Philadelphia, seen GAs via live stream and countless photos of occupations nationwide.  I’ve noted the diversity before, but nothing is quite so intimate and surprising as walking into a 20’x20’ room and shaking hands with 80 year olds and teenagers, hippies and bikers, long haired guys and buzz cut women, professors and janitors, residents of Society Hill, and people who sleep on benches all before finding a seat.  In fact, the only thing that most of these people had in common was their shared belief that our system has gone insane and needs to be 302ed.

After a long introduction and some fun and introspective group exercises, we moved on to do the work of the day.  Our mission was to discuss, in small groups, topics we think are important to the movement.  First, we had to determine what those topics would be, so we were asked to make suggestions.  The numerous proposals revealed a variety of powerful issues.  Everything from “what do we do with the farm this guy gave us?” to “where are we taking this movement?” and “how do we get there?” to “how do we confront agitators?” came to the table.

With incredible patience and an unbelievable amount of respect, we managed to whittle the intimidating list down to several groups by folding similar ideas together and relating our individual focuses to broader spectrums.  The process was a bit long and tedious, but we sighed with pride and relief when it was over.  We took a breather, ate some lunch, networked and chatted, shared amazing stories and ideas, and returned to meet our groups with clear heads and full tummies.

The group I worked with was focused on the national goals and the organization required to accomplish them.  People raised questions and ideas that centered on things like improving communications between camps, honing a unified message, coordinating localized efforts, creating powerful political change at all levels of government, and developing regional and national working groups.  Some people spoke from logical stand points in calm and down-to-business voices as they suggested improvements to our networks, websites, and conference calls.  Others spoke in voices teeming with passion and threw around expressive hands, talking about things like “guerrilla gardening” and street art.  Still others pointed out necessities like controlling our narrative and avoiding media coopting, reaching greater numbers of people, and creating meaningful statements and documents.

The array of insights and visions was awe-inspiring and simultaneously daunting.  We realize that we have some serious work to be done.  Not just work on our government, but work on our movement.  If we are going to get inside this beast and make the changes we understand to be critical for the future of our nation, we have to be more than loud.  We have to do more than march.  We have to build more than an idea.  We have to plan, inspire, educate, and coordinate.  We have to broader our vision while narrowing our focus.  And we have to keep returning to meetings like this one.

Our time to work in our topic groups was limited, and the process that got us there was trying, but we are learning.  In every action and every GA, at this regional meeting and at the many that we know must follow, we are finding our way through the complexities of direct democracy to become a living, breathing reality of change.  We realize that we don’t have to have all the answers today.  Just sitting together and sharing our thoughts is a revelation, but we also know that it isn’t enough.  We do have to find those answers, and we have to do it sooner than later.

As I try now to compile my thoughts, reach out to new contacts, and take advantage of new opportunities for involvement, I find myself feeling similar to how I felt looking at the mammoth list of pressing issues raised at the regional meeting.  The feeling is nothing short of overwhelming.  Tackling the task and backing it down to a manageable undertaking is not as daunting as it seems.  The key to success lies in the simplest lessons: take one step at a time; listen to others; take advice in earnest; learn from past experience; and above all remember that this is a work in progress.

Any artist, any writer, anyone who creates something for a living (or just for the sheer pleasure in it) will tell you that our greatest work is never done.  There are always things that can be done, visions to be intensified, thoughts to be clarified, systems to be perfected.  This is especially true in the case of our democracy.  Believing that the work was done, that we could sit back and let the cogs turn, is what got us into this mess.  So, we are as our nation is: a work in progress – always growing, always changing, always improving, and always searching for the answers to the tough questions.