Occupy Together

Erosion

/ JillArcangela / 1 Comment

A game of legal cat-and-mouse is in full swing as legislatures scramble to outlaw everything that falls just outside the perimeters of that which is constitutionally protected.  You can protest, but not near any political figure relevant to your message.  You can vote, but not without this single, specific form of identification.  You can have an abortion, but not until we are done violating and humiliating you.  You can get an education, but not without the burden of lifelong debt.  You can have a picnic, but not without a permit.  Like a plane working its way across a piece of wood, the layers of our civil liberties and their protective laws are shaved away, landing coiled and useless on the floor as the corrupt and insane shape the new America.

Just beneath the gliding sound of the plane’s dark work, you can hear the lapping of the ocean – a vast body of corporate initiatives and the endless goals of the financially insatiable – as it pounds its relentless force against America’s delicate social fabric.  Cultural and religious freedoms, logic and reason, checks and balances, individual liberties, privacy, personal choice are all eroding along the edges of our society.  Each tumultuous swipe of the sea strips away more and more of that which we hold most dear.  Yet, unbelievably, the lemmings – distracted by imbecilic obsessions (“Did you watch Idol last night?!”), led by the cunning and manipulative (“Fracking is safe.”), and obliged by the insanely religious (“[The Christian] church needs to be the conscious of the nation!”) – keep marching headlong into the cold and terrible depths.

America was a nation built by people seeking freedom from judgment, discrimination, persecution, and fear.  It was a nation designed so every citizen could create a life individually tailored to him or her, in which personal goals could be set and met through hard work and determination.  It was a nation of hope and liberty in which all voices and matters could be heard and what is best for all could be deduced from intellectual debate – free from the slant of varying religious ideologies, unencumbered by the motives of small-minded men, and unmarked by the scars of ancient human error.  She has sadly now become her own adversary, blanketed in the filth of bigotry, hot with the tempers of misogynists and racists, and corrupted by limitless, unethical, and vicious greed.

Soldiers called by moral obligation, Occupiers and their supporters stream into the streets, driven by a fiery sense of urgency and invited by promises made to them in our founding documents.  The peaceful warriors who deny the continuously slipping status quo and fight for the fundamental rights that keep us from a swift descent back to the 14th century are met by the private armies of billionaires, both hunter and hound donning the uniforms of those sworn to protect us.  Like the Reich marched from the basements of Munich’s brew houses into the heart of the German people only to butcher it with a knife of pure evil, our public servants wear the badge of honor and the mask of deceit.

Make no mistake, our government is working quickly, quietly, and pointedly at political, societal, and legislative manipulations intended to control and stifle us.  Undoubtedly the new laws and market manipulations (from the Trespass Bill to the doubling of student loan interest rates) are maneuvers of those in power to improve their position, gaining from what the rest of us lose.  The steady erosion of our freedom serves to strengthen their political hand in a high-stakes game between the haves and the have-nots, America’s new aristocracy versus the strong and faithful who built this country with their bare hands.

Inevitably, the makers of this war on all that is fair and just will come to find that the people will only take so much.  Eventually the sugar-coma of modern life (or should I say, “high-fructose-corn-syrup-coma?”) will wear off.  The lemmings will realize, as they stare at the lessening shoreline, this year they don’t feel much like swimming.  With Occupy opening up in the spring warmth like the impatient crocus, spreading out across the land, carrying its message of freedom and justice farther than ever before, the criminals on the Hill will find the masses at their feet growing in number and in rage.

Rise, my fellow Americans, like the mountains – higher than the sea.  Stand up and preside over your nation with the same majesty and immovability.   Spring forth from the depths of those waters like the beautiful, volcanic islands that defy that rippling temper.  Push back against their attempts to strip from you that which is yours by birth, yours by right, yours by law.  No matter how many profanities they scribble on the pages of our history, they cannot erase what is already written there.  We have been endowed with certain unalienable rights.  We have the right to speak or yell or write…; we have the right to assemble peaceably and to be left in peace while we do so; we have the right to demand our government hear and address our grievances; the right to a trial by jury; the right to live free of involuntary servitude (even if those who attempt to enslave us are corporate entities); the right to a free and appropriate public education (for all students of all ages – post-secondary included); the right to a clean and safe abortion; the right to practice our religious beliefs even if those beliefs compel a person to practice no religion at all; the right to a safe work environment and fair compensation; the right to live without fear of discrimination – be it racial, gender-based, or for sexual preference; the right to drink clean water and breathe clean air…  the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

These things cannot be taken from us unless we let them.  There are no laws, no chains, no cages that can contain what is right and good and fair.  We are not the sand and soil that washes clean away with no resistance to the ebbs and flows of their temperamental tides of change.  We are the rocks, the roots, the concrete pillars of a people who have proven time and time again that in the face of grave injustice, we stand united.  We will prevail.  We Will Prevail.  WE WILL PREVAIL.

How To Win A Neighborhood

/ JillArcangela / Leave a comment

Over my desk, I have a grease board.  It tells me what to do.  For weeks it has been telling me to write about the Trespass Bill, and I will, but not today.  Today, I have more pressing matters to address with you.

As you know, Occupy Jenkintown started here a few weeks ago.  I expressed, and still experience, excitement about the Occupation and my hopes for what it can accomplish.  There are problems, already, however.  These are not problems unique to this Occupancy.  In fact, they are the same problems that plague many Occupations and are of serious detriment to the movement if they are not addressed swiftly and effectively by all involved.

The Occupation in Jenkintown has taken its residency at the center of town in the “square,” which is a small space with a gazebo and a brick pavilion where we conduct most of our town events.  Everything from the annual Christmas Tree Lighting to the seven month-long weekly farmer’s market takes place here.  The farmer’s market, which is already being threatened by borough politics and a nearby indoor market about to open 7 days a week, draws considerable business to the community on what used to be the slowest day of the week.  With the market season quickly approaching, and local business owners on the far side of the pavilion already sweating over (what they claim to be) negatively affected sales, the relationship between Occupy and the community went from temperate to tenuous overnight.

Nothing is friendlier to the wildly passionate, the motivated protester, or the inner-hippie than a group of tents, but for those with more conservative life formats – even if they have shared political views – the tents seem messy, intimidating, and unapproachable.  Almost immediately, rumors of homelessness and filth erupted, as they have around all Occupations.  Swift “not in my backyard” mentalities roared to the surface.  A few people have approached the camp to discuss concerns (and the Occupiers are working out a new location so to not harm local businesses), but fewer have done so to find out more about Occupy and get involved.  This is a problem.  After all, isn’t raising public awareness and spreading the important messages of the movement the purpose of the Occupations?

In places like New York City, where tourism is everywhere and the population is incredible, the characteristics that make Occupations unapproachable to some seem to have less of an impact on the camp’s overall success, but it is all a game of averages.  The percentage of the population that is offended impacts the success of camps a lot less when the total population (100%) numbers into the millions.  In a small place, like Jenkintown – for example, the same ratio has a much greater affect.  Moreover, in smaller communities, where the majority of people already know (and have established feelings toward) one another, rumors and slander fester more quickly, more venomously, and more detrimentally.  You don’t have to get the vote of a board representing a million people with a million interests to push Occupy out.  All you have to do is get four friends to call “Fred,” the police chief who lives down the street.

If Occupy is going to meet the challenges of camping in small communities, its members cannot simply set up and sit in.  They have to show up and reach out.  The focus of small camps has to be on becoming part of the community.  Making this even more dynamic is that approaching people at random can be a bit of turn off to the blasé, non-political, and avid head-in-sanders, also creating a bad taste in the mouths of those we need to enlighten.  So, what do you do?

Invite them in.  Everyone loves a party, so throw one.  Sponsor small events cheaply by talking to local bands, business groups, and charitable clubs.  Bring some attractions to the space, and while the people are there, hand out information on Occupy’s issues, have fact sheets posted, organize tables that represent different local and national interest groups, and have a GA schedule posted.  Have sign-up sheets for specific types of emails: petitions, food news, women’s issues, local issues, etc., and narrow down what you are sending them.  (When I see a bunch of emails from one group flooding my inbox, it isn’t long before I put that group on my mental “auto-delete” list, highlighting for deletion as I read the sender, not the subject.)

While you are chatting it up with the locals, about more than politics – please, remember to ask questions about what needs to be done in their community, what their local concerns are, and how Occupy can help them meet the challenges they are facing.  In Jenkintown, we have a problem with vacant store fronts, a local economy that is surviving but not meeting its full potential, and property owners who don’t want to renovate crumbling commercial properties.  A reasonable way to reach out to the community would be to set up a space for a town meeting to address the issues, flyer the neighborhood advertising the meeting, and then head a local group that corrects the problems.  Every town has its issues.  Find out what they are and head organizations to address them.

I’ve heard a huge number of people take issue not with what Occupy wants but with what Occupy does.  They don’t feel that living in tents, blocking traffic, interrupting public speakers, and civil disobedience are mature and effective ways to combat the system.  Now, I’m not saying I agree.  I think every tactic has a time and a place.  I do, however, understand that we are not going to reach the rest of the 99% by continually reapplying the same tactics over and over.  What’s more, we are going to offend them and lose any chance we have of bringing them in.  Those we have not reached in six months need to be approached other ways.

It is harder to win a heart than take a park, to open a mind than pitch a tent, to create change than to recognize problems.  If you are going to win the war, you have to win the people.  I’ve been reeling (and often retching) over politics since I was old enough to understand what is unjust and unfair – and if you have kids, you know how young that can be!  The closer an issue is to home, the more important it is to people.  If you help them solve their problems, you win their trust and loyalty… which is exactly what we need if we are going to fix the problems within our Occupations, in communities around the country, and in the halls of America’s most powerful addresses.

Wag The Womb

/ JillArcangela / 1 Comment

We’ve all heard of wagging the dog, right?  It is the political protocol of those who are so deeply woven into the corruption that rots our political system that they are unable to discuss the actual issues.  The first time I distinctly remember anyone wagging the dog was the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal, during which time it was discovered that the then-President had approved the sale of military super computers to communist China, increasing China’s nuclear capabilities.  In the years since, I’ve noticed it happening every election and most days in between.

In the past few weeks, an argument over insurance covering pharmaceutical contraception has triggered a conversation that is so ridiculous it’s hard to believe it is actually being entertained.  For generations, it was up to insurance companies to hammer out the details of the plans they offered, and it was up to women and their gynecologists to determine their medical needs and measures.  With the rise of the spin doctor, however, medicine has become political gun powder.  Suddenly, I’m looking at a panel of five men – most of whom are sworn to celibacy and have (in theory) no sexual experience whatsoever and none of whom are medical professionals – publicly debating the religious correctness of women taking birth control.  As the news unfolds, all I can think is, “Where are we going, and why am I in this hand-basket?”

Setting aside the dubious separation between church and state, which summarizes to churches taking funding and wielding unreasonable political influence but paying no taxes, I can’t help but wonder what a different world this would be if men got pregnant instead of women.  A brave woman I know well often quotes an even braver friend who had once said that “if men got pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament.”  The thought is striking, not only for its vulgarity but for the weight of what it implies.  First, that this is, for all our bra-burning, still a man’s world; and second, that the men of this world are still indulging at their gender-given ability to relieve themselves of any and all sexual responsibility, should he choose.  (Stay with me, guys…)

No one is arguing about whether or not insurance should be covering vasectomy.  (Many plans do.)  No one ever stands outside an abortion clinic with signs calling for the castration of dead beat dads, one-night wonders, or incestuous uncles.  No one ever yells about the guy who fathered multiple children and fell behind on his child support, blaming his morally questionable libido for an overextended welfare system.  Yet the women who bear the pregnancies, the children, and the scars of such circumstances come under attack constantly, from the ceaseless trimming of already insufficient social services to the threats of reducing access to care in women’s clinics.  These injuries are then peppered by the insulting rants of people like (Head-) Rush Limbaugh.

Without getting into the fact that the same groups of people who complain about legal abortions and birth control are also, ironically, often the same ones who want to cut welfare programs supporting the impoverished communities that most need access to such services, tossing aside the basic logic that if the poor and underinsured can’t get birth control then there will be more children on welfare…  Leaving alone the reality that conversations about the accessibility of women’s contraception should be about health and civil liberties, not morality and judgment…  Completely ignoring the fact that the support these arguments receive from notorious chauvinists and discriminators should be enough to send any sane person looking for the quickest way to distance himself…  These arguments are, without a doubt, nothing more than a simple diversion from the issues that are real and damaging to the nation.

Every election is the same routine, like a scene from a movie we have all watched a thousand times: a flaming arrow is shot into a barn while the thieves make off with the gold.  The powers-that-be ignite the crazies and gas the flames, creating a conflagration through the glare of which we cannot see the perils of their true workings.  People ignore the voting records of these politicians, their former-lobbyist appointees, their multi-million dollar estates, and hone in on arguments that appeal to their inner-bigot.  Meanwhile, they slowly chisel away our rights with things like indefinite detainment, the Trespass Bill, and surveillance drones, simultaneously lubricating countless palms (including their own) with plans for pipelines, fracking, and genetically modified foods.  The whole time, we are running back and forth dumping pint glasses of water on an inferno that is timed to self-extinguish the minute their deals are signed.

It is a series of marionettes cascading down the great political stage, puppets controlling puppets.  Wanting to change the conversation, the corporate puppet masters pull on the political representatives that are indebted to them.  The reps then pull on the leaders of special interest groups, because no one is happier to plunge us back into the dark ages; and they – in turn – yank the strings on the people they control with the most proven measure known to man: mysticism.  Within a hot media minute, the whole world is on its head in a mess of wood and string, a Pinocchio production gone berserk.

The current debates over things like women’s reproductive rights and civil unions are important issues, but they aren’t the issues.  The issues are the ones that allow systems like this to even exist.  The fact that we live in a society where access to affordable healthcare is a problem for millions; that corporations have the power to determine so much about how our government and society function; that politicians and their radical supporters can call women terrible names but can’t stand up to a Wall Street tycoon; that legislation can close health clinics serving the poor but not Bank of America; that five men with religion for a resume can speak about female contraception but the only human in the room who might actually take it isn’t allow to speak at all; all while the citizens acting as the voice of the people, carrying out their most basic right in a last-ditch effort to save the nation, are arrested for standing on the steps, not the sidewalk.

There is nothing new under the sun.  We are witnessing the old stand-by call from a worn out playbook, the burning barn.  So, while Occupy writes the current attack on women’s civil rights onto the schedule of teach-ins and rallies, adding it to the heaping junk pile of American issues we, the people, now need to address, it is critically important to see (and make clear to others) the overarching theme that ties all these issues together: America is being stolen from her people while the masses are gazing wide-eyed at the long-nosed liars parading from strings in a song and dance we know too well.  Cut the strings.  Free the people.  It is time to wag the tail, not the dog… or in the case of the current spectacle, the womb.

Meet The New Neighbors

/ JillArcangela / 4 Comments

The early signs of spring are appearing.  The promise of change and revitalization teases us in the form of trees with tiny buds, too young to be green, and the stump-ish beginnings of long, slender tulip pushing their stems through the soil’s surface.  But aside from the crocus, something else wonderful has popped up in my small town: tents.

I almost crashed my car when I saw them, honking in support – scaring the hell out of a guy sitting in camp… I’ve had some trouble containing my excitement.  Although the early onset of spring has me seriously worried about both my summer garden and a crop famine my unborn great-grandchildren might have to suffer through, I am truly revved up for spring… especially now that there is an Occupancy in my town.

Let me start by saying, thank you to Occupy Philly and the founding campers of Occupy Jenkintown.  Inspired by nothing short of brilliance, they have decided to bring the movement into places more graspable to those looking to get involved and more visible to those who are simply missing it.  While urban occupations are important and productive, they are also sitting in places that are relatively cut off from the people Occupy needs to reach next.

It is as though our nation is designed in circles.  Like those emanated from a stone thrown into calm water, populations ripple out of urban centers in decreasing magnitude as they delineate.  Since September 17th, the stamina of the movement has been discussed by everyone on all sides, as has its ability to reach large portions of the nation.  This is the first real sign that Occupy may be up to challenge.

Jenkintown is small.  It is just over one half of a square mile, which means our annual 5K race has to loop through as well as round our town.  In truth, however, we are small but mighty.  About 4,500 people call this bite-size borough home, a pretty dense population.  We have our own school district and police force.  We are encapsulated on all sides by the American phenomenon of true suburb, thickly populated and overrun with corporate chains of every kind, but our town prides itself on a central hub of Mom-and-Pop shops, a farmers market, and an historic movie theater that we faithfully support.  We are primarily middle-class, and we are – like most – feeling the sting of the corporate-political bully who has been slapping America in the face for decades.

My neighborhood is ripe for change, as are countless others across the states.  Setting up tents and signs, and working with Occupy Philly to make sure that there is a constant presence (when local Occupants are at work or at OP functions) brings the movement and its message into the path of the average American.  It makes representatives accessible to people who may be on the fence or plainly uninformed.  It helps make involvement and interaction a possibility when driving into the city for a GA at dinner time, leaving the family behind, after a long day at work doesn’t seem so desirable.

Most importantly, however, it takes the very important step of extending the possibility of true democracy.  For generations, we’ve been calling America a democracy, but it is not now – and never really was – a democracy.  We live in a Republic, a governmental structure that empowers representatives to hold office and work (in theory) on behalf of the people.  A representative system has the strong advantage of narrowing the political players into smaller, more productive groups, but it bears the characteristic burdens of easy corruptibility and simple misrepresentation, two problems that ail the current system.

In a true democracy, the people are engaged, educated, and participating in the decisions being made.  They are the government.  They make the decisions as a unit.  Democracy, surprisingly, is natural to species throughout the animal kingdom.  It is how herds and flocks of all kinds decide when and in which direction to move, and in some cases, it even holds contention is whether the winner of a fray becomes the seated alpha of a pack.  It isn’t always harmonious, and it certainly isn’t easy – especially with populations into the billions – but it can work.

The trick to a better, stronger America is to make it work in cooperation with a representative system, and that starts with tents in places like Jenkintown.  By engaging the members of smaller communities, bringing real, counter-media information to its members, and making people unavoidably aware of what is happening within the small offices of the local representatives we largely ignore, Occupy can stretch direct democracy into functioning reality.  We can hold these elected officials accountable, force them to represent us, and remove them from office if they don’t.

What’s more, if we directly involve the people in small communities, particularly in the further, less pronounced ripples of the population circles, we can reeducate people about the realities of consumption and the effects it has on human and political behaviors (as well as the environment).  In towns like mine, Occupy has a leg up.  We are a small borough surrounded by larger, commercially dense communities, but we stick to our own and forge strong personal relationships with one another and with the small businesses owned and operated by our community members.

In larger areas like those around Jenkintown, that lack town centers of commerce and community, Occupy will face greater challenges in uniting the people.  Engaging in local politics, acting in schools, shaking hands with local business owners, and handing out information in places like parking lots will help the movement root itself in these less centered areas.  Similar strategies will help bring Occupy into the fold of more rural communities as well.  If we can successfully reach out to these communities, unit the people by finding their common ground, and promote basic political, social, and economic understanding, we can raise these communities from crowds of apathetic consumers to educated, aware social participants.

Imagine what we would be capable of if people saw themselves as not only members of empowered local communities but empowered national communities – or, dare I say, the human community.  We could control the people who are controlling us; we could put the full-court press on representatives who use blatant manipulation and bold-faced lies to retain their power and position; we could level the playing field and stop the exploitations of our people and planet that will surely spell our inevitable doom; we could oppose the growing volumes of ridiculous and unconstitutional legislation meant to suppress the people and their voice; we could wield the power bestowed on us by our forefathers.

So, while I swallow the jagged pill of early spring, the frightening reality of yet another weak winter, the foreshadowing of increased garden pests and fierce allergies, I admit there is something beautiful about the warmer weather… the furling and flapping of tent tarps and cardboard.  Though I am constantly worried that the planet might be dying, liberty is alive and well – as is the promise of a still blooming and growing Occupy movement.   If for that alone, I can peacefully and honestly proclaim my welcome to spring.

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.

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.

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.

Stepping Stone

/ JillArcangela / 2 Comments

With many of our camps packed up, at least for the winter, our reduced visibility is an issue for contention.  However, with regional and national coordination on the rise, we can start to hone in on what we need to accomplish and how.  Pressure from the outside to “boil it down” into a short list of statements is routinely rejected, and with good cause, but can we be all-encompassing and still generate distinguishable outgrowth?

The idea of creating a set of focused goals seems contradictory when working within a grassroots movement.  Moreover, an inventory of demands, not matter how thorough, could become a checklist for appeasement from our current political leaders, who would pass legislation only to repeal it after the “uprising” is disbanded.  Conversely, avoiding a list of solid messages and concrete objectives could translate as political ineptitude, stunted maturation, or just plain wishy-washy.

The trick is to move forward simply and become the organized extension of the people’s voice.  By participating in local politics, – backing or rejecting local and state legislation, becoming a consistent presence at meetings (from school boards to state committees), working with charities and social projects, and so forth – we can start to make ourselves a admissible political force.  We can be direct democracy in direct action with a representative Republic which has lately tuned its ear to the loudest voices in the room: the lobbyists.  In order to combat the forces in power (the corporations), we must infiltrate the system and create recognizable political change.

Occupations in urban (or town) areas must make a point to reach out into the suburbs (and rural communities).  We must bring our messages to those who don’t follow us on Twitter and who haven’t liked us on Facebook.  We must make our intentions known to them and hear their voices as well.  We must understand that connecting to everyone is essential to our mission.

By involving ourselves in local politics, we can push for the changes that we need within our communities and claim substantial victories for our movement.  We can reach out to the people who misunderstand or simply don’t connect with Occupy and increase our numbers, support, and strength.  We can begin to list the accomplishments of our movement in places where the world can see it: in legislation.  We can begin the hard work of changing our government by changing our approach to politics, raising awareness where there was illiteracy and involvement where there was absenteeism.

It is easy for those who man the battlements and protect the aristocracy with smug indignation to discredit us for our lack of order, our missing spokespersons, and our cries for justice scribbled on fragments of former refrigerator boxes.  What isn’t so easy is to contend with an organized movement that is forging real bonds with people in every nook and cranny of the country, that is uniting communities and marrying local people to the idea that they “can, too” make a difference, and that brings forth a sudden outpouring of consciousness and participation from their previously comatose constituents.

Apathy put us here.  We, as a nation, sipped the Kool-Aid and went numb on the couch; and sometime between Mork and Paris Hilton, bandits made off with the nation.  We were warned repeatedly by our leaders over two centuries about these types of criminal enterprises and how they would loosen the democracy, but we stopped teaching history with the depth it deserves to make time to practice for the standardized tests – something else that was lobbied into existence while we snored through our artificial-cheese powdered lips.

Marches build our solidarity and visibility.  Occupations symbolize our idyllic society.  Civil disobedience and our constant entanglement in their red tape can bankrupt the system which attempted to bankrupt us.  But it is through sincere and direct local political action that we will build the strength, character, experience, and support that we need to take this movement “to the house” (…of Representatives).

In time, we will amass the things we need to ready ourselves for our active restoration of this nation.  We will have rooted leadership, widespread support, and deep understanding of our local needs and national issues.  We will add these things to the treasure trove of strengths we already possess.  Combining our assets with profound and impacting accomplishments, we can move forward toward the ultimate goal: a truly free America in which we stand together as a citizenry fully conscious and taking responsibility for our democracy, our neighborhoods, and our future.

As a child, my mother always reminded me that I was a “pebble in a pool,” my actions rippling across the whole of my life and family.  I employ this fitting metaphor here.  We are the pebble, and our local actions are the first of many circles flowing outward to impact greater and greater space.  No matter how small it appears, even when compared to the vastness of the water it breaks, that one pebble can affect everything… even a nation.

Critical Path

/ JillArcangela / 3 Comments

As Occupy camps across the nation are swept up and out, we find ourselves in a puzzling and contradictory state of both expulsion and exaltation.  While we may have been dealt a technical blow, suffering the loss of space and materials, we have gained significant ground.  A revived zeal, cheers of ironic victory, and a hell of a lot of media coverage garnish the beautiful affirmation that we are winning.  Amid the noise of political banter, police actions, and even the underlying hum of counter-Constitutional conspiracy from our nation’s highest office, we tune our senses to the subtle yet resounding message: we are getting to them.  Though public statements made by directed (not independently reasoning) local officials outline reasons to break up the camps that range from public safety to impeding on the picnic spaces of area employees, there are a few very real reasons the powers that be want the movement dismantled, and all of them are odious, not odorous – as they would have us believe.

The obvious reason to break up Occupy camps is our edging closer and closer to our first inevitable victory, one we must win over our most visible adversary: the police.  To do this, the movement needs only to continue to show up.  Peaceful assembly in large numbers, arrests resulting from civil disobedience, and the tactical maneuvers and discharging of weapons by police add up to more than public failure and embarrassment for city officials.  The simple fact is that our cities, fiscally crumbling beneath the economic pillage of the higher-ups, cannot sustain the expense of continued police action against the movement.  The obvious question is then raised, why carry out said action?

Any logical, logistical thinking person would deduce that it would be easier, cheaper, and more pleasant to let the camps stand, cooperating with internal working groups to keep occupations clean, safe, and free of unwanted elements.  Instead, the cities leave occupations to fend for themselves, blaming occupants for problems only reconcilable through cooperation from local officials then wasting city resources in unsuccessful attempts to unseat the movement, citing problems stemming from the city’s systematic failure and political ineptitude in dealing with the camps.  While the cities struggle to pay for actions against Occupy and the public relations necessary to recuperate both the city’s reputation and the personal political careers of those in office, the bottom of the shilling purse fast approaches.  Meanwhile, the only thing these actions succeed in doing is strengthening our resolve and exposing the corrupt ringers of a much larger, far more crooked game – an expense of a different kind, equally unaffordable for the city, but with pressure from the top to dispense the movement, local officials find themselves the scapegoats and puppets of multi-millionaires and are left holding the checking and the smoking gun.

Given the cost and blatant unconstitutionality of these relentless assaults, the indication becomes clearer that those in power are in fact struggling to protect something they feel is worth the increasing social and financial costs.  What they stand in firm defense of is not, however, the things they were sworn to protect: our national sovereignty, our freedom, our people, peace, and prosperity – nationally speaking.  It is to protect the illusion of democracy which serves as a façade for political pirates and their network of corporate accomplices who, with focused intent and great efficiency, have managed to turn our government into a well-oiled wealth machine for an American criminal elite so devoid of ethics that they conduct their business at the cost of human life and liberty, and from behind the protective cover of titles and privilege we unwittingly bestowed upon them in good faith.

Though we, those who comprise and support the Occupy movement, relay our messages to the public in terms more common and understandable terms – buzz words like “income disparity,” “bank bailouts,” and “corporate welfare” – it is essential that we understand our mission will not be completed with the passing of meager legislation that will be torn down and reconstructed to the benefit of these American traitors and capitalistic mutineers.  We must change the structure of our government so that it is no longer possible for the public servants we elect to govern themselves as they are clearly ill-suited for a task of such great moral obligation, having proven themselves unscrupulous manipulators of legality and hoarders of wealth.  We must change the checks and balances of an old system that relied on the goodness of man and was constructed before the design of the economic system that is now our undoing.

This brings us around to the battle of Antietam, something I mentioned in a previous letter.  At the birth of the American Civil War, Confederate and Union soldiers fought in one of the bloodiest wars the world has ever known.  At the time, the goals of President Lincoln were solely to preserve the nation, keeping the North and South united.  However, it was in the wake of this battle that Lincoln realized that the hardships already faced and those to come amounted to a war that would not be worth the end prize of a rejoined but unimproved Republic.  It was necessary to make the nation greater, stronger, and more just that it ever was before the secession of the South.  It was through this effort, this weighing the ferocity of the fight against the victory to be won, that the abolishment of slavery was decided upon, an act Lincoln believed would create the better society he so desired for us and justify the critical path that our nation was forced to forge by other circumstances.  From this we learn that it is not enough for us to simply correct tax law and imprison a few stuffed suits from various financial institutions.  Doing so would only mop up the puddle created by the leak in our roof.  It in no way corrects the real problem or secures our ability to weather future storms.

Those who have risen to power, occupying offices won in backhanded games of democratic manipulations and shadow deals by mystery men, now sit atop the world’s most dangerous con.  They peddle propaganda about the merits of capitalism and publicize dramatic political epitaphs laden with invented terminology and imaginary economic science, all the while stuffing down our throats values of materialism and servitude to the market.  They sit in secret meetings, gathering insider information that translates into stock market trading tips.  At the end of the day, the rearrange their personal portfolios, using privileged information to amass obscene personal wealth, something any citizen would be locked up for, but they do legally, protected by laws and exemptions they have created for themselves.  This is why Willy went to Washington.  This is why they clamor to serve, clawing their way through mudslinging elections (an insight into their true, frayed moral fiber), to grasp in the mêlée public offices that pay less than $200,000 annually.  Not because they feel an earnest sense of duty to their nation; not because they hear a calling to serve their neighbors and community; not because they could not make this much or more money working for the companies that own them, but because it permits them access to money making opportunities far beyond anything they could ever tap into on their own or take advantage of legally.  In exchange for access to the money machine and their resulting personal fortunes, American politicians repay the people and corporations who funded such opportunity by placing them and their private agendas into positions of power and priority, creating business networks and removing legal barriers so their financial backers can bulk their own treasuries without limit, at any cost, and at our expense.

To stand up and say that we want our grievances with these outside industries addressed by the people we have entrusted with our political process is like telling the wolf that the fox ate our chickens.  He simply doesn’t care, but he’ll lick his chops of his portion crumbs and promise you anything to keep the henhouse guarded as is.  We, as a movement, do not want our government to hear our grievances.  We want it to hear our wrath.  We want these criminals to scamper futilely under their fancy oak desks, pulling in those big leather chairs behind them in helpless panic, as we storm the capital, cuffing every profiteer who has abused our trust and capitalized on our former ignorance.

We must organize in greater forms and with loftier goals, fueled by the apparent desperation of our cities as they tip of their hand, revealing their struggle to contain our movement and our message.  This is not a plea to be heard.  This is a change in ownership.  Remember this in the days ahead.  We are not a protest to be stifled or stymied by the confiscation of books and tents.  We are here to overthrow the criminal hijackers of Washington as well as Wall Street.  Change will not – cannot – come from within.  It can only come from us.  It starts in our streets and ends on the hill.  Aim high, think big, and keep your feet on the ground… marching, park or no park, tent or no tent.  Ours is a critical path.