SISYPHUS is an online magazine that values original thinkers and honest inquiry.
Featuring:
We are proud to present six singular moments from Occupy’s first year. The pieces include reporting, personal essays, photographs and an embedded video by talented creators. Each brings passionate hope for the movement. Readers will feel the energy of these six writers thinking, interviewing, and experiencing the crowds and camps and dramatic moments of Occupy, voicing cautious optimism in a movement so unexpected, so fluid yet persistent, so mysteriously democratic—a movement with thousands of peaceful, sacrificing members, but no leaders or creeds.
At Sisyphus we have been thrilled and surprised from the beginning, back on September 17, 2011.
Now pundits speak of the movement fading. But they forget that this movement put the 1% vs. the 99% at the center of national discussion. They forget how the movement informed President Obama’s State of the Union speech in January 2012. A year ago “capitalism” seemed an archaic term, and its reference in reality seemed a pervasive white noise. But at this moment the presidential race involves a lively debate about capital, redistribution, and social justice. Occupy has been a people’s grass-roots response to the crushing power of banks and other corporations, governments, police, and military. It has been huge in Europe as well as the USA. But what were its goals?
The movement embodied wisdom from the civil rights and peace activist experiences of the last century.
Thousands of people were willing to endure the conditions documented in this issue to bear witness, and call to consciousness, cruel aspects of capitalism today. In their numbers and in the justice of their causes—often expressed through signs held aloft—they forced the national conversation to change.
In some ways the movement was like that of the mothers of the disappeared who marched silently outside the presidential palace in Argentina. The grief of those mothers gave them moral force, their silence gave them a measure of protection, and their persistence crumbled the arrogance of criminals in political power.
Our goal for this issue has been to publish accounts of events which burned so brightly that afterwards it’s hard to believe they happened, yet which remain in the air, somehow. These stories and images take us into exciting or uncomfortable or frightening encounters, and leave us with more than memories of what we have read about. The nature and direction of the whole movement, if there is such a thing, is unknown, but it is more than a collection of events.
November 3, 2011
I cut my political teeth in the sixties. I am far left of center and an activist.
It seems very long ago that we activists fought with fervor and hope, believing that we could change America for the better. And indeed, in many ways we did. Our legacy of civil rights and women’s rights and programs that attempted to eliminate poverty still stand. At least in some measure. Unfortunately, in recent years, we’ve watched in horror: the wars on women, growing income inequality, the decimation of the personal/family wealth of people of color, the mortgage loan scandals, the pollution of the political process by uncontrolled and un-accountable amounts of private/corporate spending, threatened to wipe away all of our gains. Instead of hope, we began to experience despair–feeling powerless to stop the Right’s money and influence.
Misinformed and deceived, the American public was caught up in the Right Wing’s insistence that the real crisis facing America was a rising National Debt—not foreclosures; Citizens’ United; un-employment, college loans and credit card debt; evaporating futures through defaulted pension funds and runaway outsourcing. Nope, not these.
They went so far as to frame the political debt debate as a matter of “national security.” The not-so-secret Norquist code was: no more government spending on anything but wars and Wall Street.
Then along came the Occupy Movement. And behold, income inequality was finally front burner reality. “Occupy” was everywhere and it was everything I had hoped for–eye opening and invigorating. Somehow, someone clapped one hand and the juggernaut paused in place, mum for the moment.
With glee I could see young people in the streets, not just grey-hairs like me. Joined by the unionized middle-aged, middle class, thousands of Occupy sympathizers and General Strike supporters filled the streets of downtown Oakland, protesting, marching to the Port of Oakland to shut it down.
Their posters and banners spoke Truth to Power. They published and broadcast to the nation that the system wasn’t just broken, it was fixed, rigged and wired by the wealthy at the expense of everyone else.
I wanted these messages to be the topics of conversation throughout the nation. This was the teachable moment I’d been waiting for. I prayed it would be the powerful, populist, photogenic antidote to Tea Party poisoning that had afflicted our political process. And the media seemed to be awakening, reporting on our actual numbers and broadcasting the hand scrawled messages held high above our heads.
I carried no sign this time. I was a photojournalist, there to bear witness to our collective outrage and to document this movement in my city. I was there to see and feel and capture the hopefulness and sense of possibility at that moment.
Yes, we can! No, they may not!
With clenched fists triumphantly thrust skyward, a thousand voices shouted: May they know us by who we are today—resisters of their domination, mendacity, cruelty and greed. We are the future. This is our City. Notice what we stand for and who we stand with. We are the 99%.
December, 2011
This essay was written for CNN.com and Sisyphus
This past December I received an invitation to speak at a conference on Occupy Wall Street at the University of Tehran. Given the grim state of U.S-Iran affairs, I was naturally filled with suspicion. Perhaps the Iranian state was trying to use the Occupy movement to foster anti-American sentiment? Or maybe the conference organizers were just naïve dissidents, and we would be viewed as foreign instigators, attempting to foment internal strife. Both, we reasoned, were not likely. Occupy may be anti-corporate,but it is unambiguously pro-American. And there was never any talk of Occupy Iran.
The night I accepted the invitation, my husband Glenn and I watched news reports of Ahmadinejad on camera displaying a recently captured U.S. spy drone. We joked about buying drone paperweights and key chains as souvenirs for our friends. But it was a nervous laughter. Days later, Iran deployed naval ships in the Strait of Hormuz, through which about a fifth of the world’s oil trade passes, and Israeli leadership gloated at the murder of an Iranian nuclear scientist. Obama retaliated with the severest round of sanctions to date, backed by the European Union, but more controversial in the East. The embargo was being justified as the “humanitarian alternative” to war, but we knew from Iraq what that meant. A line had been drawn in the sand, and everyday people were going to suffer. People that we Americans were about to meet face to face.
Continued conversations with conference organizers helped ease our paranoia. North American Studies students and faculty members genuinely wanted to understand this historic movement. Occupy Wall Street has inspired fundamental changes in the American political and cultural landscape, with much of the world’s support and respect. Why would Iran be any different?
As the spectre of world conflict loomed, I prepared my talk carefully, haunted by news reports of detained journalists and alleged U.S. spies. What should I not say? Will we be watched, controlled? Will I, as a woman, be treated as a second-class citizen, captured by the fashion police? Or will my husband bear a deeper brunt, as a Jew? We felt like we were jumping off a cliff. Yet my Iranian friends and academic colleagues strongly encouraged me. This was an opportunity of a lifetime. The media, they said, overblows Iran. Much of the mythology is based on lies. You will absolutely lovethe people.
It took much less than the measly 100 hours we spent in the country to discover that truth. Indeed, we soon fell in love with our gracious hosts, especially the graduate students that accompanied us everywhere, engaged us personally, intellectually and culturally, and sacrificed their time and energy to make sure we were cared for.
Against the common misconception of anti-Americanism in Iran, faculty members repeatedly talked about Iranian students’ desires to know America, study in its universities, and experience its unique culture. And despite its reputation for anti-Semitism, some expressed concern that an attack from Israel would endanger their friends in the Jewish minority. Large numbers of faculty attended the conference, as well as the in-between lunches, dinners, and tea times, offering lively and rich conversation. We found common ground in heavy teaching loads and underfunded research. Not once did any of them speak to each other in Farsi while in our company.
I do not want to overstate or over-generalize my experience. There was quite a bit we did not discuss, and there remain many unknowns. We were visitors, and we were treated with white gloves. I know that. I did not learn enough to assess the elections or the magnitude of desires for reform. I did not visit the terrible prisons or get to talk to any Green Revolutionaries or potential Occupiers. And of course, I did not gain insight into whether Iran is developing WMDs. One hundred hours is not enough time to unravel the complexities of any country’s social and political life. And any decent ethnographer knows that you cannot force “truths,” especially those that may be informed by decades of misunderstanding and conflict. It was more important for me to share human moments. And we did share many of those.
One such moment occurred my very first day in Tehran. After touring a colorful and energetic bazaar, we decided to step into a majestic shrine (mosque) made of ornate blue tile with a brilliant silver sheen. I was exhausted from travel and enjoying an immediate camaraderie with the female graduate student accompanying us, named Zahra. Just as we approached the entrance to the mosque, a man ran out from a booth and placed a chador on my shoulders. Zahra smiled sweetly, “You look beautiful!”
The men entered with the men, and Zahra and I, with the women. The walls of the interior glistened like diamonds, and I felt my ignorant, egotistical self shrink before the enormity of the place, the enormity of what we don’t know about Iran, and the enormity—and sheer beauty—of Islam.
Such Awakening remained a common theme, both in and outside the conference. Presenters located continuity between Occupy and the Arab Awakening, and the crucial struggle against inequality, imperialism, and the 1 Percent. I spoke about the socio-economic woes that precipitated OWS. Though I did not use the language of Awakening, I did speak about dispossession, and the grassroots nature of the movement, aimed at taking back what had been lost to corporate greed and irresponsibility.
Another American participant, Dr. Idris Hamid, translated this message of loss and Awakening in moral and spiritual terms, illuminating the Islamic concept, wallayah, a dynamic and communal love that interconnects people and binds them to God and each other. Occupy signifies the breakdown of such bonds in American society, but also the deep desire to re-find them. I thought of the Occupy camps. With all their warts, they represented the found community that so many people in this country desperately need.
The metaphor of Awakening struck an even deeper chord during a special meeting the faculty had arranged with the Ayatollah Khomeini’s daughter, Zahra Mostafavi. We toured Khomeini’s home, beginning with an incredible room of photographs documenting the Islamic Revolution. The Revolution involved some of the largest street protests in modern history. Interesting by any standard, but for a social movement scholar like myself, a true wonder.
As I viewed the dramatic scenes of Khomeini’s life, I flashed back to my own childhood, to propagandistic images of Khomeini as an evil dictator, the terrible jokes about Muslims that circulated through my Catholic grade school. I remembered support of the tyrannical Shah, who privatized much of Iran’s resources, turned it into a comprador regime, and committed unspeakable acts against his own people. During the hostage crisis, Iranians were cast as fundamentalist monsters in American bedtime stories, and it’s the generation of children who heard those stories, my generation, who are now setting the terms of our political relationship today.
During our meeting, Dr. Mostafavi told us the story of Khomeini’s intellectual and spiritual development, his stalwart activism, and difficult exile. He did not force the Revolution, she said, but rather waited for a true and popular Awakening. People had to see the world differently for themselves, they had to believe in the possibility of change. In his writings, Khomeini eschewed simplistic East versus West narratives of inequality. His was a framework of Arrogance versus The Oppressed.
Decades of betrayal of the Revolution’s promise by Iran’s 1 Percent has darkened Khomeini’s legacy. But the importance of this framework persists. The 1 Percent is not just a statistic. It is a concept that speaks to the arrogance of power.
***
After we said goodbye to our new friends in Iran, Glenn began to weep in the elevator. “I looked into the eyes of those children in the playground. I made sure to look at each one of their faces.” I had only ever seen him cry once before.
“We can’t go to war with this country,” he said. “We just can’t.”
That evening, news footage of the burning of the Qu’ran by U.S. soldiers was reported on all channels, alongside images of them urinating on the dead bodies of Afghani people.
I was filled with Terror.
All photos accompanying this essay are courtesy of Glenn Kaplan.
January 21, 2012
A clear cool winter afternoon and helicopters are circling to the south, over downtown Oakland. I count four of them, red and white blinking lights in the fading sky, they look like intricate sci-fi bugs but for the noise. That kind of angry rapping sound and the fairly high altitude formation tell me they’re police copters. The demonstration set for noon today must be still going on, the Occupy people were to take over an empty office building on Lake Merritt.
I’m on my way to the gym to shoot some baskets. My boy and I were at a bike-riding session in Marin, so the demonstration was out of the question. And since I was only an observer at the bike session, I’m quite happy to work out, to go to the gym in my sweats and basketball shoes, with the ball under my arm. The gym is almost empty, a couple of young guys at one end of the court and an older ballplayer running back and forth across the court at my end. I’ve got plenty of room, though, to shoot jump shots, what I came to do, make a hundred of them, fifteen- to twenty-footers, and fill out the hour with some experiments.
Halfway though my session there’s commotion on the street, audible even in the gym, shouting and some sirens. Then a rush of people into the mezzanine, a short track that circles the ball court twenty feet above the floor. I can’t see much, because of the steep angle, but some heads are visible for a moment. There must be thirty or forty people up there. And they’re being herded in by police, who are shouting and stomping around. The two people I can see are police, with face guards and riot gear, in dark blue, no those are dead black uniforms. The others are making no noise, but the police are aggressive and ugly, shouting, rasping, “Go over there.” “Keep quiet.” “Stand by the wall.”
But they don’t seem to know what they’re doing. They’re walking back and forth, then one disappears, then the other, then one comes back. Some confusion? I wonder if I should leave. But nothing’s changed on the court, so I continue shooting baskets. I feel protected, perhaps foolishly, as I’m simply going about my private, lawful business. Where have I heard that before?
One person I do see climbs over the rail on the opposite side of the court, away from the police and the protesters. He’s twenty feet up above the floor, and he grasps the railing and swings round, his back to me and the court, and climbs down the backstop, putting his foot on the rim, then bends and lowers till he can grasp the rim with his hands. He’s got a long green scarf and the backboard’s supporting wires snag it as he drops to the floor, pulling it right off from around his neck.
As he walks by me I say, “You lost your scarf.”
He glances back, shrugs, and smiles at me, clearly pleased. He leaves the court, walking, not running, toward the rear exit.
The scarf was caught beyond the top of the backboard and hangs down just below the rim. I interrupt my routine and spend several minutes throwing the basketball, attempting to free the scarf from the wires. No luck. And I can’t jump high enough, anymore, to catch it with my hands.
One of the young players comes over, jumps up easily, pulls down the scarf, and hands it to me.
“Thanks!” I say, but he’s too cool to respond.
I finish my workout and as I leave an older player smiles at me, “You got a scarf out of this.”
“Yes.” The scarf is an attractive, open-knit wool, pea-green, and I like it.
The crowd on the mezzanine is quiet, but I’m aware they’re still there. The gym’s exit follows up some stairs away from the mezzanine, and in the lobby are another thirty or so demonstrators crouching and sitting against the wall, calmly, with eight or ten police, again with thick plastic face guards and very dark black uniforms, standing in a line, penning them to the wall.
I walk by, throw my towel in the bin, and an officer motions me to the rear exit. I look at him blankly. I’m standing in my sweats and ball shoes with a basketball under my arm. No way can I look like a demonstrator.
“You can go out the front if you like,” he tells me.
There are many, many demonstrators on the street, sitting on the median, handcuffed or with their hands behind their backs, and a long line of police guarding them. The demonstration must have gotten out of hand, and seems to have ended right here at the Oakland YMCA while I was in the gym. None of the demonstrators are standing, they’re all sitting and all are quiet. The vibe is calm, really kind of sweet, and acquiescent. I’m embarrassed for the police. They seem aggressive and hostile, just in how they’re standing, as if this quiet group in front of them is about to erupt. But there are no signs of this. Even though, indeed, some demonstrators might be thinking about doing exactly that.
People are standing around my car, which I happened to park at the near corner. I walk along between the Y building and the police, who are lined up facing the demonstrators on the median, their backs to me. At my car, the police are facing me, separating the onlookers, with cameras and video cameras, from the demonstrators. In the eye of the police, the observers are potential demonstrators, I suppose.
How will I get my car out? Ahead are police; police cars, some identified by writing on their doors as from Pleasanton, twenty some miles away; and demonstrators, filling Telegraph Avenue; around my car the onlookers; and a police line that crosses right in front.
I approach an officer in the line, and the officer happens to be a woman. “There’s my car,” I say, pointing, and ask how could I get it out.
“Go yell at that woman,” she motions to another officer, one behind the line.
This stuns me. “Did you say ‘yell’?” I ask quizzically.
“Yes,” she smiles, her expression just visible through her face guard.
I touch her hand. “I don’t want to yell at her, I want to have a conversation.”
The officer looks abashed and smiles again.
I walk along the lines toward the officer she pointed out, her supervisor I’m sure. I’ve still got the basketball under my arm, I’m in my blue gym sweats, and around my neck is an elegant green scarf. On my way, I will pass in front of a tall African-American policeman, and as I approach, he stiffens and stands taller. Is he readying himself for an attack? I wonder if I can take him, and how would I do that? It’s an automatic response, and I don’t change my stride or alter my composure as I pass him. It’s only a single second, and in the same second I notice how much bigger he is than I am. And how stupid I’d be to start a fracas.
I point out my car to the supervisor, and we strategize. She tells me I could make a sharp u-turn and drive away from the demonstration. “If those people,” she motions to the onlookers, “will let you.”
Why wouldn’t they? I think, and then speak to the officer. “I’m not obstructing you in any way, am I?”
“Not yet, you aren’t.”
I throw my ball in the car, unwrap the fine green scarf and think, if someone recognizes it they can have it back, of course.
October 13, 14, 15, 2011
What a strange three days in Los Angeles. I’m a photographer, and it started off with a welcome money job, shooting an event sponsored by a big booze company, up in the hills of Bel Air. To drive into Bel Air is to enter a crazy fairyland where the air is full of money, and you’re intensely aware of how much your car cost. The events were lavishly catered lunches and dinners, with chefs, sommeliers, restaurateurs, distributors and food and wine journalists, all wined and dined in style in a huge mansion. One event even featured a suckling pig roasted on a spit. The clients were very nice, everyone was nice, but it was a different world from my usual one, where it seems like everyone is struggling financially. In short, it felt decadent, fiddling while Rome burns. The booze they were promoting? It’s $250 a bottle. The streets of Bel Air are nearly always deserted, except for landscaping trucks zooming by at alarming speed. All the landscape guys are Latino, natch.
One night I had to find an alternate route to the mansion, because the low level Latino workers were staging a protest march at the ultra-exclusive Hotel Bel Air, shutting down the main road. It was wildly jarring to round a bucolic, exquisitely landscaped curve and come upon all these chanting, disgruntled workers with signs. It reminded me of that movie “Westworld,” where the robots run amok.
Dinner conversation among the swells included a lot of fun chat about marketing and branding, and devotion to quality in marketing and branding a brand for full cross-platform, targeted penetration of markets, and like that, as well as some pooh-poohing of the Occupy Wall Street movement. To be fair, I doubt these people would dig the Tea Party either. There were also lots of funny visuals of people smelling their drinks, since they are all oenophiles, and grok the grape.
On the way out one night, the valet guys were bringing my car around, and I was waiting there with them, by the side of the road. We all had to jump way back when a brand new BMW with a bunch of teenagers in it blazed by, blasting some shitty Rihanna song at max volume, nearly mowing us down. When you’re non-rich in Bel Air, it’s a bummer because it makes you conscious of how you don’t have that stuff. I wish my soon-to-be teen had her own 2012 BMW, and was an arrogant, Rihanna-loving dumbass, almost running people over in the road. Well…not really. But you know what I mean, maybe.
After, I got lost in a fog that’d rolled in. If you take one wrong turn in Bel Air, and don’t know your way around, you’re doomed to wander the empty streets, going what the fuck, Tiffany Lane, Bellagio Way, where am I? I was in 1% land all the way. But I guess Reagan was right, some of the money had actually trickled down to me.
The next day, my daughter and I went running around on errands. But first we went to Krispy Kreme for doughnuts, on our way to the craft store to look for stuff for her Halloween costume. There were lots of fat kids and fat grown-ups all over the place at the mall. It was an uneasy, modern world moment of consumery squeamishness about sugary, fatty foods. But we were like, fuck it, Krispy Kreme tastes good and we don’t have them very often. A lot of these people looked like they had them 24/7 though. I noticed nearly everyone had a corporate logo or advertisement on their t-shirt. You don’t see that up in Bel Air ever. When I see a suburban Dad with a Harley Davidson t-shirt and a sport team hat, I just go wow, what a tool, he’s made himself into a walking billboard for some corporation. There were tons of little kids just totally jacked on sugar going berserk in logo covered shirts at Krispy Kreme.
So, pigs on a spit, sugar-crazed kids in logo shirts, just for starters. After that, we’d made a deal to go to Occupy Wall Street, the L.A. edition, down at City Hall. That was truly impressive, moving, frustrating and beautiful. Also sad, in a way. Remember that Bad Brains song “I Against I”? It has this great line about how the singer is “all confused about the USA,” and that’s how I felt. What the occupation at City Hall brought home is how the nation is so wrecked right now. It was moving, because there’s no focus on exactly what should change, but people – rational, crashingly normal people – are concerned enough to conjure up a giant tent city out of nothing to try to get their many points across. And also because people get killed in other countries for trying to do this stuff. It had all the leftie clichés: hippies, bad speeches, an all-over-the-place complaint list, even a drum circle, though the drum circle was compelling, as it sounded like people on the march. My 11 year-old daughter found the whole thing fascinating, and wanted to go back and camp out. Most inspiring were the young people being interviewed right and left by various media outlets. They were clearly intelligent, coherent and concerned.
One guy had a pile of cardboard and markers set out in front of his tent, for anyone who wanted to make a sign. There was a pile of them already made, one of them said: “We Are The 99% and we’ve met. You are not alone.” I was really moved by that, and it made me think about the USA, and what it meant in the context of our history, our founding, what’s happening now, and I got really choked up. I still get choked up about that, even writing this, months later. It’s the “we’ve met” and “you are not alone” parts that kill me. They’re loaded: “we’ve met” evokes secret societies, Paul Revere, the founding fathers (a conspiracy, after all). “You are not alone” moves because it resists the crushing command from on high, that, in a capitalist, no-nonsense, stern corporate nation, well, you are on your own, son. So invest wisely, work hard, keep your nose clean, do what you’re told, and if you fuck it up, suffer and die.
Even though I had sunglasses on, my kid caught me, and asked, astonished, “Are you crying?” I was, a little, because I was all confused about the USA.
November 18, 2011
I walked onto the UC Davis campus a few days after the infamous pepper spraying incident there. I wanted to see for myself who these students might be, and what were they now saying, doing and feeling as a consequence of the assaults on their fellow students who were and had been protesting the arrest of other students. Those earlier demonstrators had been protesting the continuation of the escalating cost of higher education, the dimming likelihood of jobs, and the general slide from democracy to oligarchy we have all been experiencing, rather silently, up until now. I wanted to see how events were continuing to unfold, but also to be in some way “part of” what may be a turning point in this battered America. This is what I saw and heard.
Many students with bags and backpacks were streaming out of campus for their Thanksgiving holiday. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. Turning a corner onto the main quadrangle, however, I saw a circle of various tents, perhaps fifty, in the center of which several dozen students were conducting a meeting. Approaching closer and listening for a while, I came to realize that what I was witnessing was a “meeting” of a kind I had not quite experienced before. Although I had participated in the March on Washington in which Martin Luther King gave his “I Have a Dream” address, marched down Fifth Avenue alongside the ILGWU against the war in Viet Nam, was active in many other civil rights, pro-peace and anti-nuclear war movements, what I now saw seemed different.
A woman stood in the center of the circle and by way of bringing things to order, called out, “Mike Check” to which the other students replied; “Mike Check.” She/they did that twice, and continued with the agenda, in the call and response mode. When people spoke, everyone listened. A person from the Health tent described their services. A person from the Media group spoke of the importance of insuring that if anyone was interviewed by any news media, someone from the encampment should record the conversation. The Food Services spokesperson described what they had to offer and what they needed. The Safety committee spokesperson pointed out that if anyone saw someone needing a hand, be sure to promptly do so. Someone said there needs to be some consensus—if it at all possible—of the core objectives of the encampment protest, and urged each person and group to come up with a concise description of that and bring it to the General Assembly, which in turn would discuss and vote on the issues. Others spoke of safety issues in and around flammable tents and wires, others spoke of the importance of maintaining the integrity of the processes being employed, still others gave a calendar of upcoming meetings and events. A general strike was being set for the following week.
People spoke after, calling for a “Mike Check” and all the others assenting to their request by responding, “Mike Check.” No one was derided for their views, no one was hurried to complete their statements although all respected the one or two minute time line.
Walking around the encampment I saw large chalk boards that had, with schedules of meetings, itineraries of guest speakers, rotations of the safety patrol, various crews to clean, feed and take care of the members of the encampment. At the food tent, a woman welcomed a fellow who had just come just came in, “Hungry? Thirsty? We have hot soup, some bread and sandwich fixings, what can I get for you?” At the First Aid tent a fellow there explained to a student how they might care for a superficial wound.
Of the hundred people I saw, most looked like any student one might meet on any college campus. There were about a dozen or so older folks who might have been teachers or townspeople; they seemed to have little to say or role to play. There were some people who clearly were not students and not there for the exact purposes the students were, but they were treated as anyone else and no fuss was made about their obviously different intents and behaviors. There was no hooting, no hollering, no banging of drums, no chanting, no effigies. There were sayings hung from tents and taped to trees, reading more or less, “Invest in public education—not arms,” “This is a Drug Free Zone,” “Education must be made available to all of the people,” and, “All you need is love, love, all you need is love.”
Then Chancellor Katehi walked towards the group accompanied by two kitchen staff pushing tall containers of Thanksgiving dinners: 25 Vegetarian, 50 Turkey. A student aide to her called out, “Mike Check,” the students replied, “Mike Check,” and the aide said that the Chancellor was here, bringing Thanksgiving dinners for everyone so inclined. All the students became quiet. Someone who looked to be in her forties or fifties shouted (who I thought did not look like the other students; being in her forties or fifties and in distinctive dress), “Who paid for this?”
The aide replied, “The Chancellor.”
The same someone shouted, “Well, how about her sharing her salary?”
No response to that either from the rest of the students or from the Chancellor and her aide. A student said, “We don’t need her food, we have plenty ourselves. What we need is refrigeration.”
The aide, who seemed to know this student approached him and said, “We can work that out. Let’s talk.”
A majority of the students walked toward the chancellor and a small circle was formed around her as the students asked her questions. She responded quietly and directly. A question posed by the head of the Media Committee was, “Will she, as Chancellor, take back the encampment’s recommendations to the boards she presides over and to the president of the university system?” Her response was, in effect, that of course she would, but to understand that she is the chancellor of, not only this group or any other group, but of every group, all 35,000 students and 30,000 faculty and staff. Her job was to listen to everyone and to synthesize the entire converging and diverging viewpoints into a coherent policy affecting all stakeholders.
While this conversation was going on, a small group of students, about 5 or 6, again led by the woman who had asked that the Chancellor share her salary with the encampment, began a chant accompanied by hand clapping, “The people, united, will never be defeated.” They drew closer to the small circle around the chancellor, trying to have others join them, and to break up the conversation between the chancellor and students. None did. A person from the commercial media, with mike in hand, sought to interview the chancellor. She denied his request saying, “I’m here to talk with students today,” and continued her conversation with the students. Both parties seemed to listen carefully and speak carefully. No posturing, no shouting, no vilifying; just looking at each other eye to eye and talking straight.
I continued my walk around the tents for another half hour and a young man who I had heard speaking several times at the convocation passed close to me and I said to him, “Good work, I wish you well.” He paused, we looked at each other, and he said, “Thank you. Thank you very much.” He continued on his way, and I continued on my way back home.
During my brief visit, tears welled up several times in my eyes, and I found it difficult to speak. It had been an all too rare experience for me, one that gave me hope in the intelligence of the emerging generation. A hope for our future that I had all but given up on with the corrupted and defective system of government we now have and our incompetent governors. I was impressed at the sophistication of the students’ political strategies, their decorum, their care for one another, their devotion to their process, to open discussion, to openly-arrived-at positions, and the appreciation that they were being severely scrutinized for any excuse to dismiss them and their causes.
I was impressed by the students’ commitment to stay the course of their causes. I believed I had a glimpse at a generation whose technological savvy empowered their evolved strategies, far eclipsing the modest array of skills and tools I used a generation ago. I believed I saw, hoped that I saw, a return to the great experiment at the heart of the founding of this country; to see if indeed such a confederation of diverse people might become a democracy, establish a commonwealth. I had thought that this grand experiment was running out of steam, giving up on our earlier convictions, reverting to an earlier, more primitive form of governance: Oligarchy.
I had seen a small encampment on the grounds of a school, a dozen or so students and the head of the school. They were talking with each other as if their intertwined fate depended upon a new civil outcome. It was only a glimpse, but I had been a believer for so long, I think after I saw and heard what was going on, I thought oh heck, we just might make it after all.
If love is ultimate concern for the well being of the other, well, love might be all you need, for without love…. you know the rest.
November 24, 2011
A half year has now passed since the events at UC Davis, and my earlier reflections. Since that time many hearings by many committees have studied and presented their reports, damning in no uncertain language the incompetency, the fear- induced, untoward, and illegal behaviors of the Chancellor, the Police and other chief administrators of the university. Changes have been promised, some have been accomplished, a few heads have rolled, more heads to come, expensive lawsuits are pending, divisions have deepened across campus, the mess is still to be resolved. Occupy Davis and Wall Street and other streets and squares continue. What might be learned? The emergent generation is watching us, they are savvy, they are impatient for their time to take over, see if they can’t make us whole. Let us hope the transition will be substantial, least costly and soon.
June 12, 2012
November 21, 2011
You’re on most likely the Internet. What does that mean?
Most likely, it means one of a handful of telecommunications providers is middlemanning your information from Point A to Point B. Fire off an email or a tweet, broadcast a livestream or upload video to YouTube, and you’re relying on vast networks of fiber optic cables deep underground and undersea, working with satellites high above, to move your data around the world, and to bring the world to your fingertips.
It’s an infrastructure largely out of sight and mind. AT&T, Level 3, Hurricane Electric, Tata Indicom – to most these are simply invisible magicians performing the act of getting one online and kicking. To many open-source advocates, however, these are a few of the big, dirty names responsible for what they see as the Web’s rapid consolidation. The prospect of an irreparably centralized Internet, a physical Internet in the hands of a shrinking core of so-called Tier 1 transit networks, keeps Isaac Wilder up at night.
Wilder is the 21-year-old co-founder of the Free Network Foundation. Motherboard first caught up with Wilder at Zuccotti Park during the fledgling days of Occupy Wall Street. The Kansas City native seemed to be running on little sleep. He’d gone hoarse from chanting relentlessly over the first three days of a populist movement that would soon sweep the country and the world. But there was an undeniable urgency and excitement when Wilder told us about the efforts of the FNF, a non-profit, peer-to-peer communications initiative striving to liberate the global Internet from corporate and governmental interference.
It all sounded lofty and arcane and way, way over our heads. But Wilder seemed committed enough to his drop in the bucket of global revolution, which comes in the form of nine-foot-tall Freedom Towers that beam out free, secure Wi-Fi to occupied sites and underserviced communities, that we wanted to hear more.
If the argument for mesh networking, a sort of pirate radio Internet scheme that allows people to talk to one another online through no middle man, is that a centralized ‘Net lends itself to the sort of surveillance and censorship that, however futile, strokes the Internet kill switch of science fiction, is there a way to circumvent that system altogether? Is there a way to build a new network from the bottom up? To occupy a fresh Internet outside the existing confines of the Web? Or is that all just the stuff of ideological fantasy?
To check the pulse of the Internet – and to get a feel for what life’s like in the digital nerve center of what’s arguably the first fully Web-fueled social movement in America – Motherboard has been following Wilder and Tyrone Greenfield, communications director for the Free Network Foundation, for the past half year. Through the thick of Occupy marches, in squats and test-lab offices, on rooftops and all places in between, we saw Wilder, Greenfield and the FNF building and perfecting their Towers and their humble, cooperatively owned, physical Internet.
We even broke a story that popped off on the Internet in the immediate wake of the New York Police Department’s Nov. 17 raid on Zuccotti Park. We traveled with Wilder to a Department of Sanitation garage shortly after he was released from a 36-hour stint in jail. He was looking for things lost in the early morning sweep of Occupy’s epicenter: cash, his backpack and laptop, Zuccotti’s Freedom Tower.
What he found next to a wet heap of clothing and tents were a number of laptops splayed in rows. They appeared mangled and snarled. One was even stripped of its back casing. Whether Occupy’s laptops were purposefully destroyed, or merely crunched under the hydraulic mash of a Sanitation garbage truck, remains unclear.
To be sure, after the incident we contacted the NYPD, who forwarded us to Sanitation. Sanitation was tasked with hauling away all the abandoned property from Zuccotti to an off-site garage, where demonstrators were later allowed to rummage for their belongings. A Sanitation representative told Motherboard there had been no directive to destroy property, but that he wasn’t surprised to hear that some items, including laptops, had maybe been mishandled or misplaced.
In the end, what we came up with is a short documentary called Free the Network. It’s a story about big dreams and cloudy missions, about complex affiliations and what happens when a DIY hack-tech movement confronts the force of the state.
But beyond that, it’s a story about the incredibly high stakes of living networked in today’s world. We all have skin in this game. Remember these things.