Occupy LA

I'm pretty exhausted, so excuse the shit writing.

Yesterday I went down to Occupy LA, and marched with them from Pershing Square to City Hall. I went to show support, although I'm still nursing a (un)healthy skepticism about the movement. I think movement, at a point of stalemate, is good. It has to be. But this 'leaderless' movement quickly needs to get motivated in a similar manner to the unprecedented grassroots support for Obama's campaign in 2008. Like that campaign, there's going to be morons, assholes and pricks on our side. There will be the cool kids, who like the drama and the arrests, but scorn the boring shit (ever canvassed? It will kill your soul). There'll also be the ones with passion and drive and fire and intelligence, who truly believe that this movement can evolve to make a difference. Put me with them, please, I'd like to learn.

In the meantime, I read one of the recent facebook status updates of the protestor who got maced by NYPD. This is what Damian Crisp wrote:

Last weekend I was peppersprayed by the nypd on a sidewalk while protesting. Yesterday I was part of a group nearly pushed off the Brooklyn Bridge because of the violent crowd control tactics of the nypd. I was surrounded by high level officers in white shirts who are beyond prosecution and enact the will of new york's most powerful and wealthiest citizen, Mayor Bloomberg. I was handcuffed for 6 hours, then detained in a small cell with eight people four more hours, given stale bread and a cup of water. A vocal writer and critic of corporations, the nypd, my name and face became known to the nypd after I was peppersprayed and of course I was the last person released. Other protesters were released ten at a time until they got down to myself and two others in my cell. One guy was released... the another... then I waited until I was finally given what amounts to a traffic ticket and released. I was alone with a precinct full of cops at 3 in the morning. These attacks are not a diversion from the cause. They are instances of a power structure revealling its disregard of our human rights.

I do not like cops on a power trip. Cops are assholes at the best of times. But so are regular people. And surely this demonstration, like the Obama campaign, is meant to be about erasing divisions and joining together? Are cops excluded from 'the 99%'? I'd say they epitomize what it is to be an average American: they're doing a shitty job for a boss they probably hate, and getting massive contempt from everyone around them for having to suck it up in order to pay their mortgage. If they were better people, surely they'd have a better job. C'mon kids, we know America doesn't work like that.

While we're at it, Bloomberg - yes, another rich, (ex)Republican asshole - but he does support abortion rights and same sex marriage, and oppose the death penalty. His stance on immigration is realistic - "We're not going to deport 12 million people, so let's give them permanent resident status". He has tried to get through a number of measures to protect the environment, and been defeated several times. Bloomberg's big problem is his support of the Patriot Act and Homeland Security - and the fact he's a mega-rich (ex) Republican. This hating on mega-rich people, by upper-middle class rich people - it's kind of annoying. A woman at the march said yesterday, "I like it when they say 'Tax the super-rich', but when they say, 'Tax the rich' - that's kind of everyone I know'". Hello Los Angeles! Welcome to the throng, and thanks for your honesty! The cities in which the people are mobilizing - they're rich, liberal hubs. It's rich against mega rich, purporting to care about the poor and the "working poor", which have replaced the middle class. I massively oppose the corporations and big business - but let's be honest about ourselves, hey? Nothing wrong with being rich, if honestly earned, so don't lets start having rich people walk around in rags, hiding their PPO Blue Shield Health Insurance cards for fear of reprisal...

Also - hell, I do not like cops. I hate authority figures in general. But if they're confronted with 600 of you sitting in the middle of the Brooklyn Bridge, causing chaos to traffic and bystanders - they're going to take action. That's why you all sat down. You sat down in order to provoke the cops into making arrests, in order to gain more publicity for the movement. To then slag the cops off for doing exactly what you wanted them to do, seems more than a little disingenuous and ungrateful. The mace - no, that was idiotic, brutal and pointless. The cop who did that is a schmuck, a moron, and needs his bottom smacked. But the arrests? Come on, kids. Own it.

I'm still not sure how I feel about the mass Brooklyn Bridge arrests - I mean, in relation to its effectiveness as a form of protest. I can't get arrested or I'll get deported, which scuppers my First Amendment rights (or do only citizens get them?). So I always have to be super careful in protests. Of course the point of protest is that your very existence becomes an act of quiet rebellion - but despite being the most angry person I know, (I accept paypal if you'd like to contribute to the anger management course I should be on) I can't help thinking that Gandhi got it right with satyagraha (mass civil disobedience) - and its accompanying philosophy, ahimsa (non-violence).

Brooklyn Bridge was simple provocation. I think there's a time and a place to take this protest from marches and occupations, to direct action, to the more 'fingers up' approach of deliberately stepping into the middle of the road as an invitation to be arrested and manhandled - but is it now? When they haven't clarified their aims, protestors are still stumbling to articulate, Trade Unions and uniforms are starting to join, the movement is growing and changing? I suppose if the arrests get more supporters and increase its diversity, then it can't fail to be a good thing - although ironically, sitting in the middle of the Bridge was itself against direct orders from the 'leaders' of this leaderless movement, which might want to get protestors thinking about what the definition of democracy is. However, I was already proved wrong by dismissing the protestors as annoying white, anti-capitalist, over-educated teens - actually, maybe I wasn't - but they did quickly evolve into something else. Thanks annoying, white, over-educated teens. I hope the movement evolves again, and starts to agree on its aims.

I turned up at the LA occupation with my friend Donovan, who's a very Liberal schoolteacher, in that Liberal "I'm concerned about world affairs and the economy - I regularly tut about them," way, which is probably most people's general attitude. He, like me, felt slightly uncomfortable with the middle class nature of the protest and its definitive lack of aim - we passed, at one point, a homeless bum sleeping with a handwritten sign next to him, "It's OK. Continue shopping", while the march to City Hall led us passed a bunch of Asian and Hispanic store-owners touting cheap plastic crap. It made me starkly aware that this protest is not yet representative of the 99% - but it could be, if it grows into something more than light civil disobedience and becomes mobilized into a political force that speaks for the people and demands government attention.

About 1,500 people showed up to the LA march, and 328 pitched their tents for the first time last night. No arrests, it all went smoothly, a local councilman I spoke to, Richard Alarcón, has been liaising with the LAPD to ensure the protestors could exercise their freedom of speech, and pitch their tents, without arrests. Although if Saturday is any indication, maybe he shouldn't have bothered and everyone should have pitched their tents in the middle of Spring Street to get a bit more press. I sent my report off to The Guardian, and said I'd take them some food this week after I get paid. Next week I'll pitch my tent for a few days.

I wish I didn't have the kind of mind that examines everything minutely. To be a good protestor you either have to be an excitable sheep: not think too deep and just follow the herd, or be truly, wholeheartedly passionate, realistic and educated about the issues. When I worked for Obama I was passionate and realistic, and I became more knowledgeable, and learned from everyone around me - which got me through truly mind-numbing tasks like endless canvassing, and living off KFC for six weeks, with 0 dollars in my bank account (I survived off blog donations - thanks guys!). I'm not truly, wholeheartedly passionate yet about this protest, because there's no leadership, and it annoys me when The Guardian pops up with a sweet, well written, but patronizing Op-Ed from a sexy Hollywood actor. There needs to be some leadership (Yes, I am aware that's not the point) - because right now it's not enough for me to be passionate about the message, which I am. I need to know that passion is going to be utilized in an effective way for real, true change, not just arrests, bitching about the cops, and repeating discontent without knowing what to ask for.

I've been working with my old Obama group on this. Unlike most people I know, I haven't lost faith in Obama, and people who don't understand the separation of power and how that affects Presidential rule need to go back to fifth grade. We're coming up with ways to help mobilize, train and educate the LA protestors into using local action to gain political traction and make demands which will affect the bigger picture, using all the crap we learned working on '08 - dealing with the assholes on your own side is a big, big part of this. Yes, I count myself an asshole.

Interestingly, after having a day of protests and seeing all the gaps and flaws in the movement, and identifying ways we, as over-educated, politically-conscious liberals can help, I ended up volunteering at LA Decom that evening, sitting next to a wonderful, mad, brilliant Persian-American woman in her thirties who had come to this country as a child refugee from Iran. Her uncle, who sponsored her family, was killed by the Iranian mafia (I use the term mafia loosely here) and her entire family then became illegal, because their sponsor had died. Eventually after years battling the system, being denied a college education because of her undocumented status, and having to be a nanny for eight years, this woman was granted resident alien status based upon asylum. She told me about her interview with immigration:

"They sat me in this room, and this woman goes, 'Do you think it will affect your life negatively if we send you back to Iran?' I was like, 'Lady! I'm a bisexual, loud-mouthed, opinionated woman with a nose stud and a tongue ring and a tattoo down my back, who can't speak Farsi and has never worn a headscarf. They're going to kill me if I go back. They'll stone me to death'. And then I start crying, and this woman's like, 'There's no need to get emotional,' and I'm like, 'This is my life! This is my country! I don't know anything or anywhere else. I can be whoever I want to be in America'."

Unless you're gay and in the military, or you're Islamic and your last name is similar to a 911 bomber or... but for the most part, we do have human rights which are enviable here. They're being covertly challenged and tested right now, and the people are responding to that. This country, for all its flaws, for all that it favors the richest 1% over anyone else, for all its healthcare issues, and expensive education, and Guantanamo, and the stupid goddamn Patriot Act - we still believe in it, we still keep believing in it. We have to.

That's why I won't stop criticizing my protestors even thought we're on the same side, because, like them, I believe in my First Amendment rights. But it's also why I will join them, because I believe in the Fourth, and our rights have been violated. I believe in the Fifth - and I wrote an entire screenplay about how Reagan screwed that one up and no one ever notice. I still believe in this country I criticize, fear, love and loathe. I still believe it can be great. I'm British and I love this country more than my own. The first time I said the pledge of allegiance was during the Obama campaign and I stand by it. I was born British and I swear I'll die an American.

A condescending, annoying, patronizing American. I'm going to bed. Here are some crappy twitter pics I took - click on them to get them bigger. If you'd like to help Occupy LA, check out this page and get your butt to City Hall. If you're an ideas person, I guess you should contact me and get together with my old Precinct Obama group and start plotting.