First They Ignore You....

My new blog post at Occupy LA

You Just Don't Get It Yet....

But you will.

Here's a blog post I wrote about the misconceptions people are having about the scale of this movement.

My Solidarity Blog (below for link)

It's just after midnight and my head's whirling. I drove up to Topanga in torrential rain, rivers running past me on the PCH, mists rising up off the sea and cloaking my shitty little Ford Escort, blanket-like. I was en-route to CSA California to pick up fruit and vegetable donations from the kind folks up there. CSA, for you folks who don't know (and I had no fucking clue until this morning), stands for Community Sustainable Agriculture, and is basically a bunch of individuals just like you who want to support our local farmers, being pushed out by corporations and increasing land taxes. Those individuals band together to form a collective which shares the risks and benefits of food production. I won't bore you, but here's the wiki explanation. Essentially, it means local people helping local farmers and businesses stay afloat, and providing the community with good, organic produce which is far, far cheaper and tastier than the shiny, waxed, genetically engineered crap you buy at Ralphs, Trader Joe's and Wholefoods. I'm sorry, but apples just don't have that fucking sheen on them, Wholefoods. They don't. Nor do they cost the price of a small condo. I fucking hate Wholefoods. But I still go there, because it's easy, it's recognizable, it has all my hippy shit in one convenient location. I do, however, frequent farmers markets for all my fresh produce, and after meeting the folks at CSA, I'm now one of their customers.

I loved that early morning rainy drive through Topanga Canyon, my car smelling of apples and oranges and Kale. Los Angeles just rained and rained today like the heavens had had enough, they'd just burst. It felt cathartic, in some way. I got home to my rose-covered cottage in West Hollywood soaked to the bone, tired and happy. I mooched around getting dry with Mr Chips, cooked up some winter soup with parsnips and carrots and beans and sweet potatoes, and then went to meet a fellow screenwriter for coffee at The Grove.

I fucking hate The Grove, and though I love movies and writing them, I hate the screenwriting industry. It was an interesting coffee as this screenwriter professed to be the same way, but it was all we spoke about, and my mind kept drifting back to Topanga and the hippies, Burning Man, and Occupy LA. I was at the March Saturday, and since then have kept up to date by following it closely on Twitter, talking to the organizers and checking in with them, and trying to hustle up donations. I finally got an evening off work, and so scooted over with Chips and boxes of organic goodies about 6pm this evening.

I'm pretty tired, so 'scuse the prose. I'm going for brevity, not style here.

Firstly, it's friendly, it's warm, it's open, and it's full of debate. You walk by - maybe it seems intimidating. A bunch of dirty, wet, unemployed people in tents, holding signs. But look at them, and they're smiling at you. Smile back, hold out your hand, ask them questions. They'll sit you down and answer them, fetch you a cup of coffee, introduce you to people. Sure, there's hardcore activists here - the type who hop from protest to protest, cause to cause. And they're working alongside mothers, fathers, the unemployed, the blue collar worker, the middle class dude who just valet-parked his Audi down the street. Everyone's here not to press an agenda, a specific cause. They're here to express their discontent, and to come together to form a conscious movement which simply expresses the desire for change. They want America to change: not to rewrite the constitution, oust the President. Nothing crazy like that. They want America to be the land it was always promised to be: the land of the free, with liberty and justice for all. What is their main complaint? Their main complaint is that corporations - the 1% - have too much power. They wield political power, as recently proven beyond doubt with Citizens United. They wield global power, as demonstrated with the absolute autonomy of the Federal Reserve and the repercussions of this un-audited institution upon the world's economy. Their CEO's advise the President and affect policy decisions. And when they gamble with our money and they lose, they are given more, while we lose homes, and jobs, and our health, and self-respect. And nothing changes even when this comes to light. No one audits or shuts down the Federal Reserve. The CEO's right at the top continue to reap massive salaries and bonuses. They still advise the President.

Occupy Wall Street, and by extension, LA is not 'anti' capitalist, 'anti' globalization, 'anti' government. It's a movement, it's a voice, and that voice is saying 'this is no longer good enough. We demand representation. We demand a change. We demand that this system where massive corporations wield unlimited political, social and economic power - end'.

This is not a march, nor is it a protest, nor is it a mere 'occupation'. What I scorned a few weeks ago as a few trustafarians in a park, what I saw on Saturday, what I've read on twitter and facebook, seen blogged about on liberal media (fucking hate The Guardian) - has evolved rapidly into becoming a truly representative, democratic movement. Outside City Hall has become a camp for Revolutionaries, and I mean that not in the lefty, hemp-wearing, kombucha-swigging, trustafarian blind faith way. I mean Revolutionary in its purest form: as a fundamental change in power. This is the people claiming back their power and their inviting you to join in. There will be the crazies, the nutters and the loonies - and they will be listened to, and their views will be heard by the General Assembly. And as I saw tonight, Mad Vegan who hates meat-eaters will be told politely to deal with them and value her opinions, but not press them on anyone. Crazy group of over-zealous anarchists who hate the LAPD and decided to start a facebook rumor suggesting they'd used violence and pepper spray, will be told this will not be tolerated in a democratic group. Cop-hater will attack me on twitter because I tweeted that LAPD have been great to Occupy LA - as if their kindness somehow undermines or condones the police brutality in New York. This is not the case. We report as we find, and so far, LAPD and the City Council have been exceptionally well behaved, communicative, even supportive and open with us. Boundaries are clearly enforced only with the agreement of the group. Finances are completely transparent, and open for anyone to see. The group is growing everyday.

It's nearly 2am and I need to sleep - have a big day rewriting tomorrow. After tonight's General Assembly I sat and talked for a long time with a Farmer from Northern California. We spoke about pretty much everything under the sun. I told him my reservations about the movement, and he made me feel better by saying faith shouldn't be blind, I should be realistic, and not blindly follow. Mr Organic Farmer was the first person I'd spoken to since Burning Man who made sense to me, and then it struck me, this whole set up was like Burning Man without the art, the drugs, the desert and the costumes. It was Burning Man being put to the test: self-reliance to the core. Those two years I was dying and unemployed, god how I would have loved to have had Occupy LA to keep me alive, to have given me hope and solidarity, to have made me feel I wasn't alone.

Mr Chips, by now. was fast asleep in my arms, and I was exhausted and buzzing and happy, and Mr Farmer had to work, and I had to drive home.

I'm crawling into bed barely sentient, so I'm posting this without editing. But I will be at the Occupation every single day I can manage (bar this weekend, when I'm being sent to the desert to work). OK, so I'm going to Joshua Tree Music Festival, but it is for work!

I have a few plans on how to work with Occupy LA to get more people joining from what I think are under-represented classes: the employed, solvent, affluent, educated 10% with decent jobs and cars, and the very fucking poor and uneducated, so please join me over here where I shall be blogging for the duration of the movement, in solidarity with Occupy Wall Street and Occupy LA. I will be updating much more regularly than I normally do as I write about the growth of the movement, and I also plan to interview as many people as possible and tell their stories on the blog in order to show all the cynical fuckers out there who (like me) think this ain't for them, that they're wrong. This is for you. It's your movement. Join it. Walk up, don't think about appearances, put out your hand, and ask questions. Come down to Occupy LA and hell, I'll even buy you a cup of coffee. Or a kombucha.

(For the final time, I didn't edit this. I'm tired. I apologize for shit writing)

Questions Answered

People keep asking me why I don't write the blog so much these days. There are numerous reasons for this.

1. I now get paid to write, so I write all day long. I wake up at 6am every morning, drive out to Santa Monica to take a yoga class with Jerome, take Chips hiking up Runyon Canyon for an hour, and by midday I'm at my desk, ready for a stretch of writing which will usually end at 10pm. I'm working on a mix of projects: some are literally soul-sucking money projects - but even those are pretty interesting. Some are passion projects, and they're amazing. I earn money through screenwriting, but I keep dabbling in journalism as well as I enjoy it. My first love is, and always will be, prose. I don't know when I'll have time to write the second book. Having said that, two unfinished manuscripts, both 60k words each, are idling on my desktop, waiting for attention right now.

2. Now I get paid to write, I have more to lose. I bitch like hell about producers in private, but on here I can't get away with it so much. I look forward to the day when I can unleash my fury back upon the blogosphere again - probably after my first Oscar win.

3. From about September 2008 until January 2011, I made barely a cent and was heavily in debt. The recession hit me hard. I survived by going into human hibernation mode: I shut down pretty much everything, including my opinions. I didn't even write for a year after Obama got elected. The last few years have been the hardest of my entire existence, and I'm still, curiously, poking my soul, and examining it to see what I make of it all. It wasn't right to write about it then. It was too raw and real.

4. I got sick of letting people have a direct route into my head. For some reason I'm far more socially eloquent in person than I am on the page. This translates as: far better at concealing what I think or feel. I liked having my privacy back, so I kept stuff in. I don't really like people knowing what I think or feel. Oddly enough, it creeps me out when people - strangers - talk about the book. It creeps me out when boyfriends pretend it doesn't exist, but everyone else has to pretend it doesn't exist, aside from boyfriends. Huh?! I prefer the book to exist independently of me, and for us all to pretend it has nothing to do with me.

5. When I write in the first person, I'm as subtle as a sledgehammer, and I offend people, and it got quite exhausting - being a pariah. The last few years I didn't really exist, simply because I didn't write about me. It was peaceful. I'm not sure why I started writing this thing again. Writing the first draft of a screenplay is basically like hosting a four week party in your head, full of pretty obnoxious people having the same conversation over and over in slightly varying forms. So perhaps I'm tired of facilitating all these other voices, some of whom I love, some I loathe.

6. Another question I get asked is: if you write so many screenplays, how come you don't have IMDB credits? - I started writing screenplays in 2008. As in, I wrote a spec script, it got picked up by an agent, and then she sent my script around, and organized meetings, and for a year, I was unemployed but "taking meetings". After a year, people started asking me to do stuff - write treatments, come up with ideas, pitch them - a lot of it unpaid. And in the second year, I did two scripts on commission, and I got paid. One sucked - because the producers were crap. The second one was brilliant, even though the producers were crap. Now - I work with awesome producers, and I've lost count of how many scripts I've written, and I can't tell if they're crap or not. All my scripts are lounging around 'in development', which means a production company is in the middle of the arduous process of getting funding and a director / cast attached. Sometimes this can happen quickly, sometimes slowly, sometimes not at all. As a writer you have to just brutally detach from the process and the script. Apart from with those one or two scripts you really, really love, and those you can't ever forget. I have one of those scripts written, and two on the boil right now. It's the best feeling ever. Although you're always dependent on someone to channel your words: a publisher, an editor, a press, a magazine - ultimately, a reader. If all else fails - hell, you can find a reader someplace. But screenplays - you really are fucked if no one makes your movie. Screenplays need a director, a producer, a cast, money, love - they need to have everyone converge on the same point, with the same vision, the same aim. Even if it gets made, a shit director will make a great script suck.

For an opinionated prose writer, adopting out your kids to strangers is pretty terrifying. Life is interesting these days.

Detachment. The key to all life's problems. Sigh.

Back to work....

They Took The Bridge

This is interesting. It appears a very small number "took the bridge" - and then a bunch more followed, without being stopped by cops. There's claims police led them - this may be true. If there was congestion, and the cops are getting yelled at, I can completely imagine a couple of people walked on the bridge, and then the cops just allowing the rest through so they could arrest them. I think the cops have a pretty hard job in this scenario though - I can't imagine it's much fun being there and putting up with the inevitable abuse. It seems more likely a few people took the bridge either to piss off cops, or to make a statement, or maybe even because they were getting crushed. It's pretty ridiculous to arrest people for standing on a bridge - but rules are rules, and to be honest, it's increased media coverage no end, so whether the cops, or the protestors are responsible - does it matter? I just hope this doesn't descend into an LA riots type scenario: hatred between cops and protestors. I think the cops should send men in uniform to join the march - I heard a rumor some military guys intended to do that. Anyway. Back to screenplay.

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.