Occupy Everywhere

Dear Friends,

I’m feeling grumpy these days. I’m grumpy about, among other things, the gross lack of social and economic justice and equality in my nation. This has led me to get involved with the Occupy movement in my hometown. That is the other thing that is making me grumpy.

While pretty much everybody in the group are nice and good hearted folks, as a unit they are remarkably ineffectual. They mainly are going about having meetings about having meetings and instructing newcomers in arcane hand signals that seem like some weird fraternity handshakes perhaps created by mute extraterrestrials. These are used to supposedly facilitate a democratic to-and-fro that winds up a discussion on how to come to consensus about what constitutes a consensus and hence arrives at no consensus except to have another meeting… maybe.

There is often no consensus as to whether or not it was decided to have a meeting, nor where and when it should happen if it was to happen to somehow have a meeting somewhere in space and time. The disassembled, well-meaning folks wiggle their fingers and gesticulate patiently in a manner that would befuddle a native speaker of ASL. There is silence in the room until the formation of a working committee is proposed. Another meeting is called for somewhere, sometime under the Great Arc of Heaven to decide on actually forming such a group. More gesticulations flurry the air, everybody gives up on the issue and agrees to tell each other how nice they are and exchange hugs.

Thus, I am now submitting an action plan to actually get something, one thing, done. If these good people can’t get out of their own way to work toward the stated and simple goal of promoting economic and social justice across the world and here in the U.S.A. I’ll do it on my own initiative with just a little assistance. Only a few folks happy to take a bit of time and small risks are required. A sense of humor and willingness to spend a night in the local lock-up are also essential. The staff at the police station are very accommodating and breakfast from McDonald’s is customarily served at 7AM, prior to the 8AM date in court. Don’t ask me how I know this.

Action Plan # 1: A Fugue in Ten Easy Pieces

• Recruit at least one sympathetic lawyer and one doctor to lend their efforts to the action described below.

• Recruit at least four folks willing to disrupt the local evening newscast that uses our city’s streets as a set to talk about how good business is, how swell the weather is, and how nice our fair city is, while ignoring the folks living on the street just out of the view of the news camera.

• This can be done very simply. We only need to have four or more folks with large, readable signs standing in view of the camera behind the lovely newscaster. As the camera and lights are weighted down by sand bags, they cannot be moved once the location’s telecast has begun. All the camera will be able to see is our protest, our signs and our presence in front of Bank of America (twenty feet away). We needn’t say anything, chant, play bongos, or make any fuss but by simply standing on our own street.

• A lawyer and a doctor should stand aside but able to clearly see, take notes, and record on video the unfolding, silent protest.

• Protesters should be prepared to be asked to move by the news crew. We should remain in place. One designated individual may report to the camera that we are standing on our street, where we pay taxes, and we are only exercising the same rights as the local TV station.

• If the cops are called, we must be prepared to be arrested, as mentioned above. Be polite with the officers. Repeat our statement made to the news crew. If told by an officer that we are being a public nuisance, ask how we can remedy the situation while not sacrificing our 1^st and 4^th Amendment rights to peaceful assembly, free speech, and the freedom from unlawful search and seizure.

• If told by the officers that we may not remain on the sidewalk, state that there is no local ordinance against standing on the sidewalk (factually true). Again, be prepared to be arrested.

• If arrested, be compliant. Thank the officers for their contribution to the cause (as this is being recoded, if not by the news crew by our doctor or attorney). The attorney will follow us to the local station and sort things out, if possible, or stay tuned to the upcoming morning’s court docket where he will represent us. He will also call the local print, television and Internet news outlets, offer the recording, his notes and comments.

• If the evening local news crew has not delivered any news of the event, or even the lovely weather, the producer back at the station will be fuming mad with that crew. If they do tape the protest, that will be all the station has to use to fill the four minute hole in their evening program. Either way, we just took over the biggest broadcast outlet in the region.

• If we do wind up in the clink and have to go to court in the morning, we will have a recording of the entire event, a doctor to report on the physical treatment of the detainees, a well dressed lawyer to argue for our rights… and one irritated judge wondering why his time is being taken up with a few citizens who did nothing but hold up some oak-tag on the street that they actually own. He may be irritated with us. He may be fed up with the cops that should be busy rounding up the kid that sold his own son some pot. Either way, again, we win. We just made the news.

So, who’s with me?

Res Ipsa Loquitor,

S

Plan C: Paisley Jello

Dear Friends,

My lawyer has advised me that he will not represent me in what he judges to be the certain repercussions, the stout fist of The Law falling upon my head and his fragile reputation as an officer of the court, upon my following through on either Plan A or Plan B for the local Occupy movement. The Commonwealth will not abide by dead pigs, dead horses, baloney cannons nor a spew of stinky mortadella juice showing up in the lobby of a prestigious bank; one globally owned tho currently leasing a small patch of property for a tiny office next to the Mayor’s office and up the street from the police station.

Thus, I have come up with Plan C. It’s a good plan, I think.

Ya’see, I have an associate. His name, his code-name, is Wladimir. He is late of Minsk. He has an advanced degree in, um, engineering, from a Soviet-era university where the education was as broad as it was deep and included a minor in “social engineering”. He knows some people who know some people. He also owes me a favor. One of the peoples that Wladimir knows who know some peoples is a fellow that I cannot presently name.

That fellah has access to a Redi-Mix cement truck. It’s a Teamster Union-thing. Anyhow, that fellah that Wladimir knows knows the guy with the cement truck who knows a guy who found about a ton of Jello® brand jello that just sort’a happened to fall off the back of a semi down by the river. The Staties have yet to find the driver, but the accident had been ruled an accident, so it’s all okay. Okay. Well, the missing driver’s wife will have to wait until the corpse is recovered until she gets her insurance check, but it’s all okay. Okay?

Now, Wladimir is a bit of a tinkerer, a serious hobbyist. He’s got this microwave dish in his garage. He made it himself. It’s a lot like the little flying-saucer things that you see on cable or cell phone company towers, but has enough power to roast an elephant with radio waves in about ten-seconds. That is not our purpose in its first “real world” deployment of his device.

No. We will soon fill the Redi-Mix truck with 200 or so gallons of water, dump in a ton of yellow jello powder. Then we will add the secret ingredient! That is the paisley in the pudding. Yes! I’ve got it all figured out.

Down the hall from my tenement apartment is Mad Ray, The Insane Poet. He is brilliant but does not write well. His dyskinetic scrawls are indecipherable, but this apparent affliction makes him the perfect man for the task at hand. You see, his jittery squiggling of a pair of scissors, while a potential risk to his trembling digits, is ideally suited to cutting the colorful swirls and giggling ameboid lines from the lovely drapes we will rip from his beautifully adorned windows.The wobbly serrations will perfectly complement the generous folly of the pattern, as well as the iridescent goop in which the fabric will be embedded. Even better, Mad Ray will do this garment work at no cost, in the name of ART! All he requires are some real scissors (not his little plastic ones) and plenty of beer and cigarettes.

Once the millinery effort is complete, we are off in the cement truck to the side of the river, just out of site of the highway and the marina. There is a fire hydrant right up the hill. I’ll take my trusty Moon Wrench and attach the fire hose borrowed from the apartment building. As the giant, rotating cylinder gyres and fills with water, we’ll dump the heady compost of paisley and approximately one hundred pounds of jello mix into the beast. Once mixed, it is time to fire up the portable generator that somehow disappeared from the hardware store up the road and light up that microwave to boil the water.

Now, this might be the only dangerous part of the enterprise. Microwaves do not like metal. Great bolts of lethal electrical energy and howling tongues of plasma may erupt about the vehicle. There is diesel fuel in its tanks. Thus, as a precaution, I will be at a safe remove as Wladimir hits the switch. If things should go horribly awry at least his boiling, exploding flesh will be contained in the rubber suit obtained from the local exterminator’s shop.

I am, however, an optimist by nature. I believe that Plan C is a good plan. Wladimir will pilot the commandeered cement beast laden with a then well congealed load of paisley jello from the river’s edge and into town. In front of the bank, an “accident” will occur. About a ton of yellow gunk laced with the ephemeral proceeds of a crazy person’s two days and nights with a dangerous tool and the supremely coordinated efforts of several criminals and a right-thinking citizen will be disgorged during a slight parking mishap on Main Street. A terrified driver, mysteriously clad in a rubber suit and lugging a fire extinguisher will be seen fleeing the scene as pedestrians recoil in horror and confusion. I will be nowhere nearby.

The bank will closed for quite a spell as police and haz-mat men in bunny suits from the Department of Homeland Security argue with the good folks from the EPA and the local DPW as to what this mess actually is and what might be done about the radiant excrescence that is slowly melting into confetti as its liquid corpulence flows into the city’s sewage system.

Yes. I think that Plan C is a good plan. It's much better than Plans A and B. Nobody gets killed… well, probably. Are you with me, my fellow patriots?


Kludge Ergo Foo,

S

Plan B

Dear Friends,

I’ve been getting a bit of feedback on my previous post. Most of the local Occupy folks no longer talk to me. They regard me with glowering stares and sullen silence. My girlfriend, a strict vegetarian, has moved out of the apartment. She regards the killing of farm raised animals as a heathen practice and will have no more to do with me following my modest proposal that would involve their gun-shot demise at the hands of a thuggish idiot startled into a panic by their mere presence in the small lobby of a bank on Main Street.

Thus, here I am in a now unfurnished apartment. She did leave Sophie, the cat, and tins of cat food. It smells very poorly, but Sophie and I enjoy it at our meals together. It is nutritious, I think, and with enough cinnamon and sugar, it does go down without provoking a gag reflex. Sophie has shown me how to eat right from the can, as my girlfriend took all of her fine silverware before slamming the door behind her.

So, tummy full of nasty gravy soaked meal and unspecified meats and gristle, I am rethinking my approach to making a statement at the bank. There is a possible solution, an alternative to sending pre-deceased critters into a confrontation with an armed maniac. See, there’s a fire hydrant in front of that bank and an invention called Baloney (Bologna, if you prefer).

Now, for forty-seven dollars and fifteen cents (plus shipping) I can get my hands on a Grainger Adjustable Moon Wrench, suitable for opening any hydrant. A trip to the hardware store will provide me with the PVC pipe and fittings to affix it to the fire hose procured down the hall from my apartment. A fat tube of baloney will only cost about ten dollars. But, at minimal cost, there you have a baloney cannon!

Of course, firing the baloney through the window of the bank will require some legal risk to myself, along with the theft of public property, damages to private property, and perhaps the damage to a customer’s skull should that skull be in the trajectory of the hurling meat. That would be regrettable and, thus, I have a Plan B. Let’s say we commandeer a book binder’s press. I know where to get my hands on an old rig that is no longer in use. It’s in the basement of a neighborhood bar that long ago housed a printing shop. Let’s make some baloney juice!

With proper squeezing, a fulsom tube of commercial baloney will yield quite a bit of juice. Baloney is mainly made of water, salt, and spices; there’s really not much else but fur, bones, gristle, insect parts and fat in it. So, we got about a gallon of baloney juice from the enterprise. Yet, it occurs to me that baloney juice is not sufficiently stinky to do the job intended. Let’s try salami or, better yet, mortadella! Mortadella has the right water and fat content. It’s a fine Italian cold cut from which to ring a truly horrible herb saturated goo from. I’m surprised that our military has yet to exploit the properties of mortadella sludge in the field of modern warfare.

Anyhow, all you have to do is fill a very large plastic container with the proceeds of the Italian cold cut squeezing and load it in the back of a van. I know where to steal a forklift to do the job. That container will be fitted with couplings to attach Fire Hose-A to the hydrant, and Fire Hose-B. The nozzle of Fire Hose-B will be placed in the mail slot by the front door of the bank from whence it will gush the foul excrescence at force into the lobby. Nobody will be hurt. The creep with the gun will be running from his post to alert the pudgy little manager to the horrible situation. Customers will flee whilst gagging on the aromatic fumes and rising, soupy tide of shattered animal parts. I and my unnamed confederate will hasten to abscond as panic and confusion take the day!

Yeah. That’s the plan. What do you think?

Res Ipsa Loquitor,

S

Remember Vaclav Havel

R.I.P. Vaclav Havel

Dear Friends,

This will take me a little stem winding to get to the point. That regards the loss of a real Man, a fellow who did put a dent in the little corner of the universe that we humans inhabit. He actually made our little pale blue dot a better place.

Anyhow, last night was the typical deal with local Occupy Noho folks in General Assembly politely waiting their turn to wiggle their fingers and then tell others in the room how nice they are. In other words, not much was accomplished other than ignoring practical business or taking a single action. But, on the upside, most agreed that we are very nice people.

Meanwhile, Vaclav Havel died as our group was meeting to decide to do nothing. I doubt that many in our group nor the American public know many of the details of the two peaceful revolutions that he pulled off in what is now the Czech Republic and Slovakia. They likely know nothing of his methods and the action on the street that he provoked with nothing more than will and words. The man took down an empire ruled by a man with atom bombs. He prepared himself to do so by first studying history and looking unflinchingly at present reality as it is. Then he reported on what he saw as best he could during fifteen years behind bars. Yeah. Havel was a Man.

He was a poet and philosopher, then a reluctant leader of his fellows as the first President of the nations that he freed from tyranny. The only bombs he ever lobbed in the revolutions that he fomented were made of syllables. The shrapnel that rained down on his tormentors heads was reason. His smile, wit and generosity of spirit were his only armor in his battle.

So, as folks settle back to their comfy seats in a warm house with a safe roof over their heads, when you dare talk politics with your neighbors next door or on the 'Net, think about what this guy, Havel, dared to do and pulled off, and study how he did it. Study a little recent history. Then think and feel. If you are so inclined, even get yourself arrested for the crime of thinking and speaking on your own streets in your own country.

Res Ipsa Loquitor,

S

This Is Not What Democracy Looks Like…

Dear Friends,

Is this what democracy looks like? This man with the gun standing on Main Street has been hired by Bank of America to intimidate possible protesters seeking to occupy their own nation and speak their minds with good heart and in a peaceful manner. He wears a pistol, dresses in black and tucks his pant's legs into his jack boots in the fashion of a Nazi trooper. Around his waist is a holster and a belt designed to hold hand grenades. You can't see his eyes behind the shades he wears even after the sun has set. He is a thug who sells his services to a bank that seems to feel that it needs protection from its own customers.

Photo by S. Solomon, 10/22/2011

So, here on the streets of my peaceable little city is an armed brute who apparently can't get a job with even the most corrupt police department in our supposedly free nation. He lurks in the shadow by the bank's door and acknowledges a polite greeting by turning his back to his fellow citizens while fondling his pistol. As far as I can discern, he is a sick, angry creep who does not belong in any situation that involves possible armed force.

Res Ipsa Loquitor,

S

A Shot in the Dark…

Dear Friends,

This shot pretty much tells the story from the Occupy America activity on the Main Street of my hometown. Is it madness, righteous anger or joy that we are seeing?

Shot w/iPhone 4 by S. Solomon

Res Ipsa Loquitor,

S

Occupy American #3: Broke Down Palace…

Dear Friends,

At the behest of Wall Street, international banks and insurance companies, the city of Denver was shut down today. Nobody was permitted to leave nor enter the city via major highways, highways that We The People own, that We The People paid for. The rational for the lock down of a major American city was that protesters were interfering with commerce. Today's action was one of a police state.

Our democracy has become a broke down palace. It is now a sham. I think I'll go out and see if I can get myself arrested for being a citizen this afternoon. I know how to do that. All I have to do is stand in front of a bank on Main Street and take pictures of other citizens with signs protesting the ruin of our economy and general betrayal of obligations by our so-called leaders in government and business.

Res Ipsa Loquitor,

S

Utterly Pathetic: Occupy America #2

Dear Friends,

Below is a photograph that well illustrates how utterly pathetic things have become on our nation's streets. Here is a man armed with a gun in broad daylight. What is this? Are we back to the days of the wild west? No, this fellow has been hired to defend The Bank of America against its own customers in 21st Century America. He stands proudly on guard before a tide of righteous ire at the financial and business sector. This has not much been seen but for occasional intervals every few decades in times of exceptional distress.

Back during the last depression, bankers contracted armed thugs to protect real estate that housed empty vaults. That made a lot of sense to those financiers. The wealthy continued to take home their fine salaries and bonuses rewarding them for the ruination of the world economy. The common man went hungry, their male children were sent to ride the rails to find work, any work. Their wives sold apples, if any were to be found, on the streets along side their daughters selling pencils for a penny outside the bank on Main Street. That empty bank was worth more than Humanity in the estimation of the Titans of Disaster.

So, here we are today. It's just another day like any other day, lo many years ago. We are being greeted on the streets that we, The People, own. Our gracious host is a jack-booted bullet head goon with a gun.

The most pathetic aspect of this situation is that the poor jerk in the photo is likely making barely a living wage as he is employed to guard safe fortunes for folks that would not have him in their home, wish not to lend a hand to feed nor clothe his babies, and would let his beloved wife die without medical care. We are living in a time of depravity.

Figure out for yourself how you might occupy America. Think for yourself. You will know what to do. All I can recommend is that you not simply take up space, but occupy America.

Res Ipsa Loquoitor,

S

Occupy America…

Dear Friends,

The big "Occupy Wall Street" hoo-hah has now over-run my own little city, Northampton, MA. This, I believe, is a good thing. I actually do not know what they exactly stand for. I suspect they don't either. But, they are righteously pissed-off and solidly in favor of Democracy, and so am I. So I stand with them.

Res Ipsa Loquitor,

S