Tornado Alley (PROG)

[arizona1]

#OccupyBoston: the day after+*

I wasn't sure I would make it to #OccupyBoston yesterday. I generally need to take a couple of days away for my health. I had something scheduled at 6pm. I really could have used the rest. I share a house and raise my daughter with my ex. We've been tag-teaming. I stay home when he goes down and he stays home when I go down. Monday, evening, though, our housemate was home, so he joined the line right next to me. It was one of the few times we've been there together. He had obligations last night, as well. We started off the day saying that we couldn't go.

However, as the day wore on, we were both feeling quite strongly that we needed to be there. Over 100 of our friends had been arrested. Many were beaten. An entire camp of belongings had been destroyed. The collective had had an intense experience. We had shared that experience. We needed to reconnect. Independently, we each rescheduled our previous obligations. I had a conversation with our daughter about why it was so important for us to be there. She listened and asked questions and, in the end, agreed that it was important and that she would come with us without complaint.

At 4:45pm, we headed into town. Here is what I experienced:

Before I go into the events of last night, I'd like to reiterate something:

#OccupyBoston is committed to non-violence. We had unanimous commitment to not resisting arrest. We had made that publicly known. Multiple public conversations about that can be seen on film. We had let the police know that we are non-violent and would not physically resist. We may all differ on the right to assemble in a public space or the value of civil disobedience, however, it is unequivocal that the police did not have to use violence to make those arrests or clear the camp. We were not going to leave without being arrested, but we would not resist arrest. Had they tapped someone on the shoulder and said come with me, we would have complied. They never tried anything non-violent. They immediately took a battle stance and charged the line in full riot gear, attacking peaceful, unarmed people. Many people were choked and beaten. I've seen people with knicks and bruises on their faces and very shaken up. Look for the story of one man who was arrested and ended up at the hospital.

So, yes, we were prepared to be arrested. That's what civil disobedience was about. We were not prepared for the unnecessary force. It was unprovoked and uncalled for and quite traumatic.

That was in the early AM hours Tuesday. Now on to Tuesday evening:

I came into the square from the south and was immediately heartened to see it packed with people. There was a performance dance piece happening on the plaza, people reading signs and the information booth was buzzing. Notably, I saw far more people in suits. People coming home from work were more curious, now. I was searching for friends that were missing after all the action last night. I saw one or two, but missed many. So, while my heart was warmed by the increased public interest, it was also shadowed by concern.

I sought out the facilitation working group meeting. It is supposed to start at 5. When I arrived at 5:15, there were 3 people, two of whom were new faces, and no meeting had really begun. I was concerned that our facilitation team members were either still in jail or had needed to take a break and that we'd struggle to put together a plan and a team. We decided to go looking for people. We found a couple and the meeting started sometime after 5:30.

It seemed self-evident to all of us that the evening's topic of discussion was the events of last night. It was the talk of the town, as it were. This General Assembly would be the first time that the larger collective would be gathered together. We also felt that with so many people having been arrested and possibly not present, along with those who may have really needed to rest and not come today, that it was not an appropriate time to make collective decisions. We agreed to propose to the Assembly that tonight's agenda be a facilitated discussion how what people experienced and how they were feeling.

Of course, you can't just have an open mic. Hundreds, maybe even more than a thousand, people were present. We needed some way to hear from a variety of perspectives so that we got a full picture and people who were in different places experiencing different things felt connected the whole, without going ad infinitum and losing the connective purpose because people were floating away.

Our idea was to open an individual stack where we were calling for people with specific perspectives. We wanted to hear from people who had been arrested, people who had not been arrested but had witnessed arrests, people who were holding the line where police interaction did not happen, runners who relayed information to everyone, and from the different working groups: medics, logistics, legal observers, etc. We then added two categories: people who watched it streaming online and people who had not watched it, but had heard about it and were now here.

We discussed more details about how to facilitate this and how to be open to input from the Assembly about how to proceed. Part of this was stressful for some of us.We were all exhausted and each had our own heightened emotional states. One of the ongoing struggles with facilitation planning is that it to do it well really takes at last two hours. As a group, we must stay tuned to the general vibe of the collective and current news. We have a bit of a template agenda, but we have to adjust it as needed. Some nights, the template is thrown out the window completely, which then requires a lot of process to build an agenda, figure out how to present that plan to the Assembly, and have a backup idea if the Assembly doesn't consent. Often, we're short on time. More often we struggle with something else.

We need our facilitation group to grow. It takes a team of at least ten to conduct a General Assembly. Ideally, that team has different faces, so that the collective doesn't start to see individuals as having inordinate power or being in a leadership position. To rotate people well, it would be great to have a working group with 40 people. They might not all be there every day, but it would be a good pool to ensure you always had a full team and that fresh faces were in front of the Assembly. Right now, we have about 15, I'd say. So, we're constantly inviting people to join the working group. We're so happy when we see new faces. However, what often happens is that we see new faces or people join the planning meeting just 30 or even 15 minutes before the meeting is to begin. Often, they have come because they are enthusiastic and have ideas. But, at that point in the meeting, we are past the idea stage. We're working on executing a plan we've already been through a consensus process to develop. I struggle to manage the stress it generates in me when someone arrives last minute and says, "I'd like to propose...." Particularly when it's something that is vastly different from anything we've ever done, which would require training all the facilitators, etc. I get upset with myself for not figuring out a way to ensure that th new person feels welcome while also asserting that the timing for their idea is wrong.

There was some of this tension in the meeting last night. Of all days, given what had happened the night before, we were managing the need to keep some familiar structure while adjusting the standard GA agenda to process. We weren't in a space to entertain completely new processes for the collective. I'm certain that the ideas brought to the table will be wonderful to consider at another time, but we simply didn't have the emotional space for it last night. I hope we didn't leave people feeling unwelcome.

We did come up with a plan. We gave ourselves some time for each of us to prepare ourselves. Fifteen minutes, then we would propose our plan and see if we could facilitate the Assembly such that the movement was served well. We were nervous. (That seems to be the case, often.)

As we headed back into the square where the GA's are held, I had a moment of panic. The media team had set up the mics and people had grabbed them and had begun to speak. I really don't know how that got interrupted, because by the time I reached the staging area, the microphone had been cleared and one of our team was announcing that the GA would begin soon. I looked around and I couldn't believe how many people were there. As might be expected, the police treatment of us the night before had garnered us more support. It's something you know can happen, still when you're there and it's real, it's a powerful feeling of relief. There is strength in numbers, so when more people arrive, your safety net has grown. Every new person there knew what had happened. They knew that we were risking ourselves. The vast majority of them had come in support and willingness to do the same. I felt my safety net grow so much stronger.

It probably won't surprise you to learn that it take any twisting of arms of gnashing of teeth to reach consensus on having the GA be about processing what had happened. What the collective added to that was to also discuss what comes next.

We heard from several people who had been arrested. Their testimony was powerful. One person was able to describe the feeling of having men "the size of Green Bay Packer linebackers" charge him and how overwhelming it was. He was a veteran of the Iraq War. He spoke of the fear and confusion, as his glasses were knocked off. He gave a touching shout out to the policeman who is often on duty at the square, because that policeman found his glasses and later brought them to him. He was very grateful.

Another veteran came up and spoke of a similar experience, but also of standing next to a female vet who is smaller than the men and how difficult it was to watch how she was treated. He was incensed that not only was she treated quite roughly, physically, she got different legal treatment, with no explanation for why. While all the male vets had their charges dropped, hers were not. He was right next to her and knows that she did nothing differently from him and he was upset that she got processed differently. He had her standing by his side and offered her some of his time to speak, but she opted not to. She stood draped under his arm with a warm smile for him. Seeing the two of them, vets from different wars, standing up together was moving. Perhaps one of the most powerful moments of the evening, for me, came when he said this, "We came here to serve and protect you. We offered to stand between you and the police and we did. We got roughed up, but we are proud to stand with you. We will be there for you the next time, too!" (I'm paraphrasing with the best my memory can do. Forgive me.) There was a roar from the crowd.

Two other arrestees spoke. They had been held for 13 hours in a cold hard cell, packed in with at least 20 other people and an open latrine (which apparently went un-flushed for a while.) Both of them expressed their determination. "I'm back and I'll keep coming back!" One had some prepared notes and passionately spoke to the need to stand up to the oppression we face and to fight the system which has handed rule of our lives over to small group of people. (I'll try to find the tape of him and see if I can get better quotes. He's thoughtful and I'm couldn't possibly do his words justice.)

Another arrestee told a harrowing story. He is older. Late 60s, early 70s. He's a small man. He was knocked to the ground and cuffed. The cuffs were too tight. When they went to cut off the cuffs at the police station, they sliced open his wrist. He had to be rushed to the ER in an ambulance, bleeding profusely, to get stitches. He's likely to have a scar which will look like a suicide attempt. He'd had a traumatic experience. Still, he was back. As he told his story, he had an encouraging smile. He looked so frail to me that his courage was that much more inspiring.

One of the themes of the arrestee testimonies was that the legal service from the National Lawyers Guild did not go well. The next story explains why.

We heard from the legal team about the Executive Director of the National Lawyers Guild being arrested. She was monitoring how one of the vets was being treated when she was grabbed. I can't recall which one, but you can see her getting grabbed in one of the videos floating around. She's wearing the lime green hat of the observers. She's clearly monitoring another arrested when she is violently jerked out of the camera view. It is a breach of the Geneva Conventions to hinder, much less arrest, a legal observer. By arresting legal observers, the police are denying the other arrestees a trained witness to the events of their arrest. If you want to get away with bad behavior, this is smart way to do it.

The arrests of legal observers and medics are clear sign that the police and Mayor Menino have no respect for human and civil rights. Medics were arrested as they tried to tend to people. Their medical supplies were destroyed. One medic spoke about his experience and how he had the red crosses on his chest and arms and repeatedly stated that he was medic while being arrested. He closed by saying, "We're back and if you choose to go into tear gas, we'll go there for you."

From those of us who were holding the line where there was no police interaction it was a slightly different emotional story. Two of us spoke and the common strain was the added sense of guilt at knowing that our friends were being hurt and arrested and we were relatively safe. It's a form of survivor's guilt. We didn't want our friends to go through that alone. We wanted them to know we were there. We'd rather be beaten ourselves than have our friends beaten. We were worried about them and feeling useless and helpless to help them. Those feelings were raw for each of us when we spoke.

We also heard from some people who were not there. The were a range of perspectives. One woman had had to leave at 9:30pm and then saw what was happening on the iivestream and felt guilty about not being here. Another expressed dismay that people commenting on the web site had expressed an opinion that we should not go against the Greenway's wished and occupy that site. They were supporters of the movement and were disappointed in us. (I had a strong urge to discuss the realities of a democratic movement which believed both in consensus decision-making and the right to autonomy. Anyone who had been here, would have known that we allow autonomy and then the collective can determine how it wants to respond. So, even though some may have disagreed with the move to the expansion camp, we decided as a group to stand in solidarity. We couldn't be bothered with being "disappointed". We simply had to determine how we would respond. The healthy tension between group think and individual autonomy is an important topic to keep discussing and exploring. I knew, though, that this was not the moment for that. Her perspective was hers to express freely without being debated.)

A third had witnessed some of the action from a distance, but felt that the reporting from the OccupyBoston media team was hyperbolic and that this didn't serve us well. (My internal reaction to this was the same as it has been here: if you weren't in it, you couldn't see everything. Certainly, no one was shot, still it was explosively violent. The people on that line were attacked, not just arrested. More and more, as video is released and legal observers start to speak, this is becoming clearer. I wish that people would stop blaming the victims for being "over reactive" to violence.)

We didn't end up hearing from the working groups. Those who would report were either not back to camp, yet, or were swamped with activity. We did get one last note from the legal team: every arrestee had now been released. Also, we raised far more than enough money for bail. The world had responded upon seeing what had happened to us. The overflow would go to logistics to buy supplies for the camp or put aside for future bail needs.

We finished with testimonials and checked in with the Assembly about breaking out into small groups for a little more sharing. Some people aren't going to be comfortable speaking in front of approximately 1,000 people. Still, they might need to feel heard so that they could reconnect. The Assembly wanted to use this time to also start discussion next steps. I was distracted by someone and missed how we made the decision to use the time for two purposes. I'm of a view that this does not serve us well. Those who are reluctant to speak need a clear space with a clear purpose. Those who weren't interested in discussing the previous night any longer could easily steer their group away from that. It was a done decision, though. After some resistance to even giving it ten minutes, the Assembly did agree to ten. At ten minutes, they asked for ten more. They were very engaged.

I had to leave at this point. I was too tired and was staring to shake strongly. I needed to get my daughter home. So, we left. I left feeling positive and hopeful and inspired.

I wonder when people in power - Mayors, Presidents, Governors, Police Commissioners, etc - will ever learn that you can't quell an uprising by trying to forcibly stop it. You actually generate more energy for it. I did not hear one utterance of "maybe we should stop". Rather, I heard firmer commitment. I saw more people committing. The movement is growing.

We all know that our supposedly democratic system has been hijacked by a ruling class. The courts have told us that money equals speech and corporations are people. The courts can be wrong. When they are it's up to the people to force the other branches of government to address it. That usually only happens via civil disobedience and dramatic acts to get the American people to pay attention, learn and stand in solidarity. Women didn't get the right to vote by demurely working with the powers that be. We didn't get civil rights legislation that way, either. When we know that something is very wrong, we rebel.

Our politicians are sold to the highest bidder. They don't represent us. This has led to severe economic injustice, civil rights abuses and human rights abuses in our name. They are not going to listen to us unless we disrupt the systems which serve their interests and expose their contempt for our rights to democracy, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. This movement is growing. More and more people are hearing the call. I expect more civil disobedience will occur. Those in power can keep trying to silence us, but we will not be silenced. We will not move. I will not be moved. I will not be silenced. I will be back. I will keep going back.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/10/12/1025591/--OccupyBoston:-the-day-after?via=siderec