the intentional camp/us

there is talk that swilled around the general assembly last night, in regards to the vitality or necessity of the camp... oh it made my heart flutter, and in my only attempt to address the issue one on one with a critic, i failed.

he did not want to listen.
oh listening ... once we have that tool down, we will speak with clarity, together.
but this post is NOT about listening.

this post is about why we are living in tents in the middle of winter ... and why occupy MUST continue to live in this manner. i am not saying it is the ONLY thing we must do ... but it is one of the most challenging!

have you stopped to wonder WHY so much time and effort is going into shutting down the intentional communities of wall street?
because, if we can succeed at this stage, to live and work together, to learn to listen to each other and solve our issues collectively, we have learned to dismantle the system.
we WIN.
it is the biggest threat there is.

have you stopped to wonder WHY so many people think that this aspect of occupy is dangerous or trivial?
because they do NOT understand it ...
because starting at the bottom and building our way up is MESSY. because horizontal or direct democracy is a SLOW and often messy process ... because the truth is often brutal and difficult to face.

those who come and go

whether you physically occupy a camp, or no, it is irrelevant!!

those who come and go, are VITAL members of the collective "we" of the occupy movement!!!

you are the foot "soldiers" (hate that the most descriptive language i can employ is militaristic).

you are the ones who whisper over fences to your neighbors, in community groups to your friends, in households over meals.

you are the ones who sway minds and hearts of family and community members.

you are the ones who open the door for those who don't yet know or understand our movement.

in short, you are we.

we are a diverse body of beings, beginning a conversation to build new systems that exist outside of the broken ones that have kept marching the 99% along!!

i have heard too often, "i support occupy, but i am not an occupier!"

to be an occupier does not mean you must become a member of the symbolic people's square or space.

it does not mean you need to go through the grueling aspect of living in the intentional community "camp/us" ... while that work is oh so important and vital to our movement, the other aspect of participating in the movement by visiting camp/us attending workshops, giving workshops and registering your voice in the general assembly is ESSENTIAL ... it is important for as many chuk shonen's (tucsonans) to learn the process of horizontal or direct democracy ... it takes a while, it's difficult because it's slow ... and we aren't used to taking our time in this culture of the united states.

in fact, the media and our government banks on this flaw in our inculcated minds ... they rest assured that we have an attention span of about six weeks!! if you can remember the iran-contra hearings from the late 80"s, and the subsequent election of bush as president within eight weeks of those hearings, this should help to drive the point home.

we must take our time, we must learn to listen.

once we have learned to listen, and learned the process of how to practice horizontal democracy in action, we will be a powerhouse community!!!!!!!!!

i am excited for us.
let's suspend the need for instant gratification, and let's all work together to re-build a world that is functional instead of dysfunctional!!!

we value yer work.

you are our hero.

we are all heros!!

my phone was stolen from IT on thursday when we got back from the foreclosure intervention.

i left the camp/us tonight after speaking with one of its leaderless leaders, a talking head.
i packed my shit outta there.

it was the only means by which i could throw up a block.

it seems that one of our homeless folks and a hearty participant in the movement had a breakdown friday night.
in my attempt to speak with said leaderless leader and talking head for our local movement, he was condescending and an all around jerk in regards to my attempt to communicate on behalf of the fellow occupier.

my complaint was that the thieves who took my phone (caught on camera) were still on campus, simply by denying the theft ... and were, furthermore, set up in a very nice tent (don't know if they provided it, or if it came from donations) ... and my homeless friend, well he was allowed to sleep outside on the ground in that storm of wind and rain and the only way he was given shelter was through me accepting a tent donation and passing it to him. i had thought i would occupy midnite's tent in protest and solidarity until he was returned to camp/us.

what really made me angry enough to leave the tucson movement was that talking head for OT said:

l) he is pressing assault charges against our homeless occupier, because he was violated in such an egregious manner (to be spat in the face) ...

my homeless friend had made such great strides. he came so broken and so afraid that he could not look us in the eye ... and he has grown in leaps and bounds because for once, he is being accepted on human terms as being valuable.

out of many of the homeless at OT, he is one who keeps trying to grow.

leaderless leader's inability to allow leniency for our fellow occupier's condition just kills me.

this man, who is a talking head for OT proved to he isn't even on page one. if he had just considered forgiving our fellow occupier (because maybe our comrade would refuse to come back) in our conversation, i would not have been compelled to pack up.

but i can NOT reconcile myself to this talking head, who doesn't live on camp/us... who doesn't sleep through the night with the honkers who hurl their invectives at us ... who has no clue as to how demoralizing it is ... who doesn't understand that a broken man can be triggered into madness ... who doesn't understand that this man's spitting in his face (while a very nasty and aggressive thing to do) probably took a lot of self control.

i believe that mr. talking head FEARS mr. homeless man and his spittle, because he thinks that his condition is infectious, or that he is diseased and could have passed a disease to him.

mr. talking head's condescension and inability to understand my attempt to communicate with him, "are you threatening me?" when i state emphatically, "i hope you get to live in the streets one day and experience being beaten and jumped and reduced to nothingness because you are homeless." showed me just how deep his ignorance is.

or his defensive statement that i was angry with him, just because i don't like him - my response: "i don't dislike you, i don't even KNOW you!" and when he urged me to press charges against the thief , i responded by asking "have you ever been mugged?" again, he took this as an affront, and stood to leave (i've been mugged, i was mugged at knife point in paris, france, when i was living and working there one summer ... the police NEVER retrieved anything taken from me in that incident. i am not a VICTIM!!!!) ... i might be a madwoman, but when he got up as i asked the question ... saying "we will have to just agree to disagree."

i knew i was done with occupy tucson. it's the only block i had, the only way to say, our talking head, one of our leaderless leaders is SO out of line with the movement, that i must retreat.

i went to the tent, grabbed my stuff, put it in my car and left.

ah... this morning i awoke on the couch in the back of the shop i work at.

it seems that it has been days since i've had a good night's sleep.

we've been running on the lamb for what feels like weeks, which is in fact only a matter of days.

there was the first night of poncho villa, when we had as a group, been evicted from the armory camp/us.

oh lord, we had dug our heels in there... and the police arrived with a mandatory eviction read by the chief of police which gave us a one hour timeline for evacuation.

i believe they anticipated non-cooperation. but we ceded to the authorities and immediately worked like mad to get the hell out ... with all of our equipment in tact. it took us double the time they gave. but because we working, they agreed to allow us the extra time within reason.

after arrival at poncho villa, we spent another several hours moving in.

oh what a mess it was.

the next night was the terrible wind and rain storm.

the night after that was just a chill ... and helicopters circling endlessly.

there is a terroristic threat in that ... once a routine is set between occupiers and the authorities; to break the trust with the eviction, sets the camp/us at unease (or at least me).

so i finally broke down and slept like a baby on the couch in the back of the shop. i hadn't intended it. i had meant to go to the all souls procession. which i missed last year.

i awoke at around 6 a.m. to a slight chill ... and when i went out the front door, i realized that the chill was sodden with overnight rain. which (of course) made me worry for the crew at poncho villa camp/us. were they still there? had they been rousted in the night? were all the tents and all the occupiers beat down from this unusual cold?

free radicals

last night there was a conversation between some of the camp/us members as to when in their lives and our national history they became radicalized.

their stories were about being teenagers and young adults, the civil rights movement, the death of mlk and jfk, rfk, the vietnam war, kent state and the like. each had a different moment when they looked at the big picture and said, "things are NOT right, and i MUST join [respective movement] in order to try to change things." i will not relate these stories, because these stories are best from the tongues that issued them. however, these stories triggered a reflection of my own history with an impulse to locate where and when i became a free "radical".

i think i located it -this moment of radicalization- in my own history:

it was at the age of three.

my father who trained at west point, and was groomed as an officer to lead his comrades in the art of war, was caught crying with my mother. he was sitting on her lap at the kitchen table. tears were flowing down his face. when i asked why he was crying, he replied, "your mother bit me."

three days later, he was packed off in his handsome uniform with a duffle bag and a brief case, to a land far away, a land called "vietnam".

during that long year, i would see images, horrifying images on the television news, reports from the land where my father, the soldier, was living without my mother and i. i would lay in bed at night, troubling over this war, i knew only that it included destruction, and two sides in opposition. i would puzzle my young brain to figure out a way to put an end to this devastation, for the most selfish of reasons, i wanted my father to be returned whole and alive, and did not want to lose him. i was haunted for the duration of his tour of duty there.

i thought of warrior olympics: two sides could train for athletic mock battle, the winners take all.

i thought of a type of lottery: paper, rock, scissors between the leaders who wanted to engage in such wars. winner takes all.

i know that many theoretical means of engaging in pseudo-warfare were considered by my young mind and dismissed over the long period of my father's absence, until finally, i believed i had found the ultimate solution:

i believed i could build a platform between the warring sides, and wave a white flag, issuing a cease fire and the proclamation that someone would have to shoot me first, before they could proceed.

oh the innocence of babes, i honestly believed this was the only workable solution! who could shoot a child to continue with the barbarous acts of war?

this year of my life, was the year of my radicalization.

i remembered too, that as a young child, my father had emphatically told me if i threw so much as a penny in the trash, i would adversely affect the value of money at large. somehow what was minted and pressed as money was inherently bound to the value of ALL of it remaining in circulation.

i'm not quite certain why my father related this story to me. i remember clearly that i believed he had given me the key to live in a world where money was no longer in circulation.

whatever his purpose, i feel certain it had the opposite effect of his intentions.

after being handed this information, i purposely threw away pennies at first, then nickels, then dimes, and quarters ... waiting to see some effect crop up due to my transgressions. i was disappointed and frustrated by the whole experiment, as i never felt any discernible shift in money's operations.

my mind has always been preoccupied with socio-political and economic issues... i don't know if we are born with spirits that are inclined toward certain mindsets, or if our circumstances in life create the mindset. was it growing up in a military household that made me hyper aware of these issues from the youngest of ages in a very personal way? or was it that i was born with these proclivities and they were informed by the environment i developed in?

my brother's keeper

last night was horrific.

the police arrived at the pancho villa camp/us to cite folks for criminal trespassing. after they left and we re-entered the camp/us, karla's tent (where i am rooming) was collapsed, one stake having been pulled. i suspect an officer thought it would be fun to pull a stake and make us work to reconstitute the tent.

after spending time chatting with my camp/us members i buttoned down the hatch and tried to sleep. the wind was blowing wild and crisp. if i had been in a slatted house, i am sure the wind would have been howling like a banshee.

i went outside and gave midnite some extra blankets, knowing the biting cold would be especially hard, since he sleeps beneath the stars, with a blanket beneath him and a couple above him.

i bundled up and laid myself down for the night, when shortly thereafter, the rain began lightly tippling on the roof of my tent. my thoughts went immediately to midnite.

midnite is a street dweller who came onboard at occupy while we were at armory park. his hair is matted, his demeanor quiet and removed, until inflamed with passionate anger, when he righteously feels wronged or disrespected.

i have grown fond of midnite, i have seen moments of glowing brilliance in his quick mind, a quality that many cannot see, because they are reluctant to interact with him at a level of equality, where one begins to see beyond his appearance, and into his mind. he is articulate, and sensitive, and tries to give to the camp/us as an active member.

anyway, i am troubling myself with midnite as the rain is falling, and i am trying to fall into sleep, i want to invite him in out of the rain ... into the tent to rest, where the rain will not effect him. i fall asleep, turning over in my mind that i should unzip the tent door and say, "brother, come in to this shelter from the rain." but the fact that he is sexed man and i am sexed woman keeps me from doing so. there is still, at my very core, an inability to trust my own safety with a stranger or new acquaintance of the opposite sex. plus, i wasn't sure that midnite was the type of man who would sleep in a tent... perhaps he didn't like being confined ... perhaps he slept beneath the dome of stars as a personal preference, i was afraid on many levels, including the risk of offending him.

i fell asleep slowly, turning these issues over.

i was exhausted having slept very little the night before, as we had been through the emergency evacuation from the armory camp/us and we were up all night sorting and rebuilding at our new location.

the rain came down throughout the night, and i inched my way from the back wall of the tent to the front door, as i slept to avoid the pooling rain. around 4:30 in the morning, i woke up to the chattering of my teeth and the shivering of my body. my pillow had wicked the water, and was a cold mass against my face. everything i was sleeping on was soaked, and everything i was sleeping under was wet.

the tent was pressed down on top of me, and i thought it had collapsed again.

i scrambled out of the tent. grabbed my uke and other possessions and headed mindlessly to my car, teeth chattering. i exchanged my soaking shirt with a dry one, turned on the engine and napped behind the wheel. at some point i fell off into a deep sleep and left the engine running by mistake.

when the sun rose, i walked back onto camp/us and drank hot chocolate with the sanitation, kitchen, and peace keeping crew. i was still worrying for midnite, and wondering how he had fared through the night.

in the early hours a volunteer from tucson arrived with two tents, and two sleeping bags. the woman from lexington took the first tent, and they installed it at the top of the park. then the various crew members i had been sharing coffee and conversation with were insisting i take the second tent. i have a tent, though it's not mine, i do have a place to shelter. i accepted the gift and the offer that i take possession of said tent. i scouted a place for my new home and put it together with the man who had donated it.

then i went looking for midnite, i knew he had survived because his pile of blankets was empty. i spotted him walking by the west island and heard his voice "my tent was ..." echoing from across the roadway. i called him over, told him how bad i felt about him sleeping outside in the awful storm last night. and asked him what he had said about his tent, he said, "i lost it in the brouhaha last night at armory."

"ah," i smiled and motioned him to come with me, "i have a surprise for you."

"surprise?" he flashed his eyes in consternation, surprises aren't a welcome turn for midnite.

"no, no! a gift! something to show you!" i assured him.

i took him to the door of his new home, "have a look in there, and tell me what you think. it's kind of musty but..."

midnite leaned down to peer in, and raised back up to look me in the eye, "well, yeh, it's nice, man?"

"it's your new tent midnite! it was donated this morning, and last night i felt so bad with you sleeping outside in the wind and rain beside my tent that i wanted you to have a place to shelter."

"for me?!!"

"yes, for you!" he leaned in and quickly kissed my cheek, to thank me.

trust the chaos

this afternoon i was mourning what i felt was the beginning of the complete undoing of our camp/us. the young, most vital contingent seemed to be pulling out and away from the group. the young people were breaking down one tent after another, to move along to the satellite camp at pancho villa. i sat in my tent and cried, because this pulling up of stakes by the young was veritable proof of failure to put into motion the ideals by which we want to build something new.

if the young separate out from the collective, the social experiment of our intentional movement is failing. we would miss the greatest lesson of the reason for encampment, a reprogramming of our cultural values and mores ... the vital lesson that every being is valuable and that we must learn to live together harmoniously, with each member contributing to the effect of the whole. if this mass exodus takes place, it means we have failed to learn to listen. in short, we have not learned how to communicate honestly and openly to resolve interpersonal issues and synthesize the diverse voices into a collective directive.

if we can't work as a diverse group, across inter-generational, racial, economic, political (partisan) and religious differences, if we can't learn to communicate honestly, and learn to speak effectively, and truly listen to each other, to arrive at a collective synthesis to address the issues of the group and difficulties within this micro community, there will be no hope for us to take our movement out into the larger community, or the world at large. to change the broken systems of our world, we must accomplish this across the globe, from town, to city, to states, and nations.

if we can't air our singular voices as a diverse collective and then unite through this conversation, at the most micro level, then how will we arrive at a new and effective form of action? how will we arrive at very real solutions to our problems?

my mantra remains: trust the chaos, there is entropy, and then, new patterns emerge.

i am a silent, anonymous stitcher.

i struggle with the roller coaster ride of this movement on a daily basis, and just keep telling myself to trust the chaos. i have surrendered more than once to the tucson collective and accepted the general assembly's provisios even when i am adamantly against them, and i work silently, interpersonally, in hopes to sow the seeds of harmony and group success.

i think my ego is in it's proper place, i dunna care if anyone knows who i am, what i am doing, or why i do it.

what i care about is the SUCCESS of the rebelution.

what i care about is that we learn to rise and overcome.

we should be very aware that the silliest things can derail our oh so very young movement.

it is a tight rope walk, where-in we must learn the balance of the self to the whole. without this awareness we can lose our footing.

i myself am a stitcher... -----------> ----> ---->

where i see the need to comfort, rally, educate, relieve, i put myself.

this is a very important undertaking ... and the less noticed it is, the better i feel about it!!

i camp in tucson ... but i am not from tucson, i am from the world, of the world ...

but a citizen of this fine country.

together we will build a better, more humane world, unto 7 generations!!!