For Calliope

**Law and Order **

From the Captain’s Private Log, September 14^th 2065

            Appendix A of the Charter for the Solar Harvesters Union (SHU) was agreed on by all members (H. Antolosky, M. Cotman, W. Jackson Jr., P. Jones, D. Lechnar, M. Lechnar, T. Lopez, H. Mudd, R. Nixon, M. Pirrone, P. Richman, C. Rose, D. Rubin, S. Sanchez, J. Smith, D. Styer, H. Suzuki, A. Teasel, S. Trunzo, L. W. Wojohowitz) today.

            Wages: Minimum wage of crew members will be such that, after seven years of employment on one of the member ships, the member will have earned enough to purchase one sixth of the supplies and equipment necessary to build a 12 person solar airship. (The underlying assumption is that a crew member would only save half of their wages towards a ship, so that after seven years they could buy one together with eleven other like-minded people and have a full crew.)

            The undersigned commit that, should wages fluctuate based on an individual’s experience or skills, no crew member—up to and including the captain of the ship—shall earn more than ten times the pay of the lowest paid member of the crew. (Some discussion about other means of pay—bartering, etc. They even talked about dental benefits. Do I laugh and point out there is only one ship and we are its crew? Or do I encourage them to dream? They make me feel old. So grateful for Josie and Hansuke and their wrinkles.)

            For reasons of mutual aid and to foster a sense of community, if any one ship should earn a profit above wages and maintenance of the ship, one tenth of this profit will go towards a communal pool for emergencies. Profit can be defined by each ship’s crew monthly, but all budgets will be made available for all members of the SHU to examine at an annual meeting. Ships that fail to share reasonable profits—“reasonable” defined by 75% or more of the other ships’ crew members, through individual yes/no polling—will be put on six month suspension wherein the other crews will help define “profit” at mandatory monthly meetings. After that time period, if the questionable ship still wishes to be part of the SHU, it will be reinstated as a full member if 75% of the other ships’ individual crew members agree. (This seems like an awful thing to be thinking about, but I’m glad that they are talking about ways to solve problems before they appear. Even if this particular one never happens—they talk of making a profit! Oh, the dear lambs!—it does suggest a way of handling disputes that doesn’t make me—or any future captain—the bad guy. I can support that.)

            Recruitment: If there is room for another member on a ship, any crew member can suggest a candidate, but all the other crew members must agree and the potential member will have a 6 month trial period where they will get wages but not be entitled to access the emergency funds. (I am never going to live down Roger. He seemed like a good idea at the time. Oh well. I still claimed that I got grandfathered in, and can appoint crew members to my own ship since I’m paying for The Judy’s upkeep and all their wages at the moment. But they are welcome to have this rule apply to any future ships that want to join us. Poor lost kittens. Josie laughed at them, which I think may have made it worse. I <3 Josie.)

            (Then they talked about food, and I agreed that we could make a rule that peanut butter could not be served more than three times a week. But they would have to come up with alternatives that were as cheap, tasty, long lasting and vegetarian or I couldn’t agree. And since we had most solemnly agreed at the very beginning that this was a consensus or it didn’t happen… we get to have peanut butter whenever the duty cook likes. Sometimes winning feels like losing.)

Protest Mom List

Just now I was reading this extensive list for Street Medics. I was amused by how much of it, in more domestic forms, I carry with me already as a well-prepared Mom of rambunctious kids in a hard and pointy world.

I had been thinking about making a list of items I take to protests the last couple of days anyway for my own records so I don’t have to remember what worked well and what didn’t. Then I thought maybe other people would also find it helpful.

So, here’s what I (usually) carry around that has proven to be useful specifically in Protest Mom situations, from smallest to largest receptacle (I always have the purse and then I pick the backpack based on the situation):

My (small) purse:  

Smart phone

NLG hotline number

Tiny tents, 2-3 colored markers, stamps, envelopes

Very small ring-bound notebook, two black pens (precise v-point are my favorite)

Tylenol, bag of throat sweets (Mic Checking is hard on a throat), very sleek pack of cleansing wipes, tiny plastic tub with keychain that fits a tube of Neosporin and about ten bandaids (mix of flexible fabric and CVS colorful ones with antibiotic in them already—asking a crying kid which color they wants is a good way to distract them from OMG blood. Works for grown-ups, too.)

Lollipops (I don’t carry hard candies because they are choking hazards. Yes, I assume the average protestor is not going to choke. But I’m a Mom first, and I’d rather there was a handle at the end of any hard candy I hand out so I can reach in and pull it back out if necessary. …Also, who doesn’t love a lollipop?)

My pink flowery backpack:

Two bottles of water, one for me/my kid and one, factory sealed, to share with others

Finger food: (ie: sliced pumpkin/banana  bread in Ziploc bags, apples, cold baked potatoes, pretzel rods)

Depending on weather: spare hat, scarf, umbrella, sunscreen

(In our house, before we leave for our next adventure, I mumble to myself, “Water, hats, sunscreen, snacks”… as long as we have variations of those things and my wallet, we’re good to go.)

When I participated in N17 and I wasn’t sure what would happen, I took 

My Huge Red Rucksack.

It had the contents of the pink bag, plus: Several handkerchiefs in Ziploc bags, gauze bandages in small Ziploc sandwich bags, and two baby blankets.

I would like to recommend these wonderful objects to those who may not be familiar with them: they are usually cotton. They are big enough you can sit on one but small enough that they are extremely portable. They are sturdy enough they can swaddle a wriggling baby in them and hold it still, but-- assuming you have a sharp knife--you can cut it into strips for emergency dressings. And they come in soothing colors.

…I’ll add/modify to this list as and when I go. I’m not a trained street medic and I don’t think I’m a fast enough runner to be one. But I’m an excellent Mom, and these are the things I’ve found useful out there. Hope you’ll find the list helpful, too…

Arresting Developments

So I’ve been joking about getting arrested (I shoulda done it with Cornel West! Though our current OWS boarder says she’d hold out for Christian Bale) for a while, and occasionally worried about it when fortifying myself for direct actions (see this post for that anxious but stubborn meditation)...

But watching the police harry the protestors out of privately owned public spaces (the winner of the 2011 Oxymoron Award, I hope) twice in less than two hours tonight has my knickers in a twist.

Freedom of speech. Freedom of assembly. Seeing as how our government is ignoring our petitions for redress of grievances, Freedom of Getting Shit Done (aka Good Governance) Ourselves. These are really important things, not just words to trot out at the 4^th of July… They are what makes us citizens of a great country, not consumers of a plastic-but-comfortable culture.

They can be just words, but the words made manifest can create a healthy and sustainable reality for a large and diverse group of people.

I’ve never been able to sit/stand through a whole GA (I can never hear past the tall backs and there are lots of people wonking off on polysyllabic jargon and I don’t have the patience to get through the personal agendas before we get to the real agenda. That’s why I chop carrots and carry soup…) But by golly, the wonking needs to happen, and it needs to happen in public.

And this is something I might just be willing to get arrested over.

Free speech. Free assembly. Free alia.

P.S: Happy New Year, wherever you may spend it...

Tidings of Comfort

When I was 16, a mental health professional told me that she thought I’d be ok for 4 reasons. I forget what the other two were, but one was because I still had a sense of humor and the other was because I was still able to feel discomfort.

People who go through severe/extended trauma can, for obvious reasons, numb themselves. Some do it through alcohol or other external measures, others transform their hearts and minds so that they are safe inside… deep inside… and nothing bothers them, nothing disturbs them… nothing really matters, nothing hurts at all…

It’s really not comfortable following General Assemblies and Spokes on twitter when there’s shouting and “just a joke” that isn’t funny and pain and ignorance and disappointment and panic…

But I just wanted to say—I am glad that people are speaking up and sharing their discomfort. It’s hard to read and I expect it’s harder to participate in. But please—please keep your sense of humor (the sense of it, not the brush-off/excuse of “it was a joke” but the true making-fun-of-the-powerful and the comfortable and the self) and please (oh please) keep your ability to feel discomfort.

Consensus doesn’t mean everybody’s happy all the time. It means that everyone works together to find (a) solution(s) that everyone is comfortable with. In the mean time, there will be awkward and uncomfortable moments. They are part of the process, a sign that you’re doing important work, not that you’re doing it wrong.

I’m not qualified to say if you’re doing it right.

But I’m so fucking glad you’re doing it.

Hearts

It feels so good to be tired for a worthwhile reason again.

This morning I took Older Son to the anti-bullying Children's General Assembly and Photo-op. He was the first to get on stack at the General Assembly (of course he was-- he was practically jumping up and down with excitement at the chance to speak in front of all those cameras), and he spontaneously sang the Jingle Bells, Bloomberg smells song. Must not grab child when the cameras are rolling...


At least he wasn't carefully prompted by his mother, right? It was all genuine and from his heart?

(sigh)

Then he painted on some of the 5000 construction paper hearts that were symbolizing the arrests of protestors since September 17th and drew a peace sign on the Children's Brigade banner and got interviewed by someone with a real lapel mic and an extremely soft voice. He chose a pre-made sign with a big cartoon on it and we hit the subway to Foley Square (Which stop? This stop!)...

I had seen a suspiciously large number of people wearing Santa-themed items of clothing, but assumed it was a flash mob sort of thing. Then we got to Foley Square and they-- and their little helpers-- were everywhere. (You haven't lived until you've seen Santa-Jesus--red velvet outfit, carrying a cardboard box cross covered in shiny wrapping paper-- walking past City Hall)... And they were drunk.

So, there we are, taking pictures in front of the courthouse steps and there are drunk Santas frolicking around us... (I'm just setting the scene here, I'll get to the good stuff in a minute...)

We move over to City Hall, heavily under renovation and well-fenced. A decision is made to use tape to tape the hearts onto the fence, since we can't/ aren't allowed to bring them onto the City Hall steps. So, the kids (and parents) start slapping up painted hearts on the tape. We occasionally shout "Kids are the 99%!" and "Banks got bailed out, schools got sold out!" and "Hey, Santa! Bloomberg's getting coal in his stocking this year, right?"

At some strange point, Person Who Seems to Know What Is Going On turns to the livestream guy and starts narrating. Remember those Drunk Santas? Well, it seems the City Hall Police were keeping such a good eye on us and our cute kids, they missed one of the Drunk Santas getting over/through/around their high security fence.

...All I saw was him being gently lead out, but he was already fifteen feet away from the fence at that point, and I'm pretty sure he hadn't traveled in a straight line.So... Drunk Santa 1, City Hall Police 0.

Fellow shy parent Carlos and I grabbed either end of the Children's Brigade banner and stood to the far end of the hearts, so passersby would know what was going on if they hadn't figured it out by the time they got to us. Older Son frolics.
 

We were there for at least twenty minutes, maybe longer, when one of the People Who Seem To Know What's Going On comes over and says, "Roll up the banner, roll it up," and I drop my end (Carlos had it well in hand) and locate Older Son and make sure he is in frantic grabbing distance.

Suddenly (and I cannot say whether he was taunted, ordered, or pushed, as I am always safely away from where the excitement is. It's the short legs, I need a good head start on the running away thing...) a cop comes over and starts ripping the hearts off the fence from the other side. It was so weird: it wasn't a careful removal, it *looked* violent, enough so that I held Older Son's head and pressed it to my chest in the other direction. I didn't want him to see an adult-- in uniform or not-- lose their temper like that.

It was very unpleasant. There is no way to stop them from doing what they want to do. And he wanted to rip the hearts down. But... he didn't finish the job. That was the other weird part. He started working his way down, and I put my hand up against the fence over a white paper heart, and he tore the tape and it ripped the heart in two... and then he stopped, a few feet past me, with half a heart in my hand. He turned away and marched over to his superiors and I don't know what happened next but I turned my back and started picking up the hearts that had fallen to the ground and tried to stick them to the bits of sticky dangling tape.

An angry dad shouted, "You made a little girl cry. Do you feel big now?" And I felt like crying, adult woman or not.

I don't understand. I don't understand why our small group was so dangerous that they missed a drunk Santa invasion. I don't understand why our paper hearts had to be torn up.

I picked up a small handful. I couldn't rescue them all.Then we got hotdogs and went home because there was nothing more we could do.

If you would like a heart, one of the 5,000, let me know and I'll send it  to you.

I don't want to be the only one who saves a heart today.

Pin

My OccupyLife has gotten quieter and more sporadic—squeezed in between Christmas cards and home-cooked dinners. (Papa Johns was catering far too many of our meals, the last two months…)

But we are still here. I am still catching up on twitter highlights and facebook essays and posting them whenever I can.

I am still wearing my “Occupy Wall Street” button. I thought it would be my brave but trembling sign to my neighbors that Yes, I hang out with crazy people, so maybe they aren’t so crazy after all. I thought it would be a long, quiet conversation in their heads that would bear fruit when the sun finally comes back and melts furrowed brows and stiff lips.

Instead, and much to my delight, it is bringing curious interest and real support right now. Yesterday morning I got my hair done at the fancy salon on our main street, and the owner approached me and we started talking. I mean, *really* talking—not about my hair color or the weather—Bob was excited by the potential of Occupy Wall Street. He told me to bring signs for our first OccupyAstoria meeting, he would hang them in his big plate glass window. He was full of ideas, and really wanted us to do local things for our community.

Encouraged by that support, when Celia—a quiet little old lady getting her hair colored next to me— mentioned the weather and sort of half-hinted it was global warming, I dived in and agreed with her fears and her frustration at being powerless and told her how I had felt the same way, until I started making peanut butter sandwiches for the Occupiers. She was curious if it was local people or not, and I said it was a mix and talked about the four young people who cooked at my house, and then my colorist came up to play with my hair and he was concerned about the way Anonymous was co-opting OWS. Jake didn’t approve of everything Anonymous did.

I agreed, because I don’t approve of it all either, but pointed out the two groups had some overlapping interests and the nice thing about OWS is that they don’t kick you out if you don’t go to every meeting or event.

And he promised to tell his friends who were interested in Occupy about the meeting Sunday night at the Waltz coffee shop. Hopefully if they can’t make it to that one, there will be ones in the future.

And then there was the man with missing teeth at McDonalds who was a little crazy but had a nice smile and held my hand as we talked about bankers and money and where it goes.

I bought some gifts for people at the locally made gifts shop with the cash I picked up from my credit union’s ATM at McD’s, and mentioned to the shopkeeper that I was feeling anti-Paypal and Visa and he said he didn’t blame me. I went a step further and shyly said I was feeling anti-big business in general, and that I had specifically come to his store that day to shop local.

He sighed and told me he had just talked himself out of a Kindle—he had told his partner not to buy him anything from Amazon for Christmas, after the new awful thing Amazon was doing (the price-scanning thing, with the $5 discount to the scab), but it turned out that was going to be his present. He was very disappointed. I pointed out the Nook was DRM-free and not tied to Amazon in any way. He didn’t look convinced, but he seemed a little less disappointed. I suspect OWS doesn’t care whether you use a Kindle or a Nook, but *I* care that people are reading; the fewer barriers to entry the better.

Last night, I went to the opera. I was prepared to put my OWS button in my pocket to save my host’s spleen. (I am still a mostly polite revolutionary… subject to change at my discretion)… It turned out that while the out-of-town host wasn’t a supporter, per se, she had just learned about the 5,000 books that the NYPD threw away from the People’s Library. Her daughter is a librarian. “What a waste,” was her comment. It was good enough for me, and I kept my quiet little pin on my coat through all three hours of La Boheme. No mic checks ensued. But…

Me and my button and the occupations around the world—we are still here.

We aren’t going away, though I don’t know where we’ll go from here.

We are here. And there are more of us than I had expected.

Enough of us, maybe, to pin a hope on.