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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.

Thursday

Oldest Child and I marched, today. Homework, schomework, this was his civic duty—I told him it was like voting, only more interesting.

The march went really well. I had enough water and we hooked up accidentally with another family who had a videographer following them around—Older Son made sure to be in many shots, he’ll get his casting call any day now—and the older child in their family took my filk and punched it up to the next level. And she was right—why mess with Police Commissioner Ray Kelly, when you can poke Obama?

                Jingle bells, Bloomberg smells

                Obama laid an egg

                The 1 per cent

                Are at the wheel

                And the bankers got away—Hey!

Also gravitated towards a group of young teachers (we were embedded with the teachers union) with noise makers and a willingness to chant—most of the older teachers were chatting with each other as if they were on holiday. (*sniff* this is not a holiday people, this is a *revolution*)… Mainly I was just shocked that anybody on that street could be there and not know what the pin on my coat that said “Occupy Wall Street” meant. Really? On *this* march?)… So being with them was good and they were patient with Older Son’s screechy enthusiasm. At Union Square we listened to the bag pipers (Swords of Light… they had twin tower patches that said Never Forget) and drummers (at least two of them were infamous Zuccotti drummers but I have to give them props because they were Present and Accounted for and made a hub for people to gather around and find each other) and a police barricade between us and The Christmas Market.

So much for pretending to be a tourist.

Not that we could have, because as part of my Overprotective Protest Mom thing, I had tied a yellow balloon to Older Son’s backpack and, at his request, written a pro-Occupy message on it. Kind of hard to mingle with a giant yellow balloon on your butt.

But you know, fun as the march was, what was more interesting to me as an activist is what happened on either side of the march. For instance, that balloon was one of ten I picked up from the florist by the Subway. (Teddy’s, on the Key Food side of the street. Nice guy.) While he was cutting me some ribbons to go with my balloon, Older Son said, “Too bad you’re working here, or you could come with us to march with the protestors. That’s where we’re taking the balloons!” That potentially awkward moment (Greek neighborhood, they are proud of inventing Democracy and are as passionate about politics as they are about their grandma’s spanikopita recipe, may she rest in peace *puh* *puh*) turned into a love fest, as he called himself a strong independent and totally understood my frustration with the Democratic party and my delight that the Occupiers were trying to make it about up and down not left and right.

We were both so excited we lost track of how many ribbons he had cut, so I’m pretty sure I can wrap all my Xmas presents in gold ribbon now… and also, he gave the balloons and ribbon to us for free! (Teddy’s Florist, for all your Occupied Flower Arrangement needs…just sayin’…)

So that was very cool. Then on the way home (ow, my feet) we decided to take the bus because (ow, my feet) and the young man in front of us in line’s eyes lit up and he asked if we were Occupiers. I explained that we had just been marching and he asked us all sorts of “interested but not closely following further developments” sorts of questions and I gleefully answered them with enthusiasm and wild hand gestures (Older Son is *such* his mother’s child)… I actually feel like I did more good with those two conversations (one with old-Astoria simple-life-loving shopkeeper, one with nice-suited bespeckled new-generation young man) than all the shouting in the march.

(Though if any of the videos people took of Older Son leading chants—which he did, with enthusiasm and wild hand gestures—make it onto the searchable internets, that will probably be a useful thing, too.)

Whose bedtime? Our bedtime!

PS:

In case anyone stumbles here who doesn't know Me and doesn't know My Story: I have a lovely upper middle class lifestyle thanks to some hard work and some extremely good luck and even some desperate leaps of faith. I grew up poor and occasionally homeless, however, and as the oldest child of a single Mom, I can say we were on every kind of public assistance there was, and some they made up just for us-- so when I say I feel left out or at a loss, I'm not just speaking from A Position of Privilege... I've got privileges, but I've also got institutionalized insecurity and shit. So. If I write stupid poetry, please know it's complicated and I cry a lot.

But I cook pretty damn well.

Poems after following the GA on twitter and the latest Occupied Wall Street Journal post and worrying a lot about race and colonialism

Solidarity

When your eyes run dry,

I will cry for you

If you will hold my hand harder

When I think you want me to go away.

When your stomach is empty,

I will fill it

If you will fill in the gaps

In my clumsy affection.

When you are falling down,

I will hold you in the light

If you will forgive me

For not coming sooner.

And if you cannot do all that,

I will still try to help

As long as someone out there

Still means me, too,

When they talk about 

solidarity.

An injury to one is an injury to all

And I don’t know where to fall

In the middle

On the left

In your face

On my sword

On the edge of the apocalypse

Rock your mic check

And the sweet space

Break it down

Open up

Rain check the sky

Lightning fast

Feel the blast

Fall up into

Apocalypse now

The beginning of the beginning

Shout and murmur and fear and loathing and suspicion and compassion

And all of the ands

Are still words on a page

As we’re living with rage

And the beloved’s betrayal

And all that’s left
In the I of the storm is

Lost

I feel lost without the park.

I started to lose it when the tents went up

And the conversations got squeezed out

And wandered away to 60 Wall…

Suddenly there was a barrier to entry

And I am skittish around barriers.

Who are you keeping out?

…You keep out me, when you draw a line in the sand

Or have a glass ceiling or floor or wall or door

(glass is made up of grains of sand, after all)

I am the unwanted

The uncomfortable

The unrequited lover (who makes a mess but usually means well)

And I love you anyway. And I loved the park.

And I am so sad it is not the place that it was: a place where the boundaries were dropping and I was embraced, taken in and comforted. Fed and warmed and given to… things were mostly given though yes, occasionally taken.

That’s still a better deal than I got outside the park.

So yes, screw us and we multiply. So yes, keep fighting. So yes, take it everywhere and indoors and set the place on fire.

But I am still sad that Bloomberg took my safe space from me, and I am not ready to follow you away from the park. If it is childish to honor a space people suffered to protect and defend, then I am a child listening to stories in the monsterful dark.

Please help me fill the night with stories, the long hard winter with novel ideas. Warm me with your companionship.

Please choose the now-and-future spaces with an eye for height.

Make sure the floors are limitless,

Uncountable

Stories so tall

They can fill a people’s library.

Then there might be room for me to sneak in on a breathless word

Or two.

And find you again.

Love,

alia

Medals

I’m still washing dishes from the epic Thanksgiving for 60 Vegans we pulled together for the Occupiers Thursday afternoon. Thank the great unknowable for aluminum pans in bulk from Costco, or I’d never reach the end of pots.

After all that, I thought I would take a break from Occupy today. I played trusty native guide for my sister into the depths of Manhattan, and used that as an excuse to check out the markets at Union Square with Older Son.

He charmed a free stuffed turtle, an artist’s pin and a travel candle from the Christmas Market kiosks, being the adorable kid that he is. It probably helped that the weather was good and the crowds were mostly smiling. Especially when he sang Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer at the beeswax candle shop…

Early in our shopping adventure we stumbled upon a vintage jewelry kiosk, and my eyes caught the shine on a pewter pin in the shape of a soup spoon.

…Apparently, you can take the girl out of the kitchen, but you can’t take the kitchen out of the girl…

I laughed, and before I could stop myself I went into my OWS spiel—how I’d been cooking for the protestors at my house, and so kitchen utensils were on my mind.

The stall holder’s eyes got big and she leaned over her counter, “What, every day?” Oh no, just two or three times a week. “Did you carry it down in a pot?” No, gallon Ziploc bags. Mostly in my backpack…

She showed me the three other kitchen-themed pins she had, and I decided to get them all—M, M, and E need medals for their hard work with the vegetable peelers, too—and then, despite my weak protestations, she gave me a significant discount. “You’re doing important work,” she said.

Gulp.

I do want to be important to the movement, I have an ego as hungry as the next person. But as an adult with non-protest responsibilities and a healthy sense of my own limitations, I don’t know if I can handle being indispensable to the movement.

In order to function, I think I’m going to take her “you” as plural. We are all doing important work:  chop carrots, carry signs, take turns being strong and being important and taking time out with our families to bond over carols and credit cards… If we can do that, maybe we can get through the winter with our spirits rested and well-fed and we can cook up the most delicious revolution ever.

And whatever comes out of the soup pot next spring, I have my medal now.

And so will my occupied kitchen buddies.

Enough

It’s been over a week since the raid. I saw Marsha yesterday, her yarn survived because someone happened to be borrowing her storage tent for sleeping since the weather has been unseasonably warm. The visiting friend rescued the supplies and the folding chairs from the NYPD that strangely well-lit night.

I went to a Direct Action meeting Sunday, and met P who had been arrested. We hugged. I expressed my desire for actions that people in Central Pennsylvania could participate in, too, whether it was sending coal to Congress or trying to pull a Miracle on 34^th Street… I mean, wouldn’t it be amazing if the post office brought bags and bags of letters to some interesting political place?

It’s been over a week—I’ve visited the park with Older Son and with friends and by myself. I have brought homemade bread and apples and Thanksgiving dinner for 60 to the space that used to feed three thousand.

Actions speak louder than words, but I cannot do enough:  I cannot hug hard enough, peel carrots fast enough, think thoughts big enough…

I can’t run fast enough or stretch tall enough to video the revolution, and the lens carriers seem to do the most good with their instant electric efforts. I am a sitter in one place, a word puller, a rhetoric dancer after-the-fact. By the time I have something I think is worth saying, the next crisis has occurred.

I am struggling. Even the words are insufficient, but they’re all I have tonight.

It’s been over a week, and I keep thinking about the medic, describing the raid on Zuccotti and the way his hands moved in staccato rhythm with his strained voice. I imagine myself as the patient inside the medical tent, the terror I would have felt as the NYPD chainsaw sliced through its synthetic fabric and carbon fibers.

In what world is destroying a medical hospital the answer to health and safety issues? In what upside down world does that make sense?

And then my brain jerks like his hands, and I think about the action medic kneeling on the sidewalk outside the police barrier with red and black permanent markers. The red and black cross on his coat shoulders was not enough for him anymore. He drew the symbols of his vocation—the red cross, half black from smoke or the dark of the night raid—on the backs of his hands.

He looked like a medical student, long black ponytail pulled back from an intellectual’s lean face. His medical bag looked like it weighed nearly as much as he did.

But as he marked his hands, it had all the singularity of purpose as a giant putting on war paint.

These people have (literally) put their skin in a game that is rigged against them. They are getting bruised, beaten, and battered and they have bad coughs from being thrown out of their homes in the dead of a cold night.

I am not the president. I am just a Mom. And my mother’s heart looks at these young, old, tired, enraged, calm, crazy, sane, black, white, privileged, scared, bold women, men and children who do not have enough…

I look at them and I think not what my country can do for them, but what has my country done to us?

Tenting for OWS

So OWS had this "tenting" idea, where people put tents in public spaces with their messages. I do not have the resources to buy a tent for every public space I go through... But I love the idea and by golly I want to participate. (Edited to add: Official start date is Sunday... but hey--Occupy Early, Occupy Often!)

And I thought you might like to protest in public, too.

This is not fancy, but here is something you can print out on your own or take and run with it into realms of very fancy:

Occupy Wall Street: Protest is In Tents

I plan to fold them in half, write a message (along with "Occupy Wall Street") and place them on subway seats and maybe even use them as stationary. Not sure what all the wonderful uses could be. 

If you have more ideas, please share them in the comments-- and please share this if you like the idea or know someone else who might.

Cheers,

alia

PS: Special thanks to J, for having software and knowledge at the same time. <3!

New Project!

Cooking for the Occupiers has gotten a little more awkward, since I'm not sure where they will be tomorrow...

Time for a new project!

We’re sending love letters to occupations. Because it’s all about the love, baby! And we all need encouragement—I know I sure do.

So… I’ve got the Eastern seaboard, but I’m willing to share. If you want to send a care package to Poughkeepsie or some other small Occupation that hasn’t gotten much media attention, do it! And if you want to let us know so we can keep track of who is getting love and who needs some extra, comment!

Once we get some love letters sent out, we’re also going to send some lovely letters to members of the media who have done an outstanding job of covering this story—Olberman, we’re looking at you!

Love,
alia

PS: That doesn't mean I've suddenly stopped feeding the occupiers. No way my family can eat all these PB & J sandwiches by themselves. It's just gotten a little more difficult and I have no idea what the larger strategy is... So we're taking some initiative. Love is non-perishable. Spread it thick.