The high price of Occu-pie

What does it cost to feed an occupation?

I don’t know what it costs the Occupied Kitchen, but I know what it costs me.

It costs money: food does grow on trees, but most of the trees are far away from my NYC apartment and I pay money so that other people will pick, process, and carry it to my doorstep.

It costs time:  The time it takes me to cut, slice, chop, dice, simmer, bake and fry. Time I need to be in the house keeping an eye on the oven instead of outside protesting or working in my garden or running errands.

It costs energy: Not just my personal energy—every meal I prepare is energy I could have used to write a blog post or my next novel—but fuel. Gas in my stove, gas in the trucks that bring me the raw ingredients, the train’s diesel it takes to haul my ass and my big-ass backpack to where I think the hungry people might be today.

But most of all, it costs trust: that those who take the food I spent hours cooking and preparing and carrying to a space are actually hungry and will actually eat it and not waste it or complain it needs butter or more green vegetables or yell at me for taking it to the wrong place.

(Those things have happened to me, and it made me not want to feed the whole occupation. But I got over the feeling, because those injustices were less than my love for the whole. But. They were still real and still cruel and thoughtless and ungrateful.)

Trust that the eaters won’t try and work out what it cost me to prepare, and decide that I didn’t spend enough money on them.

Now that’s me, and I understand that if people have issues with the Occupied Kitchen and how it spends its money, that is a different set of issues.

And yet, it’s not.

The first Occupy Wall Street fundraising was for food. I know, because I donated to the WePay account. I donated money for peanut butter and bread, because that’s where the page said it would go to. I was a little surprised when the GA voted to open the fund to the whole occupation, because that’s not what I donated for. 

But, I trusted the GA to use those funds for good.

So please, fellow Occupiers, when you start complaining about what the Kitchen does or doesn’t do, spends or doesn’t spend, feeds or doesn’t feed… please remember that you may not know what it cost to put that food in your mouth.

Please trust that we are doing the best we can with what we have. 

That’s the thing about volunteers; you can’t actually fire them. But you can abuse volunteers and cast aspersions until they burn themselves up and burn out and disappear.

Sure, you could start paying people to cook and serve. But why stop there? Pay people to protest, to go to General Assemblies, to face arrest.

But then you still won’t know what it costs to feed an occupation, because you will have lost the occupation.

All you’ll have is a job.

Ali Hussain Ahmed

Ali Hussain Ahmed is from Samaheej.

I had never heard of that town before yesterday. But yesterday, a tweet went past about Ali being detained and beaten. I would cringe and move on, except that he was 13 years old.

Thirteen.

And there was a picture of him:  Ali Hussain Ahmed

To me, he doesn’t look like a big, angry, unpredictable teenager.

He looks like a child.

He looks like the sort of child that ProtestKid would run up to at the playground and ask if he wanted to play Dino Wars or cars with. He looks like the sort of child who would grin and play along, maybe teach ProtestKid some new games. He looks like someone my child will become.

And I didn’t know where Samaheej was. I didn’t know which political power I should turn my outrage towards.

Google told me: Bahrain. Vaguely aware that it was a location on a map, now I know it used to be a fishing country before they found oil there. And the government has a history of human rights abuses.

Now that doesn’t sound good, but it isn’t clear: Do they arrest protestors for not having a permit? For scaring little old ladies? What?

So I used Google again, because I wanted more information about Ali. I searched for “child arrested in Bahrain” because I expect that the internet will be able to cough up anything given sufficient search words, and how many child arrests could one tiny country have?

More than one, apparently.

You know what? One is too many.

Two is… something that makes me sick to my stomach.

This isn’t right, this isn’t good, this isn’t something that a human with control of all their faculties can condone or excuse.

My first instinct is to go pull the blankets over my head and cry.

But I’m going with my second, which is to shout.

I don’t know who will hear me, but Ali Hussain Ahmed  from Samaheej, I am mic checking for you.

Ali Hussain Ahmed from Samaheej, a town in Bahrain, is thirteen years old.

He has been arrested and beaten.

If you know how to help him, please do.

If you don’t know how to help him, please shout with me.

I don’t know the name of the child being arrested in the video I posted, but small nameless child, I am mic checking for you, too.

I have little boys. I love them.

For them, for all passionate little boys, I am mic checking for you.

Ali Hussain Ahmed, please be the last child arrested. Please be the last child hurt.

Please, let someone who can help hear my words.

Mic Check.

Spring

I tell my story over

                And over

                Because the story isn’t over until I stop telling it.

And I am waiting for the happily ever after.

In the meantime,

                When times are mean,

                Strangers tell me other people are cold bastards,

And that we nice people are extremely unusual.

They are telling a story.

                They are tale-telling

                Name-calling, hero-waiting

Shivering in the extreme cold of lonely-exceptional-absolutely-zero.

This I believe:

As long as you use my story as an exception

It will be.

But when I listen at the window I hear

The special snowflake hero story

Is melting.

The warm tide is rising past my toes.

It feels nice.

No.

It feels wonderful.

Quick Update:

OWS Tenting! In the subway! (Edited to add: And in Grand Central!) And it wasn't me! And I don't know who the photographer is, either!

So very pleased the tents are finding new homes and having adventures without me.

This morning at 9:15 I found out about the anti-NDAA press conference at noon, and decided it was more important than going to the gym or running my errands. Shoved the rest of my #tenting cards in my purse, went to the rally at the New York Public Library with lions, and... ended up with someone else's kid on my shoulders. (I gravitate towards kids in a group of strangers. They are easier to deal with and they laugh at my jokes faster.)

Anyway, it was good but chilly and then we marched to Schumer's office where I handed out a few more cards. Someone thought I should put my email address on them... and maybe I could put the blog on... but I kind of like their unbrandedness. I mean, it's not that I don't want credit. But... it isn't about *me*... it's about other people's right to free expression.

Principles before personalities.

(Besides, it's not like I drew the tents. They're copyright-free images I found somewhere. Sharing is good.)

...So that was fun but I lost my voice way before we got to Schumer's office and then I was freezing and hungry and cold and my feet hurt and did i mention the OMG COLD... so I handed my last tent I had made for the occasion to someone whose hands were empty and went to pick up Older Son (who I may start calling ProtestKid because it amuses me...) and now I'm home and I missed the Grand Central action and the arrests and the General Assembly as Direct Action/Expression of Freedom of Assembly...


And that's ok, because my tents have been used by someone besides me and my loved ones.

Going to bask in the glow of approval, for a minute... If anyone calls about publishing my novel, tell them I'll get right back to them after I warm up a little... ;)

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...

and Joy... to the World

I took my sister to Liberty Plaza last night. It was her first time, and she wasn’t comfortable twinkling or shouting or holding one of the freedom fingers—the candles in the shape of a large fist with a middle finger raised high—but she was there.

I wasn’t going to take a candle either—just pictures—but someone firmly handed me his wax hand even as I said, “But…but these hands play with play-doh!”…Peer pressure is a powerful force.

So, feeling a little light-headed—and very light-fingered—we joined the wild and freezing mob huddling for warmth around the big circle that used to be full of plantings and now appeared to have some sort of landscaping fabric over it. The trees twinkled, the park security in day-glo vests watched, we lit up.

Eventually we decided to go visit Wall Street. It was spontaneous enough that there weren’t many police when we arrived. Some steps were briefly mounted on our way, but we ended up on the sidewalk across from the Stock Exchange with no harm nor foul. Its pillars out front were flood lit a deep red. Someone in the crowd announced that it was unfortunate as a color choice, since it was the color of blood. I decided that it was the color of communism (better red than dead?), and just enjoyed the pretty lights. Some of us started to sing (though the number of people who just hummed after the first few words of Silent Night was regrettable. I soldiered on, but wished I hadn’t just spent ten minutes chanting myself hoarse. Urgh.)

There was some philosophical discussion—do we say Fuck the Cops when someone else mic checks it even though we don’t approve of that message because of its divisiveness? Or do we have that conversation in private because solidarity in public is important? (It would be nice if people didn’t Mic Check things that others might be uncomfortable shouting, but I guess that’s an even more awkward conversation to have…)

And there were speeches: earlier at Liberty someone had spoken about how the middle finger was a form of speech and free expression. In front of Wall Street, someone stood on a piece of sturdy street furniture and told us to pay attention to this moment. In twenty years, we would remember this night with tears in our eyes.

Folks had such a good time, they decided they should finish the GA there. But the wind was hard and sister and I did not feel up for staying for the GA, so we turned and walked back up Wall Street. It was a little unnerving: walking with a large and rambunctious group of young people past silent cops is one thing, walking past when it’s just you and your equally short sister is quite another. (One young man turned to the livestream earlier that night and explained that he didn’t want to do X because he would get arrested, and “I’m too cute to go to jail!” …our sentiments, exactly…)

So, we wrapped ourselves in our adorableness and, as we strolled the long way around the cold metal barricades, started singing.

That was a moment I will always remember: up a dark and windy Wall Street towards Trinity Church, watched over by vaguely miserable blue angels, singing “Silent Night”… or at least the first one and three quarters verses of it… My sister and I sang together for solace and for solidarity.

There were no tears for once, just joy in the quiet moment.

May all your days be merry and brightly lit, and may all your revolutions be filled with such joy.

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.