[a blurb from an email to Larisa and Jess]
I am back from Occupy Wall Street now... (though I really want to return there.) Goodness... the whole time I was there I was just imagining how awesome it would be to be camping there with you and Larisa. When I first arrived at Zuccotti park it didn't seem like much more than masses of people camped out in tarps- it was a really cold morning and people were still curled around each other, dreaded-locks like medusa's snakes tangled over their heads, hats pulled over faces. Then suddenly Julia ran into someone she'd met before and the whole places sort of unlocked and unfolded, sleepers began cleaning up their mats and I realized there was an entire little community enclosed within this small space-- there's a people's library, food station/kitchen, prayer tree, art section, media, info, info in Spanish, a comfort station handing out blankets, an empathy table! And the structure keeps improving and responding to the needs of the people and the protest. They were even composting! and I met this guy wandering around at breakfast time saying, "Hey, if you're glutten free and can't eat what they're serving I'm buying you breakfast." It was incredible to witness such diverse people (black, white, brown, immigrants, visitors, business men, old, young, hippies, anarchists, straight-laced middle class folks) with different agendas actually listening to each other, dialoguing, trying to figure out what America could be.
OWS gave me a lot of hope-- not that the system will change easily or quickly or at all... but that people are remembering their humanity and compassion and want something different. I kept tearing up just for the possibilities. Something is happening. Resistance is happening. It's powerful-- the intersection of lives. And the consensus and general assemblies and refusal to be framed by media or demands, the process of how to hear and respond that is emerging... it's all such an embodiment of what we studied. I went to a ton of workshops--- one that Eve Ensler was at!
One of the best things was the human mic (since megaphones were banned) the process is one person speaks in short sentences and then their words are repeated by the nearest crowd so they are amplified and carried-- and how beautiful that these words become our own, participating in the listening and internalize and speak out the others words, responding in unison and echoing the voices to make others heard... the "others" story becomes part of me-- creating space inside my own body and repeating in my own voice (and even when there was disagreement, you were forced to chew and recognize the human desire and thought, to hold the difference inside you... and the speaker had time to reflect and be articulate- I was so impressed)... It was so powerful. There is a process of step up/step back where people who are traditionally privlidged are asked to give room for people whose voices aren't heard so there were so many people of low economic status and non-white sharing their experiences. It made me believe American can be different, the occupy movement is a womb, a place where new ways of seeing, of being together, of wrestling with the difficulty of so many different needs is being born. I went to a BDS workshop led by some Israeli women (ugh, I miss you guys so much.)
I could go on forever but in summary:
Percy Bysche Shelley's Mask of Anarchy...
// Rise like lions after slumber
in unvanquishable number!
Shake your chains to earth like dew
which in sleep had fallen on you--
Ye are many, they are few//
of course it has its flaws and there are so many issues that people are concerned about... It's exciting.
