wikipedia's SOPA / PIPA blackout page

As far as I know, it’s the first coordinated internet-based strike of its kind.  It’s happening in opposition to two bills – SOPA and PIPA. Although I support the strike one hundred percent, and in fact love the solidarity, I find I’m conflicted about it. But first…

What Are SOPA & PIPA?

Long story short, SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (Protect IP Act) are bills backed by entertainment and media companies.  Not unreasonably, they want people to stop pirating the movies, TV shows and music they peddle. At first glance, the concept is not unreasonable. They produce a product, put it up for sale, and a bunch of people steal it. It’s bound to be frustrating.

The problem with SOPA and PIPA is twofold. 1) Their proposed limitations won’t even solve the problems of piracy. Far more worrisome is number 2) The limits proposed in both acts give the US government and corporations control over information that’s shared on any website. If you’ve missed all the hubbub, or you’d like a little more info, you can watch the video below for a refresher.

What’s the Strike About?

Many of the companies who oppose both acts are blacking out their sites for 12 or 24 hours today in order to demonstrate their opposition to both SOPA and PIPA, and to educate the uninformed public on what may come to pass if we don’t make as much of a fuss as possible. It’s a remarkable thing. More than 7,000 sites plan to be a part of the strike. Some companies who oppose the bills either can’t afford or aren’t willing to lose a whole day’s revenue by blacking out their sites. Still many, like WordPress, are giving their users the option to add a “Stop Censorship” ribbon or banner.  This is what Google’s homepage looks like right now.

google's anti SOPA / anti PIPA homepage on January 18, 2012

So What’s the Problem, Sunshine?

I applaud the internet’s effort on this one, I really do. What I don’t love is that we’re only getting any damned traction because the corporations that oppose SOPA and PIPA are just as large as the corporations that support it. It’s like a Godzilla vs Godzilla death match and we’re the tiny, faceless, screaming, running people getting trampled betwixt.

This strike has the very nice feeling of something grass rootsy and by the people, but it’s Wikipedia vs Hulu. It’s Disney vs Facebook. It’s not us against the man, man. For some companies – like the non-profit Wikipedia – the strike is probably happening for the right reasons. Net neutrality, freedom of information, and all the issues you and I (hopefully) care about. For other companies, like Facebook and Twitter, a passing of these bills would threaten their business models. Not to mention the fortunes they’d need to spend on administrative housekeeping. They’re as (literally) invested in blocking the bills as entertainment companies are in supporting it. Everyone loves a good old fashioned strike, but it’s not so warm and fuzzy when you really think about it.

I mean, where was the internet when NDAA passed? Sure, that knee-in-the-balls to the Bill of Rights wasn’t internet-specific, but where were our knights in shining armor then? They weren’t beating their chests, decrying the offense to American civil liberties or the poor world role modeling we were exhibiting, were they? They were mum. Life went on, business as usual. And when Occupy finally manages to get the supreme court to change their minds about Citizens United vs. FEC, you can bet Google’s not gonna change its masthead for 24 seconds in support of the people.

So I’ve blacked out my Facebook picture, and I’ve blacked out my blog, and I’ll leave the anti-censorship ribbon up till the 24th of this month. Because it’s important. SOPA and PIPA scare me more than NDAA, frankly, and NDAA scares the shit out of me, so I’ll do it.   And I’m thankful that there are some big names and some big bucks behind squashing both bills. But really, as tempting as it is to swoon over the impressive efforts of some of the biggest internet companies out there, when it comes down to it, I’m not all that impressed.

Nevertheless. Block #SOPA.

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Resources & Related Reading:

• SOPA PIPA Flowchart & Reference Guide: http://www.apeconmyth.com/00227-super-pipa-sopa/
• http://americancensorship.org/infographic.html
• http://sopastrike.com/
• http://idealab.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/01/google-joins-mass-online-protest-against-sopapipa.php

I have a long, long list of topics to cover in this new year, but two issues have crossed my path in past couple of days, and I figured here is as good a place as any to get back into the swing of things.

Yesterday, I read this article which was written about a year ago: 1/3 of Women in US Military Raped.  The article details the following statistics:

• According to a 2004 study, 71% of female veterans seeking PTSD treatment had been raped or sexually assaulted (by other US military officers).
• Another study showed that 90% of rapes in the military go unreported.
• When they are reported, 62% of those found guilty of rape or abuse received “demotion, suspension, or a written reprimand” as punishment.

• In 2005, a female operative was gang raped by defense contractors with Halliburton/KBR.  ”Her injuries were so extensive that she had lacerations to her vagina and anus, her breast implants were ruptured, and her pectoral muscles torn. The response of KBR was to lock her in a shipping container with only a bed, and to deny her food, water, and medical treatment. The rape kit that was taken after she regained consciousness was mysteriously lost.”

There’s another investigation currently underway, about the contested suicide of Private Danny Chen.  Pvt. Chen was taunted by his fellow soldiers, and was the victim of constant racially charged abuse.  He was found dead from a gunshot, in a watchtower in Afghanistan, on October 3rd.  His family has made this video, called What Happened to Danny?

There’s a lot of yellow-ribbon talk.  A lot of conversation about our brave soldiers, and what they put on the line for us on a daily basis.  But in whom, exactly, are we putting our trust?

According to a 1998 DOJ survey ^[1], 1 in 4 women on college campuses in the U.S. have been raped, or have suffered attempted rape.  That’s 25%.  The 2004 study referenced earlier in this post shows that 71% of female veterans with PTSD have been raped or assaulted.  Why, I wonder, do the rates of rape and sexual abuse go up nearly 50% in the armed forces, as compared to civilian life?

We of course have the shame of the 2004-2006 Abu Ghraib abuses to refer to if we’re looking for any causes for concern with those in the armed services.  There, several US soldiers forced Iraqi prisoners to cover themselves in shit, walk around naked, and arrange themselves in humiliating sexual positions while the soliders took grinning, thumbs-up photos.

I don’t have a particular thesis I’d like to make in this post.  More, I think I’m posing some questions.

The first is: Do our armed forced attract fucked up people?  Is the US Military a place where miscreants imagine they can allow their demons to live out loud?

Or, is it the challenge of being on a tour of duty that causes otherwise normal, respectable citizens to become torturers, abusers and rapists?  And if the answer is B, what the fuck are we doing to them?

Either way, we’ve got some serious problems to look at.  If our soldiers are treating one another this way – that is, with racism and aggression – we can only imagine how they’re treating the foreigners whose homelands they’re living in.  And really, that’s just for starters.  We anoint the holy image of fatigue-glad servicemen with implied halo and wings, just because they’re willing to don the outfit and get on a plane.  As with all over-simplifications, it’s an incomplete rendering, and one we should be careful not to fall for too completely.

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Further Reading:

• http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/dec/09/rape-us-military
• http://newsjunkiepost.com/2010/01/26/13rd-of-women-in-us-military-raped/
• http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2083702/American-military-accused-abusing-Afghan-detainees-comparison-Guantanamo-Bay-holdings.html
• http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/271642/20111222/danny-chen-suicide-army-racial-bullying-video.htm

Uncle Ben was born in Brooklyn in 1927. My dad was born 2 years later, in 1929, just a few months before businessmen in Manhattan began walking off rooftops because that seemed to them a better fate than whatever else there was after the crash. Their father, my grandfather, was an African immigrant of Sicilian descent. He ran, and later owned, a barbershop in midtown Manhattan. “Forty chairs!” my dad still boasts. One of the largest barbershops around. They had a manicurist and a bootblack, and everything.

The boys grew up eating penny candy and shooting marbles. They held hands when they crossed the street. They shared a bed all their lives, till they were drafted into the army during the Korean War. They wore Italian undershirts and shorts pulled up high on their waists. They had the olive skin and dark-circled eyes of boys from the other side. But they grew up speaking English, not the bastardized Sicilian dialect their

father brought from Tunisia. Their mother made gnocchi. Meatballs part lamb, part pork. Manicotti with crepes light as air she made herself without making a fuss about it. She did make a fuss about most other things, though. She was barely 5 feet tall. Platinum coiffure, always perfect. She penciled a birthmark in just over her lip. She suffered from an undiagnosed mental illness that caused her to lash out toward everyone. Had it been diagnosed, it likely would have been deemed some type of generic, old-fashioned hysteria. It was probably something like bipolarity. She had violent rages. Moments of blinding, destructive fury. Her boys always forgave her.

One summer Armand and Ben donned roller skates and hitched themselves to the back of the Coney Island trolley. They bumped along the cobblestone railpath behind the trolley, and realized later that their wheels had been rubbed down to nubs. They’d had to spend all their money on new wheels, and didn’t get to go on any of the rides.

Benny was always a sensitive boy, and later, a sensitive man. He clung close to his mother, while my dad, Armand (also known then as Junie, short for Junior), ran off to play ball or whatever else. Uncle Ben was seized, from time to time, with fits of sadness or fright, traits that were much much later passed into the next generation of our family. There was a brief discussion, when the boys were in their teens, about putting my Uncle Ben into treatment. He ran to my father and begged him to not let them take him away, and they didn’t. Uncle Ben stayed home.

Later, my dad chased women. Led a fancy, cosmopolitan life. Uncle Ben was a humble man, with a good, simple life. He married a woman named Helen, and they had two children. A boy and a girl. They kept a modest home on a hill in Nutley, New Jersey. Uncle Ben worked for DuPont for most of his adult life. He wore short sleeved man’s shirts, and carried a hard backed attaché case to work every day. He kept a garden out back, and showed off his tomatos and carrots each spring, an activity which as a little girl I found spectacularly boring. They sold wallets and other trinkets at flea markets most weekends. They had hard furniture and starched polyester sheers and brown carpeting, and Aunt Helen kept everything spotless and new looking. She clipped coupons and never, ever changed her hairstyle from the unmoving, swept into a swirl style she appears with in every single photo ever taken of her. Even the ones that were taken when she was fourteen years old.

Both my dad and Uncle Ben put on weight over the years. They took turns being bigger than one another, and often put their bellies together for photos. They laughed together at every holiday, at jokes no one but them thought were funny, but we all laughed anyway because they laughed so hard, and so wholly, and so completely with their bodies as if their entire lives were stitched together by these singular moments of laughter, and all there was for everyone to do was laugh and laugh along with them.

Uncle Ben was forced into early retirement by the company to which he’d devoted his life. He took up watching cooking shows, and once made cous cous by hand, the way their father had learned to do during his turn of the century childhood in North Africa. I don’t know what became of his anxieties until 2005 or so. His panic attacks. His bouts of melancholy and sensitivities to the world seemed to manage themselves, or to be managed by the consistency of his world, held in precise balance by Aunt Helen. (Those are all disabilities to which I can relate, I should disclose, and I’m sure my own similar tendencies came from that side. I think I’m able to equalize not because of any great intrinsic traits, but rather because of when I was born. Namely, into a decade obsessed with psychotherapy; accepting, and indeed nurturing of, neurosis-prone adolescents.)

Aunt Helen passed away around 2005, and Uncle Benny fell deeply into a void. He sat stoic in his sunroom, and more than once cried out so violently a neighbor came running to see if he was alright. He got caught up in a terror over a tree on his property losing its leaves on the other side of his neighbor’s fence. He cried. He called my dad three and four times a day to discuss how to best handle it. He was lost. He was falling. He had nothing to which he could ground himself. Then he found the internet.

He met a young Russian woman who claimed to be in love with him. He sent her thousands of dollars, until his daughter found out and put a stop to it, which frankly disappointed me. If he wanted to spend the money he’d worked all his life for on a woman he truly believed loved him from a distance, I figured why take that away from him? It stopped him from worrying over the tree, after all. He dated a woman his own age, then, (in real life!) who was apparently (according to dad) quite naughty (in a good way). Uncle Benny made a Native American friend, whose plight he became increasingly compassionate toward. Uncle Ben had a little party toward the end. He did things he would never have done before. He thought about writing his life story. He told my father he was once in love with my mother. He had some fun.

Then, last year, he suffered a stroke. Since then he was in exactly the sort of worst case scenario everyone prays to be spared from. He was immobile, almost entirely paralyzed on one side. He was addled. Too much so to properly communicate. He wasn’t really able to speak, save for a few words. He could string a few sentences together, but couldn’t really converse. He was able to feed himself, but required assistance from his full time nurse to use the bathroom. He could no longer use the computer. He couldn’t even really watch TV. He found it confusing and overwhelming. Most days, he sat in his wheelchair and stared out the window; all at once oblivious to the passing of time and also experiencing moments of lucidity and enough coherence to know the situation that he was in. He knew enough to know, and that was the worst part. When my dad visited one time, he managed to suggest that they commit suicide together. Another time, just after the worst of the stroke, he asked my dad for their father.

“He’s gone, Ben,” my dad told him. “Passed away 30 years ago.”

Uncle Ben asked about their mom.

“She’s gone, too.”

And Uncle Ben cried like it was the first time.

For the past few months, Uncle Benny has been wasting away to nothing. He passed away this evening at just over 100 lbs, after a few days of being unable to eat or drink anything at all. My dad went to Uncle Benny’s home in New Jersey yesterday, and said his goodbye. I don’t know what he said, or what he might have wanted to say, but I do know this.

My dad is now the last of everyone. His parents are gone. His cousins are gone. And now his brother is gone. Everyone my dad knew as a child, as a teenager, as a young man, is gone. Every single cord that ever tied my dad to his beginnings, has been severed. He now lives in a world where no one can share a single memory with him that happened before more than a third of his life had already passed. He grew up eating dinner and breakfast at a table with his brother, sharing a bed with him, comforting him, protecting him. And then yesterday, after two whole lifetimes had been spent, my dad parked his car in the driveway and walked into his brother’s house. Into the dining room that for the past few months has served as Uncle Benny’s bedroom, but used to be a place where we ate Sunday sauce till we thought we might throw up, and laughed till everyone’s faces hurt. He walked into that space, and said goodbye to his wasted brother, with whom he shared a bed till he was eighteen years old.

My dad isn’t the best at dealing with sadness, or any emotions other than joy, really. He doesn’t know that if he wants to sit on the phone with me and just be silent, that would be fine. He said it’s better this way. That Uncle Ben had no quality of life. That all he’d been doing was existing. That he was unhappy. He was able to say, through tears, “But now I don’t have a brother any more.” And then he tried to get off the phone. I kept him on as long as I could, but he said he didn’t want to talk, and I know I have to respect that. He took a pear from the fruit bowl, and a knife, and told my mom he wasn’t hungry, but wanted to keep himself busy. I called him again a few minutes ago. It’s nearly 1am, but I knew he’d be up. We talked about Ava Gardner’s profile for a bit, and then just before we hung up, I said again how sorry I was that Uncle Benny passed. That I know it was better for Uncle Ben given his condition, but regardless I understand why dad is still so sad about it. I told my father that most of all, I don’t want him to feel alone. He got me off the phone in a hurry after that.

I’ll go there tomorrow morning. My dad is better in person, and comfortable with physical contact, so I’ll be able to hold his hand and sit quietly easier than I can sit on the phone with him. The hardest part, I guess, is that that’s really all I can do. I’m tempted to remind my dad that he’s relatively able bodied. To encourage him to take advantage of the freedom he has, both of mobility and circumstance, in order to live a fuller life right now, while he can. But that’s silly. I’d never listen to bullshit like that if someone said it to me, and we’re a lot alike. He’ll do whatever the hell he wants to do, even if that’s nothing at all, just as I would. So I guess my only option is to do everything I can to help him remember that he is loved, even though I know that right now that doesn’t really measure up.

██████ ███████ █████ ████ — ████ of the ██████ ███████ ███████████ of ███████ — ████ ████ █████ ███████ its ████████, so we can too:

“████ the ███████ ████ ██████ ████ ████ had to █████ █████ or ████ ██████’t do [████████] in █████ ███████, ████ ███████ to ██████ out how to █████ █████.”

█████ are the ██████ our █████████ ██████ to. If we’re █████ to win, we ████ to █████ ████ out ██████ ████████’s █████████ ████ on ████.

██████ ████ ████ to ████ or █████ ████████. It’s █████ ████ and █████.

████://██████████████████.org/█████/1#██████

The tellers at Wells Fargo, closing my account for good!

I visited several local banks and one credit union in my area, and settled on Ridgewood Savings Bank, mainly because they permit four non-Ridgewood ATM withdrawals a month with no ATM fee.  I use ATMs a lot…

I opened the account with the cash I had on me.  $32, I believe.  I then began slowly depositing cash and paychecks.  It took a couple of weeks to get my new card, to get the PIN to go with it, and to change all the online accounts and automatic bill pays I’d set up over years and years.  It was a pain, but felt worth it.

Until, today, when I checked my account and saw that I had a negative balance, and a $30 overdraft fee.  Now, I’m not the most financially organized person in the world, but I know I didn’t overdraft my account.  I deposited more than enough in checks – thousands of dollars worth – to cover the bills I’d paid.  So wtf was going on?  I called, and the customer service person who answered told me my checks were being held against my account, as is policy with brand new account holders, for 30 days.  Yikes!  I got pissed.  The customer service woman then transfered me to my local branch.

The man who answered the phone at my local branch, Mark, happened to be the man with whom I’d opened the account.  I told Mark my situation, and he put me on hold.

Ten minutes later, I was still tapping my fingers on my desk.

Eleven minutes later, Mark got back on the line and told me they’d release the checks into my account.  That my account was back in the black.  That from now on, my checks would only need 3 business days to clear.  And that they’d be happy to wave the $30 fee…

I told Mark that they were amazing.  That here I was, stewing over the fact that I’d taken the trouble to switch from my big bank, only to be dealing with the same shit all over again, and how happy I was that they’d resolved everything so simply.

And then (and THEN, omg) Mark on the phone, who knew me by my account number only, asked me how my dog was.  My dog.  Who’d been invited into the bank on the day I opened my account.  Here’s a picture of my dog, Mickey, meeting Mark on the day I opened my account.

Mickey meeting Mark, my new banker, the day I opened my account at Ridgewood Savings Bank.

Can you even believe that shit?!

Move your money.  Move your money!  MOVE YOUR MONEY!!

THE END.  :-)

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Related Reading:

• 5 Things to Know About Moving Your Money: Why, Where & How?
• The Move Your Money Project Official Website

1. Occupy our Homes

The first is Occupy our Homes, which appears to be the next big phase of the Occupy movement.  Occupy our Homes actions involve occupiers pitching tents in the front and back yards of the homes of people who are in danger of eviction.  Aside from being a great cause, and one that we surely need, it makes sense for the movement on so many levels.  (See what else Occupy is up to in cities across the country.)

Watch a video of one foreclosure occupation in Brooklyn, NY or skip to @2:46 on the below vid.

• Occupiers cannot be evicted from private property, where the owners have granted them permission to stay.  This eliminates the police craziness occupiers face in city squares.
• It’s direct action that yields literal, tangible results.  This is good for the movement’s public perception, and also great for Occupiers themselves, who must at times feel frustrated at the pace of change they’re working so hard for.
• It’s good for Occupy’s PR problem.  When average Americans go on the news to talk about how helpful and supportive Occupiers have been to them, it’s hard to call them violent and anarchic.  Occupying evictions and foreclosure auctions puts a kinder gentler face on a movement that’s been scarred by sources outside of mainstream media, as well as by sources inside the movement itself.

Rachel Maddow had a great piece on Occupy our Homes.  Watch at MoveOn.org.

2. Farmers Join Occupy Wall Street

Before Occupy, I’d protested just about everything from dangers around reproductive rights, to war, to you name it.  The injustice that got me most riled, though, was what companies like Monsanto have done to our global food supply.  To me, Monsanto and the corporatization of food is an even bigger evil than the worst of the Wall Street crooks who crippled the economy.

From OccupyWallSt.org:

Through a day of dialogue, musical performances, and a march, farmers and their urban allies working for food justice in their communities will form alliances to fight and expose corporate control of the food supply.

Events throughout the day will call and inspire participants to fight against the corporate manipulation of the agriculture system. An industry that is responsible for using chemical toxins tied to soaring obesity rates, heart disease and diabetes and limiting access to affordable, wholesome food to the country’s poorest citizens.

Here are some pictures from the event and the original post on OccupyWallSt.org.  If you’re a farmer, or you know one, suggest that they reach out to their local Occupy group to see how to get involved.

3. More than 2 Cops Support Occupy, But only 2 So Far are Talking About It

I’ll leave this one to speak for itself, except to say that I think we need to do some police outreach.  Here’s something I posted on my pal Mishelle’s Facebook wall earlier today.  Thanks, Mishelle, for sharing this video!

Ya know, the cops I’ve spoken with down at Zuccotti have no. idea. what occupy is about. It’s like they were bussed in from outer space. They honestly didn’t get it. I drew a comparison for 2 of them around contracts. Their contracts (which is an issue in NY because Nassau cops were for months at risk of losing pensions because of budget fubars), as compared to the wall st contracts that guaranteed bonuses, even after the fallout. I got their attention with that one, by pointing out that wall st contracts just COULD NOT be broken NO MATTER what. But look at the men on the job for 25, 30 years in Nassau who could be going home without their pensions in the end. And a leetle lightbulb turned on. But for srs, by and large, they’re in the dark. Main stream media heads, the lot of ‘em. We should probably do some outreach. I’ll get on that.

You can watch the video below, and if you have any ideas about direct police outreach to educate them on Occupy’s issues, and why they’re a part of the 99%, I’m open.

4. From Democracy Now: Indigenous Activists From Canada Protest Tar Sands Oil at Durban Climate Change Summit

Yes, I sneaked a #4 in here.  It’s not specific to Occupy Wall Street, but it does touch on environmental concerns which are close to the hearts of the Occupy Movement.  I’m embedding the short Democracy Now clip below because it’s one of the more concise, educational pieces on why drilling in the Tar Sands is a disaster of epic proportions.

Watch on Democracy Now

~ Further Reading ~

Just some other pieces, some OWS-related some not, that I’ve come across today that are worth sharing.

• Occupied Washington, from Mother Jones | A long look at the whole Occupy concept, why we’re pissed, what we want.
• N.Y.C. Police Maligned Paradegoers on Facebook, from NY Times | Not news: NYC Cops are, by in large, bigots.  News: they started a Facebook group about it, which was later disappeared magic-like.  The article is about the annual West Indian American Day Parade in Brooklyn, but sheds some light on the Archie Bunker mindset of the NYPD.
• The 45 Most Powerful Images of 2011, from BuzzFeed | Some Occupy pictures are included, as well as plenty of natural disaster photos and more.  All the pics are pretty compelling.
• …and a funny one from The Onion, on what main stream media news-heads don’t realize about how their news is presented. (below)

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Related Reading

• Occupy Does, Actually, Know What it Wants
• (not ows specific) Poor & Content
• 5 Things to Know About Moving Your Money to a Local Bank or Credit Union
• 8 Ways to Defend the Occupy Movement to Your Conservative Family Over the Holidays
• 11 Ways to Support the Occupy Movement Without Sleeping in a Park

I could tell you the story, for example, of the early twenties aged person I met at Thanksgiving this year who’s studying corporate law for no good goddamned reason.  When I asked him why, he said this exact quote, I swear, “I kind of like contracts, so…”.  He kind of likes contracts.  So he’s making it his life’s work. My impulse was to take him by the lapels, wrestle him to the floor, and sit on his chest till he promised me he’d think about what in this life might make him happy beyond a goddamned paycheck, and then realign to walk in that direction.  I could have done it, too!  He’s a scrawny thing, still growing into his man-ness.  But, I stuffed my mouth full of brussel sprouts instead.  I swallowed some rising tears that crawled up my throat when I thought of all the smart young people like him, following the money with no thought to personal, spiritual gratification or social contribution, and how this pattern has ruined generations of minds and spirits.

I could tell you the story of how a friend of the family, when referring to the job of her school aged son’s friend’s mom, mouthed the word “nanny” to me across the table like it was an epithet.  I guess she thought it might somehow be rude to clue her son into the fact that his friend was, by all accounts, poor.  That by mouthing the word to me, she was somehow being considerate or sensitive.

But I won’t get into all that!  Because here’s what I really want to say.

I have 5 jobs right now, and I still can’t pay my rent on time. My weekdays are full of work and travel to work and rescheduling one work thing for another.  I work a lot to make almost no money.  I don’t have health insurance.  There’s a whole lot that we’d like to do, that we don’t do, because we can’t afford it.  I have a hundred thousand dollar education, and I’m doing work that in many cases could be done (though maybe not as well) by someone still in high school.

The old corporate salary would be nice.  Health insurance…my god, it would be sublime.  I’d love to do some shopping.  Like, hit it hard, for real.  My favorite lingerie company emailed me to launch their new line of silky, lacy things the other day.  I actually (literally) salivated, and filled a faux digi-cart with $700 of things I couldn’t afford, then just closed the tab.  The car has needed work for about six months.  I would love to get a haircut and re-up on my fancy curly specialty products.  I also need a new winter coat, and I might have to just squeeze into my old one for another season and hope the zipper holds out.

And…

I can hardly remember being this content in all my adult life.

It’s Sunday night, and I feel happy right now, as opposed to the many Sundays I spent practically in mourning over a Saturday behind me; in tears, dreading the coming week.  I like every single one of my jobs, and I’m looking forward to my hectic, unrelenting, low paying week.

I’m not saying that I’d like to keep going at this pace – working harder for less – forever.  I have passions to pursue and certainly some very concrete goals I’d like to meet.  If my days continue to look like this five years from now, I doubt my blog posts about it will be as positive.  But for today, my today, my December the fourth two thousand and eleven, I feel pretty good.  Better than I felt when I was wearing brand new lacy unders, but was just another replaceable moving part in someone else’s machine.  I’m not ashamed, when compared to former classmates or colleagues, to admit that I’m wearing last winter’s boots and a coat from five years ago.  I really don’t give a shit about whatever the thing is that might make someone, somewhere, want to mouth my situation across a table because saying it out loud would appear gauche.

What I have now is better.  Not in a making-the-best-of-it way.  It is actually, in reality, better than I what I had before.  I’m certain (and hopeful) that there’s better, still, out there.  Don’t get me wrong.  But for today, things are just fine.  Things are really very nice.

It included a Venn diagram that showed the overlap between Tea Party and Occupy interests.  I wrote in brief about the dangers, as I perceive them, of becoming too divided as a nation.  If danger is too strong for you, then we can discuss our polarity in terms of productivity instead.  As in, when we’re busy telling each other we’re wrong, we’re not getting a whole lot else done.

I closed that post with this thought:

“While we’re beating each other over the heads with our clever poster board signs, the corruptions we’re passionate about dismantling will continue to do their profit-hungry bidding right beneath our noses. And the shame will be on all of us.

Solidarity is what will win this movement for everyone. Stand together.”

 Yeah, I did just quote myself.  Anyway…

There are two issues that have come up recently…

…that make me facepalm so hard that both my face and my palms will likely see bruises before congress votes on them.  They are SOPA / PIPA and the National Defense Authorization Act bill.  I’ve posted on Facebook about each of them, and to my surprise, my few conservative/tea party Facebook friends have eagerly jumped into the threads to voice disgust that matches my own.  We agree.  We actually agree!  In light of this miracle, I decided to revisit the topic of bi-partisan solidarity.  I see an opportunity here to sow a little unity, and I’m jumping in with both feet.

For starters, I think I’ll point out the obvious: We’re all getting fucked, equally.  So why not let’s work together?

I’m not saying we have to join forces forever, on every issue.  That clearly won’t work.  But on the issues where we do agree, imagine what it would be like!

Tea Partiers and Occupiers, standing shoulder to shoulder, in peace and respect.  Spiky mohawks and safety pinned fatigues, right beside a granny in mom jeans and an appliqued season-themed sweatshirt.  Together, we’d be representing our entire population as the patriots on both sides who feel most strongly about, and are most passionately committed to, the freedoms for which America used to be known and lauded the world over.

Imagine the power of all of us, standing together to shake our collective fist at Capitol Hill to cry in unison, “We do not approve!”  I would love to see a movement of combined energies, if only just to taste the power there would be in that unity.

Productivity aside, imagine the terror we would instil in our do-nothing congresspeople.  Imagine them gathering by the windows to look outside and see something that looks a lot like the real 99%.  We’d blow their heads right off.

Remember that saying, “Divide and conquer”?

As siblings tend to mirror combative parents, so too are we as a population reflecting the dysfunctional two-party system that’s modeled in Washington.  You know who wins when we’re at constant battle with one another?  The terrorists.

Just kidding.

Who wins are the exact people at whom we’re channeling our rage.  Whether you’re a tea partier pissed about cronyism, or an occupier mad about corporate influence in Washington, while we’re standing on two sides of a line pointing at one another, the very structures we seek to dismantle are growing stronger.

Divided, we’re conquered.

It Won’t Be Easy

As I’ve written this post, I’ve had to backspace the word “bagger” several times and replace it with “partier”.  I have my notions about what and who Tea Partiers are, just as they do about us.

I’ve had some scary thoughts about this notion of joining together.  Like, for example, what happens when an OWS black bloc kid (notoriously agro and troublesome) comes face to face with some TP gun-toting bigot (notoriously agro and troublesome)?  Our chances could be ruined right out of the gate, I suppose.  But I also suppose that most of us are fairly moderate patriots, perhaps equally unfairly represented in the media.

I’d like to think we’d control our most difficult members at a united rally the same way more moderate occupiers keep the aggressive ones in check on the heated days of police action.  I think the issues are more important to us than hating one another, and if I’m wrong, we’re in a whole world of trouble I don’t have the heart to get into at the moment.

Hey, Tea Party!

Occupy has a slogan we like to chant, and I’d like to offer it to you on temporary loan.  It goes like this:  The People, United, Will Never be Defeated.

That slogan has a broad meaning, and I would like to formally extend an olive branch over the masking tape line that’s been stuck down the center of our adolescent bedroom.  You have the bathroom on your side, but we have the door to the rest of the house.  So let’s get together.  Let’s…you know…join forces.  Just on a temporary basis.  I’m not suggesting anything permanent or committal.  We’re as reluctant to align ourselves with you as you are with us.  But there are disasters happening in congress right now, and stopping them is more important than our stubborn old pride.

Who’s with me?  If you have ideas for how to make it happen, please comment.

]]> http://iamlaurenleonardi.wordpress.com/2011/11/28/an-open-call-to-the-tea-party-and-ows-lets-harness-the-power-of-the-majority-to-align-on-two-issues-sopa-pipa-the-udall-amendment/feed/ 1 iamlaurenleonardi http://iamlaurenleonardi.wordpress.com/2011/11/26/youre-welcome-now-get-to-work/ http://iamlaurenleonardi.wordpress.com/2011/11/26/youre-welcome-now-get-to-work/#comments Sun, 27 Nov 2011 03:58:19 +0000 lauren http://iamlaurenleonardi.wordpress.com/?p=495 Continue reading »

]]> The emails are nice.  I appreciate getting them.  I’ve gotten more than a dozen in the past few weeks.  From strangers emailing through my contact form, from friends, from ex-friends with whom I haven’t exchanged a real-time word in fifteen years.  From business acquaintances who read my blog.  From friends of friends I’ve met once, and run into at parties.  Many people in my life seem to have a message to send me, and it’s something like: thank you.  Thank you for being committed to the Occupy Movement.  Thank you for writing about it.  Thank you for being there, in the middle of the night; for taking shit from testosterone fueled cops wielding batons; for taking photos and sharing them; for representing our generation (of thirty- not twenty-somethings) in this time of great upheaval.

The real message, as I understand it, is something like…thank you for doing what I have not.  What I’d like to say instead of thanks for the thanks is stop thanking me and, you know, do something on your own.

There might be this idea that I have more time on my hands, or somehow have more room in my life for Occupy.  I’d like everyone to know that every day, I go to work.  I have two regular part-time jobs, and three freelance jobs, and sometimes I work at all five on a single day from 7am till 1 or 2am.  I spend hours in the car every week going to and from these jobs.  Once a week, I take an evening continued education class in Chinatown.  Between my partner and myself, we have a host of pressing family obligations, which we meet, including celebrating all the funny little milestones of grade school nieces and nephews, babysitting toddlers, and making time to break bread with my elderly dad who’s dealing with a new heart situation.  I do errands like laundry, housekeeping and repairs on housewares, shoes or clothes.  I go grocery shopping with coupons that I’ve taken the time to clip or print.  I cook meals, clean up from cooking, and store the leftovers.  I walk my dog two to four times a day; I feed him; I throw the ball or one of his weirdly sexual looking rubber toys on a daily basis.  I make or shop for birthday and holiday gifts.  All that’s the ordinary.  We also have fun, sometimes, too.  We go to dinner parties and shows, occasional movies.  We have lots of friends and we try to see them when we can, and support their stuff like art shows and music shows.  I love to dance and try to fit that into our social schedule when I can.  I read plenty of fiction (though not as much as I’d like) including New Yorker magazine’s bi weekly fiction pics.  I do my nails once a week, which takes awhile.  Oh, and it takes me about an hour to do my hair, when I’m really trying.

So all this considered, I also managed to visit Zuccotti Park several times a week when the encampment was there.  I don’t blog as often as I’d like, but when I have a spare few moments, I whip up a post.  In between every activity, and sometimes while I’m doing other things, I’m checking links on Twitter, Facebook and my RSS reader to get as much information as I can, in order to continue sharing.  While I brush my teeth and do my morning ablutions, I prop my iPhone up on the back of my sink and watch Democracy Now’s daily news update.  I fill my browser with open tabs till they’re each about 3 millimeters wide, and come back to read them whenever I can.  Sometimes that means I’m reading 5-day-old stories, but so be it.  Tonight, sick with a cold (bestowed from one of those school-aged children I mentioned), I have no plans and instead sat here for hours writing this post, and this one, and this one.

I’m telling you all this not because I want extra gratitude, or whatever it is I’ve been getting.  It’s to demonstrate that you can probably find the time, too.  If you have children, your life is no doubt even more complicated and unwieldy, but still.  I guess it’s a matter of deciding what’s important and attainable.

I’ve been trying to get to the bottom of what makes someone an armchair-supporter versus a more active supporter.  I’ve been trying to identify with some degree of specificity what makes me, for example, rip my pajamas off, jump into boots, and head down to Zuccotti at 1am when I hear the encampment is being evicted compared to what other people’s (admittedly more normal) reaction might be.

When asked, a good friend said, “I support it totally, but I’m not gonna go downtown and stand in a street and get beat about it.  No way.”

I asked why not, and he answered generally instead of specifically, but still thoughtfully.

He said, “I guess when it gets bad enough for everyone.”  Dot, dot, dot.

I guess that’s the whole story right there.  If you have a job, if you feel good about your life, if you personally don’t feel directly impacted by the disaster of our current national situation, if you’re comfortable enough, it’s just not important to you.  No matter what I say, you won’t believe your life is right this second being tinkered with in ways that negatively affect your future; that being passive about injustice is the same as condoning it; that by the time you are uncomfortable, it might be too late to do anything.

But here are a couple of thoughts that might make an impact.

Educate yourself on the issues in order to be an active participant in your own life.  At the very least, know the names of your local politicians.  Know who represents you in congress.  Read up on them.  Find out which companies have donated to their campaigns, then research those companies and see what sort of ethics they live by.  Connect the dots between your local representatives and their biggest donors to see who your employees – remember, politicians serve us – are loyal to.

Buy some handmade Occupy gear, and rock it out loud so that everywhere you go, people know the movement is with you.  Read this list of 11 Ways to Support the Movement post, and pick something – just one thing – that you can do quietly, maybe even without leaving the house.

If there’s a big action, like a march, attend.  The joy and energy at the marches is overwhelming and so positive.  It’s enlightening and inspiring, and the more bodies the better.  There’s very little violence on big days of action, and it’s easy to not be arrested. (The big marches tend to have permits, which means you’re not breaking any laws by being in the street, which means they’re basically just long walks with a few thousand walking partners.)

Not everyone is a writer.  Not everyone can keep a blog.  Not everyone is a cook who can bring trays of rice and veggies down to their local encampment.  But everyone can, in some way, be a supporter of Occupy Wall Street.  Supporting OWS doesn’t have to mean sleeping a park.  It doesn’t have to mean standing on a street corner waving a poster.  It doesn’t have to mean spending all your free time at an encampment volunteering or attending a working group.  Those actions are great, but they’re not all there is.  Emailing me to say good job and thanks is so sweet, and it really is nice to hear, but rather than say it to me, say it bigger.

Most importantly, I think, if you support the movement, but haven’t said so “out loud”, get on Facebook or Twitter right now.  Right now.  And come out of the Occupy closet.  Just say: “I haven’t said this yet, but I support Occupy Wall Street”.  Talk about it with friends.  Ask questions.  Email me, if you like, and ask me to write something specific.  Every public declaration of solidarity is another coal on the fire of the Occupy Movement, and we need as much fuel on our fire as we can get.

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Related Reading

• Occupy Wall Street Does, Actually, Know What it Wants
• 5 Things to Know About Moving Your Money to a Local Bank or Credit Union
• 8 Ways to Defend the Occupy Movement to Your Conservative Family Over the Holidays
• 11 Ways to Support the Occupy Movement Without Sleeping in a Park
• OWS: Recommended Reading & Viewing

]]> http://iamlaurenleonardi.wordpress.com/2011/11/26/youre-welcome-now-get-to-work/feed/ 4 iamlaurenleonardi http://iamlaurenleonardi.wordpress.com/2011/11/26/occupy-wall-street-does-actually-know-what-it-wants/ http://iamlaurenleonardi.wordpress.com/2011/11/26/occupy-wall-street-does-actually-know-what-it-wants/#comments Sun, 27 Nov 2011 03:17:17 +0000 lauren http://iamlaurenleonardi.wordpress.com/?p=505 Continue reading »

]]> “They Don’t Know What They Want.”

This is the number one most frustrating and pervasive falsehood out there. I hear it from the Fox News people – those conservatives who love to make original quips like, “They should get a job, but first they should take a bath, har har.” Sad thing is, I hear it from moderate OWS supporters, too. So here. Please. Take this post and spread it around. Print it out, and bring it along. Tattoo it to the inside of your eyelids. (Sorry for that imagery). We know what we want. We do, we do, we do.

• I’m taking these first four line items (with a few updates and edits) from my recent post, How to Defend the Occupy Movement Over the Holidays.
• If you’d like to see any of these topics covered in more depth here on my blog, vote in this poll before 11/28/11.

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1. Occupy wants money out of politics. We want corporate personhood revisited by the Supreme Court.

Corporate personhood is a big issue, and one that extends beyond money in politics. For the sake of the OWS argument, we can discuss it in the context of the 2010 Supreme Court ruling (“Citizens United“) that states that corporations may donate freely to political campaigns. This, essentially, means corporations can buy whichever candidate they believe will most favor their own interests. It means that few if any politicians are truly by the people or for the people, because average citizens don’t have the financial power to catapult any one candidate into office.

In One Sentence: Occupy Wall Street wants Citizens United / Corporate Personhood revisited and changed.

2. We want more regulations on big banks.

After the great depression, regulations were placed on banks that prevented them from engaging in certain risky behaviors that could jeopardize the economy…again. The most famous regulation was called the Glass-Steagal Act (GSA), named for the two congressmen who were its legislative sponsors. The GSA, in short, prevented three big industries from co-mingling: insurance, banking and investing. The financial sector wasn’t a fan of this act, because it kept them from making exponentially more money. Things were going well till the late 90′s, when after decades of lobbying, a new bill was passed (Graham, Leach, Bliley) that basically kicked GSA out of the game. The 3 industries merged, and it wasn’t long before the whole system collapsed under the weight of its own greed.

In One Sentence: Occupy wants GSA reinstated, and many conservatives agree.

3. Occupy Wall Street is concerned with the growing income disparity between the ultra-wealthy and the lower classes.

The movement believes the middle class is rapidly disappearing. Average people are becoming poorer, while the richest are becoming richer, and before OWS, no one seemed to care. We believe our children and grandchildren will have to work harder than we’ve worked, to have less privilege and fewer comforts. The movement has gotten the country and the world talking about this problem. So that’s already a major success. Besides talking about it, what can we do about this enormous all-encompassing issue? Occupy Wall Street thinks a great place to begin is to stop cutting taxes on the rich.

One pretty obvious reason congress may not want to cut taxes on the richest Americans is that they themselves are in that group. I mean c’mon who would elect to pay more taxes, given the choice? (Um, lots of rich Americans, but I digress.) Another reason: the people who donate to their campaigns – see #1 – tend to be quite well off.

Conservatives argue that raising taxes on the wealthy would not make that much of a dent in the economy. Occupiers and most liberals tend to disagree. Conservatives argue that raising taxes on the rich will discourage the “job makers” from creating more jobs. Right now, the wealthiest have the most lenient tax scenario ever and there still aren’t jobs, so that theory is dead in the water. Some say that the “problems” our country is facing are no worse than they ever were. Again, occupiers tend to take a look at graphs like the one above, and worry about what that chart might look like if the lines continue on the same trajectory. We fear it could be a lot like this diagram.

In One Sentence: Occupy would like taxes raised on the wealthiest Americans, and lowered for the middle class and the poor.

4. Occupy wants professional lobbyists out of Washington.

Big corporations spend fortunes lobbying congress. Lobbyists write their own bills favoring their own special interests, and congress often passes them. This means that businesses have disproportionate impact on governing law. Bills should be passed and laws should be made to favor the majority. Occupy Wall Street believes the majority (the so called 99%) should have equal influence on legislation.

In One Sentence: Occupy would like the impact of professional lobbying to be limited, beginning with a law that prevents lobbyists from writing their own bills.

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These four ought to be concise and specific enough to make even the most closed-minded, msm-strung-out occupy-hater have a normal conversation about issues that effect everyone.

You can choose on your own whether to take the conversation further into things like civil liberties, America’s disenfranchised minorities, our problem with consumerism, wall street’s greed, the fact that far too few white collar criminals have been tried and jailed for the unlawful and unethical risks they took with the global economy. You can even take it to environmentalism, because that’s a big issue for Occupiers. These issues, while close to our hearts, might be too much for your average occupy critic. So if you find the waters of your conversation are becoming muddied, bring the dialog back on track and see what happens when you stick to the four points of reform mentioned above.

For more, there are some very poignant and concise tweets at #ioccupybecause on Twitter.

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Related Reading

• 5 Things to Know About Moving Your Money to a Local Bank or Credit Union
• 8 Ways to Defend the Occupy Movement to Your Conservative Family Over the Holidays
• 11 Ways to Support the Occupy Movement Without Sleeping in a Park
• OWS: Recommended Reading & Viewing

]]> http://iamlaurenleonardi.wordpress.com/2011/11/26/occupy-wall-street-does-actually-know-what-it-wants/feed/ 12 iamlaurenleonardi the-future-of-political-donations-in-one-graphic-full 79_to_07 income gap