Occupy Wall Street

There is a statue of George Washington across from the New York Stock Exchange, on Wall Street. It’s banked by steps where tourists often stand, to get their pictures taken in the heart of American capitalism.  But at present, it’s difficult to get close to the old man. Around him, and around the steps are barricades, the metal kind, linked together to contain the statue, and the steps, from passersby. One can enter the steps, but only by passing through a narrow gap, policed by Federal police (because this is a federal monument). Some of the police are, oddly, wearing SWAT uniforms – as if someone was about to start a riot, or start shooting the street up. Not that they’d get very far, because Wall Street itself is barricaded, both at the ends, and along the edge of the sidewalk. It’s tricky to maneuver in this old lane. This, not coincidentally is also where Occupy Wall street activists are currently… occupying.

The original location had of course been Zuccotti Park, a hundred yards away. Since mid-march there was an occupation at Union Square, twenty blocks north, nightly cleared by police. Now the group, the stalwarts who hold down the space, have got prime real estate, one half of the steps, within the barricades, directly across from the stock exchange. But it’s a nerve grinding space of harassment and intimidation. I went by there yesterday for an hour or so. I was with Sidney and Mac and an Irishman and his three year old Scarlett. We had a stroller with us. We were told immediately that we couldn’t bring  the stroller into the steps. But we couldn’t leave it beside the steps either. In fact, we couldn’t stop touching it at any time. So we took turns holding onto it, outside the barriers, on the sidewalk as we stayed within the barricade.

It was a motley collection of folks inside the barricade. Most Occupy activists are busy elsewhere – organizing for Mayday, simply getting on with their lives, maybe going to meetings or organizing in their neighbourhood or workplace. Those who spend time here are able to do so for a variety of reasons. There was the one young man, about 25, bearded, holding a hand lettered sign from the AIDS march earlier in the day, that read how he lost two uncles to AIDS and that the government needed to tax the rich to end the ongoing deaths. He told me that he’d been at Occupy since the first day, and that his family is worried.”I’ll get a job”, he explained – but not until after Mayday. There was the veteran peace activist who had trained the young ones in Non violent civil disobedience. He’d been there a lot, and was tired but angry. He told us about how he’d been told that he could hold a sign, but not lean it against anything. When he’d been there the previous night, he rested it against his knees and the police snatched it. He put on his Guy Fawkes mask after a while and sat there quietly. The tall, young, African American man, silently holding his sign about human rights. The gaggle of college students talking about their courses. The older white woman with her canvas shopping bag. And the young, white man who was celebrating his 21^st birthday.  His long hair held back with an American flag bandanna, he argued that we needed to work together to resist the penny harassment. I agreed wholeheartedly. Because it’s the little things that are wearing people down. After a while, one of the federal police told us that we needed to remove the stroller. I asked him if we could put it up at the top of the steps or where we might put it and he advanced on me threateningly, yelling ‘didn’t you understand what I said?! Get rid of it!’ This of course meant that the stroller and its owners had to go. I walked with them to the end of the street and then returned to do some reading. Ironically, I was reading a book on the Public Sphere and 19^th century social movements. I tried to return to the steps and was told that only 25 people were allowed to sit in the ‘protest’ side – 25 filling maybe 20% of the space there. So I went to the other side of the statue. Unfortunately here, no one was allowed to speak loudly or sing, a fact we quickly learned when some folks tried to sing a version of Officer Krumpsky from West Side Story. Nor were we allowed to hold signs.  I tried to be tricky, simply holding up the title of the book as I read, hoping it would speak for itself. However, the idea caught on and people got sheets of the latest ‘Occupy’ newspaper and held them up as they were reading them. Immediately, we were all cleared from the ‘protest’ side of the steps. Spilling onto the sidewalk, one older activist held onto one of the barricades, rattling it. Immediately, he was tackled and arrested. No one was really sure what the charges were. Every day there are arrests like these, they don’t make the paper, and they are intended to dissuade anyone interested in protesting. It can work. As I was about to leave an older white man got onto the steps, called on the passing tourists to support these young people. He explained, “I came out of the civil rights movement, and I am proud to be here today with these young people as they defend our rights and our freedoms. God bless ‘em.” Despite the messiness and lack of clarity around what’s unfolding on those steps, I think that their endurance is a sign of how committed some of the people mobilized by OWS are. If they aren’t worn down by the police and the neglect around them, it bodes well for the larger struggle to create a fairer world.

Glitter Party

Our housemate Jen from Toronto was visiting and we wanted to show her a good time. So we went to the Glitter housewarming party on Saturday night.  I wanted to share it with you all. Glitter house is a rare breed – a collective house in New York city – where almost everyone lives in apartments. This is a cluster of artsy, activisty, gender-queer folks who have lived in a number of dwellings across Brooklyn and this latest establishment is in Bedford-Stuyvesant. I had been warned by the invitation that this was going to be a true fete. The house is an odd spiral, with only one room on a floor, circling up four flights to a ‘top kitchen’. Each wall was covered in draperies, posters for May Day's General Strike, and gorgeousness. But I’m getting ahead of myself. 

There was a basement kitchen with djs and a bar serving bourbon and lemonade, the ground floor housed only a pump organ, around which guests gathered singing four part Appalachian harmonies. I tried to do this and then slunk up the stairs, still unsure whether I was an alto or a tenor.  Then up to the mountain room – with piles of books covered in glossy black and green fabric - and the bed that the kids would crash on later. Onwards and upwards to the cloud room, all draped in soft white material and then to the kitchen where ‘alien heads’ were served. The alien heads were grape leaves stuffed with lentils, with faces poked into them. There was also a night sky of bean dip, punctuated by space ships of roasted carrots, planets of roasted beets, and salt as the stars. I am so lucky to know such weirdos.

Brooklyn Free School

Finding other parents who have a similar lifestyle to ourselves is a blessing – and in this we’ve found Henry. I actually met him in jail, when we were both busted for trying to provide legal support to high school students protesting against the Organization of American States in Windsor Ontario in 2000. He’s an amazing, high energy radical goofball, father to a seven year old known girl Lou. He works as a caretaker at the Brooklyn Free School in exchange for rent. I knew we were in luck when after running into him he simply said – ‘hey, I can look after Sidney and let you go out and you can look after my kid.’ Golden deal. But sometimes instead of going out separately, he hires babysitters and we all go out together. Last week he hired a sitter and I joined his crew to go and see an amazing cabaret show in Red Hook, with an ensemble featuring a classically trained Armenian singer squeezing our emotions out, followed by folk guitarist and then a brass band that I wasn’t paying that much attention to. I returned to relieve the babysitter about midnight and stayed over with the kids – awaking to the chaos of a free school. FYI a freeschool is a place where there are no classes as such, only teachers available for the students who want to take advantage of them. The idea is that when students are ready to learn, they will. Philosophically I agree. But I don’t think it “works” for everyone.  It can be loud. It can involve rollerblading indoors. It’s fun and challenging (but inspiring) to me. Still, I don’t see myself sending Sidney to one.

Occupy Wall Street – and Organizing Against Foreclosures

I thought I arrived six month late for Occupy Wall Street. And I probably did in some ways. I know I’ll be teaching about those hopeful days in September and October 2011 for a good long while. But I was hoping that things would still be moving along when I hit town this spring. And indeed they are. Its impossible to really get a sense of the massive mobilizations still underway across this city. There are more than ten meetings and usually at least two or three demonstrations every day. Wall Street is occupied once again, after a month of occupation at Union Square. There are arrests of those trying to lie down and sleep at midnight every single night. One message I read explained – come and see the street theatre – performances every evening at midnight. 

But we’ve been most able to hook in with the Occupy Foreclosures. Folks we know from ‘back in the day’ are involved in this. These protests are incredible and it’s a movement that will likely reach beyond the street protests and occupations. According to Organizing for Occupation (O4O):
“Every week, foreclosed homes are sold at auctions throughout the five boroughs of New York City.  Many of the families who live in these homes were victims of predatory loans and deceptive banking practices, but now face imminent evictions from some of the biggest culprits of financial fraud in the banking and mortgage industry. Others will have their house bought out by speculators, who are looking to flip properties, or gentrify new neighborhoods.” So… folks go to the courtroom where these auctions are held, fill the courtroom and sing songs and make it impossible to auction off the homes. Often, the auction is cancelled for the day and the disrupters are arrested. This is happening across the US, but all this last week in New York. Now, I must admit I haven’t yet made it into the courtroom, mostly because there are many others more prompt than I, and because we usually have Sidney with us – but on Thursday we watched as people joined in. I stood outside with a giant banner that read, “Banks, Stop Stealing Our Homes.” Person after person approached me with something supportive to say. From the old woman who blessed us for fighting for what’s right, to the high school kids who were sad that they had to miss the protest and go to class, to the man whose home had been foreclosed on – all of them easily understood that this madness must stop.

A Story of two Seders

Who wouldn’t love a celebration of an escape from slavery and a commitment to ensure that no one else ever suffers the same fate. Passover has food, music and wine. All good. Most of the Seders I’ve attended have been at my Aunt Heather and Uncle Mel’s house in New Jersey. They were kind enough to include us this year and so we went. At their house, Aunt Heather told me that she reads all of these blog postings – so of course what will I say except that it was lovely to share the food, stories and ritual with them, and my cousins Stephanie and David and their families. The kids asked the questions about the story of Passover, found the afikomen (the hidden piece of matzah), and played. There was matzah ball soup, we joked around, read through the text and ate. I’m always struck by the Haggadah (the sort of program/order of service) that is used – it intersperses the traditional readings with stories about Anne Frank, Chagall paintings and poetry. Super nice. Given that Sidney is too young to remember meeting his cousins in the past, it was special that he got to spend some time with them.  

The second night was much less traditional, and much anticipated. A beautiful setting was laid out across the floors at my dear friends Meredith and Jamie’s place. Meredith is a trombone player in the Rude Mechanical Orchestra and Jamie a radical techie with the May 1^st/People Link – that organizes electronic networks for social justice organizations. They’re also both amazing hosts and incredibly thoughtful about this Seder which they have held for years. It’s a radical Seder – one that celebrates the traditions of the radical Jewish left, and is collaborative with about 25 people participating.  We were invited to prepare a part of the evening – and submit readings, poetry and songs that were collected into a Haggadah. We chose to focus on the moment where Moses and the people are in front of the Red Sea and losing faith that they’re going to be able to escape slavery and win justice. Not that any of us might be able to relate to that? We collectively passed around the poem Angels of Death by Martin Espada to think about how change will come – and perhaps, as the poem proclaims. This is the Year…

There were some moments in the evening that stuck out for me.  Early in the seder, we stopped to talk about slavery and contemporary forms of slavery in Africa obviously, but also the slavery of rent, of wages, of an immigration system that leaves one vulnerable to abuse.  At one point we also talked about the welcoming of the stranger – and after a bit Famous spoke about her understandable uncertainty about welcoming a homeless refugee to live with her – apparently temporarily, but given that this person has limited resources, there is a possibility that the stay may be longer. After the discussion, she committed herself to welcoming that particular stranger, despite the risks. At another point we talked about the orange on the Seder plate – sometimes seen as a symbol of the inclusion women and/or the fruitful inclusion of gays and lesbians. And the olive on the seder plate, in solidarity with those struggling for peace and justice in the Israel and Palestine. One woman spoke about a friend who had recently passed away who had been part of a Jewish feminist collective in the 1980s who had initiated the ‘orange’ inclusion. Amazing histories and ‘herstories’ all around us. An Israeli woman at the Seder hadn’t known of these symbols and said she will bring them back home when she returns. We sang songs, some in Yiddish, some in English, some in Hebrew. We drank wine, ate our potluck and made a lot of noise.  Some had grown up with the traditions, and for others, this was all new. One of our friends from Toronto was also visiting, and even though he was half Jewish, he had been raised in an atheist household, and had never attended a Seder before this Passover. He was quite moved by the spirit of the event, and texted his dad to tell him about it - his dad replied, "I hope the food is better than it was when I was a kid" I'm confident it was... Again Sidney was part of a tiny crew of kids to find the afikomen and of course they did find it, winning false mustaches that they immediately put on, to great hilarity. I realize at events like this one, there is not enough ritual in my life – and hope I’ll be able either to return for Passover in the future, or help to build something like this in Toronto.