Observations from the Edge, Mockupy

There is an old saying that a fool and her sleep are soon parted, or something along those lines. Thursday night I was at the apartment trying to read but at the same time keeping an eye on some of my twitter lists because after a judge's ruling opened the door it was assumed Occupy Boston would be evicted that night. In the end Occupy Boston wasn't raided, possibly because close to a thousand people descended on Dewey Square in support.* A couple even got married as they awaited the arrest that never came. But to the south, in New York, something truly surreal was about to happen.

“ALERT: Midnite tonight: Fun action in solidarity w @Occupy_Boston! Charge yr phone, dress warm, hang out somewhere downtown, await info!”

That is the tweet that initially got my attention and more facts began to emerge quickly, 140 characters at a time. Producers of the TV series Law & Order had set up a fake Zuccotti Park in Foley Square to film an upcoming episode. At midnight the true occupiers of the real Zuccotti Park were going to descend on the faux Zuccotti Park using the hash tag #Mockupy.

“We have reoccupied.” “We're a revolution not a plot point.” “We can take a joke but fauxcotti is just too soon man.” “Livestreamer to cop: "are these real barricades, or a set piece?” “Chants of "NYPD does not respect law and order!" as cops rush in.”

Just before midnight I had had enough so I grabbed my camera bag and headed out into the frigid night to see what was happening. Even with Boston in the back of my head I couldn't help but laugh as the tweets flew endlessly. I got there just in time to see a very real NYPD preparing to raid a mock camp that was that looked very real down to the functioning, and fully stocked, kitchen and library. There was even mock netting for rounding up fake protesters at the fake Zuccotti in the real Foley Square.

“NYPD Captain saying, "i need to find someone from Law & Order." “Whose fake Zucotti? OUR fake Zucotti.” “Police are holding fake Zuccotti. Someone just yelled "whats are your demands?!" "U guys just cleared a fake Zuccotti Park," I said to Cpt Jaskaran. "We didnt clear a fake Zuccotti," he insistd. "Theyr takng the set down."” “NYPD tells occupiers to leave #Mockupy so crew can remove set. Isnt that the cops' job? After adequate pepper spray, of course.”

Every tweet included or ended with #Mockupy and at 1:07 AM Friday morning I tweeted #Mockupy is trending, and it was, worldwide.

Not long after my phone went to black as I had failed to follow those very important initial instructions.... I didn't charge my damn phone.

*postscript - I wrote most of this Friday at the gallery but never got it finished or posted. After ten weeks Occupy Boston was evicted from Dewey Square in a pre-dawn raid Saturday morning. For a change it was a rather peaceful raid that lasted barely an hour and included 46 arrests for trespassing and disorderly conduct. His Majesty the Mayor Mike Bloomberg and what he calls his 'army' could learn a lesson from this raid.

Observations from the Edge 12.10

I wanted to try out the new twitter's embed option and this seemed like a good one to use. I rarely fav tweets unless I want to save a link for later but this one I rather like.

WE DID THAT!!! “@KcNightfire: #mockupy is trending”

— OWS_Tactical (@OWS_Tactical) December9, 2011

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Observations from the Gallery 12.8

With longer holiday hours at the Gallery I have some time to kill so I've been working on something new. My first crude attempt at translation.

Samedi Matin

Pendant que vous dormez hors de la cognac, petit,

ma main pourrait trouver son chemin de retour à l'endroit

il sait si bien, maintenant. Même avec votre visage

s'est détournée de moi, de dormir dans jusqu'à midi,

vous déplacez à travers moi. 

Après que nous ayons fini de parler, que le cognac, jusqu'à quatre

AM, vous, dans l'obscurité, a joué trois chansons pour

moi pendant que je m'assoupis, si fatiguée que je ne pouvait pas venir

lorsque vous avez essayé pour moi. 

Ainsi vous vous êtes assis sur le plancher

à la guitare, à côté de moi, troubadour,

puis, nu, vous m'avez réveillé pour vous, m'a acheté

vers le bas sur votre bouche, il a acheté le bas et m'a attrapé

dans l'aube grise, dont le rayon de soleil était votre nom

comme le cognac dans ma bouche que je suis venu et est venu.

"Amour, la Mort, et le changement des saisons."

from "Love, Death, and the Changing of the Seasons" by Marilyn Hacker

Observations from the Gallery 12.7 Randomness

Governor Rick Perry, gay or not gay? All the world wonders. Maybe all the world doesn't wonder but rumors do continue to swirl. If you have never seen it this would be a good time to watch Outrage a documentary by Kirby Dick about politicians who push an anti-gay agenda to cover the fact that they themselves are gay. Methinks you doth protest too much.

One of the stranger conversations I've had recently concerned the artistic merit of Resident Evil: Afterlife versus Resident Evil: Extinction. No decision was made but my thinking is Mila Jovovich looks rather stunning in either one so I don't really care. Extinction does have that slow cam shot up the legs in the opening sequence, deff a point in its favor.

In geek news I just discovered a Twitter app called Buffer. The free version allows you to load up to ten tweets in your 'buffer' and have the tweets spread out over preset times. The awesome part is you can download a Google Chrome extension that adds a button to Chrome. Click the button and it writes a tweet for whatever page you happen to be looking at. Now if you happen to follow me on twitter don't be surprised if I seem to be constantly tweeting, I'm not really there. 

It seems my little family is spreading farther and farther apart. My brother spends most of his days in the wilds of northern Pennsylvania working. I'm really happy for him because he always wanted a job where he could work outside and that is what this is. As always with us though he seems a little torn by it all. It's a good job, pays well, and he gets to go four-wheeling in his new jeep but in the end his salary is paid through his employer's contract with Shell Oil and its new fracking operation. The sis is continuing to move down her own beaten path and will be transferring out of Penn State after this semester. From art school to uncommitted to a political science major all in one year, seems we have more genes alike than we ever knew. I so miss spending time with her so hopefully we will get to over the holidays. As for myself, I'm always just a dream flight away from Paris. It is what it is, I guess the three of us will just conquer the globe one day.

With the holidays the days get longer at the gallery and the weekend days even longer. I think I need to get home, light some candles, slip into a hot tub filled with those black raspberry vanilla bubbles, and soak.

Maybe some wine is called for too.

Rihanna - We Found Love

Observations from the Edge 12.6.2

I was talking to my sister earlier today and she happened to ask me how the Occupy Wall Street thing started. It's actually something I have wanted to write about but other things always seem to come up and I never do. This is a little something I wrote up for another project that does a good if spare job of answering that question.

A short history of the beginning of Occupy Wall Street....

It all started with an email sent out by Adbusters magazine that included a hashtag, #OccupyWallStreet, and a date, September 17th. It quickly spread with the help of a poster depicting a ballerina dancing atop the Wall Street charging bull statue. When September 17 finally arrived, people came from all over the country but they numbered closer to 2,000 than the hoped for 20,000.

The plan was to hold a General Assembly meeting at Chase Manhattan Plaza and then figure out the next step from there. But the plaza had been closed off the night before. Leaflets showing a map and alternate locations were circulated through the crowd and a decision was made to go with plan B, Zuccotti Park, right between thoroughly barricaded Wall Street and the World Trade Center site. The name Zuccotti Park once had is still on a building across the street and it was too good to be true. Zuccotti Park was quickly renamed Liberty Square, not unlike Tahrir (Liberation) Square in Cairo. The first week there was rarely more than a few hundred protesters at Liberty and they were constantly harassed by police. The began to call themselves 'the 99%' as opposed to the 1% who control majority of the wealth.

Each time there was an incident with the police media attention increased. It sometimes seemed as if the police were trying to do the occupation a favor. Young women pepper sprayed without provocation, teenagers slammed onto the pavement, about 700 arrested on the Brooklyn Bridge, each episode brought more cameras, more sympathy, more people and more momentum.

The movement was born.

Observations from the Edge 12.6.1

At the end of my day of wandering Saturday I stopped in at a bar close to home for a quick drink. While I was there I ran into a guy I had meant weeks ago at Liberty Square but hadn't really talked to since. I honestly don't know if he knows as much or knows as many 'insiders' as he said he did but we did have an interesting conversation about where OWS goes over the winter.

One thing we agreed on was that the eviction of November 15th probably wasn't a bad thing. There really was no way the camp could survive a winter like the one we had last year. Being close to the water the winds would howl up the streets in a storm and anything approaching last year's snowfalls would have buried them, all their energy would have been spent simply surviving. Imperial Mike may have done everybody a favor in shutting Zuccotti down and would have better served himself by letting everybody freeze.

That being said the winter months are going to be very important to the movement's future. A time to organize, grow, and prepare for its part in the coming presidential election campaign including the rumored occupation of both the Democratic and Republican conventions. During a recent visit to OWS Jesse Jackson said, “At some point, movements must take on some form, some identifiable agenda. At some point, water must become ice.” Whether those in attendance liked hearing it or not, and I'm thinking not, this is very true. Not that I think the movement needs some set of concrete demands, everybody seems to have their own, but I do think it needs a clear direction, maybe destination is a better word, an end game to strive for.

I'll have to get back to that conversation some other time because I wanted to mention something that began today and ties in somewhat. Organizing for Occupation (O4O), a 200 member squatter group, and Occupy Wall Street today launched the Occupy Our Homes campaign. The idea is to disrupt foreclosure proceedings, liberate foreclosed properties, and help people facing eviction. With squatting on the rise O4O was formed months before OWS but in recent weeks over 50 new squatting support groups have sprung up, many affiliated with local occupy groups. Banks seem to be sitting on foreclosed homes at record levels akin to the trillions of dollars in cash they are sitting on overseas. In parts of the Bronx as much as 40% of the housing is foreclosed and empty as the unemployed go homeless.

“The Occupy Wall Street movement and brave homeowners around the country are coming together to say, "Enough is enough." We, the 99%, are standing up to Wall Street banks and demanding they negotiate with homeowners instead of fraudulently foreclosing on them."
You can read more at OccupyOurHomes.org.

Tis the Season

And so it seems the Christmas season is here, grudgingly on my part. I may have mentioned last year that I have a love/hate relationship with this time of year but I'll stay away from that for now. I did some uptown shopping and wandering yesterday that included visiting the ice at Citi Pond and I suppose it has put me in a better holiday frame of mind. One thing is certain, this little holiday video will keep making me smile no matter how grumpy I get.

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Observations from the Edge 12.4

I just wanted to pass along a pair of things I think are worth reading. The first is an article from today's New York Times and but the second a report from the Cato Institute so it's a bit longer.

"Riot police officers tear-gassing protesters at the Occupy movement in Oakland. The surprising nighttime invasion of Zuccotti Park in Lower Manhattan, carried out with D-Day-like secrecy by officers deploying klieg lights and a military-style sound machine. And campus police officers in helmets and face shields dousing demonstrators at the University of California, Davis with pepper spray Is this the militarization of the American police?"

From "When the Police Go Military" an analysis by Al Baker of the New York Times and published in the December 4^th edition of the paper.

"Americans have long maintained that a man's home is his castle and that he has the right to defend it from unlawful intruders. Unfortunately, that right may be disappearing. Over the last 25 years, America has seen a disturbing militarization of its civilian law enforcement, along with a dramatic and unsettling rise in the use of paramilitary police units (most commonly called Special Weapons and Tactics, or SWAT) for routine police work. The most common use of SWAT teams today is to serve narcotics warrants, usually with forced, unannounced entry into the home."

From the summary of "Overkill: The Rise of Paramilitary Police Raids in America" by Radley Balko for the Cato Institute and also quoted in the Times column. This report is rather long but a pdf file can be downloaded free of charge. 

Observations from Amerika 12.2

It should come as no surprise that what follows occurred in the dark of night. I don't know how 93 US Senators, elected by the people of this nation, can look themselves in the face this morning. It boggles my mind how little media attention this whole thing has gotten.

Yesterday the Democratic controlled US Senate quietly passed the 680 page National Defense Authorization Act for 2012 (s.1867) by a vote of 93-7. Included in sections 1031 and 1032 of the bill is wording that for all purposes declares the whole of the United States, actually the whole world, a battle zone. As such the US Military could for the first time since the Civil War be allowed to detain United States Citizens within the US and hold them indefinitely without charge or trial. These same US citizens could conceivably face a military and not civil court. That is if they are given a trial at all. As it always seems today the purpose of the provisions is to make it easier to fight and prosecute terrorists but now it seems we are all suspect.

The sections are opposed by President Obama who promises he will veto the entire appropriations bill if they are included. Its is also opposed by the Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, FBI Director Robert Mueller, and many retired military leaders. Friday morning the White House said the veto threat still stands.

"The bill is an historic threat to American citizens and others because it expands and makes permanent the authority of the president to order the military to imprison without charge or trial American citizens," said Christopher Anders, ACLU senior legislative counsel. It should be noted that a compromise was reached in order to pass the bill. The compromise? It only includes US citizens “if we want it too.” One can only wonder what any future President Dick Cheney would think of that.

It all reminds me of a quote....

“For once Benjamin consented to break his rule, and he read out to her what was written on the wall. There was nothing there now except a single Commandment. It ran: All Animals Are Equal But Some Animals Are More Equal Than Others.”

George Orwell, Animal Farm

notes:
Those voting against the bill were Senators Tom Coburn (R-OK), Tom Harkin (D-IA), Mike Lee (R-UT), Jeff Merkley (D-OR), Rand Paul (R-KY), Bernie Sanders (I-VT), and Ron Wyyden (D-OR).

update - To clarify what "if we want it to" means.
A compromise amendment was passed which just pushes the entire matter down the road. The compromise simply leaves it to the Supreme Court to decide should some future president decide to assert the authority the bill specifically authorizes him to do. Our current crop of politicians can't even seem to get taking away our freedom right.

Observations from the Edge 11.30

One would think the chances of me posting anything about Miley Cyrus would be about as good as the temperature hitting 70° in the Village during the last days of November. Well that day seems to have arrived. "It's a Liberty Walk" is a song and video released by Cyrus in support of Occupy Wall Street. Some might say she did it to reclaim some of her time in the limelight but I'm giving her the benefit of the doubt for multiple reasons. Cyrus herself appears nowhere in the video, something you could never say about Madonna, and the video contains scenes that in no way endear her to her former employers at Disney.

Just remember that nowhere here did I say I liked the song but you just have to support the admitted pot smoker and now occupier Miley Cyrus.

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Observations from the Edge 11.29

I rarely reprint anything here but this is something I wanted to share. What follows was written as an open letter to police by Quinn Norton who is on an extended assignment covering the Occupy protests and Anonymous for Wired magazine. You can read her introduction to the project here. It was published yesterday as both Occupy L.A. and Occupy Philly awaited eviction.

"Dear Police, upon the occasion of the eviction of Occupy Philadelphia and Occupy LA:

It is not my place to say whether what you are about to do is right or wrong, and it doesn’t matter what I believe either way. You are going to evict this occupation, and all the resistance this ragtag band of sleep-deprived community organizers, volunteers, and chronically homeless could put up might, at best, delay you by a matter of hours. You, the occupiers, and we in the media: we all know these conflicts can only have one outcome.

What I am asking you to change is your demeanor. I have seen you be confrontational, frivolous, spiteful, insulting, self-righteous, and even at times, solemn.

There is something I’d like you to know about what you’re about to do. You don’t know these occupys like I do. This isn’t your fault; you can’t. You’re largely not welcome in many of them, because we all know what you will eventually do to them. Even if you’ve visited, you have to hold yourself distant from their story, even as I immerse myself in it. You’d no more want to hang out and get to the know the camps the way I have than you’d want to cuddle and name a calf that’s meant to be tomorrow’s veal dinner.

These camps, these collections of tarps and tents, are more than you see. They are the sweat and treasure of hundreds, sometimes thousands of people trying to learn how to take care of each other. The fucked-up kids, street kids and old homeless are as important as the community organizers and grad students.

They’ve all come to this place and tried to build a way to talk to and take care of each other, after giving up on a system they believe has failed them. This is what they’ve poured their hearts and their best thinking into. It may not be legal. It may, in your opinion and many others, not even be a good idea. But they’ve built a village. There are libraries and kitchens, places for women, places to provide shelter and clothing. There are even little temples here.

People have sanctified this space with their hope. It is imprinted with their lost nights, their spare money, their effort and their bodies. The places you see covered in plastic sheets and bric-a-brac are thick with memories: the echos of unguarded conversations, of commitments made, of love and struggle and compromise.

When you go in and wipe this place clean, and you will, what I ask is that you do it solemnly.

Do it with the gravity of the execution, not the frivolity of the easy triumph.

When people scream at you, think of them as the family members of the condemned, not as your enemies. Be, insofar as you can, gentle. Remember that when you are gone tomorrow and there is nothing left, these people will remain, not merely angry but emptied of effort. They will be hunting for friends lost in the fray, for scraps and bits of the life they built together. They will have lost their place to be in the world.

Remember that these people, whether misguided or not, stayed because they all found here something they needed. Some of them were listened to for the first time in their lives here; others found a place where people accepted them. A few were told hard truths about their own failings.

There are middle-class professional occupiers here who did something they believed in for the first time in many years. They’d lived outwardly successful but inwardly desperate lives, drained of the sense that anything they did could ever matter.

A few even came to prey on this place, but found something that mattered more than their own appetites for the first time. Almost none of them were good at being these new people, and it will show. I’m sorry for that. These people were weeks in on years-long journeys to be new.

Be merciful in the execution of your orders. Respect, if not the thing built, the hearts behind the building."

Observations

No words necessary.... 

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Observations from the Coffee Shop 11.28

After a rather mellow holiday weekend with the family I was ready to stay mellow and write something about the end of the Penn State football season. However I have a few things that are irritating me, surprisingly all are coming out of DC, and all of them just drive home the point that those running this country are either totally out of touch with today's world or they just don't give a damn about it.

The first is the Stop Online Piracy Act, HR 3261 or SOPA, which would start the United States down the same road as China when it comes to censoring the internet. Sponsored by the Republican dominated Congress it is just a hand out to entertainment corporations that can't seem to find a way a legal way to make a profit in the 21st century. Forget that the latest installment of The Twilight Saga just had a worldwide weekend box office of almost half a billion dollars, the corporations need our help.

SOPA would give the Department of Justice and copyright holders a fast track to court orders shutting down websites accused of copyright infringement. It would bar internet advertising and payment sites from doing business with the accused pirate sites. Search engines would be barred from linking to the sites and service providers would be forced to block them. Another section of the bill would make unauthorized streaming of copyrighted media a felony.

A major force behind the bill is the Motion Picture Association of America which is using the tried and true fear tactic to push for passage. The MPAA claims that 2 million American jobs hang in the balance and need to be protected. MPAA congressional testimony is frequently quoted by the bills sponsors while testimony that for every job lost the internet creates 2.5 jobs is totally ignored.

Not at all surprising is the fact that a group that includes Google, Yahoo, and Amazon is leading the fight against SOPA. What is surprising is that Microsoft, long a proponent of stronger copyright laws, is also quietly fighting it. Opponents say the bill as written would overturn the provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act which allow warned websites to take down questionable material before further action is taken, the principals YouTube operates by.

A partial list of supporters of the bill includes the MPAA, the Recording Industry Association of America, NBCUniversal, Macmillan Publishers, Viacom, Comcast, the AFL-CIO, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and various other music, cable, and movie companies.

A partial list of opponents includes Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter, AOL, eBay, the Brookings Institute, the ACLU, Human Rights Watch, the American Library Association, Reporters Without Borders, the Business Software Alliance, and TechAmerica which is a tech trade association with 1,200 member companies. Senator Ron Paul said SOPA would cause "an explosion of innovation killing lawsuits and litigation," thus costing not saving jobs. If passed as written the internet as we know it would cease to exist. Flickr, YouTube, and Vimeo would would probably shut down. Twitter would become virtually useless.

We might as well all learn Mandarin and get it over with.

If you want to voice your opposition to the bill click this link to StopCensorship.org and fill out the simple form. A letter will than be generated and sent to your representatives. Also Senator Ron Wyden will read your name from the House of Representatives floor during his flilibuster when and if it comes up for a vote.

Observations from the Window 11.28

"Morning Joe" on MSNBC is the only morning show I watch. I mean seriously where else does the conversation jump from the latest political news to the current Premier Soccer League standings? So this morning I pulled myself away from a Britney Spears takeover on Fuse to see what they were talking about and this is what I found. I can totally relate.

[useless embed] video

Well this is kind of a stupid post but I had it all posted with the video embedded than I saw that due to restrictions the embed doesn't work. Somebody explain to me why they have an embed link if you can't use it. What the..... MSNBC?