Exhaustion and pain has permeated every inch of my body, every cell of my being, for weeks now. I've wanted to write, to document the happenings with the Occupy movement in Albuquerque and within my life, but simply haven't had the energy.
I'm a disabled veteran with PTSD and migraines. My days have been filled with appointments, hearings, and attempting to sleep while my inconsiderate neighbors insist on slamming their door and chatting until the wee hours of the morning in the very small foyer between our apartment doors, even though I've asked them to please stop.
I've realized how many people really do not care about others. The lack of consideration for one's fellow human being astounds me, although it shouldn't by now, I suppose, and my depression grows as I watch the live stream of events in NY continue...
Over the past couple weeks, I confess I've become more and more dismayed; mostly on a personal level due to the reactions of those within our local Occupy movement.
The statement most bothersome to me is that unless you are physically at a General Assembly meeting, your voice doesn't matter.
As a female disabled veteran with PTSD at a severe level, I'm not going to attend a General Assembly meeting unless I happen to be in the area already for some other reason that is essential to my personal well being, or I am accompanied by my personal body guard; my significant other. Neither is going to happen at the times the GA is held here due to my personal schedule and how quickly my body, mind, and spirit exhausts itself.
PTSD is not an easy thing to deal with.
The one and only time I was in the area where our General Assemblies are held, no one was around. For the first time in years, I had been invited to speak before a university class... the topic was the Occupy Wall Street movement. I was terrified, but was able to make it through the class like an old pro. However, once it was over, I was wiped out and had to make it through traffic to my humble apartment for a nap; a long one.
Total time out was about three hours.
My significant other and I also made it to one Occupy event. The anxiety, excitement, and migraine pain which struck afterwards forced a system crash which lasted two days.
So I do my Occupy Wall Street and Occupy Albuquerque support work from home as I sit on my couch with my laptop, my cigarettes, coffee, and arguing with my cat. This has been my routine since September 17th when things kicked off full force.
But I'm told I don't have a voice in my local movement, and I'm attempting to understand this conundrum.
I am disabled. I was homeless, lost my home, and now live below poverty level in HUD housing on a voucher provided by the VA. I support the Occupy movement via Twitter, Facebook, and blogs. One of my diaries on the local Occupy Movement was even published...
...but I don't have a voice in our local movement because I'm not physically present... my body isn't at a specific location at a specific time.
I just can't absorb this situation. The fact I AM the 99%; one for whom this movement says they are fighting, and yet, I don't have a voice within it.
Along with everything else within my life at the moment, this simple notion adds to my incredible depression. This is a Revolution, hell, THE Revolution of my lifetime. I haven't had much of a say in much of anything throughout my life, and it seems, I still don't have a say within a Revolution that is supposed to be about Economic Inequality that directly affects me and others like me.
What an incredible irony!
I was depressed. I had just spent the past couple of days, including this morning, watching the live UStream of what was happening in NYC. Everything that had gone on in Liberty Square. The whole eviction and the aftermath. The march on Wall Street this morning. Everything.
In fact, I was experiencing a bit of withdraw from Tim Pool's excellent UStream reporting.
And as I was pondering all this while sitting in the waiting room of my therapists office this afternoon, I saw the front page of Bloomberg BusinessWeek. It must have been from a couple weeks ago, but it had a black cover with bold red letters.
(And here is where my exhaustion and stress really show; I cannot recall the actual text, but it was something along the lines of ... )
The Real State of the Debt Crisis
I picked up the issue and began to thumb through it. Charts showing accurate information regarding "What People are Thinking About" reflecting what they believe to be true about how much of our debt is due to Social Security, Medicaid, etc, versus "What People Should be Thinking About" reflecting accurate charts of how much debt is REALLY taken up by Social Security and Medicaid (which is very little), Military spending (which is quite a lot)...
The whole issue was filled with articles about the financial state of our country. What big banks have done. What kind of harmful laws Congress has enacted. What kind of laws Congress wants to enact, etc.
I realized then that while many right-wing pundits continue to skew the facts about Occupy Wall Street, and main stream media still won't show the complete truth of what is happening there, Occupy Wall Street has made a difference.
The topics of conversation have dramatically shifted. Issues not discussed previously are now regularly covered in the media, including topics which used to be considered taboo, like the homeless and what to do to help them rather than ignore them, or worse yet, imprison them.
The Occupy Movement has made a difference... for some.
We still have a ways to go, however. While our combat veterans are now garnering the attention they deserve, the Department of Veteran Affairs now has a growing amount of female veterans to assist, and their claims are backing up. We are your growing ranks of homeless. We are your growing ranks of Wounded Warriors and our wounds are hidden; buried so deeply, for so long.
We've held our heads high and soldiered on as the military trained us to do, but we are not super women.
We are human. We deserve to be heard via our claims, our blogs, our twitter streams, our contributions to this Occupy movement in whatever form those contributions may take.
We have a voice and it deserves to be heard. We are present and accounted for.
Do we really have to be physically present at a General Assembly meeting to be heard?