The following was written by a member of OccupySpringfieldMO and I thought it was appropriate to republish with her permission. I didn't make it to last weeks OSM Wedsnesday meeting, but I'll be in Springfield, MO this Wednesday to share my thoughts and support them however I can. The groups website is OSM There is also a new group in Joplin, MO Occupy Joplin MO where the tornado destroyed much of the town a couple months ago.
I hope this is the beginning of a local community movement that I can support. We are the 99%. We are the Power of the People. We must unite against corporate greed and the inequality of our current systems of government. Corporations are NOT people. We need government for the People. We need to win the battle between hope and despair for the 99%.
Who Moved the Cheese, Struggling to Hope, and other Misc. Thoughts
by Kristy Dalton on Sunday, October 9, 2011 at 10:53am
Inside of my brain right now there is a battle taking place between hope and despair, and I have grown very familiar with the conflict throughout my life. One of the few charactaristics that I pride myself on has been that I tend to be more logic driven then emotionally minded - although there definitely have been times when I was called heartless or cold for responding to difficult situations with logic.
Currently I am unemployed and have been for what - a month? Perhaps longer? Most recently I was working at jobs that were made available to me through a temp agency - jobs that at the moment, at least, seem to have dried up. I have applications in all over the place locally - and I am desperately hoping with each passing day that I'll be able to start bringing in a paycheck again soon so that I can pay my bills and feel the tension weights drop off of my shoulders. I find myself struggling against a desire to crawl in bed to sleep away the hours spent tediously and fervently hoping that things will turn around. I am not unwilling to help myself - although I will say that sometimes when you've been low for a long time it gets difficult to see the sun through the clouds, especially when opening your eyes is the first battle of the day.
Anyone who has been watching my Facebook page lately has seen me post a large number of links, maybe has noticed me commenting on the links of others as my Friends list has expanded - the main topic recently been Politics - and specifically the Occupy Springfield Movement. Lots of people - I am sure - think that my passion for this is overzealous, that this is just another passing phase which will melt away any day now. Some don't even want to take the time to figure out what it is beyond a cursory glance at some random news source out there - or a list of supposed demands put out by the News York Occupy Wallstreet group. They look at the list of 'complaints' or 'demands' and wave their hand, "Unrealistic - not economically feasible - people just bitching to bitch about something - People unwilling to work - No central ideas - No central leadership - What do they want, anyways?"
Know what? That attitude hurt me at first - it felt like a slap in the face initally - but now - it is starting to make me angry. I welcome this anger - because at least I'm feeling something other than an urge to cry day in and day out. I feel motivated for a change - willing to shakily reach out my hand to touch the world outside of my apartment. I have gotten rides to Springfield from Republic twice in the last week - once with a kind gentleman who I met that very day on Facebook - and hadn't met in person until he showed up in my parking lot - and once with a woman who I spokke with long enough to be handed a piece of notebook paper with her contact information.
I went and sat at Phelps Grove Park on Wed, October 5th, not knowing what to expect - I didn't know if there would be five people there when I got there, or fifty. I packed up my laptop, forced myself to go out and step into a social setting that was a complete unknown - and for someone with severe depression and an anxiety disorder who has barely left her house in almost two weeks - that was no small matter.
Those who are dismissing that gathered group out of hand - who are wrapping up the folks who have since gotten involved in a tidy little package of 'silly politically driven lazy hippee idealist unrealistic not worth my time' bandits - please kindly pull your heads out of your asses. Maybe you don't agree with what you saw listed as supposed "Demands" from the Occupy Wallstreet crowd - Maybe you think its started as a bunch of people whining about taxes, wanting a free college education - but you didn't even look at the members of your LOCAL COMMUNITY with curiousity. You didn't even bother coming out of your home to stand at the park for an hour to see if what all these people talking about was worth adding your voice to - or even trying to direct them toward ideals you might agree with more. I'll tell you what you would have experienced if you had - if you even bothered to read this far.
When the man who I rode to Springfield with pulled up in my apartment complex parking lot in Republic, I was privledged enough to meet a man probably ten to twenty years my senior - I'm not sure - who was friendly, curious about what we were headed to, who asked me interesting questions during the drive about why I was interested, and who shared his open minded enthusiasm with a wonderful attitude that was so visible that just being around him cheered me up. I learned that he was a member/organizer (in some capactiy at least) of a liberal group which had been assembling in town for a while, and he was wondering if what he heard that night would be something he could get behind.
We got to Phelps Grove park early - the meeting was to be held at 6PM - and at 5:15 there were already about 15-20 gathered. I was surprised - I'd reached out to a friend of mine - Travis - at about 4:30 encouraging him to attend because I had no idea how small the group might be. As I approached I was handed a printout by someone telling me a bit about Direct Action. I found a seat in a growing circle and started listening to what was being said.
That circle kept expanding - and expanding, and expanding - there were senior citizens, college students, representatives from other protest groups, kids with their parents, people who walked up with dogs on leashes - and I noticed that everyone was respectful to one another. Eventually Jim - the kindly fellow I rode with - saw a need for a sound system to be used to make the words of each person reach the opposite side of the circle as we abandoned basic introductions so that we could get down to business.
In this General Assembly Meeting everyone who wanted to talk had a chance with the microphone. People listened to the speaker - there were nods and looks of understanding in the eyes of others as our numbers swelled to between 130 and 150 people. We talked about organizing ourselves, we talked about what the movement meant to us thus far, we read aloud the statement from the Occupy Wallstreet Group (Or at least what is being spread as the statement.. ) and seemed to be able to get behind the bulk if not all of the ideals.
We talked about sustainability - our frustration with the job market - with the difficulty of obtaining affordable health insurance - the seeming unfairness, most of all, of that top 1% of the population holding such a significant amount of the wealth in our country and how politicians and government no longer seems to be for the people - instead seeming simply bought by mass corporations. There were so many people from so many walks of life that to give a summary of what we talked about would be nearly impossible. If you want to know what was said during that meeting, you can find out because someone - bless them - recorded about 50 minutes of that first meeting and posted them on the Occupy Springfield page. Nobody started preaching their religion to others who were gathered - nobody mentioned a political party, be it Green, Liberal, Tea Party, Republican, Democrat, Anarchist, etc.
We talked about how we might actually have a chance to bring about some local changes with our unified influence - and briefly brainstormed for some possible areas to get involved - to perhaps try for legislation to limit the number of incoming corporations into the city, or to push for more regulations to help the environment - maybe get something out there to promote recycling. I have since spoken with various members of our city who have mentioned the group perhaps taking up the cause about asking what the heck the city is going to ACTUALLY do about the still-vacant Heer's building, what will become of the city buses and if there are plans to try to make that a more popular method of transportation, following up on the stories we have heard about briefly in the Newspaper about the legality of the smoking ban - just to name a few.
This group of fellow citizens broke into about six committee groups at one point - and I would like to add that throughout this entire meeting KSPR 33 was on site, as well as a senior reporter from the News-Leader and a reporter from the Community Free Press. I was very happy to see these journalists doing the opposite of what happened with the New York group initially - they weren't just getting enough information to give us a nasty public image, either.
For me, that meeting gave me hope. I have been busy trying to help coordinate the group's efforts on Facebook to get more supporters and continue organizing into a Direct Action Committee, Communication Committee, Media/Public Relations Committee, Educational and Outreach Committee - There are folks offering workshops to fellow members and to the public about sustainability - trying to set up times to help folks learn about things like gardening. There are folks holding workshops about Peaceful civil Disobedience - we are committed to refraining from anything that could be construed as violence.
We talked about being grateful for the service of our veterans in doing what they did to allow us the right to do what we are and will continue to do - exercise our right to peaceful assembly and free speech. We talked about having respect for public servants such as police officers and emergency service personell. We exchanged information, and I left that night with over 97 email addresses written on sheets of notebook paper that I have since typed up into a mass email list to keep everyone in the know.
I have since watched our numbers surge from about 300 followers on Facebook to over 1000. Our group received a tweet from Keith Obermann on Twitter. We dealt with one person who had admin privledges changing the profile picture to a display of the Anonymous mask and post a lot of that group's propaganda. This was quelled, because whether Anonymous supports the movement or not - we are NOT Anonymous. The group is a true melting pot of simple citizens getting together to talk about what feels right and wrong and try to come to a consensus about what should be done to change what can be changed.
I have for a long time felt like part of the struggle in America is that people are so busy trying to run the rat race - working one or more jobs, usually both parents - if there are children involved - and trying to spend time with family, perhaps trying to find time for an establishment of faith, worrying over their bills, chasing from here to there to there to here - that they don't have time - or don't make time - to stop and look around at the bigger picture. I know that when I AM working and going to school and being a single mom and trying to keep my house clean and trying to keep up with my business paperwork and doctor's appointments and trying to keep up with what might be happening with my close friends that I rarely have time to sit and pour over independent news stories about what is going on.
The fact that I have perhaps too much time on my hands at the moment has forced me to have no excuse but to look around and read about what is happening - and let me tell you, it is pretty disturbing. I think that so many folks are busy in the rat race - so as not to end up in the bottom 10% of the 99% like I am - that they don't realize that the goal they are seeking keeps getting moved further and further away - the cheese is constantly on the move, I guess you could say. Heck, I bet some people get to the cheese only to find it hanging from a cord about thirty feet over their head with no ladder in sight - they can just see it, but not obtain it. I sometimes don't even remember why I entered the maze in the first place, so far away from the cheese am I.
Anyway - if you made it this far in - thank you. Thank you for taking this five minutes of your life to read something that was important to me.