Well Saturday morning I awoke early to see what this "Global Occupy" movement was about. So I tun ed into several Livestreams of the Occupy Europe movement. I watched the M arches in Berlin, Portugal, and Paris live. There seemed to be good turnouts at all these marches and protests. I am sure you are savvy enough to track down recordings of these protests, so I won't go through all I saw here.
The I spent the morning not at Camp, but out and about getting ready or the protest. IU saw this as a REAL Opportunity to get interviews from the "People" about the why there were turning out to the March, and get the faces of the protest/march.
INTERVIEWS
I did over a hundred 45 second clips of people expressing their views of what brought the out, and their issues. I came to the march thinking what I was going to here was a lot of Frustration. Frustration with the status quo, frustration with the American Dream failing.
Boy was I shocked as I continued interview after Interview. Two things I was not expecting started to turn up. The first was Hope/Joy/Bliss at finding a COMMUNITY TO BELONG TO, and the Second thing that turned up was FEAR
COMMUNITY
The sentiment that people had finally come home to a place where they could belong, to things they could believe in was WIDELY held. One woman even started to cry during the interview as she told me she had been lost and wandering aimlessly through life till now nd this OccupySF movement. She felt at last like she was home. Another woman told me she was here to help out and just be. Another an told me that he was just passing through on his way to LA, and found this and felt like he finally was home and had found a community to believe in. I truly was not expecting this strongly felt sentiment of BELONGINGNESS as being a major factor of bringing people to the Movement!
Then as I march later in the day with the 10,000+ people there that I could feel it myself. I could feel the energy of all the people, I could feel like I too belonged to something that may or might do something, but at least I ad they WERE doing something. I at last too had found 'home', and I felt something that had been missing in me for a very long time, I felt HOPE.
So to some up what I got out of the interviews was simply a lot of people feel isolated by our "New Society" of living in the "Suburbs", being fed media through TVs, having very little real human contact any more. They feel all their "Creature Comforts" do more to isolate and keep them down then build them up, and they are tired of it.
I met people that came to the city from Berkley and Oakland, and Danville, and Walnut Creek, and they all said the same thing, Yes there were Occupy movements in their communities but they came to San Francisco to be part of something bigger than their little isolated community.
One woman told me that the next great challenge would be to Bring all the Occupy movements together in one place. At the time I thought this funny, but now I am really beginning to understand. PEOPLE WANT TO FEEL APART OF SOMETHING, AND WANT TO BE CLOSE TO OTHERS! Our society of single family homes spread out in sprawl just doesn't seem to satisfy people.
I just came back to the city after spending some time living with a friend in Sherman Texas. It was only 3 weeks, but it seemed an eternity. The thing I can say about Sherman is that there is no There There. It is the land of strip malls, and stand alone business on "Highways". There is a historic old downtown, but no one lives there, or goes there, it is a ghost town! They don't even have walk up ATMs, everything is a drive through. The friend I was staying with was really glad to have me around, and at the time I could not figure out why. But after the interviews of the people at the Camp and March I understand. He too feels isolated, and the "American Dream" he bought into is one of consumerism, (always have the next latest and 'best' thing), and Isolation, (Owning your own home with your own fenced in back yard in the sprawl!).
Looking at it from my new perspective I can see how it is designed to keep people isolated and consuming. The other thing I can say about my stay in Sherman is about the people. They are very friendly when you finally can meet one face to face, BUT THEY ARE LL SUPER SIZED. My friend for instance weighs 320 pounds. The people are huge. They are consumers of everything including food!
FEAR
I was expecting Frustration, but what I heard was FEAR, fear things are only going to get worse and that they are going to lose everything. I had college students tell me that they could no longer afford to go to school and were having to drop out, s they could never amount to anything, their dreams had been pulled right out from under them. I had elderly people tell me how they lost everything due to bad investments and now were going to be thrown on the streets.
For these people the Protest was about try to keep things from getting worse to lessen their own suffering a little. But the majority of the people were afraid. Afraid of getting up tomorrow to see more suffering, more friends evicted from their homes. One man from Stockton told me about what it is like to live in a subdivision were 60% of the homes are empty. He told me about moving lawns and trying to keep up the other homes, to retain what little property value was left in his own home.
Fearl, fear of tomorrow was driving a lot of people. The view that they could not believe anything any more was strongly help. They felt abused by Bush, by the manipulation and lies, they felt robbed by his bail outs.
I was expecting a general frustration, and was shocked when it finally dawned on me that these people WERE AFRAID, and hen I felt sorry for our Government of the People by the People because it is easy to work with a person that is frustrated, but I can tell you from my years of doing Crisis Counseling it is really hard to work through Fear and Paranoia, (but in this case it is not Paranoia is it, the American People were lie to by Bush, and they are being lied to by Obama!), and because people are afraid they will be very difficult populace to work with. Because they have been abused by our government they will be difficult to sooth and are not likely to just swallow the Blue pill again.
MEETING UP WITH FRIENDS
After the march I went to dinner with some old activist friends and got their perspectives. My old 'Queer Activist' friends expressed a difficulty working with the young heterosexual activists. There narrow worldview and blatant homophobia and hate speech really was an issue at our dinner. Since yesterday was OUT OF THE PROBLEM INTO THE SOLUTION day I asked those present to brainstorm with me how we could address this narrow world view, and bigotry. The feeling was that first EXPOSURE would help, but second they thought maybe some Sensitivity Training would help. They are going to try to come up with a plan for sensitivity training. I also encouraged my Queer Friends, (They self identify as Queer by the way!) and get them out on the street and into the camp!
Well time for this Old Activist to get out there and see what is happening in the camp!