Well I made my first expedition out to my nearest Occupy protest event yesterday. Quite an interesting experience, on a few levels. Thank you Shockwave for coordinating an effort so some of us could chip in to fly Jesse (MoT) out for the day. It was great to meet him in person. I was equally enthused to meet eight other Kossaks for lunch at Biyani house in Berkely for lunch. My first Kossack meetup :o). Follow below for more on our excellent adventure.
Click this (cropped) photo to see the entire photobucket album (59 pics)
In attendance for lunch (delicious) and a great discussion were: Shockwave, JPmassar, Kimoconnor, Citisven, Glen The Plumber, Glorious, Catilinus, Kathy, myself and last but certainly not least, MinistryofTruth. JP, thanks for organizing the lunch gathering. It was a perfect place to accommodate a group of varying size and boisterousness. :o)
I live in the boonies of the East Bay about 1 ¼ hours from Oakland which I had thought was ‘a ways away’. HAH! Shockwave drove up that morning from Southern Ca.! He told a great story of talking a CHP down from a 92 MPH speeding ticket to a fixit ticket. OMG he must be a silver tongued devil!
Of note, I did not see one single police officer in or near Oscar Grant Plaza in my time there (about 3:00 – 7:30pm). Since I do have a magnificent grasp of the obvious, I’ll share it with those less gifted (Mayor Qhan, the police chief , the military police industrial complex, the MSM and the hard core 23% of America with HUR [head up rectum] syndrome that staunchly hold onto their right wing, hate all, bigoted points of view)… Gee, when the SWAT teams are not in attendance, there is no trouble… What a flippin’ concept. Obviously the powers to be have no desire to ‘keep the piece’, but to aggravate and CAUSE trouble so as to be able to squash the movement. When this movement started actually getting national attention via independent web based sources, the powers to be from the national government, to big to fail corporations, regional and local governments and police forces quickly realized they need to perform a hard core shock and awe smack down of these ‘radical and dangerous elements.’ OMG, curfews and camping in parks is WAY more important than literally bankrupting our country and robbing it blind. Oh, wait, that’s right, the people doing the bankrupting and robbing blind are the same ones who supply the lobby (bribe) money to our elected representatives (word not meant to be factual), so they do not even get looked at, let alone imply there is any wrong doing. But put a blanket down on a piece of public property to hang out and express your constitutional right of free speech, and you are public enemy #1 !
Hmmn, I did not write this to rant, but oh well. So shoot m…
All in all I had a very interesting day with the above folks. I mostly hung out with and enjoyed the company of Glen The Plumber at Oscar Grant Plaza. After lunch Shockwave, JP, Sven, Kim escorted Jesse to SF for some sight seeing before getting over to OccupyOakland at about 6:45pm. Maybe Kim, Jesse other s will share their ‘experience’ in the military surplus (of sorts) store they dropped into to get Jesse a belt (the kind with holes as JP described. ;o) Kim may need to expand on her notice of their selection of ladies underwear.
Well on that tawdry note I will end my share.
Thanks to all at OccupyOakland who are there full time (or mostly) for their herculean efforts. I was extremely impressed with the organization, level of spirit and energy these folks have. For theirs AND our sakes, they certainly have earned and deserve our full support. It takes a village Occupy!
Solidarity,
Dave