STOCK MARKET WATCH, Friday, December 16, 2011

[Demeter]

34. Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Revolution

http://www.truth-out.org/thirteen-ways-looking-revolution/1323283309

...And as column inches and news web sites fill up with words about what their OWS message means now that camps nationwide are gone or threatened, the photographs that captured them at their peak take on new meaning. As the poet Wallace Stevens knew and as others have echoed, sometimes images tell the story best...

...A homeless man sits on a bench eating a free sandwich. "This is luxury," he says. "I got a kitchen. I got a bathroom. I can sleep without the cops messing with me. This is paradise."

Junebug, as he calls himself, says he has been homeless for 17 years. He says he prefers the camp to many of Portland's shelters, which he says open too late in the morning and don't provide enough services.

A story in one of the local weeklies quotes multiple sources who say the presence of homeless people at the camp is disruptive; that pattern has echoed in the media around the country. But Junebug says he goes to every general assembly. He wants to show me hard copies of emails about a financial conflict on the agenda at tonight's meeting. He leaves his dinner and takes me to the library tent, the legal tent, the media tent. All the copies are gone, but he takes my business card...

...Therapist Michael Stone could charge $120 an hour if he wanted to, but he'd rather not. The licensed professional counselor gives free sessions at the camp's north end for two hours every afternoon. At his private practice, his sliding scale is $25-$55.

"I think we have to switch to kind of a creative poverty model," says Stone. "If you have an old car, it should be applauded - not like you haven't 'made it' yet." We should use old things, make them last longer, he says. Conserve everything. With one exception:

Stone is tired of fighting the mental health battle inside a plutocracy. "You can only do so much when the system is so corrupt. You can help people find peace in their lives, but when it's within a corrupt system? It's hard to find peace."...

PHOTOS AT LINK