EXCELLENT: "To sum up: the only two MSM live-feeds switched off at precisely the same time..."

[Hissyspit]

http://www.theawl.com/2011/10/the-livestream-ended-how-i-got-off-my-computer-and-into-the-streets-at-occupy-oakland

The Livestream Ended: How I Got Off My Computer And Onto The Street At Occupy Oakland

By Lili Loofbourow @ 12:10 pm

When I heard the “We Are the 99%” slogan, I worried. I am movement-skittish. I don't like being spoken for. Anytime I hear the language of political clichés, whether about “workers” or “job creators,” my ears shut down. I know those vocabularies, and I don't agree with the worldviews that produce them.

- snip -

Now, I had seen Snow Park by accident the day before—I parked nearby without realizing it, and as I walked to my destination, I started seeing chalk outlines on the sidewalk. They were outlines of shadows: shadows of meters, trash cans, bicycles, all traced in blue chalk.



- snip -

The “evacuated” park is packed with bodies, the “occupied” park is idyllically empty save a well-tended camp of some ten to 15 tents, and this all makes a kind of sense in our embattled country where corporations are people, special people who have the same rights as we do but none of the responsibilities. (Immortal people who won't be troublesome and go to public parks; clean uncomplicated people without hands to cuff or eyes to teargas or bodies to arrest and jail.) They're people, moreover, whose right to bribe politicians is protected as “free speech." Without getting dramatically Orwellian, it's reasonable to say that our words have lost some of the concreteness that made them useful.

- snip -

And then the ABC livefeed went dead.

My Twitter feed went crazy with reports of tear gas.

I refreshed the livefeed frantically. “This broadcast has ended,” it said.



MUCH MORE AT LINK, READ THE WHOLE THING

[Ignis]

1. K&R

This is how the movement grows: One person convincing another "skeptic" to dig a little deeper, do a little more research, get a little more involved.

:kick:

[glowing]

2. This is a wonderful account of what Occupy means... Love it.

[Fire Walk With Me]

3. Wow, wow. Thank you. I especially love this sentence:

"Never in my life did I imagine I'd be sitting with a group of adults seriously debating policy as if our decision made a difference."

[SalviaBlue]

4. K&R... great read!

[woo me with science]

5. "Without getting dramatically Orwellian, ...our words have lost ...concreteness."

Yes, we are seeing the construction of many electronic gags and memory holes.

[Marazinia]

33. We need demands and concrete actions

This is becoming a hostage situation. We the people intend to hold the country hostage until the rich no longer hold the resources hostage. So it's an exchange of hostages. I have concerns, however.

1. What are our demands exactly? Concrete, specific, and obtainable demands seem to be lacking. We need those.

2. What is the six month (or longer) plan? This thread raises the possibility that we will lose reliable communication with each other as time goes on. If that happens, if the enemy takes full control of communications, every community needs a plan and needs to know to stick to that plan until all specifed demands are met. Otherwise, we can be taken apart, made to work at odds with each other, and fed devastating lies. But if we know that, for example, a strike is to begin on February 1st, 2012, is to encompass all non-essential workers, and is to continue until all listed demands are met, regardless of what anyone, inside or outside the movement says from that point onward, then no misinformation can stop us.

3. What are the plans for supplying protesters, and later strikers (because this will not succeed without strikes), with food, power, and housing? One way is for essential workers to go on strike as well if power to homes is cut off or if stored food is destroyed and not distributed to those on strike. Also, independent truckers and farmers who support the movement can help. Doctors and nurses can volunteer their time as well, and will need to, otherwise, we'll simply be starved into submission. One of my concerns regarding Occupy is the current time of year. This would be much better begun in the warm months, after a good food supply, from canned goods to crops ready for harvest, is prepared.

4. Are there enough Americans behind this, or have ordinary Americans not yet suffered enough to make them realize that this isn't about who will get elected in 2012, it's about changing America entirely? If there aren't enough of us yet, we will fail, and it will make it that much harder to succeed in the future.

5. The anti-Semitic associations. I've no doubt these are agent provocateurs, smear artists intent on destroying the credibility of Occupy. How are they being dealt with? Has anyone collected their names for future investigation? We could really use the help of some private investigators on things like this, to see if the people making these racist remarks are merely ignorant or are agents or police informants. We need people who are experienced in investigation to thwart and expose any COINTELPRO tactics currently being used against us.

[redqueen]

6. K&R

Thanks so much for posting this.

[hootinholler]

7. What a great piece!

Thank you for bringing that here!

[Luminous Animal]

8. I've become stupidly weepy over the Occupy Movement. This battle worn activist

was getting tired. Hell, I was getting tired 15 years ago. I've spent so many fruitless hours exhorting young people to take up the reigns... from defending abortion clinics, to battling the fundies, to defending the social safety net, to dismantling the industrial prison complex, to military industrial complex. This is not to say that some young people haven't participated but enough haven't to create a critical mass. A critical mass is being created now and it fills me with joy.

It is the final paragraph of the linked article that made me break down and, I think, the most important part in an important piece:

The best answer I can muster for the question of what an engaged citizen tired of being a spectator can do is this: try the ordinary channels and try being one of the 99%. It is not perfect. Nothing is. But there is room for more than your vote or your money: there is room for you, your body and your brain. It offers something our political system (increasingly peopled as it is by disembodied, bodiless, shadowless “corporate” persons) doesn't. It's this: talk into the human microphone, and your voice doesn't disappear. It's amplified. Talk, and you stand a chance of leaving, not a mark—nothing quite so permanent—but a chalk outline of a shadow that shows that you, too, were once here.

[justabob]

35. agreed... great paragraph

That paragraph and specifically: "...talk into the human microphone, and your voice doesn't disappear. It's amplified." It is a powerful thing, the human microphone. More than once, hearing the repetition and the power of so many voices together has made me cry. I can't quite call it joy, but there is strength there that has been missing for so long.

[Luminous Animal]

9. Kick. Everyone really should read this. Hissyspit is right. It is excellent!

[arikara]

10. Oh what a good piece

thanks for posting, Hissy.

[one_voice]

11. Good reading! ....

Thanks!

K&R

[Tsiyu]

12. Great work

This is what it's about:


snip


"And that's how I—a mealy-mouthed moderate visiting Occupy Oakland reluctantly, and for the very first time—was not only welcomed but spoke, was listened to, and was heard. I'll note here that the proposal passed, unamended, and the planning committees are open to anyone who wishes to be involved. The debate continues, and you can participate as much as you want to. After three decades as an American citizen and years of leaving messages for my representative, only last night, speaking into the human microphone, did I feel for the first time that my political participation could matter."


Thanks for this find, Hissyspit

[Hissyspit]

13. Rachel Maddow Tweeted it.

I meant to put that in the OP, but forgot in all the cut-and-pasting.

[Luminous Animal]

14. Nice!

[Tsiyu]

16. Good for her as well

And thank you for bringing it here

[RainDog]

15. k&r n/t

[MedleyMisty]

17. Thank you for linking this

I am the opposite of the person who wrote this. I have been a person of extremes all my life, and I'll admit that I usually sneer at people like the author. They seem selfish, cowardly, willing and able to just stand by and watch the whole world suffer and die and not give a damn. It is a moral position that outrages everything I know and feel.

And I have spent years seeking to understand. I have studied many theories about ego, consciousness, and moral development. I have researched conformity and evil and apathy. But I could never find anything that would explain people like the author to me, what they were like, what went on inside their heads, how they could be so tepid and selfish and immoral.

I think I could find commonality with the author on the language thing. The discussions on here about Libya have shown me the evils of ideology, how it takes you over and blinds you to the point where you will entirely deny reality and excuse any atrocity in order to justify your ideology, to the point where you will throw six million people under the bus because you think the dictator who abuses them shares your ideology. And in the future I will think more about my language when I get into one of my moral rages.

It's hard, though. It's hard to see the world suffering so much and to look at a person who doesn't care and feel something other than blinding rage. To me, apathy is the greatest evil. Psychopaths are gonna be psychopaths, but if the rest of us stood up to them they wouldn't be able to do the damage that they have done to the world, and my god the damage that they have done.

I will bookmark this, and I will study it. It is the holy grail I have been looking for, a look into the mind of someone who is completely alien to me. All my research, all the models of development, from Dabrowski to Kegan to Graves to Kohlberg to Loevinger, could not give me what I needed - a real look at the internal experience of someone like the author. And here it is, written beautifully. I'm a writer (not by trade, but by soul) and so that gives me a way in - I automatically respect anyone who can write as well as the author.

Thank you so so much for posting this, and to the author for writing it. It is a lesson I desperately need to learn.

[MedleyMisty]

18. K & R

Just kicking it one more time. :)

[sabrina 1]

19. People were saying that was happening on Twitter that night.

As soon as the police were ready to attack, the media stopped filming. Too bad the citizens kept on doing so.

Someone said that night that they were told it wasn't their fault, the media's, that it was a technical problem. I don't think anyone believed that.

Great OP, thank you.

[HCE SuiGeneris]

20. and so it goes...

Is it time, yet?

[Hissyspit]

23. The time is now.

[snot]

21. Excellent article. K'd, R'd, & posted elsewhere. Thank you, Hissyspit! (again.)

[Change has come]

22. K&R

Awe inspiring!

[UpInArms]

24. that was absolutely one of the best writings I have read

regarding someone's transformational thinking about how they are truly a part of this - and excepting that they are the 99%

bravo!

[orbitalman]

25. As soon as they get the tanks out....

we'll have Tenneman Square.

[snagglepuss]

26. Exceptional. Thank you for posting.

:kick:

[pscot]

27. Great post

[WillyT]

28. Most Excellent !!! - K & R !!!

:kick:

[jerseyjack]

29. The 1 % has the money. The 99 % has the votes.

[Kurmudgeon]

30. Apparenly ABCnews is too corrupt to be trusted. I had written them off already.

I'd been having odd little computer problems after visiting their site. Generally the typical browser hijack problem that can be cleared by dumping cookies. So that little sign you posted just verifies that as a news source and a site to be visited, ABCnews and anything associated with them is not to be trusted. No clicks for ABC from now from me.

[spin]

31. It is quite possible that Big Brother is watching ...

Soon we will be afraid to post our opinions on DU if they disagree with those of the 1%.

[Enthusiast]

34. Me too

ABC = Fox News.

[valerief]

32. Great post. Human microphone vs. corporate microphone.

Too many people think like this.

Underpinning those fatalistic, head-shaking comments is a faith that the world works more or less the way it's supposed to. Don't do anything wrong and the police won't bother you. Vote and you'll be represented. Do your job and you'll be able to live in relative comfort. And if you want to change things, go through the proper channels. Start a petition! Write to your representative! If something really important happens, the news will surely cover it.

[annabanana]

36. Kicking because it's too late to rec. This is a MUST READ.

Thank you for posting it.. It has been liked & tweeted.

[Kaleko]

37. kickety

[cui bono]

38. Fascinating piece and I'm only half way through.

Thanks for posting this!

[Mimosa]

39. Kicking. n/t