Too Long ; Didn’t Read was Too Long; and you Didn’t Read it?: Don’t do anything stupid and #occupyportland could be the start of an American Revolution.

TL;DR: Getting arrested is a tactic and should not be used without a coordinated reason. Getting arrested without a greater purpose makes the movement look worse in the media, as the two arrested people who were tagging a police car did. You could be arrested for anything illegal you are doing, if the police decided to arrest you. If you are breaking the law within the camp, you are not working in the best interests of #occupyportland. We have better things to discuss, like institution building, outreach and organizing.

Official #occupyportland bumper sticker proposal: ‘Put An Angry Bird On It.”

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I heard that the #OccupyPortland protests could use some advice about being arrested, just in case it happens. The only reason I am telling this story is because I want you to learn from my mistakes. As you read through this piece it will become less about me and more about #occupyportland. If you’re bored, skip ahead.

The New York Police Department arrested me on February 15, 2003 in New York City during the worldwide protest against the War in Iraq. Estimates reached 36 million worldwide participants in this day of outrage. Looking back, we were right. It is eight years later, we invaded Iraq (shocker!) and in retrospect the anti-war demonstrators were right, it was a bad decision on our government’s part. I got arrested on purpose. I stepped into the street because I knew I was right, even then. My arrest was a simultaneous sit-in with two close friends (my affinity group), we went to jail together and got out separately.

The experience of getting arrested went like this: My friends and I were on a block where (apparently) a riot had broken out, after the march. I only say this because very rapidly, riot police were present. You under-estimate the capacity of the Police to deploy vast resources to tamp out protest. They appeared in an instant, blocked off the sidewalk at both ends and then told us to disperse.

If police tell you to disperse, they mean “…or we are going to arrest you.” The threat is implied in the fact that an officer is giving you an order. Demonstration over. Speech: free… enough. The law allows you to leave, unless the police make this impossible through erecting barriers around the area they’re telling you to exit. Police have employed this tactic many times, forcing marches and demonstrations to end by driving them into large cages. The recent mass arrests on the Brooklyn Bridge fit this description.

The police were about to perform a mass-arrest. Saying “disperse” is just a polite way for them to cover their own asses. You’re practically already under arrest if you see riot cops and hear “disperse.”

Getting arrested is not as bad as you have heard. But you will hate it if it happens to you, and you don’t want it to happen to you if it’s possible to avoid it. On the positive side I will say this: when I was in jail, I was a raucous boy. They separated a male friend and I from our female friend. He and I did chants, I did tai chi in my cell, I climbed the bars and hollered like a monkey. I sang “This Little Light Of Mine” probably a million times, until I totally lost my voice and made the guards laugh when I spoke because I sounded like a teenager. I ate a shitty cheese sandwich because the vegetarian option was a baloney and cheese sandwich with the baloney removed. A guy in one holding cell let me have the end of his cigarette. I was transferred between ten cells, buses, holdings cells and rooms and waited for a long, long time, often standing. A young kid, maybe 14, in another holding cell was probably about to receive a felony, and he was crying. It took forever to eventually see a judge, receive my sentence for disorderly conduct, and walk out the front door of the courthouse. At one point, I needed to get my lawyer’s phone number off my arm, and I stepped over my hands while wearing riot cuffs (they were loose, but I made it look to the police like I was a super-hero or something). End of the delusional fairy-tale story where jail is fun and awesome.

All that happened because I’m a crazy person, but jail is hell. I don’t want to talk about being in jail anymore. Nobody should ever aspire toward going to jail. When I saw the sky for the first time after the scant 26 hours I spent in lock-up, I cried because I realized what being “free” means. I ate at Subway in Chinatown right after my release and it was the best fucking sandwich I’d eaten in my life. Judge me all you want for it.

If the walls the Portland Marathon is building for us are not actually the walls of a cage, and the Police and Mayor of Portland really will stand with the 99%, then we can actually do something significant for ourselves, our city, state and country. The point to a nationwide #occupytogether movement is there are not enough police resources in America to arrest the 99%. The 99% truly does (based solely on income) include most police, and maybe even Portland’s Mayor. Not Bloomberg, obviously. But Adams, maybe. Someone should look up Sam Adams’ tax returns. Bloomberg is the 1% for certain. Adams so far is doing what the 99% in #occupyportland need done for this occupation to be successful. He has allied himself in so many ways with our movement.

We are right, #occupyportland, about economic injustice and corruption. #occupywallstreet is the kind of movement that needs to remain on the ground in occupation until we make a permanent change in the way our government operates. Sustaining this movement is important enough that avoiding arrests and maintaining a good public image are critical to our success. #occupyportland have successfully occupied a public park for two days, City Hall and the Police Department are behind us totally, or claiming to be, and the Portland Marathon is going to build us walls.

The police could arrest you while you are reading this. Make no mistake, the Police have the power to detain and arrest you if you are participating in #occupyportland’s encampment. The Mayor miraculously granted you immunity from a long-standing camping ban, but that doesn’t mean he can’t miraculously un-grant you that power. Especially if you are stupid enough to be smoking pot or drinking alcohol in public. There is nothing revolutionary about getting fucked up in public, especially in Portland, where it happens all the time. Many of the people expressing anti-police sentiment are doing so out of paranoia, and the problem could resolve itself if we proposed reasserting the value of security through legality, which was stated in other words as a value in the days before the protests at other general assembly meetings and which we should clearly communicate to people as they join our movement. Within the camp, security is more important than inebriation. Preventing police involvement and UNPLANNED ARRESTS is critical. People are bringing their children and their parents and their favorite cops to the #occupyportland camp. If this movement remains peaceful and law-abiding it seems increasingly unlikely that mass arrests will occur.

Assuming the police and the marathon are telling the truth.

We are nowhere near a “direct action” stage in the process. Arrests are not yet planned.

I was an Anarchist when I decided to step into the street. The Iraq war still happened. I didn’t think ahead, I made a brash decision to step into the street, and I don’t regret it. But it was stupid. I do think ahead now. I’m a reformer, of one stripe or another depending upon my day. What is important is that we talk about policy, not politics and not polarized thinking. Not “us versus them” but “all of us, for all of us, by all of us.” The 1% should simply be ignored while we reorder society and government for the 99% around them, without their say.

In a protest, getting arrested can be a tactic. It should be reserved for something meaningful.

So don’t do anything stupid, okay?

There is a tiny nation of Government by the People growing in many cities. It may one day turn into a People’s Movement, united as US Citizens (can we please stop saying “Americans” like we own the whole hemisphere?) as a fourth branch of the United States Government. That’s incredibly wishful thinking. We are nowhere near that stage in the process. Consider it something to look forward to.

Right now, the movement on the ground in all these cities is nascent. It is new. It is raw. Energies are high. Portland heard a shout-out from a friend in New York, via cell-phone bull-horn daisy-chain. It was simultaneously inspiring to hear our sister-city protesting on Wall Street, and infuriating to sit through another city’s on-the-ground report during a meeting about #occupyportland’s general assembly consensuses. Anarchists and Socialists and Democrats and Republicans are all getting in HEATED DISCUSSIONS ABOUT A NEW PROCESS. What does this prove? That the anarchists are turning into reformers. The socialists are learning how to hate the system, and teaching the anarchists to make clear demands of a process they don’t entirely trust. The Republicans and Democrats are both shocked (shocked!) that they agree on being the 99%. We all want to work with each other to build.

The anarchists in the group should decide if they are against the current government, or if they are against all organization. Institutions can only be built upon trust, understanding, and respect for the space and needs of all other people. That is why general assembly is frustrating but necessary. It prevents the collective from making a brash decision, even at the expense of forcing a slow grind that frustrates the revolutionary in each of us. If anarchists can become reformers, they allow the general assembly to reach consensus, and learn to trust the process and the rest of the crowd. We are in the struggle for economic and social justice for the 99%, and against government corruption by the 1%, together. If any anarchist is not willing to become a part of an organization of the type that #occupyportland is establishing, or that #occupywallstreet has established and maintained for a damn month, then that anarchist should stop using the resources and time of #occupywallstreet and #occupyportland general assembly. Something tells me that the anarchists might believe in economic and social justice, and in these movements see the capacity to get them done, to perhaps change the government. For an anarchist, getting some kind of control over the corrupt, unjust government would probably feel good.

In closing, here are a few ideas I think people should bring up during General Assembly (I can’t attend Saturday. I will keep coming back, cheering and occupying, and eventually speaking up if I am worried the movement has lost its way) :

Proposal #1) That in order to aid the general assembly voting process, #occupyportland begins an official registration and head-count. We need our own number of how many people are in attendance / with us, not a media estimate, and we need to know who we are working with in general assembly. Everyone should get a number, so we can keep track of everyone involved. After a day of registration, we require registration in order to vote. People should be able to register at the information booth during the booth’s open hours. If instead of saying “MIC CHECK” you just announce your number and name, and it is repeated, the crowd could instantly identify you if they had access to an electronic copy of the official document. This would facilitate trust and networking. Google Docs? OccupyPortland.Org?

2) The members of the crowd who are in opposite political parties should buddy up. Out yourself as who you usually vote for, or who you are pulling for right now if you’re a registered independent, or out yourself as a non-voter. Buddy up and work on some demands that the two of you can propose to BOTH local and national political parties (Republicans and Democrats) AT ONCE. Make a pledge that you expect your elected representative (no matter the party) to do _fill-in-the-blank_. It will bring you together, and it will start the ball rolling on creating a better government, by getting people together to think critically about elected representation.

3) Official bumper sticker for #occupyportland: “Put An Angry Bird On It.”

That’s enough for now. Go revolutionize.

A rift exists in the GOP as it currently stands, between the propagandized masses of their party and the head honchos, the people really in charge.

You can never tell a propagandized party that they are being lied to. They must always think that the truth is all they know, and it is a simple, quirky truth. The leaders of the GOP use religion in American politics to polarize every issue as a moral imperative and insist that they charge forward with a morally-righteous agenda, one justified by reading brief excerpts of the 2,000 page Holy Bible. This Biblical agenda spits in the face of women and gays, and in so few ways resembles the historical agenda of Christ.

The contradiction between core Christian values and the reality of their voting patterns is, of course, war.

The war’s supporters are largely in the GOP. They started this thing, and never considered it thoroughly. Quite a few Independents were along for the ride for some time. But Osama bin Laden fled to Pakistan, and George W Bush lost the credibility at home he would have needed to take action in Pakistan. Obama famously declared during the 08 debates that he’d strike if the Pakistanis would not. And clearly, they did not. McCain chided Obama in the debate, as though Obama was going to do something crazy like announce he would bomb Pakistan.

“This,” Obama replied, “coming from the guy who sang ‘Bomb, Bomb, Iran.’”

The rift, essentially, are the so-called small-government conservatives who cheer-lead us into wars. Once we invaded Afghanistan, Osama fled to Pakistan, likely after Tora Bora. He’s probably been in Pakistan 6 years. Likely the ISI had a deal with him, which is why the Pakistani government wasn’t told we were coming in the night with dogs and silent helicopters to shoot Osama in the head.

With enough intelligence, we could be anywhere on the globe in a matter of seconds. Why it is I’m constantly talked-down to by “conservatives” for wanting to end these wars and the over-abundance of military bases? And wanting to invest taxpayer dollars… on the homeland? That precious homeland the modern-day fascist movement loves to gloat about protecting? These supposed Christians are used to paying 10% of their income for a corrupt organization to tell them what to do. It’s not the church, it’s the military. And it’s not 10%, it’s much closer to half of every dollar in the nation, funding this absurd idea that you can wage war on an indistinct concept like “Terror.” The wages of war is death.

Think of me the next time you see a Boeing commercial, or a Lockheed ad.

People are more vitriolic and suspicious than ever. It has created a crisis of leadership, where no body is willing to stick a neck out in either direction, for fear of being insulted or questioned immediately. It is apparent from our poor to our rich. Everyone’s under direct orders to remain vigilant.

“Vigilant,” has since 2001 been a national buzz-word. The leaders of our national security apparatus have told us to be vigilant, on the look-out for … something. Signs on the bus say “see something? say something.” It has created a suspicion among all people of the others around them, and while we simultaneously speak of national unity, we’ve shown how poorly we can treat each other, how ugly and suspicious we can all be of each other.

We live in constant fear that the next great terrorist attack is going to kill us, that some untrustworthy person on our bus is going to be the culprit. We are reminded constantly to keep an eye out for that moment of death.

I would like to calmly propose a wildly different manner of living.

Rather than suspecting you will be killed by a terrorist, or mugged, or kidnapped, or assaulted, just embrace the fact that eventually you will die and your legacy will live on. Your enemies are going to hate you no matter how much you try to appease them. You will argue with your spouse, you will pay huge bills for minor surgeries, you will have an accident that changes your life. Shit, as the saying goes, happens.

Once you accept that people are potentially going to be vicious with you (and hopefully your vigilant fellow citizens will call the police when they see .. that), you can stop being afraid of it. You can start reclaiming the words people use against you as your own, or you can call yourself something else and get a fresh start in a world you’re not scared to experience. You can stop living your life as though you are being limited by others’ potential to harm you.

The world at large may or may not end your life. But you should do your dance either way.

I think this is what FDR was talking about when, in a 1936 re-election campaign speech he said

For twelve years this Nation was afflicted with hear-nothing, see-nothing, do-nothing Government. The Nation looked to Government but the Government looked away. Nine mocking years with the golden calf and three long years of the scourge! Nine crazy years at the ticker and three long years in the breadlines! Nine mad years of mirage and three long years of despair! Powerful influences strive today to restore that kind of government with its doctrine that that Government is best which is most indifferent.

For nearly four years you have had an Administration which instead of twirling its thumbs has rolled up its sleeves. We will keep our sleeves rolled up.

We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace—business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering.

They had begun to consider the Government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob.

Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me—and I welcome their hatred.

I should like to have it said of my first Administration that in it the forces of selfishness and of lust for power met their match. I should like to have it said of my second Administration that in it these forces met their master.

(full text of the speech)

What FDR is demonstrating, in short, is the courage to act despite powerful, omnipresent hatred. While welcoming it. It is clear from his words that he knows who is out to stop him, and he believes enough in his cause to represent it, loud and clear. Perhaps this speech would incite some crazy person to try to assassinate FDR. He wasn’t far from Wall Street when he delivered it. He delivered the speech anyways, because it needed to be delivered, and he was the man at the moment to deliver it.

The frame of mind of “vigilance,” which has terrified America, insists that you must suspect everyone of being a terrorist. Until you can escape this mental torture you will be unable to demonstrate the courage of your convictions, politically. Embrace the potential to die, and move on. Injustice is as terrifying as the prospect of death. We should be on the lookout for real problems we can solve, and spend less time chasing figments of our imagination.

Oh yeah, Osama bin Laden is dead. Probably.

If you’re going to vote for someone, you should support them. Spend your time talking on their inadequacy all you want, up until you pull that lever. I want to make sure Obama (and I) win, and that means spreading my joy at his successes to counter all the spin and vitriol opposing him from either side.

Regarding most of his failings, I believe he’s at the top of an out-of-control war machine, overseeing a no-rules-or-else, bloated, viciously-lobbying financial sector, and is at the mercy of the 24/7 media. In spite of that he’s passed tough new regulations on two huge sectors of our economy (two of the most unfair to the poor), improved the status quo on a ton of civil rights issues, and he’s making clear strides toward bringing the US back under international law. He has to tell people what to do, and see that they do it. I don’t believe he’s done a poor job of that, except on closing Gitmo and on Wisconsin.

I don’t think he’s been as good a President as FDR, but he’s certainly no Hoover. He gets things done for America, even when it’s painful and harms his credibility with people like me, wild-eyed over-educated liberals clamoring for ever-more. He will go down in history as a stellar one-term President, even if he loses in 2012. My inner Progressive wants a Roosevelt (either kind), but my inner Independent tells me to make the most unemotional of decisions. Obama and the Democrats’ position has made sense for two years, and his “conservative” opposition has mostly been constantly mouthy with very little policy behind them.

His liberal opposition has articulated the vision of the 2012 campaign. Should we get a public option? Yes, moving forward. Should we keep banks from using deposits as poker chips? Yes, moving forward. Can we let the Bush tax cuts expire? Yes, moving forward. End the wars? Free the gays? Legalize it? This era has a working progressive movement, liberals who are hungry for that last little bit of change we can believe in, a Democratic Party getting most of what it wants, pulling the country back toward the center. But it won’t continue if we shoot ourselves in the foot. Now is the time to point out the absurdity of the right, lay bare the inherent contradictions in their economic philosophy, their way of governing, and their lockstep march. Not to rehash the past years’ debates and think we didn’t get enough from a President who’s done an awful lot that the TV remains silent about.

President Jimmy Carter famously put solar panels on the roof of the White House, at a time when energy independence was considered a bummer topic for polite discussion. His successor President Ronald Reagan famously took the solar panels off the White House roof. Energy independence is no longer taboo, and Reagan looks in retrospect far less conservative on issues of energy independence than Carter. “Conservative” as in “finding ways to save money.”

Similarly, President Barack Obama signed a law requiring everyone in the USA to have health insurance. “Everyone into the (premium) pool” is considered a bummer topic for polite discussion. Obama’s successor, if he is succeeded in 2012, is going to run on the platform of repealing the health insurance mandate. And you can bet that no matter who that person is, they will also be running on a platform that opposes solar panels.

If the mandate is repealed and there is a subset of people who can legally have no health insurance, yet still expect to be saved by our health care system when they get hit by a bus, it will bankrupt us. Eventually health expenditure in the US will hit a “crisis moment” similar to the pinch we currently feel from the oil industry. Then it will not be impolite to talk about cost-sharing in the US. And then on issues of health care, Obama will be historically remembered as our most conservative President.