Occupation Update
Wandered back to Occupy MN today, since it’s just two blocks from the office. The bells of City Hall were playing “My Land is Your Land,” and “America the Beautiful.” I thought this might be an editorial comment on the events across the street, but it was followed up with “It’s a Small World After All.” (You’ve never heard that one until you’ve heard it on 2-ton bells. IT ROCKS.)
The crowd had thinned to a few dozen, but the encampment still had various stations for all the Important Work that needed to be done:
You may note a certain casual attitude towards order; we’ll get back to that. New since my last visit were the chalk-based assertions, drawn all over the plaza in a rainbow of colors. Mostly quotes about revolution and action and all the other eternal, earnest, hectoring calls to Make Things Be Different. Nutterspeak:
This, of course, is a reference to building 7 being taken down by gumming bombs, because there were papers in the basement proving Prescott Bush sold poison gas to Hitler as a plan to displace Palestinians after the war was over. Hey, he's just asking questions! While we’re at it, can we blame the Jews? Yes we can!
Solidarity with Troy Davis, cop killer: the official events list indicated that he would be honored, presumably for his contribution to society. Then a "noise rally" to show solidarity for the California Prison Hunger Strike. It's at Pelican Bay, the maximum security joint. Among the prisoners' demands are wall calendars, and "an end to a policy that requires them to inform on gang members in order to be released from Security Housing Units."
As you'll note, they're having a "teach-in," because nothing says a dynamic, modern movement like terminology from the days when the Kingston Trio was still getting gigs. Looks like a hard day:
This was just sad. Oh, the fun just blares out of the place.
Have a placard? Leave a placard. Need a placard? Take a placard:
You could just dip into the collection and choose a sign that best met your own individual concerns and opinions. (“I don’t even know how I got here” is one.) I thought: they can’t even stack them neatly. I know it’s sooo bourgeoise to think about things like neatness, which is after all just a social construct designed to provide the illusion of mastery over your own life, but good Lord, what a sty. Here. Take a guess what this is.
It’s the “Medic” area. Makes a Civil War field hospital look like the operating theater at Mayo.
It all felt familiar, and it wasn’t until I saw this that I realized why.
Welcome home. That’s what they said at the Rainbow Family Gathering. The Rainbow Family was - and is, for all I know - an annual meeting in some national park, with the tie-dyed and the cast-off and the neo-hobos get together and groove. I went to one, once. (As a reporter.) All very friendly and communal and nonjudgmental, and if you’re thinking “Sunrise Reefer Bongo Sessions,” yeah, like that. When you have no home to speak of, “home” is wherever the Tribe descends. It's a rootless life of sequential experiences, complete - if that's the word - with a gaseous sense of ethics derived from a rejection of all the things everyone else does. Like marry or drive cars or buy TVs or live in the suburbs
The park was a mess after a few days of the Gathering, and this place will just get worse.
But what do they want? Well, there’s a place to go to find out.
Must have missed the committee by just a few minutes.
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Comments :
Jun '10
Re: Occupation Update
I think the "cohesive message committee" may have missed reality by a few space-time dimensions.
Jan '11
Re: Occupation Update
So neatness is just a bourgeois social construct designed to provide the illusion of mastery over your own life, but the Cohesive Message Committee is an excellent example of organic, all-natural proletarian spontaneity?
Mar '11
Re: Occupation Update
It seems that someone gets it. Because I sure don't.
Sep '10
Re: Occupation Update
This time, James, I am laughing.
Aug '10
Re: Occupation Update
"It’s the “Medic” area. Makes a Civil War field hospital look like the operating theater at Mayo."
I don't know if you get your edge from those cold winds of the North Dakota Prairie but man, dude, you are funny!
Mar '11
Re: Occupation Update
Frozen Chosen: "It’s the “Medic” area. Makes a Civil War field hospital look like the operating theater at Mayo."
I don't know if you get your edge from those cold winds of the North Dakota Prairie but man, dude, you are funny! · Oct 11 at 5:58am
Lileks is a Ricochet treasure. I don't think he's as conservative as I am but for some reason I grant a little more mercy to those who make me laugh. He makes me laugh.
Aug '11
Re: Occupation Update
"Arriving at Sustainable Solutions," "Facilitation Training," "Cohesive Message Committee." . . . so it appears they came there straight from the faculty lounge.
People, nobody talks like this. Nobody worth listening to, anyway.
Dec '10
Re: Occupation Update
There is no movement to occupy Detroit. I wonder why.
Mar '11
Re: Occupation Update
DrewInWisconsin: "Arriving at Sustainable Solutions," "Facilitation Training," "Cohesive Message Committee." . . . so it appears they came there straight from the faculty lounge.
People, nobody talks like this. Nobody worth listening to, anyway. · Oct 11 at 6:51am
Nobody but university faculty, city (county, state, federal) government, and union bureaucrats. These groups are not easily distinguished from one another.
May '10
Re: Occupation Update
I would have sworn that last sign said "Cohesive Massage Committee".
Aug '11
Re: Occupation Update
Gus Marvinson
DrewInWisconsin: "Arriving at Sustainable Solutions," "Facilitation Training," "Cohesive Message Committee." . . . so it appears they came there straight from the faculty lounge.
People, nobody talks like this. Nobody worth listening to, anyway.
Nobody but university faculty, city (county, state, federal) government, and union bureaucrats. These groups are not easily distinguished from one another.
The problem, of course, is how to talk to people who don't talk like normal people. For all the crossover between the "Occupy" people and the Tea Party movement, the first barrier to overcome is the language barrier.
Aug '11
Re: Occupation Update
The joke I heard was "Occupy Detroit! . . . because someone has to."
Jun '10
Re: Occupation Update
James: "The bells of City Hall were playing “My Land is Your Land,” and “America the Beautiful.” I thought this might be an editorial comment on the events across the street, but it was followed up with “It’s a Small World After All.” (You’ve never heard that one until you’ve heard it on 2-ton bells. IT ROCKS.)"
Sorry to digress from the central messages of James' hilarious commentary and pictures, but this reminded me of a story. I have a cousin, now a 60ish physician in Southern California, who in his more tender years worked at Disneyland. He said that the absolute worst duty was the ""It's a Small World" ride. If you've not been on it, think of several minutes of that song played at a high pitch and very loudly. He said that they'd only make employees stay there for 15-20 minutes for fear of psychotic episodes leading to mayhem. I can only imagine the reaction if the song were played on the City Hall bells.
Back to regularly scheduled programming.
One more thought: Is the "cohesive message center" where they make demands by pasting individual words from newspapers that are then sent to the powers that be?
Edited on Oct 11, 2011 at 8:33amAug '11
Re: Occupation Update
It might be a good, non-violent method of dispersing the Occupiers. (Or causing them to turn on each other in a feral rage.)
May '10
Re: Occupation Update
You missed the Cohesive Message Committee because everyone was attending the Viscous Communication Roundtable.
Jun '10
Re: Occupation Update
Thanks, Fredo, I haven't run into the word "viscous" lately. Do you mean it in this sense: "The leftist communique from the Occupy Minneapolis organization was viscous. But I repeat myself."
Jun '10
Re: Occupation Update
DrewInWisconsin
It might be a good, non-violent method of dispersing the Occupiers. (Or causing them to turn on each other in a feral rage.) · Oct 11 at 8:36am
I know James has a lot of whack with the powers of Minnesota (he is one of the "elitists" the ocupiers are after). He could make this happen.
Edited on Oct 11, 2011 at 10:32amNov '10
Re: Occupation Update
I have the present misfortune of living just a few blocks from the Occupy Wall Street Protest/Camp-in, Version 1.0, in Manhattan, and just returned from my weekly pilgrimage to the site. To those of you who have seen only internet and network news coverage of these events and come away with the impression that these people are unfocused and their message incoherent, I have to say: you are mistaken. It is far worse.
I yield to no one in my distaste for and fear of mobs, but surely this whole thing has to be a hoax. It is almost as if a casting director in a foreign country who had never set foot in the United States was ordered to assemble an "anti-establishment, American protest movement", searched the internet and old newspapers for some photographs and slogans, and came up with this. It seems a caricature, and even the police and the gawkers appear able only to take it half-seriously.
I know, I know, there has been some violence and plenty of arrests, but I just wouldn't be surprised if the whole thing turned out to be a film school graduation project.
Aug '11
Re: Occupation Update
This isn't surprising. When the news brings cameras to a Tea Party demonstration, they will focus on the most outrageous personality there. So when you watch the coverage, assume that the rest of the demonstrators are far more exemplary.
When the news brings cameras to a leftist demonstration, they will focus on the cleanest, most articulate person there. So when you watch the coverage, assume that the rest of the demonstration looks like one of the outer circles of hell.