Latest report from Pavlov Katz

Hi folks,

Time marches on, in the constant madness that is Occupy Wall Street, within the constant madness that is New York City, within the constant madness that is the earth in 2012.

I’ve made a point of attending more marches lately, realizing that this is one of the best ways to let people know that we’re still here even though we’re not in the park. One was a march against the NDAA. For those who don’t know, the National Defense Authorization Act allows the government to detain any US citizen and hold him or her indefinitely without trial if they suspect them of aiding an organization which aids al Qaeda or the Taliban. The problem is that they don’t have to prove to anyone this connection, so anyone who criticizes the US government might conceivably fall into this category. There would be no judge or jury to say otherwise.

It’s especially ironic because the US government has given billions of dollars in assistance to the Pakistani government and military, which has aided al Qaeda and the Taliban with millions if not billions of dollars worth of assistance in the form of weapons, trucks, food and cash. So according to the NDAA, anyone connected with the US government, military or weapons industry could technically be held indefinitely without trial. This would include the president and any members of congress who voted for any of these military assistance bills.

Attendance in the march was disappointingly small. A lot of people smiled in support of us, or shouted or honked their horns in agreement, either because they like OWS or they don’t like the NDAA or both. This is something I see consistently, these people who passively support us. I can’t say how many there are, maybe close to half the population? They agree with what we’re doing, but they don’t participate. If only a small fraction of these people came out for us, we would flood the streets every time. What will it take for such people to activate?

On Sunday a group of maybe 50 or 60 marched from Zuccotti Park up to Riverside Church way up in Morningside Heights, in honor of Martin Luther King. I lost the group about 1/3 of the way up, and rejoined them at the end for the candlelight vigil the last few blocks to the church. There were maybe 150 in the vigil. Riverside church is an incredible place, I won’t even try to describe it. It was a good event. Ben Chavis, Norman Seigal,  Patti Smith, Steve Earle.

A few people have been trying to pitch the “We’re still here” story to the media, by showing the community we’ve developed at the West Park Church, where about 70 of us have been staying. At some point along the way, someone broke into the pastor’s office and stole his computer. It was later in the week that both the Wall Street Journal and the Associated Press showed up. I was worried about the Journal but figured the AP would write a fair story, so I was surprised the next day to find that the Journal story was relatively positive and the AP story was a slam piece, focused around the theft of the computer.

I’ve been having a really good time at West Park, though. It seems every evening or morning I meet a few more people, and it seems a critical mass of reasonable people has been developing. Some are on the housing committee, some helping with de-escalation (security, really, but for some reason we’re not supposed to call it that), others with clean-up, and others who are just nice, helpful people who aren’t mean or crazy.

Still, at the church as well as everywhere else in OWS, there seems to always be a near-crisis, some ridiculous, crazy confusion. About to boil over but never quite does, and on and on like this. At times I get fed up and leave, to walk around the city (or at times even leave the city altogether for extended periods), to get away from it all. It’s nice to get away, but I always come back. I see it this way: True, there is confusion and craziness in OWS, but really there is everywhere in the world, even if they’re just more quiet about it. Our government spends billions every year on weapons of mass murder, while many thousands live without homes or heat. By what measure is that not crazy and chaotic? Every street I turn down is cluttered with cars creating more CO2, even though we already know this is leading to catastrophic climate change which could result in the deaths of most living things on the planet.

Some people around the city seem quite concerned about the clothes they’re wearing, the right shade, the right style. The more concerned they are with such things, the less they seem to know or care about more important world issues, as if their scarf or coat will be of some help during the next flood or food shortage. I went to an art show. The art was pretty good and it was kind of fun, but the conversations center around who are you and where are you headed? People are looking to join forces with people who are going somewhere, jockeying for position in some kind of career game that spills over beyond traditional work hours.

I met someone from Barcelona, and asked her about their occupation of last spring. Strangely enough, she was well-informed about it, but had little interest in participating. She explained that she had a job that had nothing to do with the rest of her life. In other words, she described accurately an alienated existence in which what one DOES has nothing to do with who one IS. She said she INDIVIDUALLY can live how she wants, how she thinks is right. I said what about COLLECTIVELY living as she (or they) wants. She shook her head and said, “No-o-o, no-o-o,” before I even finished the sentence.

Eventually a sort of emptiness, a lack of holism, reveals itself, and I look forward to returning to OWS, ghetto though it may be, scraping together a peanut butter and jelly sandwich off of a messy table, picking up after slobs, having to move every few minutes to avoid the latest shouting match, resisting the temptation to get involved in every argument about a crisis which seems to threaten the entire movement. I like getting out and coming back. It helps me to keep it all in perspective. Interestingly enough, I feel that my statement that the world is crazy is a sane, reasonable notion that holds up to argument.

It’s with the overall dysfunction of the human race and the planet in mind that I view the conflicts and confusion of OWS. One guy gets mad and threatens to stab people he disagrees with. Another guy says the one who issues these threats should be kicked out of the movement, though he himself has a history of disrupting meetings by speaking out of turn and people have suggested he be kicked out… People accuse those who work in the donated office space of being elitist. Rich kids who live in apartments and hang out and talk, sit at their computers, eat donated food and drink donated coffee and don’t let others in. Yet the donator of the space mandated a limited number of people in the office at any time, so how to avoid such elitism?… Someone on a certain committee works hard and helps things run smoothly. Sometimes he makes decisions on his own without consulting others. Some people call him authoritarian and, ignoring all the work he’s done, say he should be kicked out altogether… We try to limit access to the storage area to minimize theft. A guy who hasn’t been active in OWS, but who I’ve known personally for over ten years comes in and I wave him in, knowing he’s honest and trustworthy. Someone challenges me, “Why did you let him in and not let that person in?”

At every turn there is confusion, arbitrary decisions, corruption, violations, bad decisions, laziness, hypocrisy. Every step of the way! How are we supposed to take whites and minorities, rich and poor, from suburbs and jails, midwestern farms and east coast urban ghettos, people who’ve had to fight to survive and people who think every problem can be discussed rationally, people with mental and physical handicaps and special dietary needs, and whoever else I’ve left out of the list, none of whom have ever met each other before and knowing there are unidentified police informers and provocateurs among us, and hold together a movement that is being watched, admired and imitated by people throughout the world?

I tried early on to minimize the problems I wrote about, thinking a family should not air its dirty laundry. I see it differently now, though. For one thing, the fact that we’re able to face so many problems and still survive speaks to our strength. And for another, we face the exact same problems the society at large faces, but perhaps in a more raw form, out in the open and all at once. In a sense we’re trying to– are forced to– take on the problems America has not yet taken on. Also I’m trying to let people know what they might be in for in the future. If, or when, our fragile society begins to break down and you might find yourself in a roving band of people who share resources and have to make decisions on the fly, here are a few things to mull over.

Last week an OWS member who has an eye for style and rubs elbows with some club people around town managed to arrange an OWS event at a night club near the West Village. I went looking to have some fun, but also to see how our weird OWS world would interface with that of a New York night club. I told a kid at the church about the party, a young, grubby drifter from the midwest with a habit of blowing his nose by covering one nostril and abruptly snorting out the other onto the sidewalk, and he told a group of his friends. I showed up a few minutes early and the doors were not yet open. I was standing under a canopy hiding from the cold rain when he showed up with a large group. Immediately I began to feel the squeeze, as they asked me, semi-accusingly, why we weren’t yet allowed in. After all, they were there because I told them about it. This had better work out! More people arrived, too many to fit under the canopy, and the cold rain was still falling. I know for a fact half these people don’t have a penny. But they work with OWS, we all deserve to get in. This is our party.

The doorman begins letting people in…but not us! It’s fairly obvious how he can determine. Living in a church without showers and earning no money, we stand apart from NYC clubgoers pretty easily. I begin getting angry looks from people, blamed for dragging them out this cold, rainy night. Finally the guy who organized the event steps out for a cigarette and sees the problem. He starts making calls, trying to fix the situation. I manage to sneak in with a group of clubgoers and see the inside. It’s a nice club, but I’ll need one drink in order to make the transition from one world to the other. Come to find the very cheapest drink, a Corona, is $9! Okay, that’s it for me. I come back out and tell the others the story. Someone suggests hitting a liquor store for a bottle and drinking outside before entering, but it’s after 11 and all the stores are closed. Ugh! I leave alone, depressed, and catch a train back to the church. I find out later from the organizer that they all left en masse, soon after I did.

The point of this story is just how difficult it is for OWS to interface with almost anything else. We’re a group based on equality and inclusiveness. Natural enough to want to get out and see a new place, have a little fun. But where? How many things went wrong? Implied dress code, minimum age 21 years, $9 drinks, just for starters. And had we gotten in, there likely would have been more troubles.

Alright, I’d better wrap this up. Sunday night I left the Riverside Church event in a great mood and headed back to West Park church. No surprise that everyone was arguing as I walked in, but this time for a real reason. A large brass ornament had come up missing from the church. The pastor had given us a second chance after his computer was stolen, but this was too much. We would all have to be out by morning.

Of course there were extended arguments about it. Who stole it? It must still be here! Everyone help look for it! Why aren’t you looking? No, it’s been missing for days, it’s probably not here anymore, it’s pointless to look! In the morning someone said it had to have been a police provocateur who stole it, no-one else wold have any reason. I argued against her, saying if nothing else it could be sold for scrap metal. It’s typical behavior of a thief or drug addict, the thing probably has resale value. As I thought about it later, I began considering her point. Yes, it could have been a thief, but what better way to discredit and hobble our movement than to follow us around and break the trust of any place that dares to house us. We have food, we have work space, all we need is space to sleep, nothing fancy. Yet because of these thefts, we are denied even this. After all, the police directed drunks and criminals into Zuccotti Park, then used their presence as reason to evict us. It’s a compelling argument.

But we don’t know, and we might never know. We walked out of West Park church Monday morning into the cold wind, sixty or so of us, not knowing where we’d stay that night, our future, as always, uncertain.