OCCUPY SANDBOX

all told there were 31 arrests, about half of which were people inside the ~occubarn~ and half of which were people who crossed police lines to get food & other supplies to those inside. cops tried to tackle my friend rooj when someone gave her bread, but she twisted out of her jacket and got away. mike was hit with the tazer pins, but at the last moment the officer who fired the tazer *didn't* send through the electric shock. mike has a heart murmur, and it could have fucked him up something fierce. the last guy clinging to the structure was named david, and as the cherry picker & 5 other cops worked over half an hour to wrangle him down the crowd started chanting "david beats goliath! david beats goliath!" so that was kinda cool.

i'm a little bit annoyed by the whole affair, honestly, because as i recall when we consented to this project in GA it was on the understanding that if we were asked to take it down we would do so in order to protect the camp at large. in the heat of the moment the opposite happened. still, though, media team worked to frame this on-message, and i think we did well. cnn & the times running with the themes we worked in the release--"we built this structure to shelter ourselves, but also to highlight the systematic dismantling of services for the poor. we thank the park police for helping us fully realize this piece of theater by tearing it down with a bulldozer." the times even quoted part of the release, and it was a little surreal to see my own writing in the fucking times.

my man

hoos, you're the fucking man, in case you didn't know

xp

I echo that sentiment. Well fucking played.

well done, hoos

thx guyz but i just wrote some shit & tweeted--i spent my evening hugging the people who'd gotten arrested and released.

also david shuster rolled though to give daps to our livestreamer for his impressive reporting from the front line; easily a half dozen people found him and said "your commentary on this stream is the reason i came out here."

oh also i went to a positive force meeting (!!) on saturday and got some emails for people who want to help promote this punk show i'm organizing at the square, including possibly "the dc punk vegan" ie ian mackaye.

my man adrian just liked a comment i made on fb, so i guess he's out of jail. lol.

damn what's the big homie shuster up to these days

BIG SHUS

o i see he works for current.tv -_-

lol big shus

hoos, how is friend w/ heart issues?

also ~hugz~

he's good! he's an iraq war vet, sturdy as fuck, he was just concerned about the effect a tazing might have had on his heart murmur.

as one would

solidarity hoos

*lifts fist*

one of the highlights of this whole thing has been the realization a few weeks into it that we weren't doing that ironically anymore </tumblrwhite>

also david shuster rolled though to give daps to our livestreamer for his impressive reporting from the front line; easily a half dozen people found him and said "your commentary on this stream is the reason i came out here."

that dude was incredible all day

in general i think you guys are doing a great job of media and community relations - yeah, there are gonna be assholes saying "the first amendment doesn't say anything about FREEDOM OF PLYWOOD amirite" but kst's messaging hasn't really been amorphous or didactic at all (and working with agents like positive force is only gonna strengthen/legitimize kst to the dc community)

and i realize there are a lot of reasons why kst never really got confrontational before this, but don't think for a second that the media work you're doing isn't one of them

(although this all would have been a lot funnier if it had happened the day BEFORE i had to endure a night of hanging out with matt ygl3sias at some party)

yo as someone1 who is ostesibly on ys side where is this bad mattyglesisas article?

HOOS do you have a twitter handle, I would totally follow / retweet that shit.

@thebibandit

good goin i saw about 5 mins of the afternoon standoff

btw, Naomi Klein on why climate change is (as the righty nuts fear) the key to upending the corpo-capitalism state

http://www.thenation.com/article/164497/capitalism-vs-climate

HOOS do you have a twitter handle, I would totally follow / retweet that shit.

― Simon H., Monday, December 5, 2011 3:06 AM (6 hours ago) Bookmark Permalink

i am @hoosteen

btw, Naomi Klein on why climate change is (as the righty nuts fear) the key to upending the corpo-capitalism state

http://www.thenation.com/article/164497/capitalism-vs-climate

― Dr Morbius, Monday, December 5, 2011 4:27 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Permalink

this is the one thing i am just terminally pessimistic about; i think that after a few billion of us have died we'll come out the other side a different and better-educated race, so that's gonna be fine, but why anyone thinks we're gonna break six-thousand-year-old habits before the mass suffering when most people can't even quit smoking i have no idea

like if you think heroin's hard to kick before you hit bottom try Extraction

sadly I agree

well this might cost some rich people money, for one

yeah I think climate change is gonna have some really unexpected effects on things like distribution and supply chains (i.e. Thai flooding) and it may give capitalism a good kick when it's already down

(which, unfortunately, probably translates into famine as dlh was saying, but oh well)

yeah i think once stuff really starts happening (to sufficiently pink people) we will do all kinds of inspiring stuff! just not now.

How many poor people should drown in rising oceans?

livy says there's only two ways civilizations learn, from their own mistakes and others', and he's not sure about the second one. with this thing we don't even have the mistakes of others! unless you count like easter island.

and who counts easter island

anyway though, that naomi article is really good and this as far as i'm concerned is totally otm and The Point of the whole ows thing:

It is not the job of a transformative social movement to reassure members of a panicked, megalomaniacal elite that they are still masters of the universe—nor is it necessary. According to McCright, co-author of the “Cool Dudes” study, the most extreme, intractable climate deniers (many of them conservative white men) are a small minority of the US population—roughly 10 percent. True, this demographic is massively overrepresented in positions of power. But the solution to that problem is not for the majority of people to change their ideas and values. It is to attempt to change the culture so that this small but disproportionately influential minority—and the reckless worldview it represents—wields significantly less power.

http://i42.tinypic.com/2ypiyxz.jpg

#winning

YES

http://p.twimg.com/Af7N30pCAAAa_8y.jpg:large

ahahahahahah

lego make such convincing asshole-riot-cop figurines

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-12-05/advice-from-1-committee-lever-up-drop-out-commentary-by-michael-lewis.html

lego ppl are in general kindof assholish

http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/12/occupy-our-homes-wall-street-squatters-foreclosures

at a crust punk cafe and overheard a dude with a huge occupy the world thing pinned to his jacket talking about FEMA camps and stuff

more on foreclosure action in Brooklyn:

http://www.salon.com/2011/12/06/live_from_occupy_east_new_york/

this would be funny if it wasn't so shamefully dishonest/disingenuous

While the story lacks specifics on whether he invested the money in a herd of sheep or a hedge fund, we do know that he made his gain by engaging in business transactions of some sort. He used a free market system to bring a tenfold return on investment. No doubt such a return took a lot of diligent, dedicated effort.

http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2010/images/05/31/tzleft.perkins.jpg

The first "National GA" (which, my soul full of love, was affectionately referred to as OCCUPY VOLTRON) was tonight at the foot of the Washington monument, a couple hundred people from occupations around the country (the likes of Honolulu, Anchorage, Miami, Austin, LA, Wall Street, Atlanta, Duluth, Boston, and on some more), facilitated by an interoccupation team from Boston, LA, DC, and Houston.

It was really more a spokescouncil than a GA--effectively a series of greetings & reportbacks from those present--but it was still an inspiring thing to be a part of. Afterward everybody was invited back to McPherson Square to party. And tomorrow, with everybody's help, will be a fine and busy day: http://occupydc.org/wednesday-day-of-action-occupiers-unite/

Yipeekiyay.

oh and--an amazing embedded-all-day-with-the-Barn story on Wired: http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/12/occupy-dc-barn/