Another Week on the Curb

It has been another frustrating week. It is the solstice and a holiday for the few remaining Pagans it is also Homeless Memorial Day. A vigil will be held to remember those that die alone in the cold and dark each year. Then everyone will go back to the mall and buy another trinket for venerable Yorgi.

Many of our merry band of malcontents have gone off to refresh in the bosom of their biological families. I do not blame them as the family of occupy has become fragmented and looks upon some of as the crazy uncle that pisses in the punchbowl. It angers me that people are co-opting our dedication and action to start their petition drives and third party politics. They criticize us when the police come and kick our asses. They talk about putting pressure on our elected officials ignoring the fact that we are the pressure. Your Emails are deleted and the commander in deceit raises the threshold for his meaningless web zone signups.

They tell us we look bad with the crazy howling at the moon and they should go. As those folks that I share the benches with remind me when we step over the boundaries of their community, They were there when we came and they have been there for years. This has been their fight since they lost their job or their love or their strength or their mind. We have no right to exclude them as our county wide GA suggests. Are we to treat them as the rest of society already has. Move along, don’t make me look at you and know the fear. Fear is the mind killer and the dead thoughts are replaced with hatred but the anger is misplaced. It is the need for greed that has created this abysmal blight. A man running to be leader of the free world has so many houses that he cannot remember them all while in the real world women are raped on the street where they sleep denied the last of their humanity.

The tools of the war machine come down to our celebration as invited guests. We tried to show them we had no evil intent. They smiled and patted us on the head and said, “Be good little sheep and here are the rules. Oh and another thing you cannot give food to the hungry.” If you feed them they might live and stay and continue to scare us besides Xmas is for shopping silly protestor. Charity is for those that come on their knees begging as supplicants that will work for food and never complain that there are no books in the schools. We have nothing for these idle bums that walk all over town to collect enough cans for breakfast, they must move along and find Jebus in another town.

I think the only useful thing I have done on the courthouse steps is to treat some folks with respect, to listen and talk and share what food I am able. I have no illusion that the world will soon change but all that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good people to remain silent.

Shots for solidarity

Re-Occupy Day

Today we come together to celebrate the freedoms we have under the constitution of the United States. Freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, the right to petition the government for a redress of grievances and the right to be secure within our persons and papers.

We hold these truth’s to be self evident. All men are endowed by their creator with inalienable rights. Be that creator a god as some believe or the combination of chemical processes governed by the laws of physics that over the process of 4 billion years evolved into us makes no difference we have those rights from birth.

But we only retain those rights, they only have meaning when we are free to exercise them. When the police come and steal our political speech in the form of our signs and banners they deprive us of our birthright. When they fence us off the courthouse lawn to deny us our right to assemble there they cut the heart out of those rights and that is why we are here today. I am updating the language a bit and using the word person rather then man as I prefer to include all persons in the umbrella of humanity and all persons are harmed when any of us are denied our basic rights.

A person only has those rights that they can defend. We come here to show the folks in power that we will defend our rights. We will Occupy this space as we are free women and men that have the right to peaceably assemble. We post our signs because as free people we have the right to voice our political concerns. We will not allow the petty tyranny of a local ordinance to deter us. We will not allow armed thugs to disregard those freedoms. We are committed to nonviolence so when the police come they can arrest us but we will return. We will be in the courts suing those officers and officials but most of all we will be here on the steps of the courthouse some of us beaten but none of us bowed and we will prevail.

The consent of the governed. We are the 99% is the credo of our movement. We are the governed and we never consented to this. We reject the crony capitalism and the for sale to the highest bidder government that it has produced. We reject the imperialism that has led to death and destruction around the globe. We reject the prison industrial complex and the torture and dehumanization that it runs on and the destruction it brings to our communities.

5425 occupiers have been arrested while no bankers have been prosecuted. The people that destroyed our way of life got 17 trillion dollars to rebuild and we get jail cells.
We reject the buyer beware capitalism that allows the 1% to steal from the middle class and we reject the criminalization of being poor. The way we do this is to stand together on the steps of the courthouse and demand that the rights of all people be respected.

Mission Revision

We are Occupy Eureka and we have decided to stand up to the perverse desire of corporations to wring every penny of profit from every enterprise. They deliberately push beyond the limits of laws and regulations with disastrous consequences to the workers and the environment. When caught they lie, deny and obfuscate.
The privatization of government functions must stop. The militarization of the police must end. Public education must be properly funded and extend beyond K-12.
We must end foreign wars and the systematic oppression of other nations. We must end the war on the poor that criminalizes sleeping and going to the bathroom. We cannot afford to build prisons at the expense of schools and housing.
Unregulated capitalism has destroyed our economy and enriched the 1% beyond any reasonable level. We must revamp our tax system to value honest labor and end speculation. Capital should be taxed at the same rate as labor. Labor must be granted the same freedom of movement that capital is given.
The cost of pollution should be borne by the polluters. Resource extraction must be done in a sustainable manner without destroying the surrounding environment. Subsidies for industries that degrade the environment must be removed. Global warming must be addressed in the form of a sustainable national energy policy. Resource extraction from public lands must be done in a manner that benefits all members of society not just the few.
Our political system is corrupt. Political power is vested in the people and we must remove the concept of political rights for companies. All campaigns must be publicly financed and paid lobbyists abolished. We need to remove impediments in our political structure to true democracy. Our international relations must be revamped to put an end to empire. Trade between nations must be built on universal human rights and environmental protections not a race to the bottom.
We must rebuild our communities based on respect for all. Discrimination based on race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity and country of origin must end.

The police State comes to Eureka

I was kidnapped on the street in front of the courthouse today. In broad daylight a man came up to me and without saying a word he grabbed my hands put them in handcuffs and took me away. The man was, in addition to being a criminal, a police officer. Others of his ilk were doing the same thing to folks excising their rights to freedom of assembly and free speech. As a member of the occupy movement I have come to expect contempt for political dissent from the local police but being deprived of my liberty without due process is beyond the pale. I was held for 45 minutes without charge on the courthouse steps photographed and then released without charge or explanation. When the handcuffs were taken off I was told I would have to leave the public space in front of the courthouse. The fact that the officers called me, "sir" does not mitigate the criminality in their conduct. We are entitled to our liberty and cannot be deprived of it without due process. Surreptitiously "Booking" us on the steps of the court is not due process. holding me in shackles against my will while you steal my property and tear down my political signs is the definition of tyranny and should never be tolerated in a free society.