294 - The Genesis of Occupy Wall Street

Program Notes §

Guest speakers: David Graeber & Tim Pool

Today’s podcast takes a look back at some of the roots of the current Occupy Movement on the eve of the first anniversary of the death of Mohamed Bouazizi, whose self-immolation marked the beginning of the Arab Spring. Today is also the eve of the third anniversary of Occupy Wall Street, and so I have put together an audio collage that ranges from some early sounds of the movement to interviews with David Graeber and Tim Pool, as well as some comments by fellow saloner Jaret, and a couple of sound bites from Lawrence Lessig and Senator Bernie Sanders to round things out.

Links to topics discussed in this podcast:
Battle in Seattle
The Daily Show with Jon Stewart - Lawrence Lessig Interview
Brian Leher Program with David Graeber
Majority Report interview with Tim Pool
Jaret Johnston’s FEEDBACK ART

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Transcript §

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Greetings from cyberdelic space.

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This is Lorenzo and I’m your host here in the psychedelic salon.

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And today is day 91 of Occupy Wall Street.

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And to begin with, I want to thank the following salonners who have either made a direct donation to the salon

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or who paid for a copy of my Pay What You Can audiobook, my novel, The Genesis Generation,

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all proceeds of which are also going to pay for expenses associated with these podcasts

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and these fine souls are

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Alex A, Madeline D, Joe K, and Guy G

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and I also want to thank our fellow salonners

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who bought one of my three Kindle books that are now available as well

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unfortunately Amazon doesn’t send me any information as to who you are, but

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I want you to know that I appreciate your support. So, thank you all ever so much. Your support

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really means a lot to me. Now, originally, I was going to slip in another talk by Terrence McKenna

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today, and I’ll do that for sure in my next podcast, but after noticing the date, I felt that it’s more important to instead feature a few more ideas about the Occupy movement, which, as I see it, is primarily a movement of consciousness itself.

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is the one-year anniversary of the death by self-immolation of a young man named Mohamed Bouazizi.

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And as you already know, it was this act that triggered what is now commonly known as the Arab Spring.

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And perhaps in honor of this man, you’ll take the time to read something about him on Wikipedia or one of the many other websites that are honoring him now.

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Another reason I have for what I’ve included in today’s program

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is that I’ve discovered that even among some of my closest friends,

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they have very little idea of how the current level of dissent

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that we are now calling the Occupy Movement came to be.

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I probably don’t have to tell you this,

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but you are not the only person who has noticed over the past few years

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that not only is life getting much more difficult for all but a few people in high places,

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in many cases hope itself has fled.

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Which is why I see the Occupy movement as so critically important right now.

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Whether you realize it or not, if you have listened to the past half dozen or so of these podcasts,

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you’re already far, far ahead of almost everyone on the planet right now

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when it comes to an understanding of what is actually the heart of this new unfolding of consciousness in public spaces.

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While a lot of people, I’m sure, have some awareness of demonstrators being shot, gassed, and arrested in cities all over the world,

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including most major cities in the U.S.,

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well, you are one of a not very large percentage of the people on the planet

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who also have some idea that there is a strong new undercurrent in human thought,

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and that like an underground river, it has been running wide and deep for a long time.

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This isn’t simply about

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camping out in public spaces, there’s much more to the storyline than that. In

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fact, at this very moment video is streaming from Cairo showing an

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extremely violent clash between occupiers and the Egyptian military. So

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it’s not just about taking over a public space, significantly more is at stake. And

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so today

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I want to help you remember some current history in the hopes that maybe 50 years from now

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or so, when my generation is long gone, that there will still be some people around telling

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these stories to their grandchildren who by then will be living in the kind of world that

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we’ve been dreaming about ever since we first began walking upright.

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So to begin, I’m going to play a short little audio collection that should by now sound quite familiar.

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And while you are listening, try and figure out where they were recorded. Our streets!

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You’ve got people here from all over. You’ve got labor, you’ve got environmentalists, you’ve got teachers, you’ve got children,

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you’ve got coalitions between people of color and mainstream white Americans.

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You’ve got middle class, you’ve got working poor, you’ve got poor.

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You’ve got everybody out here because this hurts people.

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This is bad for people.

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It’s bad for our jobs here.

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It’s bad for the people over there.

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It’s about their future being traded off by corporations who frankly don’t give a shit

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what happens to them.

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That’s what it’s about.

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That’s what people are fed up with.

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They understand it.

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Yeah!

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The people united will never be defeated!

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You’ll remain calm.

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This would be a good time to put on your mask and goggles.

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The whole world is watching!

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The whole world is watching! The whole world is watching! The whole world is watching!

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I never thought the time would come

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that a new generation of activists

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would part the waters

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Would part the waters

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The waters in which your idealism is supposed to be drowned

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The waters in which your idealism is supposed to be drowned

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And come to the surface

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And come to the surface

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Smiling

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Smiling

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Fighting

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Fighting

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Laughing

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Laughing

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Dancing Dancing Marching March! Committing civil disobedience!

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Renewing American democracy!

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Concretely! Expressing! Solidarity! solidarity not only here in the United States

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but in the far corners of the earth

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beyond the eye of the media

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God bless you all

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so you have

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slowed the machinery of destruction down slowed the machinery of destruction down.

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Slow the machinery of destruction down.

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But it can’t be about

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slowing the rate of destruction.

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It has to be about speeding the rate of destruction. It has to be about. It has to be about.

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Speeding the rate of creation.

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Speeding the rate of creation.

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A new world.

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A new world.

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A better place.

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A better place.

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Thank you.

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Thank you.

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So, did you recognize that action?

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I’ll bet that my friend Brian from Seattle recognizes those sounds

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because he was one of the videographers that recorded these events,

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which are now known collectively as the Battle of Seattle,

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and those mic checks and chants like,

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Whose street our street, and this is what democracy looks like,

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well, they aren’t something that just popped up for the first time at Occupy Wall Street.

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No, what you just heard was recorded in 1999,

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and many of the brave people who made the WTO back down over a decade ago

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are now on the front lines of the Occupy movement.

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Now you might wonder why it took so long to get from the Battle of Seattle in 1999

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to the battles for public spaces all over the country in 2011. But maybe a better way of looking

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at it is to consider the fact that a significant amount of progress has been made since 1999 in

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opposition to several thousand years of patriarchal domination by a small number of wealthy families.

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several thousand years of patriarchal domination by a small number of wealthy families.

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The blinders are finally coming off, and people in the U.S. are now becoming aware that while we may not have a king and queen, we still have royalty running the show.

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Only this time, it’s an economic royalty that has taken over.

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Just stop and think for a moment.

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Right now, there are only 400 families who own over one half of everything that there

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is available to own in this country. If that isn’t a picture of 400 royal families, I don’t know what

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is. So how did we get this way, you ask? Obviously, the reasons are multiple, complex, and intertwined.

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But one seemingly common thread is something called bribery. As a schoolboy, I was shocked to learn about how institutionalized bribery was in the Soviet Union and other nation states,

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particularly in some of the poorer countries.

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Naively, we thought that nothing like that could ever creep into our own culture.

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How simple-minded we were, because the United States has actually elevated bribery to a high art form in the guise of privately funded political machines and candidates.

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To let you know that I’m not the only person who sees the American political system as completely corrupt, from the bottom to the top, the very top I should add,

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I’m going to play two short audio clips of people who have significantly more experience in this area than I’ll ever have. The first is a short excerpt from a recent interview that John Stewart did with

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Lawrence Lessig, and I’m going to follow that with a few words from Bernie Sanders, who is a U.S.

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Senator from the state of Vermont and who may be the only honest person in the Senate. So here are

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a couple of their thoughts about what’s going on. I guess tonight he is the director of the Edmund J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics at Harvard University.

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I didn’t know they had one of those.

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And a professor at Harvard Law School.

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His new book is called Republic Lost, How Money Corrupts Congress and a Plan to Stop It.

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Please welcome to the program Lawrence Lessig.

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I mean, I think the problem is we have a system for funding where 0.05% of Americans max out in the congressional campaign.

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0.26% give more than $200.

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So campaigns are funded by the tiniest slice of Americans.

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Not even the top 1%.

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No, no.

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So the Occupy Wall Street people are so proud of their, we’re the 99%?

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Bad marketing.

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We’re the 99.95% who doesn’t have access the way the 0.05% have access because they fund the campaign.

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This is the thing that congressmen are obsessing about all the time.

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They spend 30 to 70% of their time raising money,

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which means they’re constantly focused on shape-shifting to get the money

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and to avoid doing things that might drive the money away.

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So it’s no surprise that when they live in this life, they become dependent upon the funders as opposed to the people.

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And that is the corruption. They are dependent upon, not as the framers said, the people alone,

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they’re dependent upon the funders. Right, because they’re going to be responding to this tiny slice

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of America, which they do again and again. And surprise, surprise, that leads the rest of

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Americans to believe, as a poll we did for the book includes,

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that money buys results in Congress.

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Three-quarters of Americans believe money buys results in Congress.

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The libertarians are really keen at getting a small government.

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I’m not into that. I mean, a lot of people are, but I respect it.

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But the point is, you’re never going to get a small government or simpler taxes

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as long as congressmen depend upon having a big government and complex taxes so they have someone to call to raise money.

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So you’ve got a special tax benefit.

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Your tax benefit’s about to expire.

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Congressman has somebody to call to say, you know, we’re going to need a lot of support if we’re going to get this tax benefit extended.

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And so the point is to begin to see the way money links every issue we care about on the

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left and the right. I mean, obviously, issues on the left have been affected by money in this

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administration. But people on the right have got to recognize, too, that money blocks their ability

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to get what they’re looking for. There’s only one sacred text in this book, and that’s Henry

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David Thoreau. For every thousand hacking at the branches of evil, there’s one striking at the root.

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The point here is this is the root. The money is the root, and unless we find

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root strikers who are willing to strike at that root, we’re never going to fix this problem in Washington.

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I think what the protesters are doing in New York and across the country is extremely important for two reasons. Number one, they are focusing attention on the most powerful entity in our

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country, which is Wall Street, which is also the most secretive and I believe the most

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dangerous. Let’s never forget, ever forget, that it was the greed and recklessness and

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illegal behavior of Wall Street which plunged us into this horrible recession, which

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resulted in millions of people losing their jobs, their homes, and their life savings.

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So we have got to continue to focus on the greed of Wall Street, and we’ve got to bring

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about real reforms to end the kind of abusive behavior that is taking place there.

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Second of all, I think it is absolutely appropriate that the protesters are now forcing a debate

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and a discussion in this country on the huge issue of income and wealth inequality.

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It is very hard to write here, right?

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The United States Senate is, the floor of the Senate is 100 feet away from us.

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And I’ve got to tell you, there are very few people who talk about that issue.

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I don’t think I’ve been talking tell you, there are very few people who talk about that issue. It’s something I’ve been talking about for years.

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But we do have to ask whether it is morally and economically appropriate

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that 400 people in this country own more wealth than the bottom half of America, 150 million people.

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So that discussion is terribly good.

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Now, where I hope this movement goes is to generate grassroots activism,

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bring more and more working families, middle class people, young people into the political process

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to demand a progressive agenda so that the Congress, so that state legislatures, local government

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begins to respond to the needs of ordinary people rather than the incredible influence of big money.

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I apologize for the quality of the Senator Sanders clip,

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but some of these interviews are hard to find and are often done by young people

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with only a cell phone to record the conversation.

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However, just because the corporate media doesn’t give a voice to people like the Senator,

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it doesn’t mean that what they have to say isn’t important. In fact, today the best news reporting isn’t being done by the so-called

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professionals, but rather it’s being done in small bits and pieces like the brief interview that we

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just heard. And as you could tell from the Daily Show clip, there’s a lot more to the Lessig

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interview with Jon Stewart, and I’ll link to that in the program notes for today’s podcast in the event that you want to hear the entire interview, which I strongly urge you to do,

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by the way. So, what I want to do now is to play part of an interview that my friend Wild Bill

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from New York City turned me on to. In fact, I think I even played the phone message where he

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told me about this interview, and that was back in podcast, I believe, 291,

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which I posted on day 66 of Occupy Wall Street.

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The interview, of course, is with David Graber,

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who was one of the people involved with Occupy Wall Street from its inception,

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and interestingly, this interview took place on November 17th, which was the two-month anniversary of the occupation of Liberty Park in New York.

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And if you go back and re-listen to my Day 66 podcast,

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you can hear all that took place in New York City later that day.

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And that was after this interview had concluded.

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But now let’s join radio host Brian Lehrer on WNYC Radio.

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Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Good morning, everyone.

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And thank you, Richard and Ilya,

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for the latest from Occupy Wall Street and Lower Manhattan. We have a very special guest

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tying into that to start the show today. David Graber was an original organizer of Occupy Wall

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Street, a developer of the plan to do something on September 17th, a facilitator of the first

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General Assembly in Zuccotti Park on the first

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night of the occupation two months ago today. He is also a renowned anthropologist, activist,

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and anarchist, a cause celeb at Yale a few years ago for not having his contract renewed there,

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and author of a book published this summer about the history of debt. He was here on the show to

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talk about that book, Debt, the First 5,000 Years,

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not long before the Occupy movement began.

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So we will talk to David Graeber now

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about the origins of Occupy Wall Street,

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today’s movement around the city,

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what can come next,

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and some more of his thoughts about debt

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on a day when Europe, the Congressional Super Committee,

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and a nation of underwater homeowners

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and student loan holders are obsessed with its grip.

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David Graeber, welcome back to WNYC.

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Thanks for having me.

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And you join us from Montreal today, I understand.

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I should point that out, that you’re not in lower Manhattan and not taking part personally in the direct actions of today.

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Unfortunately, no.

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Take us back to the summer. I think the day was August 2nd,

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when you went to a protest in Bowling Green Park in lower Manhattan that was supposed to include

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a general assembly, and you wound up forming a splinter group. What happened that day?

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It’s an interesting story. I was back for the summer, because I’m normally based in London,

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but I’m from New York, so I always come back when I can. And I was trying to catch up with what was going on in the activist scene, and

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people were talking about this idea that had been floated by adbusters for an Occupy Wall Street

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movement. I mean, a lot of us were pretty skeptical. It’s an incredibly heavily policed area. It’s not

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clear what people could do, but we heard about a general assembly, and that inspired a lot of

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people because a lot of that’s going on in Europe at the time, and Spain and Greece,

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people trying to recreate grassroots democracy in Athens, in Barcelona and Madrid and other cities throughout Spain,

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and we thought that was a nice idea.

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And if that’s what’s going to come out of it, it would be worth pursuing.

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So a few of us, me and my friend, showed up at this announced General Assembly on August 2nd to plan the Wall Street action on September 27th,

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or 17th, I’m sorry. And we were rather disgruntled to discover that it wasn’t a General Assembly at

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all. It’s one of these very traditional protest groups that sort of taken over the thing, and they had megaphones and kind of stage,

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and there was a rally of maybe 120 people, speakers,

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and they were going to march, and they’d list their demands,

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you know, the whole conventional thing.

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And some of us sort of looked at each other and said,

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we don’t have to do this, you know?

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I mean, usually people see this, and they’re just sort of disgruntled and don’t really enjoy it very much and go along for the ride.

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Do they feel they have no choice?

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And some of us have said, oh, this time we don’t have to take this.

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Let’s have a real General Assembly.

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And what is, for our listeners who, you know, many folks still think General Assembly is something that only happens at the United Nations.

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So what is a real General Assembly?

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What was it that day, August 2nd, in Bowling Green Park?

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Well, it’s something like the Athenian Agora is the idea.

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I mean, it’s probably significant that people in Athens are leading the way in creating this.

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It’s direct democracy.

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Have a group of people without a leadership structure get together and come to decisions collectively. And people within the anarchist, anti-authoritarian, also feminist traditions in America

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have been working for years on how to do that.

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And we kind of know how you can conduct a meeting in a really democratic way.

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There’s been a lot of people putting a lot of thought into that.

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But we hadn’t really done it on a mass basis.

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And we thought, well, let’s try.

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And so some of us, we formed a circle,

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I’m excited to have a real meeting.

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And of course, people from the organizers came and said,

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no, no, no, we’re really going to have a general assembly.

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We’re just doing the rally first.

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And there was a back and forth and we came there

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and some of us spoke and were shoot off the stage.

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And it became clear that they weren’t really going to do anything like that.

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So a bunch of us simply said, well, what the hell is that? We’re

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just going to go have a real Democratic meeting and see who shows up. So we formed a circle on

00:20:31 ► §

the other side of Bowling Green, and gradually everybody started breaking off from the rally

00:20:35 ► §

and came over to us. That’s the real birth of the movement. And there it is. So in that telling,

00:20:41 ► §

Occupy Wall Street grew more out of a rift among activists than a coming together.

00:20:47 ► §

Well, people did come together. That’s the thing.

00:20:50 ► §

I mean, it turned out that almost nobody was really interested in yet another rally.

00:20:55 ► §

It was just the people who were part of this little group that sort of leads things.

00:20:59 ► §

Everybody came over. We formed a democratic group.

00:21:01 ► §

And even the people organizing the rally came and eventually took part.

00:21:05 ► §

And once we created a democratic group, everybody had equal say.

00:21:09 ► §

We went off.

00:21:09 ► §

We formed little working groups.

00:21:11 ► §

We formed one group to talk about outreach and who we talked to, another group to talk about process, how we would actually do the democratic process, a model of modified consensus.

00:21:23 ► §

Another group sort of brainstormed ideas for what we could actually do for actions.

00:21:28 ► §

And then we came back.

00:21:29 ► §

Everybody reported back.

00:21:30 ► §

We created a structure of new meetings and working group meetings, assemblies.

00:21:35 ► §

And thus, the thing was born.

00:21:38 ► §

David Graeber, one of the organizers originally of Occupy Wall Street, also the author of

00:21:43 ► §

Debt, the First 5,000 Years.

00:21:45 ► §

And we can take your phone calls for him on sort of the prehistory and the early history of the Occupy movement.

00:21:51 ► §

Also, if anybody’s listening in lower Manhattan and wants to report on anything that’s going on down there in real time,

00:21:59 ► §

we will take your phone calls to you or anywhere else around the city that any protests on this day of action on the

00:22:05 ► §

two-month anniversary of the Occupy Movement might be springing up. Give us a call. Tell us what

00:22:11 ► §

you’re doing or what you’re seeing. 212-433-WNYC, 433-9692. And David, to continue with the history,

00:22:22 ► §

Zuccotti Park was not the originally planned location for the September 17th initial gathering.

00:22:28 ► §

It was like your fifth alternative or something, wasn’t it?

00:22:31 ► §

I can’t remember whether it was number four or number five.

00:22:33 ► §

We had a list, but we originally, I believe it was Chase Plaza, which is not far from it.

00:22:40 ► §

It’s another private public sort of place.

00:22:42 ► §

Almost all the parks down there are private public.

00:22:45 ► §

And so we mapped out all the different places, and we announced one.

00:22:47 ► §

But the thing is, if you announce something, even if it’s just on a listserv for other activists,

00:22:52 ► §

you always know there’s going to be at least one cop on the listserv.

00:22:55 ► §

And sure enough, the whole place was surrounded by giant fencing, even the night before.

00:23:01 ► §

So that spot was blocked off.

00:23:03 ► §

So we had a little map with different alternative locations.

00:23:06 ► §

We distributed it to people.

00:23:07 ► §

And then, you know, half an hour before the assembly was supposed to start,

00:23:12 ► §

someone went around saying, okay, let’s all go to number four.

00:23:14 ► §

And that was Zuccotti Park.

00:23:16 ► §

So it was a way of kind of ducking out of the view of the authorities,

00:23:20 ► §

at least for a moment.

00:23:21 ► §

Take us back then to that first night at Zuccotti Park two months ago.

00:23:26 ► §

Do some oral history for us for the record books.

00:23:28 ► §

What happened that first night that was important, and what was your role?

00:23:33 ► §

Okay.

00:23:33 ► §

Well, my role was as one of the facilitators.

00:23:37 ► §

We had a lot.

00:23:38 ► §

All right.

00:23:39 ► §

Well, what happened is we had the action, some sort of rally action at Bowling Green where people were assembling and doing various,

00:23:48 ► §

they were having teach-ins, the Reverend Billy preached, there was music, there was yoga.

00:23:54 ► §

It was sort of a little festival.

00:23:56 ► §

And then the real assembly was supposed to start at 3.

00:23:58 ► §

And during that day, I was a little worried.

00:24:01 ► §

You know, the numbers didn’t seem huge.

00:24:04 ► §

We’d had this thing thrown in

00:24:05 ► §

our laps. August 2nd to September 17th

00:24:08 ► §

isn’t a lot of time. If you’re going to

00:24:09 ► §

bus in tens of thousands of people, which is what

00:24:12 ► §

ad busters have been imagining, you need

00:24:13 ► §

months, and also you need money. We had no money

00:24:16 ► §

at all. So,

00:24:18 ► §

you know, at first I was like, oh, I guess we have

00:24:20 ► §

a few hundred. That’s okay, I guess.

00:24:22 ► §

A little worried. And then

00:24:23 ► §

by the time everybody came to Sukani Park,

00:24:25 ► §

you realize we had over 2,000.

00:24:29 ► §

So that was a lot of people,

00:24:30 ► §

and very difficult to have a meeting with 2,000 people.

00:24:33 ► §

And what was your meeting about?

00:24:36 ► §

If you were one of the facilitators, what were you facilitating?

00:24:40 ► §

Well, we would have to decide what to do next.

00:24:43 ► §

We had various contingency plans, and different people had different visions on what to do.

00:24:47 ► §

We had to have 2,000 people meet together and come to a collective decision democratically about what course of action to take.

00:24:55 ► §

And believe me, that’s quite challenging, not just doing it democratically, but doing it in a space where people can’t hear each other.

00:25:02 ► §

We had microphones at that point, but we actually made a

00:25:05 ► §

little mistake. We thought it would be most democratic to form a circle. And some of the

00:25:09 ► §

Spaniards who’d been doing this before told us it was too late. They’d say, no, no, you never do a

00:25:13 ► §

circle. You do a crescent. Because if you have a circle, people can’t hear the facilitators.

00:25:19 ► §

So we were trying to aim the microphones in four directions at once, and it just didn’t work.

00:25:23 ► §

And that’s when we adopted the people’s microphone as the only way to do it.

00:25:27 ► §

How spontaneous or how planned was the decision to begin camping out?

00:25:32 ► §

It was one of the options we’d been considering.

00:25:35 ► §

But we realized that a lot of people were going to be coming from out of town.

00:25:39 ► §

We didn’t know what people were up for.

00:25:40 ► §

So we just created a framework.

00:25:42 ► §

We had different ideas, and we decided we would democratically decide what to do. There were two major options that people were discussing.

00:25:49 ► §

One was to go to Wall Street itself and try to camp on the street in front of the stock exchange.

00:25:55 ► §

And legally, there is a principle that as long as you’re not blocking the sidewalk,

00:26:01 ► §

you can sleep on the sidewalk, as long as you don’t raise structures

00:26:05 ► §

and so forth. We’d had that tested. A couple people had tried, got arrested. We got a judge

00:26:09 ► §

to affirm that the police didn’t have the right to arrest us. So that was one idea. And the other

00:26:14 ► §

idea was to occupy the park and turn it into a kind of a model village, a new democratic society.

00:26:21 ► §

It was hard to decide. It was fairly well divided.

00:26:25 ► §

More people were for the park, but we were working by consensus.

00:26:28 ► §

We wanted to get everybody on board.

00:26:30 ► §

So the final formulation we came up with was

00:26:32 ► §

we weren’t sure whether the police were going to allow us to stay,

00:26:35 ► §

but we figured that one thing that the police least wanted

00:26:39 ► §

was us to go to Wall Street.

00:26:40 ► §

So we decided we would stay in the park,

00:26:43 ► §

and if they evicted us, we’d go straight to Wall Street. And you let the police know that, and you think that allowed the encampment to

00:26:50 ► §

really take root? I think it helped. Did you or anyone have tents or sleeping bags that first

00:26:57 ► §

night? I don’t remember. I’m sure people must have had sleeping bags. It was made quite clear that

00:27:02 ► §

anything like a tarp, they were being very

00:27:07 ► §

strict about the rules at first. We kind of had to create that little space of freedom slowly.

00:27:12 ► §

What we saw in the first couple of days was that the police had clearly received orders

00:27:18 ► §

to be incredibly strict with all the laws, to let us stay, but to try to make it sort of

00:27:23 ► §

to intimidate us.

00:27:25 ► §

So there were a lot of, like, petty illegal arrests.

00:27:27 ► §

There were a couple people chanted in front of a bank, and they arrested them for masking.

00:27:31 ► §

They weren’t actually masked.

00:27:32 ► §

They had bandanas around their necks.

00:27:36 ► §

Clearly an illegal arrest.

00:27:37 ► §

There was another one the next day, on the second day of the occupation, where some people were riding with chalk on the sidewalk, which isn’t actually

00:27:45 ► §

illegal. They got arrested, and everybody in the area sort of started saying to the police,

00:27:50 ► §

you know, writing with chalk on the sidewalk isn’t illegal. And the cops said, yeah, I know.

00:27:56 ► §

So there was a lot of that kind of thing. The police said, well, we’ll let you stay here,

00:28:00 ► §

but we’re not going to let you get away with anything. So it was only gradually we began to

00:28:04 ► §

carve out more and more of an autonomous space to do more things.

00:28:08 ► §

David Graeber, anthropologist, activist, author of Debt, The First 5,000 Years, one of the

00:28:14 ► §

original organizers of Occupy Wall Street on this two-month anniversary. And Jeffrey

00:28:19 ► §

in Manhattan, you’re on WNYC. Hello, Jeffrey.

00:28:22 ► §

Hi. I’m just wondering how, if at all, social media influenced the movement and how it helped it grow.

00:28:30 ► §

Well, sure.

00:28:31 ► §

It was incredibly important.

00:28:33 ► §

I’ll give you an example.

00:28:34 ► §

The very first day, I went out and I sort of looked around and saw where the police were, where they were putting up barricades.

00:28:40 ► §

And I have a Twitter account, so I was sort of putting out tweets and sort of just giving

00:28:45 ► §

an appraisal of the situation. The Occupy Wall Street Twitter account apparently wasn’t down

00:28:52 ► §

there. Those guys weren’t there yet. So they put out a notice saying, David Graber is down there.

00:28:57 ► §

He seems to know what’s happening. Everybody follow him for tactical information. Within two

00:29:02 ► §

hours, I had 3,000 more followers on Twitter.

00:29:09 ► §

And within one hour, there were people in Spain who were translating everything I put out on Twitter into Spanish and retweeting it again. Speaking of Spain, Elizabeth in Glen Ridge has

00:29:15 ► §

a related question, I think. You’re on WNYC, Elizabeth. Hi. Hi, good morning. Yeah, my question

00:29:20 ► §

is related to the 15M movement that started in Madrid in May of this year.

00:29:25 ► §

And I was in Madrid when that movement started and through the whole movement and actually their expulsion from Seoul.

00:29:32 ► §

And I see so many similarities in not only the beginning of the movement and why they were occupying Seoul

00:29:38 ► §

and how it all developed as far as the tents and the kitchens and the libraries.

00:29:43 ► §

And I’m just wondering, I rarely hear any, I don’t want to say credit or acknowledgement,

00:29:48 ► §

but you never read anything where anyone from Occupy seems to be comparing,

00:29:54 ► §

maybe even giving a little bit of credit to what the protesters in Madrid had done first.

00:29:58 ► §

And I’m just wondering if that ever, if it came up in your planning process or…

00:30:03 ► §

Oh, some of the people in the planning process were from Spain.

00:30:06 ► §

Oh, we had Spaniards involved in the very beginning.

00:30:09 ► §

We also Greeks.

00:30:11 ► §

So the ties were not just of ideas.

00:30:15 ► §

We actually had people who had been involved in that who came over to help

00:30:19 ► §

or who happened to be in the city anyway.

00:30:21 ► §

And, of course, they were attracted when they found out people were doing the same thing.

00:30:24 ► §

So there were a lot of Spaniards involved.

00:30:26 ► §

You should have gotten some Germans. They have all the money.

00:30:28 ► §

Well, we actually have a good deal of money at this point, more than we know what to do with.

00:30:34 ► §

Elizabeth, what are they after in Spain with the 15M movement?

00:30:39 ► §

The 15M movement was, perhaps David could tell you better,

00:30:43 ► §

but I was always under the impression that it was a similar thing, the voice of the minority not being heard.

00:30:49 ► §

Majority, you mean?

00:30:51 ► §

On economic issues for over economic inequality?

00:30:56 ► §

Yeah, from government to education to, I mean, you know, the unemployment rate in Spain is just insane right now. And it was a very youth-based movement in the fact that

00:31:07 ► §

I think 50% of people under the age of 26 are unemployed. And the living wage is nothing near

00:31:14 ► §

what people are being paid. And it evolved in response to the government elections that were

00:31:19 ► §

sort of gathering movement, and there not really being a party that was representing what people

00:31:24 ► §

needed.

00:31:25 ► §

Elizabeth, thank you. David, you said the Occupy movement has more money now than it knows what

00:31:29 ► §

to do with. How much money is that? Well, I mean, at the beginning we had nothing,

00:31:32 ► §

but almost as soon as it started, people started sending in contributions,

00:31:37 ► §

and almost all of it like small $20 contributions. We don’t have any corporate sponsors,

00:31:43 ► §

obviously. We don’t have any big institutions, even labor unions giving us big money.

00:31:47 ► §

But little people are giving money in, and so much that, in fact, they have quite a large

00:31:54 ► §

amount of funds.

00:31:55 ► §

And being a group that is decentralized, democratic, we don’t like having a funding base.

00:32:02 ► §

It kind of could create a hierarchy, so people are a little worried about that.

00:32:05 ► §

How much money is that?

00:32:06 ► §

I don’t actually have the numbers at the moment.

00:32:08 ► §

Is there, like, a checking account at a credit union that has Occupy Wall Street written on the checks?

00:32:16 ► §

No, I think that it’s an NGO.

00:32:18 ► §

There’s some friendly NGO-lended account.

00:32:21 ► §

I’m not on the finance committee, but there is one that was it was used in keeping up the community, generators, things like that.

00:32:29 ► §

And by the way, you left Ducati Park after the first few days

00:32:32 ► §

and went to Texas, as I understand.

00:32:35 ► §

How come you didn’t hang around?

00:32:37 ► §

Was it just that you had other personal or professional business that was pressing?

00:32:40 ► §

I had personal matters down there.

00:32:43 ► §

I had been intending to go down there for a couple months anyway.

00:32:46 ► §

But, I mean, there’s also a feeling that I was kind of being developed as a leader

00:32:50 ► §

because I’m a fairly well-known person.

00:32:52 ► §

I have this book on debt.

00:32:53 ► §

And so I kind of felt this is a youth movement.

00:32:56 ► §

I’m older.

00:32:57 ► §

Maybe I’ll step aside for a while is good, you know,

00:32:59 ► §

to, like, let this thing develop autonomously.

00:33:02 ► §

I’ll be back in a week and participating as much as I can.

00:33:06 ► §

So because you were interested in this idea of Zuccotti Park as what you call the model city,

00:33:11 ► §

as you watched from afar, how successful was it? It’s so rare that anything actually tries to do

00:33:17 ► §

that, even on this relatively small scale. But by most accounts, things were deteriorating in the

00:33:23 ► §

park before the mayor and the police

00:33:26 ► §

ousted all the structures.

00:33:28 ► §

Despite the best efforts of the General Assembly members to create a model society, a caring

00:33:33 ► §

society, a good neighbor policy and everything else, it only took a different kind of 1%

00:33:38 ► §

to make the scene too dangerous, too dirty, too distracted from the main message of change

00:33:44 ► §

in society at large

00:33:46 ► §

for economic justice. What do you think? I don’t think that’s really true. It’s not the

00:33:50 ► §

impression that I had. I mean, there was an attempt to try to, you know, direct people who

00:33:55 ► §

might be disruptive, but we know that that was not quite intentionally going on. There’s always

00:33:59 ► §

attempts to disrupt things like that and to try to, like, subvert the model. But in fact, I think almost anybody who spent any time there came out of it feeling completely transformed, you know, for all the problems.

00:34:12 ► §

If you’re looking at it from outside, you know, sure, you can make a big thing out of that.

00:34:16 ► §

But I don’t think people who are actually living there, I mean, they created amazing institutions.

00:34:20 ► §

They created a huge library, which, of course, the bear then trashed and dumped into a dumpster kitchens medical tents there’s incredible things

00:34:31 ► §

coming out of it let’s go live to Zuccotti Park right now where WNYC’s

00:34:36 ► §

Bridget Bergen is reporting hybrid what’s happening hi Brian well right now

00:34:42 ► §

the protesters actually just moved the barricades on the east end of the park.

00:34:49 ► §

And, you know, since they had cleared out the park, the entire park has been surrounded by these barricades.

00:34:55 ► §

So there have been so many people who have gathered on the sidewalk outside of the park that they actually moved a section of them.

00:35:01 ► §

And then hundreds of people have just sort of filed in.

00:35:04 ► §

There’s a big group of them in the park right now.

00:35:07 ► §

I had seen a report, Bridget.

00:35:09 ► §

I don’t know if you were down at Wall Street to be able to confirm this or not,

00:35:13 ► §

but I had seen a report on one of the major networks that protesters were trying to block subway exits

00:35:21 ► §

so people couldn’t get to work on Wall Street.

00:35:24 ► §

That would be very dangerous if true, but I don’t know if it’s true.

00:35:28 ► §

Can you confirm it or refute it?

00:35:30 ► §

I can’t confirm that.

00:35:31 ► §

I didn’t see anyone trying to block access to subways.

00:35:34 ► §

What I can tell you is that the police had to create barricades across intersections

00:35:40 ► §

throughout the financial district.

00:35:43 ► §

And so maneuvering throughout the area was incredibly challenging all morning.

00:35:47 ► §

Protesters would get to an intersection.

00:35:50 ► §

They would fill the intersection.

00:35:53 ► §

Sometimes they would sit in the intersection.

00:35:56 ► §

And then there would be pathways along the edges for folks who were trying to move around the protesters.

00:36:01 ► §

And one thing that I witnessed consistently was, you know,

00:36:05 ► §

police officers giving conflicting directions to folks who were trying to get to work.

00:36:10 ► §

I don’t think it was necessarily intentional, but, you know,

00:36:12 ► §

people would be trying to get to Broadway,

00:36:14 ► §

and they’ve been directed to go down one street, they would get there.

00:36:18 ► §

Once they got there, they couldn’t go down that street,

00:36:20 ► §

they had to go to another street.

00:36:21 ► §

So there was a lot of frustration from folks who were not in any way associated with the movement,

00:36:26 ► §

just trying to maneuver around it.

00:36:28 ► §

Is it possible for you to estimate how many people are involved in the direct action in lower Manhattan?

00:36:34 ► §

The Bloomberg administration was saying as of last night that they were gearing up for potentially tens of thousands of people.

00:36:41 ► §

And I don’t know if they just put out a very large number so that it would look small by comparison and look like a failure in the light of day,

00:36:49 ► §

or what kind of numbers can you put to this if you can?

00:36:53 ► §

Well, I can tell you what I can see right in front of me,

00:36:56 ► §

which is there are several hundred people right here in Ducati Park,

00:37:00 ► §

and then I can tell you that when I arrived here this morning,

00:37:03 ► §

initially it didn’t seem like the turnout was going to be very strong.

00:37:06 ► §

I got here about 6.45 this morning.

00:37:09 ► §

There weren’t that many people here, but right around 7 o’clock,

00:37:12 ► §

which was the time that they did want people to gather,

00:37:15 ► §

the numbers started to increase, and then throughout the morning,

00:37:19 ► §

different protests had sort of split off and fanned out across the financial district.

00:37:23 ► §

They did have some folks here from 32BJ who are helping organize the actual marches,

00:37:30 ► §

and they were doing that, they said, intentionally.

00:37:32 ► §

They wanted people to be marching in smaller groups.

00:37:35 ► §

At one point, I was sort of stuck in an intersection right near the corner of Ducati Park by Broadway.

00:37:41 ► §

The police presence was very heavy.

00:37:44 ► §

I would wonder if part of the

00:37:45 ► §

reason why the Bloomberg administration talked about the tens of thousands of people they thought

00:37:50 ► §

might turn out to justify having such a strong police presence. And I can tell you there are

00:37:56 ► §

police officers at intersections throughout the financial district. You couldn’t go onto another

00:38:02 ► §

block without proving either that you worked there

00:38:05 ► §

or that you lived there. Even, I have a, you know, a police-issued press pass with my photograph on

00:38:10 ► §

it. For some officers, they were very courteous. They would let me go through. They knew that I

00:38:14 ► §

was trying to do my job. They were trying to do their job. Some police officers were very

00:38:18 ► §

aggressive. They didn’t care what kind of credentials you had. If you didn’t work on

00:38:22 ► §

that block, you weren’t going on that block. WNYC’s Bridget Bergen at Zuccotti Park. Thanks a lot. We’ll keep checking back with you.

00:38:29 ► §

Thanks. And on that subway exit question, we also received an email, and we can’t confirm that it

00:38:35 ► §

was happening, and we can’t confirm that this email is true, but this is the talk that’s going

00:38:40 ► §

on around this question today. This email from a listener says the people threatening to

00:38:47 ► §

obstruct subway stations are imposters trying to give Occupy Wall Street a bad image. So we can’t

00:38:54 ► §

speak to the accuracy of the claim. We are not reporting what one of the major networks was

00:38:58 ► §

reporting a short time ago that subway exits were being blocked because we have no evidence that

00:39:04 ► §

that’s actually the case.

00:39:05 ► §

But I wanted to pass that along, especially since you may have heard it elsewhere.

00:39:09 ► §

We continue right now with one of the original organizers of Occupy Wall Street,

00:39:14 ► §

David Graeber, who is also the author of the very new book, which came out just a few months ago,

00:39:20 ► §

Debt, the First 5,000 Years.

00:39:22 ► §

And, of course, today is the second month anniversary of Occupy Wall

00:39:28 ► §

Street, which is why all this direct action is taking place today. This was all planned before

00:39:33 ► §

Mayor Bloomberg decided to expel the camping structures and the sleeping bags from Zuccotti

00:39:40 ► §

earlier this week. That was coincidence or not. This was all planned for today already.

00:39:46 ► §

And let’s go to Wall Street where WNYC’s Ilya Meritz is standing by. Hi, Ilya. Where are

00:39:52 ► §

you? What’s happening?

00:39:53 ► §

Hey, Brian. I’m right in front of the exchange. And for the past 45 minutes or so, I’ve been

00:39:58 ► §

watching protesters sort of led to this area and loaded into police vans. I’m looking at one right now.

00:40:06 ► §

It’s mostly full, probably 20, 25 people looking out of the windows, all in plastic handcuffs.

00:40:14 ► §

And on their way into the van, they’ve been talking to the press, telling us how it happened.

00:40:20 ► §

Most of them saying they weren’t doing anything in particular. The police just sort of

00:40:22 ► §

and most of them saying they weren’t doing anything in particular.

00:40:27 ► §

The police just sort of seemed to arrest them and bring them in.

00:40:34 ► §

It’s a very weird sort of ironic scene because we are on Wall Street in front of the exchange, and I’ve seen quite a few traders come down, take pictures, just sort of watch the spectacle.

00:40:42 ► §

I’ve even seen a few jeers, but mainly it just sort of seems to be the spectacle of traitors

00:40:48 ► §

just a few feet away from the protesters who are protesting against them.

00:40:53 ► §

We just heard a very noisy scene at Zuccotti Park

00:40:56 ► §

behind WNYC’s Bridget Bergen before the break.

00:41:00 ► §

It sounds very quiet where you are.

00:41:02 ► §

Yes, this is an island of calm.

00:41:04 ► §

I mean, it just so

00:41:05 ► §

happens that right in front of the exchange is probably the most secure place in New York City

00:41:09 ► §

right now. I’m not joking when I say I could probably see, you know, 40 or 50 police officers

00:41:15 ► §

right now just from where I stand, and we’re surrounded by tons and tons of barriers.

00:41:20 ► §

So it sort of makes sense that that’s the place where they’re bringing the arrestees and loading them into the vans.

00:41:28 ► §

Was there any success of trying to disrupt or delay the ringing of the opening bell at the stock exchange this morning?

00:41:35 ► §

Well, you know, I tried to get in myself, and they wouldn’t let me.

00:41:40 ► §

And from what I’ve heard, there wasn’t any success in that, but I don’t know that right now.

00:41:46 ► §

And what about these unconfirmed reports of attempts to block subway exits so people cannot go to work on Wall Street?

00:41:53 ► §

Is there any truth to that as far as you could tell?

00:41:56 ► §

Not from what I’ve seen here.

00:41:58 ► §

And I’m close to a 2-3 stop, the Wall Street stop, and also a JMZ exit. And people have been coming out of those

00:42:05 ► §

subway exits, albeit kind of squished between the police barriers and the buildings. Often

00:42:12 ► §

people have said they’ve been routed very inconvenient ways to get to their work, but

00:42:17 ► §

they are in fact able to exit the subway stations as far as I can tell.

00:42:21 ► §

All right. So we’re going to have to conclude that, despite a report by one of the major networks to the contrary,

00:42:27 ► §

that as far as we can tell, no one is blocking subway exits

00:42:30 ► §

in lower Manhattan or anywhere else.

00:42:33 ► §

WNYC’s Ilya Meritz at the Stock Exchange, thank you very much.

00:42:36 ► §

Thanks, Brian.

00:42:37 ► §

And back to David Graber.

00:42:39 ► §

David, you call yourself…

00:42:40 ► §

For what it’s worth, by the way.

00:42:41 ► §

David, go ahead, what?

00:42:42 ► §

I was going to say, for what it’s worth, it seems very unlikely the people I know would be blocking subway exits,

00:42:47 ► §

because we all know that the people that we’d actually like to block from Wall Street don’t take the subway.

00:42:51 ► §

Let me ask you a word.

00:42:54 ► §

They don’t block the subway.

00:42:55 ► §

They all take their chauffeur-driven Escalades.

00:42:58 ► §

Exactly.

00:43:00 ► §

As someone who is an anthropologist, a scholar, world-renowned in the field of anthropology,

00:43:09 ► §

but also someone who embraces the term anarchist for yourself, what does that mean?

00:43:14 ► §

And does it mean you’re anti-capitalist?

00:43:16 ► §

Yes.

00:43:17 ► §

Yeah, it means that we believe that it would be possible to have a society based on human solidarity and actual freedom.

00:43:31 ► §

And we think of freedom as being without structures of systematic coercion.

00:43:39 ► §

An anarchist form of organization is any form which can exist without somebody with a gun ultimately showing up and saying,

00:43:41 ► §

OK, everybody shut up and do what you’re told.

00:43:45 ► §

Pretty much any form of organization that could exist without that could be an anarchist form of organization.

00:43:48 ► §

Do you think the Occupy movement is anti-capitalist,

00:43:51 ► §

which could doom it to irrelevance pretty quickly when the word gets out,

00:43:56 ► §

or is it for a progressive capitalism that respects profits and entrepreneurship

00:44:02 ► §

as good things or maybe the only economic system that can actually work,

00:44:07 ► §

but with decent rules and decent taxes to prevent exploitation and inequality and unaccountability of the kind we see today.

00:44:15 ► §

Is that a meaningful distinction to you between being anti-capitalist and for progressive capitalism?

00:44:21 ► §

I think there’s people who would be on either side of that involved in Occupy Wall Street.

00:44:24 ► §

capitalism? I think there’s people who would be on either side of that involved in Occupy Wall Street. And I think we have certain points where we all agree, which is that what we have in America

00:44:30 ► §

today, we call it democracy, but it’s not. We don’t really have a democratic system. We have

00:44:35 ► §

a system where bribery has been effectively made illegal, where money controls everything.

00:44:39 ► §

And therefore, capitalists essentially control politicians and use them to grant themselves opportunities to extract money from people.

00:44:48 ► §

It hardly can be described as capitalism even.

00:44:51 ► §

Now, whether we want to move on from that to a society where those things are merely controlled,

00:44:57 ► §

or whether we think the problems are fundamental and we have to move to a different type of economic system entirely,

00:45:02 ► §

well, people differ on that.

00:45:04 ► §

That’s a long-term question. A short-term question, I think, is a very strong agreement.

00:45:08 ► §

And when it comes to capitalism, I think what we have to remember is that people in America

00:45:13 ► §

are a lot more radical than the sort of mainstream media allows to be represented.

00:45:19 ► §

I saw a poll the other day where they asked people, what would you prefer for America,

00:45:25 ► §

the other day where they asked people, what would you prefer for America, capitalism or socialism?

00:45:32 ► §

Well, you know, capitalism won. But among people between 15 and 25, it was about evenly split.

00:45:37 ► §

In fact, about a third, slightly more than a third, were for capitalism, about a third were for socialism, about a third didn’t know. I don’t know what they meant by socialism there. I assume they

00:45:42 ► §

just meant whatever capitalism is, that’s the other thing.

00:45:45 ► §

I’m for that.

00:45:46 ► §

But, you know, that means that two-thirds of young Americans are willing to at least consider getting rid of capitalism entirely.

00:45:52 ► §

We should think about that.

00:45:53 ► §

It means capitalism has a bad reputation in America today, I think, given what’s going on.

00:45:59 ► §

And socialism already had a bad reputation in America, so nothing’s any good.

00:46:05 ► §

Exactly.

00:46:06 ► §

Well, you know, I mean, I would say we should move on to a new economic system.

00:46:09 ► §

There’s a lot of possibilities.

00:46:11 ► §

The world does not lack for smart people who could figure out different ways to organize and arrange things.

00:46:16 ► §

Miguel in Brooklyn.

00:46:17 ► §

You’re on WNYC with David Graber.

00:46:20 ► §

Hello, Miguel.

00:46:20 ► §

Hi, Brian.

00:46:22 ► §

A couple of questions that I have.

00:46:23 ► §

Well, I’d like to say first that I’m glad that David is talking about other modes of economic systems.

00:46:29 ► §

I think that we’ve been kind of brainwashed to believe that there’s only one way, which is a global capitalism system.

00:46:37 ► §

And I don’t know if there’s a lot of knowledge of any other system.

00:46:41 ► §

But that was my question.

00:46:42 ► §

What I wanted to say that the the

00:46:45 ► §

presidential elections are happening in Spain this weekend on Sunday they’re

00:46:48 ► §

actually you know elections for Senate Congress and president it’s pretty huge

00:46:52 ► §

basically and the 15m movement decided to kind of stay away from politics they

00:46:59 ► §

just didn’t want to be identified with politicians or parties or anything like that.

00:47:09 ► §

So I wanted to ask David, looking at the election next year, 2012,

00:47:12 ► §

what do you think the Occupy movement is going to be doing and whether it’s going to position itself anywhere in the political spectrum?

00:47:19 ► §

Well, I think the Occupy movement is not going to turn into a movement

00:47:22 ► §

that endorses political candidates, let alone campaigns for them. I think that the power of the movement is to say it’s refusal to do that.

00:47:32 ► §

It’s refusal to make specific demands of the powerful. What made it catch fire was it took

00:47:39 ► §

a moral stand to say this system is fundamentally corrupt. And it turns out that enormous numbers of Americans share

00:47:45 ► §

that feeling. Now, in terms of how it might affect the political outcome, that’s a different

00:47:50 ► §

question. But I think that what we have served to do is to bring items onto the agenda, which

00:47:57 ► §

everybody in America was thinking about, but no one is really talking about in either the political

00:48:02 ► §

circles or the mainstream press. And that’s going to affect the elections in all sorts of ways.

00:48:22 ► §

demands or policy items.

00:48:26 ► §

I know that’s one of the things that you argued against back last summer when the movement was forming, at least I’ve read, that there was a thought to organize around one very

00:48:32 ► §

high-profile, very specific policy item, and you were against that.

00:48:38 ► §

Adbusters had what is our one specific demand.

00:48:41 ► §

They were looking at it from a marketing perspective.

00:48:43 ► §

Adbusters are a group of people who work in the marketing industry and kind of hate it and want to join the other side, but they still

00:48:48 ► §

think like that. So they were like, we need to have a catchy phrase. And actually, we came up

00:48:52 ► §

with a catchy phrase better than theirs. We came up with the 99%, but they also wanted to have like

00:48:57 ► §

one demand. And, you know, with a great idea from a marketing perspective, it’s not a really good

00:49:03 ► §

idea from an organizing perspective. What we wanted to do is bring people together to talk about their real lives and their real problems,

00:49:09 ► §

and demands will come from that.

00:49:12 ► §

But even framing them as demands is like recognizing the legitimacy of the people who were then asking to enact those demands.

00:49:20 ► §

We prefer the language of visions and solutions.

00:49:23 ► §

But if you’re not going to recognize the legitimacy of, let’s say, the Congress of the United States

00:49:28 ► §

How are you going to get anything done?

00:49:31 ► §

Well, we seem to be getting things done

00:49:33 ► §

We seem to have changed the political discourse

00:49:35 ► §

If you look at the history of social movements in America

00:49:38 ► §

You need to have a directly democratic movement

00:49:43 ► §

You need to have a grassroots movement that envisions a new kind of society,

00:49:47 ► §

a new way of dealing with each other, new forms of democracy.

00:49:50 ► §

That means creating a space of autonomy where you can experiment with those things

00:49:54 ► §

and show that they’re possible.

00:49:56 ► §

Because most Americans are brought up to both believe we’re a great democratic nation

00:50:00 ► §

and this is what we have to be proud of,

00:50:01 ► §

but also to believe that democracy isn’t really possible.

00:50:05 ► §

We want to show them that it is.

00:50:06 ► §

Now, you need an autonomous space.

00:50:08 ► §

That doesn’t mean that other people cannot go out and take advantage of the fact that

00:50:13 ► §

we put these things on the table to propose specific policy ideas.

00:50:17 ► §

Those people are out there already.

00:50:18 ► §

There’s lots of people of all sorts of very important and interesting ideas floating around,

00:50:23 ► §

and they have to deal with the government.

00:50:24 ► §

They have to organize themselves in a hierarchical way in order to do so.

00:50:27 ► §

They have to form themselves as NGOs and nonprofits and so forth, which is fine.

00:50:33 ► §

They can do their work.

00:50:35 ► §

And we’ll feed issues to them and show them what people are thinking.

00:50:39 ► §

But they need their pressure from the left.

00:50:40 ► §

They need the prospect of a real social movement for anybody to consider them

00:50:45 ► §

relevant at all. David Graeber, an original organizer of the Occupy Wall Street movement

00:50:50 ► §

and the author of Debt, the First 5,000 Years. We really appreciate you spending so much time

00:50:56 ► §

with us on this two-month anniversary of Occupy at Zuccotti Park and articulating so much of

00:51:02 ► §

what happened and what the movement stands for for you.

00:51:05 ► §

Thank you very much.

00:51:06 ► §

It’s been my pleasure. Bye-bye.

00:51:08 ► §

And so now you know a little bit more about how this broad and deep river of discontent

00:51:13 ► §

that went partially underground for a while has suddenly burst forth in a Niagara of voices

00:51:19 ► §

that are saying, I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore.

00:51:24 ► §

Now, rather than add any of my own comments to the mix right now,

00:51:28 ► §

I’m going to pass that torch on to a couple of younger people.

00:51:32 ► §

One is a young man who I’ve mentioned before,

00:51:34 ► §

and he’s been on the front lines of the street action since day one.

00:51:38 ► §

His name is Tim Poole, and while he’s one of my favorite live video streamers,

00:51:42 ► §

he is by far not the only one.

00:51:44 ► §

In fact, I was actually able to catch the videocast from Boston, While he’s one of my favorite live video streamers, he is by far not the only one.

00:51:53 ► §

In fact, I was actually able to catch the videocast from Boston where Tim was helping Boss Ryan get up to speed on live streaming.

00:51:57 ► §

And it really paid off a few days later when Boss Ryan traveled to D.C.

00:52:03 ► §

and provided some of the most significant coverage of the action taking place in the nation’s capital over that week.

00:52:08 ► §

And out here on the West Coast, well, we’ve got a whole raft of video journalists as well,

00:52:10 ► §

one of my favorites being Sky Adams.

00:52:18 ► §

And I should point out that on my new OccupySalon.us blog, I’ve added a couple of top-level pages,

00:52:22 ► §

one of which has links to some of these video streams that I’ve been following and talking about.

00:52:23 ► §

The other new page is where I’ve begun dumping some of the raw audio recordings that I’ve made from a few of the streams that I’ve been following and talking about. The other new page is where I’ve begun dumping some of the raw audio recordings

00:52:26 ► §

that I’ve made from a few of the streams that I’ve been following.

00:52:30 ► §

And basically, this is just a lot of raw audio that maybe some of our artist friends

00:52:34 ► §

may be able to use in their own productions and podcasts.

00:52:38 ► §

But getting back to what I want to play for you next,

00:52:41 ► §

it’s a recording of an interview that Tim Poole gave to the Majority Report,

00:52:46 ► §

which I believe you can find at

00:52:47 ► §

majority.fm.

00:52:49 ► §

I actually found this on YouTube, though,

00:52:51 ► §

and I’ll link to it in the program notes

00:52:53 ► §

for today’s podcast, which you can get

00:52:55 ► §

to, of course, via psychedelicsalon.us.

00:52:58 ► §

Now here’s that

00:52:59 ► §

interview.

00:53:01 ► §

It’s a pleasure

00:53:03 ► §

to welcome to the program

00:53:06 ► §

uh…

00:53:07 ► §

one of the guys involved in my uh… favorite

00:53:12 ► §

uh… occupy wall street feed i’m talking about the other ninety nine

00:53:17 ► §

tim pool tim welcome to the program

00:53:20 ► §

they have a car

00:53:21 ► §

it’s going well now uh… gets a a little background. When did you start doing this on your own?

00:53:28 ► §

How many of there are you, and when did you start?

00:53:31 ► §

Well, we started with four of us.

00:53:34 ► §

There’s Henry James Ferry, Will McLeod, Jesse LaGreca, who most of you probably know,

00:53:39 ► §

and then me, Tim Poole.

00:53:41 ► §

And we’ve been doing this since the very beginning of Occupy Wall Street.

00:53:45 ► §

It’s sort of been a snowball rolling down a hill. As time goes on, we build more momentum.

00:53:51 ► §

And I guess we saw a really big spike in that this past week.

00:53:55 ► §

Right. And my favorite moment, I think, in watching your coverage uh… was the uh… the night that uh…

00:54:07 ► §

people marched in front of city hall and then began to move up broadway to uh… union square

00:54:13 ► §

and at one point uh… the protesters grabbed the cattling net and uh… began to run through

00:54:21 ► §

the street to it and i still uh… we we of course played the the clip at the time

00:54:27 ► §

but it still resonates in my head that this night belongs to occupy wall street

00:54:32 ► §

um… it

00:54:32 ► §

give me a sense of what’s been the most sort of uh…

00:54:36 ► §

dramatic moments for you

00:54:38 ► §

as you’ve you’ve been covering this

00:54:43 ► §

obviously that night

00:54:44 ► §

with the occupiers taking the orange cuddling that really just

00:54:48 ► §

left me in awe.

00:54:49 ► §

And that’s, you heard me yell, tonight belongs to Occupy Wall Street.

00:54:53 ► §

And they started to hold their net up in their head and chanted, whose net?

00:54:57 ► §

Our net.

00:54:58 ► §

There was one of the other most intense events for me was when the vandals who were draining the tires on the NYPD vehicles, you know, sort of rushed at me, trying to get me to turn the camera off, and, you know, they’re swinging at me. One guy grabbed me.

00:55:23 ► §

when the freight truck was trying to leave the park with all of the possessions.

00:55:28 ► §

And there was, you know, about 50 to 75 of the protesters linked arms,

00:55:30 ► §

and they chanted, we are the 99%. And the police were pushing on the crowd with the barricades,

00:55:34 ► §

trying to break them apart, and they couldn’t do it.

00:55:36 ► §

And the freight truck actually had to back up and retreat.

00:55:39 ► §

You know, everyone cheered in victory.

00:55:42 ► §

And tell me, you know, what is your agenda?

00:55:45 ► §

I mean, how do you perceive yourself?

00:55:46 ► §

Are you a reporter?

00:55:48 ► §

Are you an activist?

00:55:49 ► §

Is there something in between?

00:55:51 ► §

I mean, what you’re doing is a relatively new phenomena in media to be live streaming

00:55:59 ► §

like this with so few bars to entry.

00:56:04 ► §

What do you how do you perceive yourself?

00:56:07 ► §

I perceive myself as an activist.

00:56:09 ► §

I’ve always perceived myself as an activist.

00:56:11 ► §

I’m doing this for transparency,

00:56:13 ► §

which I feel is really the most important thing

00:56:16 ► §

when it comes to policy and historical events.

00:56:21 ► §

Too often, or actually it’s a fact,

00:56:24 ► §

that history is written by the winners

00:56:26 ► §

and on tuesday and thursday that just wasn’t true history was just written

00:56:31 ► §

about what broadcast from my point of view

00:56:35 ► §

and uh…

00:56:37 ► §

i mean where do you swear where where do you

00:56:39 ► §

i mean i think it’s a very interesting point because i think this is a you know

00:56:43 ► §

occupy wall street

00:56:44 ► §

in many respects

00:56:45 ► §

uh…

00:56:47 ► §

the documentation that you do and the media that the the movement itself puts

00:56:53 ► §

out

00:56:54 ► §

is redefining how it can do the entire

00:56:58 ► §

uh…

00:57:00 ► §

that both the process and the story simultaneously i mean it’s it’s

00:57:04 ► §

interesting to me because

00:57:06 ► §

you know when uh… occupy wall street first started he got very little media

00:57:09 ► §

coverage but managed to grow despite the fact that it wasn’t getting the

00:57:13 ► §

traditional media coverage uh… because uh… they were putting it out

00:57:17 ► §

themselves

00:57:18 ► §

uh…

00:57:19 ► §

now wet when did you when you started what was what were your hopes

00:57:24 ► §

i get i really didn’t have any.

00:57:26 ► §

We started working on a way to do a live broadcast,

00:57:30 ► §

and I found the Ustream mobile app,

00:57:32 ► §

and I thought, hey, that’s really easy to do.

00:57:33 ► §

I can just point my cell phone.

00:57:36 ► §

And the original intention was we were going to have a bit of political theater

00:57:40 ► §

where Henry would do his conversation with the 1%,

00:57:43 ► §

but we saw an arrest happen and action started happening,

00:57:49 ► §

and so it quickly changed to spontaneous on-the-ground reporting

00:57:53 ► §

using a live broadcast that people could just, you know,

00:57:57 ► §

see what’s happening and decide for themselves.

00:58:00 ► §

And did you, is that what you’re using, only an iPhone? Is that it?

00:58:04 ► §

Well, I’m actually using a Galaxy S2.

00:58:07 ► §

But, yeah, that’s about it.

00:58:09 ► §

What’s a Galaxy S2?

00:58:11 ► §

It’s a Galaxy S.

00:58:13 ► §

It’s a Droid phone.

00:58:16 ► §

It’s a Sprint Unlimited.

00:58:18 ► §

So you shoot all of it through your phone?

00:58:21 ► §

Yeah, I have the Sprint Galaxy S2 with unlimited

00:58:25 ► §

data, and it’s hooked up to

00:58:27 ► §

an XPAL 18,000

00:58:30 ► §

milliamp battery.

00:58:32 ► §

Wow. Interesting.

00:58:34 ► §

I had no idea. For some reason

00:58:35 ► §

I presumed you guys had a camera

00:58:37 ► §

rig, but

00:58:38 ► §

just because the quality is that good.

00:58:42 ► §

Yeah, I mean,

00:58:44 ► §

it’s got a I feel like I’m doing’t know commercial here but it’s got a eight

00:58:47 ► §

megapixel ten eighty p

00:58:49 ► §

i got uh… camera the back of it

00:58:52 ► §

and um…

00:58:54 ► §

just for full disclosure’s sake just for full disclosure’s sake uh… you you

00:58:57 ► §

don’t you’re you’re not a paid spokesman correct

00:59:01 ► §

no i have absolutely not

00:59:03 ► §

all right well it’s all right now tell me also how this evolved with you and

00:59:06 ► §

henry because when i first started watching it uh henry seemed to be sort of the uh correspondent

00:59:11 ► §

and uh then at one point you guys uh had uh multiple cameras going uh the other 99 and uh

00:59:18 ► §

the other 99 too uh so how does that work out is it just just a question of who’s available that day? Who’s able to get down there? What are the inner workings?

00:59:43 ► §

But, you know, as I’m the one who set it up and knew how to make it work,

00:59:45 ► §

with this action happening, you know,

00:59:49 ► §

especially the Oakland Solidarity March that we were just talking about,

00:59:52 ► §

it was hard for us to stay together because you have just, you know,

00:59:54 ► §

we had 2,000 people in the street.

00:59:58 ► §

I’m running full speed to try and film it, and Henry gets lost in the crowd.

01:00:01 ► §

And I was sort of, you know, put in a spot to take over the narration.

01:00:06 ► §

And, you know, just with Tuesday, with the eviction,

01:00:11 ► §

Henry and I were just not, you know, we were at two different meetings.

01:00:14 ► §

I was at the Spokes Council to see what that was going on.

01:00:17 ► §

The Spokes Council is an organizational system for Occupy Wall Street.

01:00:20 ► §

So when the eviction started, I was by myself,

01:00:22 ► §

and I had to do the reporting on my own.

01:00:29 ► §

And so with the, you know, the success from that that and everyone sort of clamored to keep the stream going,

01:00:34 ► §

Henry decided to use a second channel for the other 99. And so we actually ended up with two, you know, with multi-view from, you know, on the ground.

01:00:39 ► §

You can actually switch back and forth when you’re on our channel.

01:00:42 ► §

You can actually switch back and forth when you’re on our channel.

01:00:51 ► §

And your feed, I believe it was on the, certainly last Thursday,

01:00:58 ► §

was picked up by multiple mainstream media outlets, corporate media outlets.

01:01:00 ► §

Tuesday as well.

01:01:03 ► §

We were on Al Jazeera, Time.com. I also heard that we were on Reuters.

01:01:07 ► §

It’s a huge list that everybody was on.

01:01:09 ► §

Huffington Post is one.

01:01:11 ► §

They were just, we were the primary source at that point.

01:01:15 ► §

And so what are you doing now?

01:01:16 ► §

I mean, how do you support yourself doing this?

01:01:20 ► §

It seems to me that you do it almost every day.

01:01:22 ► §

I mean, how do you support yourself doing this?

01:01:24 ► §

Well, initially, I was living off of my savings,

01:01:29 ► §

but people had made contributions to the other 99 since day one,

01:01:34 ► §

and that provided us with the resources to be on the ground providing this coverage.

01:01:39 ► §

And with the recent exposure we got since the ev you know, sort of reclamation of the park,

01:01:46 ► §

we’ve actually, our donations have increased significantly.

01:01:49 ► §

And so what’s next for you guys?

01:01:52 ► §

Do you continue to do this coverage?

01:01:56 ► §

Are you helping?

01:01:58 ► §

You know, I’ve watched other streams, frankly, and I just wish that you guys had trained them because i think you know

01:02:05 ► §

what what you both do uh… quite well

01:02:08 ► §

from my experience at least viewing is uh… you are uh… fairly measured in your coverage

01:02:15 ► §

you’re fairly careful uh… to clarify when uh… you’ve witnessed something or when you are uh…

01:02:23 ► §

you know sourcing the information you get so that we know,

01:02:26 ► §

uh, the LRAD, uh, sticks out in my mind, uh, that you had multiple sources telling you that

01:02:33 ► §

they had seen it and you made it clear that that was the case. Um, and I, I, I wonder if you guys

01:02:40 ► §

have been in touch with other streamers around the country to help advise them on how to go about approaching it um has there been any any conversations like that or is it just uh you’re

01:02:51 ► §

operating on your own well we don’t we don’t coordinate with other teams but i have given a

01:02:57 ► §

lot of technical advice as to how i i do the broadcast most of the other teams use the live stream program.

01:03:05 ► §

We use Ustream. And Ustream.tv actually has the mobile app

01:03:10 ► §

where you broadcast right from your phone. And live stream actually,

01:03:15 ► §

you’ll see these teams walking around with laptops and webcams with external batteries

01:03:20 ► §

and hotspots. So they don’t have the versatility.

01:03:29 ► §

Now, as for sort of the narration, the reporting,

01:03:33 ► §

I spoke with Vlad from GlobalRev, and he said, you know, what you guys do is exactly what everyone should do,

01:03:37 ► §

you know, giving your report a narration of what’s happening

01:03:40 ► §

so that people can get a better understanding of it.

01:03:43 ► §

Yeah, it’s fantastic.

01:03:46 ► §

And so we can expect more from you guys in the future, yes?

01:03:51 ► §

Yeah, I plan on being in Oakland on December 12th,

01:03:54 ► §

where they’ve actually planned to shut down all of the ports.

01:03:57 ► §

So that’s, you know, my real hope.

01:04:00 ► §

December 12th in Oakland, and we’ll keep an eye.

01:04:04 ► §

The website is, well, the Ustream is ustream.tv forward slash theother99.

01:04:09 ► §

And what’s your website?

01:04:12 ► §

We are theother99.com.

01:04:14 ► §

We are theother99.com.

01:04:16 ► §

Tim Poole, thanks so much for spending some time with us.

01:04:18 ► §

Really appreciate your work, and you’re doing a great job, and keep it up.

01:04:22 ► §

and you’re doing a great job, and keep it up.

01:04:31 ► §

And in case you weren’t able to keep up with the West Coast port protest on December 12th, well, Tim didn’t make it to Oakland that day,

01:04:33 ► §

but instead had the bad luck of being at the Long Beach port blockage action,

01:04:37 ► §

which essentially got rained out by a massive Pacific storm

01:04:41 ► §

that drenched all of Southern California for a few days.

01:04:44 ► §

But amazingly, there were actually several ports that were blocked that day,

01:04:48 ► §

and while not every port on the coast was blocked,

01:04:51 ► §

a movement without a leader managed to do something that hasn’t been seen in a long time.

01:04:55 ► §

Maybe ever, actually.

01:04:57 ► §

While it’s been a long time since strikes have shut down more than one port on the West Coast,

01:05:02 ► §

to my knowledge, this is the very first time that ports were shut down,

01:05:06 ► §

not by striking union members,

01:05:08 ► §

but they were shut down by average citizens

01:05:10 ► §

who were exposing the horrible working conditions

01:05:13 ► §

and low wages our dock workers and the truckers who support them are suffering from.

01:05:18 ► §

And to me, that’s the true spirit of the Occupy movement.

01:05:22 ► §

People coming together to help their neighbors,

01:05:24 ► §

in spite of the oppressive governments that they may live under. Of course, the people who only

01:05:30 ► §

get their news from the corporate media have no idea what an incredible success the Occupy

01:05:35 ► §

movement had in blocking some of the ports on the coast that day. And before I forget,

01:05:40 ► §

if you want to go back and listen to some of the reporting that Tim Poole did on that historic November 17th march,

01:05:46 ► §

again, it’s in my Day 66 podcast, which is podcast number 291 here in the salon.

01:05:53 ► §

And lest you forget, this is history in the making that’s being recorded by the people actually on the ground at the time

01:06:00 ► §

and not by some institutionalized historian 300 years from now.

01:06:04 ► §

and not by some institutionalized historian 300 years from now.

01:06:10 ► §

So if you missed that podcast, I think you would be well served to go back and listen for yourself how Tim Poole transformed from a techie geek into one of the Occupy movement’s leading journalists.

01:06:17 ► §

And the secret of his success is simple, I think.

01:06:20 ► §

Unlike somebody like myself, who, if I was streaming, would probably just point the camera and let the action speak for itself,

01:06:26 ► §

what Tim does is to add his own commentary as we walk, and sometimes run along with him during some of these momentous early actions,

01:06:33 ► §

that one day will be the stuff of legend.

01:06:36 ► §

Of course, these legends are going to have to be extremely factual, because most of Tim’s videos are archived at ustream.tv slash theother99,

01:06:46 ► §

which is his streaming channel.

01:06:48 ► §

And again, I’ve embedded it on our occupysalon.us blog to make it a little easier to find.

01:06:54 ► §

I’m not sure where Tim is now, but the last I heard,

01:06:58 ► §

he was heading to San Francisco to test one of the new drones

01:07:01 ► §

that some of the streamers have been using to carry their cameras high enough

01:07:04 ► §

to cover these large marches that have begun to pop up here and there.

01:07:09 ► §

But I should add that our valiant video streamers have already become singled out,

01:07:14 ► §

at least by the New York Police Department.

01:07:16 ► §

I was actually able to record some of the audio stream from one of Liberty Park’s leading journalists,

01:07:22 ► §

who also happens to be named Lorenzo, I should add.

01:07:26 ► §

And on December 12th, the same day that the West Coast Port actions were going on,

01:07:31 ► §

the Occupy Wall Street group was also on the march in Manhattan.

01:07:34 ► §

But this time the cops rounded up all of the live video streamers first

01:07:38 ► §

and got them out of the way so that they couldn’t document what this highly militarized police force was up to.

01:07:44 ► §

so that they couldn’t document what this highly militarized police force was up to.

01:07:48 ► §

And I’m pretty sure that it was Lorenzo’s stream that I watched as he was streaming from the inside of a paddy wagon, waiting to be taken to jail.

01:07:54 ► §

Later on, I heard that most of the equipment of the Occupy Wall Street media team

01:07:58 ► §

had been confiscated or destroyed by the cops.

01:08:01 ► §

So much for free speech and free press, huh?

01:08:01 ► §

or destroyed by the cops.

01:08:04 ► §

So much for free speech and free press, huh?

01:08:09 ► §

And while, if we want to, we can focus on all of the creepy things that the screwheads in Washington are up to,

01:08:12 ► §

everything from censoring the Internet to using the military

01:08:15 ► §

to indefinitely detain any of us who disagree with the establishment,

01:08:19 ► §

well, we can focus on that if we want, but that isn’t the here and now.

01:08:24 ► §

At least in the here and now, we can still talk about these things freely and share them on the net.

01:08:29 ► §

And so today I want to close with another comment from one of our fellow salonners who had this to say.

01:08:37 ► §

Hi there, Lorenzo. It’s Jarrett here over at Feedback Arts Elysium Studio.

01:08:42 ► §

Just checking in and I’d like to engage the psychedelic salon regarding the Occupy Movement.

01:08:46 ► §

Before doing so, I would like to express to you my sincere gratitude.

01:08:50 ► §

The information which you provide costs many people who recorded these talks a pretty penny

01:08:55 ► §

and the wherewithal to stash these audio gems somewhere until they found their way into

01:09:00 ► §

your hands could have been quite an imposition.

01:09:02 ► §

Thanks be to you, your colleagues, and to the MAPS community,

01:09:05 ► §

that is the Multidisciplinary Association of Psychedelic Studies community,

01:09:09 ► §

who realize the great help these sacred plant teachers provide.

01:09:13 ► §

Many people cannot understand why you are using the salon as a platform for the Occupy movement.

01:09:18 ► §

It’s my guess that a few of the salonners may not have psychedelic experience, and they’re just curious.

01:09:23 ► §

So for them and any other individual who doesn’t understand why you might be doing this,

01:09:27 ► §

I will provide my perspective here.

01:09:29 ► §

Since I’m a painter, I’ll paint you a picture.

01:09:31 ► §

First, imagine that you are feeling different than you’ve ever felt.

01:09:34 ► §

A panic comes over your consciousness as you realize there is an emergence of some phenomena

01:09:39 ► §

which has taken possession of your person,

01:09:42 ► §

and the panic along with the phenomenal sensations are increasing rapidly.

01:09:45 ► §

We reach a stage of fight or flight with these sensations and realize that we are along too far to turn back.

01:09:52 ► §

So we embrace the experience as our own and begin following it to whatever end that becomes.

01:09:57 ► §

We choose this route through the experience because there is no fighting or fleeing because these sensations are inside of us.

01:10:04 ► §

because there is no fighting or fleeing because the sensations are inside of us.

01:10:08 ► §

As the experience unfolds, the fears and terrors give rise to a sense of understanding that we have entered new territory.

01:10:11 ► §

The panic which unfolded reordered the priorities and intentions of our life

01:10:15 ► §

and we have a deeper sense of meaning regarding what life is and why we’re involved with it.

01:10:20 ► §

We realize that as long as we are still breathing,

01:10:23 ► §

there is a sense of dawn approaching and the cold

01:10:25 ► §

of the night is on its way out you’ve unfolded the wiggly episode of a psychedelic experience

01:10:31 ► §

to reorient you to the light and align yourself on the side of life and everything that entails

01:10:36 ► §

flora fauna feelings experiences the good the bad the life and eventually the death

01:10:41 ► §

these things cannot be separated from one another and they are all unfolding now, here.

01:10:48 ► §

All of the transgressions before this psychedelic episode of understanding

01:10:51 ► §

are revisited in a new light

01:10:53 ► §

and re-evaluated to see if the path coincides with the path of life,

01:10:58 ► §

sustainability and the evolution not only for ourselves

01:11:01 ► §

but every aspect of life mentioned earlier.

01:11:04 ► §

So I’ll tie this painting to an analogy of the Occupy movement.

01:11:07 ► §

We have entered a dark passage of life

01:11:09 ► §

where we have been told one thing while we experience the antithesis.

01:11:13 ► §

We realize at this juncture that our perception of the world

01:11:15 ► §

has been dictated to us by our culture,

01:11:18 ► §

and by stepping outside of our culture, we’re stepping into another.

01:11:22 ► §

We realize these cultures are getting smaller and more fractioned with time, and we’re not understanding each other as well as we used to and often we’re

01:11:29 ► §

pitted against other cultures to conform or perish. All of a sudden it’s our culture which

01:11:35 ► §

is being called into question and this culture with which we are involved is not so well defined.

01:11:41 ► §

Over time it becomes clear that the culture which is in question is the

01:11:45 ► §

one which has a differing opinion, an alternate perspective, or more

01:11:48 ► §

specifically the one which doesn’t provide enough money to the economy. A

01:11:52 ► §

brief look at what cultures do provide enough money to the economy. Well they

01:11:56 ► §

paid more lobbying to the government than they paid in taxes. In turn the

01:12:01 ► §

government provides more financial incentives to these corporations,

01:12:09 ► §

which provide more lobbying power to the government. On top of it all, we have a private banking institution at the very top of the structure, which prints money on loan to the

01:12:14 ► §

U.S. taxpayers with interest accruing. We’re not allowed to know who these high banking people are

01:12:19 ► §

by their own intention. If you knew you had a tapeworm attached to the artery in your intestine

01:12:25 ► §

and it literally was sucking the life from your body,

01:12:28 ► §

you would do whatever was in your power to have the thing removed

01:12:31 ► §

even if it meant putting you in debt for the rest of your life

01:12:34 ► §

because you want to live.

01:12:36 ► §

But what type of life can be had as a debt slave?

01:12:39 ► §

So you find that you’re experiencing feelings which you never had before.

01:12:43 ► §

Does this sound familiar?

01:12:49 ► §

For being a citizen in the land of the free feels more like a prison sentence sometimes and it’s getting more uncomfortable with every bit of legislation which takes away our inalienable

01:12:54 ► §

rights let’s look at s 1867 the defense authorization act how about the patriot act

01:13:00 ► §

before it sopa digital rights management name it. So now you hit the

01:13:05 ► §

fight or flight stage. You realize that your citizenship bars you from living in a foreign

01:13:10 ► §

country. Sure, you can visit other lands if you have the money, but taking up residence

01:13:14 ► §

elsewhere is an option for very few of us. So we dig our heels in and confront the beast.

01:13:20 ► §

We assemble to exercise the rights granted to us by the amended constitution.

01:13:26 ► §

Then we see the rights are being

01:13:27 ► §

confiscated before our eyes as we get

01:13:29 ► §

dragged off of public land,

01:13:32 ► §

beaten, pepper sprayed, and made to

01:13:33 ► §

pay $5,000 fine for our arrest

01:13:36 ► §

doing what is, or what was,

01:13:38 ► §

our right to peaceably assemble

01:13:39 ► §

to protest. We take a look

01:13:41 ► §

at the candidates for the upcoming

01:13:43 ► §

2012 election year and hear that

01:13:45 ► §

their focus is ending Obama’s war on religion, which is an outright lie because there is no

01:13:50 ► §

attack on religion in this country, or getting gays out of the military. Excuse me, how does

01:13:56 ► §

one feed a family of four with an argument about religion or arguing about human rights as a gay

01:14:01 ► §

individual? We then realize that this has become a control culture game of hide and seek.

01:14:06 ► §

The establishment is so focused

01:14:08 ► §

on taking away the rights

01:14:10 ► §

which we bestowed upon ourselves

01:14:12 ► §

that they have blatantly made this obvious

01:14:14 ► §

that we are the enemy

01:14:15 ► §

for not believing as they do.

01:14:18 ► §

Since we have such differing conceptual ideas

01:14:20 ► §

of why we should find alternatives

01:14:22 ► §

to fossil fuels,

01:14:23 ► §

why we should not destroy the lungs of the world, our rainforests, and why we have find alternatives to fossil fuels, why we should not destroy the lungs of the

01:14:25 ► §

world, our rainforests, and why we have little need to pollute if we’re not in a hurry to chase the

01:14:30 ► §

dollar. In a sense, we’re being told that if we aren’t complicit with purchasing the latest gizmo

01:14:35 ► §

or the largest TV, we’re out of the loop, as all non-cell phone users already are aware. Try finding

01:14:42 ► §

a payphone these days in a nice part of town. This one cell phone example illustrates to us

01:14:47 ► §

how we are being asked to fend for ourselves,

01:14:50 ► §

and that is exactly what we will be doing,

01:14:52 ► §

however, we won’t be alone.

01:14:53 ► §

As the control culture finds ways to alienate us

01:14:57 ► §

and make us feel left out because we aren’t Republican,

01:15:00 ► §

Christian, a heterosexual football fan,

01:15:02 ► §

and a weekend barbecue wizard,

01:15:04 ► §

we learn that our next door neighbor

01:15:05 ► §

is a Buddhist, grows his own vegetables

01:15:08 ► §

like I do, and doesn’t own a TV

01:15:10 ► §

just like me

01:15:11 ► §

we also find that the Catholic across the street is gay

01:15:14 ► §

and has a volunteer job assisting homeless

01:15:16 ► §

to find housing

01:15:17 ► §

you find out then you feel much more

01:15:19 ► §

comfortable and have much more in common

01:15:22 ► §

with these people than with a goon in a suit

01:15:24 ► §

on Wall Street who has repossessed your other neighbor’s home without just cause because his mortgage was

01:15:28 ► §

bought up in a securities fraud with no oversight so basically it won’t be until the last illusion

01:15:35 ► §

participant loses their public servant pension for because their elected leader basically gave it away, then this country will begin the difficult transition back to sanity.

01:15:49 ► §

So as much as I have learned from the sacred plant teachers about life,

01:15:53 ► §

I see their lessons all around us in the Occupy movement.

01:15:57 ► §

Without question, we are one without percent delineation.

01:16:00 ► §

We are one, the people.

01:16:04 ► §

How will we exact justice on those who are teaching us to fend for ourselves?

01:16:08 ► §

By forcing the people to live in a way which is not consistent with the natural course of human dignity.

01:16:14 ► §

These bring up very uncomfortable feelings,

01:16:16 ► §

and these leaders are presenting the chance for us to free ourselves once again,

01:16:21 ► §

just like the sacred plant teachers do.

01:16:23 ► §

We should be grateful for these leaders’ effort.

01:16:27 ► §

I put leaders in quotations, obviously.

01:16:29 ► §

No high-dose trip is without its snags or snares,

01:16:32 ► §

and this is the highest we have been in history.

01:16:35 ► §

Pardon the pun.

01:16:36 ► §

This is high society.

01:16:38 ► §

Technology has presented to us a unique window of truth called the Internet,

01:16:43 ► §

where you can have personal debates with yourself

01:16:45 ► §

using all the conflicting information until you reach a conclusion your conclusion that life is

01:16:51 ► §

worth living and if we don’t impede upon others lives in the process this includes not impeding

01:16:56 ► §

on our own lives so as we wrap up the trip and reflect on the lessons learned and why we need

01:17:03 ► §

to know these things we set a course for life to be consistent with our vision as as consistent with our vision as we possibly

01:17:09 ► §

can we question the imposition of authority when it conflicts with common sense we reach a consensus

01:17:16 ► §

of understanding to validate our direction and then we continue on our way we strive for autonomy

01:17:22 ► §

even if we have to borrow a cup of rice from the neighbor. That’s okay

01:17:26 ► §

because we have some wheat

01:17:28 ► §

which they need too. So in a sense

01:17:30 ► §

it is a collective goal that we can

01:17:32 ► §

achieve what we put our minds to, especially

01:17:34 ► §

when the current life we lead

01:17:35 ► §

conflicts with our vision of what life

01:17:38 ► §

is. As Socrates and

01:17:40 ► §

Dr. Tim both were subject

01:17:41 ► §

to accusations of corrupting the youth,

01:17:44 ► §

all they did was ask the youths to think for themselves,

01:17:48 ► §

something that today, if it is not executed by everyone,

01:17:51 ► §

could be the greatest threat to your life and the lives of those who you love.

01:17:55 ► §

If you can step up to this challenge to think for yourself,

01:17:58 ► §

a really good test is to read Deuteronomy in the Old Testament of the Bible on acid.

01:18:04 ► §

You’ll have plenty of time, and you’ll be called time and time again to think for yourself,

01:18:09 ► §

to see the difference between life then and life now, as well as the differences between

01:18:13 ► §

you and the culture in which you may have been raised or the culture in which you may

01:18:17 ► §

be living.

01:18:18 ► §

So the examples that I provided, those examples being religion or homosexuality, are just examples to illustrate

01:18:28 ► §

how unique each individual really is.

01:18:31 ► §

You can put two people with the same exact religion together in a room, they may be even

01:18:35 ► §

from the same family and parishioners of the same church, and you can sit down and ask

01:18:39 ► §

them questions about their specific religion, and you may find that they have completely

01:18:43 ► §

differing views, yet they call themselves the same

01:18:45 ► §

denomination. This is all just

01:18:48 ► §

to prove that we are unique.

01:18:50 ► §

I mean no harm, and I do not

01:18:52 ► §

want to offend anybody by using those

01:18:54 ► §

specific religious or

01:18:55 ► §

sexual terms. I do

01:18:58 ► §

want to thank you, Lorenzo.

01:18:59 ► §

I really honor and respect your work.

01:19:02 ► §

I think that what you’re doing is such a

01:19:04 ► §

necessity this day and age.

01:19:05 ► §

And lots of love to you.

01:19:07 ► §

Thanks.

01:19:10 ► §

Well, thank you for that, Jarrett.

01:19:12 ► §

But really all of the thanks actually should go out to you and to all of our other salonners

01:19:17 ► §

who are using some of their time to become better informed about what is really going on in this world.

01:19:22 ► §

And who are also doing what they can to help us all increase our collective consciousness

01:19:27 ► §

a little bit each day.

01:19:28 ► §

And if you want to add your own voice to the mix,

01:19:31 ► §

you can send me a message or an MP3 file

01:19:34 ► §

at lorenzo at occupysalon.us.

01:19:38 ► §

And now I’m going to close,

01:19:40 ► §

but I’m afraid that I have to close on a rather sad note.

01:19:44 ► §

And that is, I have to report

01:19:46 ► §

the death of one of our supporters and guests here in the salon, Eric Hart. As you will remember,

01:19:53 ► §

Eric was our guest speaker on podcast number 265, which is titled Lawyers Lie. And it’s one

01:20:01 ► §

of our most important podcasts. Eric, you’re going to be missed by us all.

01:20:06 ► §

Thank you for everything you’ve done.

01:20:09 ► §

And for now, this is Lorenzo signing off from Cyberdelic Space.

01:20:13 ► §

Be well, my friends. Feel to the light Feel to the light

01:20:25 ► §

Love is making you move Thank you.