Chapter 12

Expect Us

July 2012—Intentional

I was still chuckling to myself at home the next week, when I picked up an email from a Michigan newspaper reporter, who had taken the time to jot down the website address I painted on the sheet. I called him back to learn that our mischief had caused quite a stir among republican men in Michigan, who were now calling on their democratic counterparts to draft a formal letter of apology, distancing themselves from the banner prank, which they speculated, might have been instigated by one of them. The democratic reps had bristled at the idea, claiming the allegations to be preposterous and unfounded. One democrat rolled his eyes when talking to a local reporter as he scoffed, “For goodness sake, she gave her name when she posted her video all over the Internet, why don’t they just go after her?” Speaker Jase Bolger was said, by the reporter, to be livid that a woman would have the temerity to violate a man’s private space, impose her beliefs on him, and infringe on his rights. “Well now he knows how it feels!” I shouted, triumphantly, into the phone.

While the blowback from our Twattergate caper thrilled me no end, it did nothing to ameliorate my fears that the Occupy Movement had seen its greatest days, and the revolution that I’d poured my heart and soul into, was dying. Few of our encampments still remained, having been crushed with overwhelming force that included chemical dispersants, concussion grenades, rubber bullets, armored tanks, helicopters, M-4 assault rifles, inflatable cages, and even an LRAD device. Municipal police departments across the country had thrown everything they had at us. I’d been shocked by the look and feel of modern police forces. We’d been chased, gassed, shot at, kettled, clubbed, cuffed, and caged and we were tired. Some of us were bone weary from the effort.

The most common police response to Black Bloc anarchist vandalism had been to stand aside and allow the perpetrators to escape, preferring to terrorize and arrest thousands of peaceful protesters instead, often beating them senseless in the process. Infighting had invariably broken out between divergent factions of Occupy—some insisting on a peaceful movement, while others wanted to employ a diversity of tactics, including destruction of property and other retaliatory measures against police armies and the power elite. Tensions between anarchists and pacifists had reached a fever pitch after the scenario of small groups of Black Bloc rabble rousers drawing firepower to the majority of us began to play itself out over and again across the nation.

Some live streamers had imploded under the pressure of instant stardom, accompanied by the brutal onslaught of vicious trolls and jealous rivals. Oakfosho vanished entirely from the picture, after having been pilloried by Occupy Oakland members for threatening to turn the camera on them for throwing plastic water bottles at police who were poised to harm us. His trolls had come out of the woodwork with messages like, “Get a job and take a bath,” as well as brutal personal insults, such as, “Hey triple chin, why don’t you put that camera down and go Occupy a salad,” and, “Hey moralfag, you turn us in, and it’ll be the last thing you ever do.” OccupyFreedomLa had her iphone ripped from her hands by an unknown assailant, who ran through a rally and was never caught. Oakland Elle had been arrested for standing outside a jail and livestreaming while trying to reason with police to release unlawfully detained protesters. Outspoken, informed, intelligent Bella Eiko of Occupy Oakland had made a tearful retreat from political activism, after tweeting messages from a City Council meeting lamenting that Oakland’s plans to institute NYPD-style, “Stop and Frisk” policies would poison the future for her unborn son, who would mature to “match the profile” of the young black men being thrown into prison for life every day in America. Police forces nationwide adopted a “hands off” policy toward the most famous streamers, fearing that all hell would break loose if their army of adoring fans and fellow occupiers saw them roughed up and hauled in. Oakfosho, Punkboy, and Tim Pool(@Timcast) from New York City, were among the superstars of independent journalism who were allowed to operate, largely unscathed, throughout Occupy’s heyday. Their raw footage and unedited comments were a breath of fresh air to activists who were fed up with corporate news coverage, or the lack thereof. Television news networks, such as, FOX, CNN, and MSNBC, had begun complaining they were losing market share to the amateur feeds. They began looking for creative ways to stop the hemorrhaging. Some desperate networks had even resorted to plucking indie footage from the Internet and airing it as their own, since streamers gave unlimited access to viewers and had no copyright protections on their work. But by this time, the cat was out of the bag and we, as consumers, had already tasted the sweet fruit of truth, and many of us were acquiring nearly all of our information from sources unbeholden to corporate bosses. Rumors that lucrative employment offers had been extended to a few wildly popular guerilla journalists were confirmed by those very journalists, who tweeted that they had declined to accept them. Television news programs struggled to remain relevant in light of the reality that some postings by Anonymous were garnering hundreds of thousands and even millions of views as they made their way around a shrinking planet in a matter of seconds.

Many Anons and other cyber activists that had been apprehended and locked up were now facing years of costly court appearances, as well as lengthy prison time. Government agencies had rounded them up like cattle, in ostentatious displays of force, coming down so hard on them that a few, like Aaron Swartz, would be unable to handle the stress and would take their own lives. The United States Department of Homeland Security proclaimed them a threat to our national interests, and formed special committees to deal with what they were calling “cyber terrorism.” America lost some of her best and brightest minds—talented people, whose extraordinary powers could have just as easily been harnessed to further our own standing in the realm of computer science and Internet technology, had they not been locked up. It is tragic to consider that many of these brilliant young citizens concluded that their government had so betrayed them, they were better served by risking everything and working against it rather than for it.

College students had been assaulted, handcuffed, and pepper sprayed at close range by campus police, for daring to sit their ground and plead with wealthy chancellors to consider their plight. They asked these officials, who all too often did double duty on the boards of major financial institutions, to recognize that they held their futures in their hands. They took their case directly to the wealthy decision makers, who controlled their fate, asking them to understand how the skyrocketing tuitions that lined their pockets, acted also to saddle the young students with unpayable debt and severely limit their choices.

At several points during and after my tenure with the Occupy Movement, I’d been gripped by several crises of confidence. As I lay in a Seattle emergency room, unable to talk or sing, inhaling steroids and laboring to breathe, after OPD tear gas triggered an unshakeable asthma attack, I wondered if it was worth it. As I tuned in to one of my favorites, #OO’s Bella Eiko, crying pitifully after revealing that what little money she earned working three jobs, had gone toward her cell phone bill and its costly data plan, which allowed her to livestream color commentary of the revolution, and I wondered if it was worth it. She implored anyone who watched her fiery, gritty street coverage, to send any sum of money to help cover some of her other financial obligations that month. By her own admission, her phone had become one of her most precious possessions, so she had prioritized that bill over others, because livestreaming had been the only thing that enabled her to keep her sanity in a world of eroding rights, extreme wealth inequality, legalized racism, wholesale planetary destruction, and vanishing freedoms. It was almost more than I could bear, listening to her explain how, although she put in over forty work hours each week, she still did not have the funds to continue her education, pay her student loans, put gas in her dying automobile, pay rent, or buy health care.

A number of my favorite activists had dropped everything to jump into the Occupy Movement. Some had immersed themselves so deeply in the culture that they’d foregone all other pursuits. One such person was a woman named Amber Lyon, who was reputed to have quit her high-paying day job as a CNN correspondent to hit the streets with little more than her iphone and a Ustream account. But these defections from civilized society—these elopements from obedience, did not come without heavy psychological consequences. During one particular Ustream broadcast, Oakfosho looked as if he was on the verge of tears as he read the same chat line comments we too could plainly see, questioning his motives and making fun of his weight. Though he showed a fierce indifference to peril when confronting out-of-control cops delivering savage blows to dissenters, I knew from closely monitoring him, that he was also emotionally fragile, and ill-equipped to bounce back easily from the hate-filled remarks. His backstory included graduating with honors from a California University after obtaining a master’s degree in Business Administration, only to find himself drowning in debt, stuck in a low-paying service job, unsure of himself, and depressingly overweight. He’d pulled himself, up by his bootstraps and started exercising in earnest at a local gym, spending nearly every non-work moment running laps and pumping iron. His affability, unfailing kindness, and dogged determination to get physically fit had gotten the attention of the facility’s manager, who encouraged Spencer to apply for a job opening that they’d recently posted. His effort and dedication paid off, and he was able to shed nearly a hundred pounds before paying a visit to the Occupy Oakland encampment. He arrived at Oscar Grant Plaza shortly after Marine Scott Olsen made headlines by narrowly surviving the impact of the exploding tear gas canister, maliciously thrown by the OPD.

Prior to that, his main online presence had been as a rabid sports fan. Most of his Internet communications had been focused on lively discourse around his beloved Oakland Raiders and athletics. Spencer Mills instantly demonstrated himself to be a knowledgeable, caring, intuitive journalist, and became famous overnight after his first Occupy Oakland broadcast on November 2, 2011, the day of the General Strike/Port shutdown. He’d been bowled over by the unanticipated reception, and recoiled from the harsh glare of the spotlight that seemed to give others license to take cruel potshots and throw flaming daggers at him. The blows had taken a huge toll on his public and private life, prompting him to abandon his routine, and eventually causing him to regain the weight he’d so painstakingly lost. Ultimately, the online battering wounded him, despite repeated warnings by friends and admirers alike, for everyone to simply focus on the revolution and ignore the critics. “Don’t Feed the Trolls” became the mantra of many #OO followers, urging everyone on board not to encourage the haters by responding to their taunts, even in defense of our dear comrade, whose name had become synonymous with Occupy Oakland. The pressure levelled him and sent him staggering for the shelter of his former life. I had to force myself to accept his decision to leave and not beg him to return. As I watched him dive back into the world of debating the merits of professional sports teams, I felt hollow and jealous, as if those players had somehow stolen my hero from me. I fought the selfish compulsion to call him up and tell him how much more we needed him than they did—to remind him how few sports teams there would even be to watch if we allowed the 1% to continue robbing us blind and fracking the planet to smithereens. It was almost as if he’d died. I cursed myself for once thinking that it would almost be better if he had died. At least we wouldn’t be left with all these unanswered questions about why he dropped out of our revolution. But hard as his departure had been to accept, it was much easier than reading the sad, defeated tweets coming from his Twitter account in response to other fans who had not resisted the temptation to throw themselves at his feet and wrap their arms around his ankles pleading with him to come back. His life was in shambles and his heart was broken. In the end, his legions of friends and fans had not been able to lift him out of the abyss. He was done.

When I got home from my last planned action, (Twattergate—July 2012) I had what can best be described as a combination of PTSD, withdrawal, and a general feeling of letdown and sadness. I felt rudderless and adrift—almost as if I’d just broken up with a long time lover or prematurely lost a treasured friend. I didn’t know what to do with myself. I was financially broke, having spent many thousands of dollars racing across the nation from one hotspot to another, foregoing my musical career by not writing songs, rehearsing, or touring with the band. I felt as if the critics, in some respects, may have been right in telling us to go home, take a bath, and get a job. We were said by them to be lazy, bratty, and spoiled—unlikable and ungrateful for the opportunities this country had given us. We had goaded law enforcement into action and gotten what we asked for when we were beaten, sprayed, locked up, and fined. It took me awhile to shake myself out of those doldrums. Punkboy and I spoke on the phone every so often and I never lost my constant Twitter and Facebook contact with almost all of my coconspirators, from livestreamers to street activists and Anons worldwide. I owed them an unpayable debt for not only keeping me safe when the tear gas and rubber bullets started flying, but also teaching me how to use my smartphone by scrupulously honoring my repeated requests to “tell me, as if I were a two-year-old,” how to perform such mundane tasks as sending out a tweet, or posting a video to YouTube or Facebook.

But little by little, I started to pick up the pieces and reconstruct my life. I spent a lot of the following winter thinking about what I’d learned and what to do with that information. It was hard for me to focus on any one thing and compartmentalize all the knowledge I’d gotten about how our country and the world works in the realms of banking, farming, the stock market, big business, branches of government, etc. I was frustrated that we hadn’t come away with a tidy, quantifiable victory that could be summed up in a few pages of a history book—that encapsulated our entire struggle for social, economic, and environmental justice. I yearned for a clean sentence that sounded similar to: “The Civil war ended slavery with the Emancipation Proclamation, or World War II defeated Hitler and freed the Jews.” Perhaps, “The Occupy Movement ended corporate corruption and saved the world.” I moped about that for awhile, until I was sick of myself, and then began taking inventory to see what others were doing to move on and make sense of what had happened to us. In essence, it looked as if many viewed their days in Occupy foxholes as a smorgasbord to sample areas of activism they wanted to acquaint themselves with or already felt passionate about. They floated around, as I did, from issue to issue, march to march, throwing themselves into whatever worthwhile cause was being protested right then, but filing the most compelling things we learned and people we met to revisit and get to know better when things calmed down. We were all fed up and angry about a host of worrisome conditions that exist today, and none of us seemed inclined to limit ourselves to any one concern. They treated the experience as a primer in civil disobedience and personal empowerment.

One such individual was Kshama Sawant. After Seattleites set up their own OWS encampment at the downtown campus of Seattle Central Community College, Sawant, who’d already been a long time social/economic justice advocate, showed up to join in the struggle. She did the same things most of us did—marched against capitalist excesses and the corporatocracy, risked injury and arrest, and spoke with all walks of life from the downtrodden to the wellheeled. Wherever she spoke, she put her own socialist beliefs front and center, in an attempt to enlighten and enroll others to the manifold benefits of governments based on equitable distribution of wealth, rather than personal acquisition and overblown displays of military might. Kshama grew up, middle-class, in India, observing the painful injustices of the caste system there, which she found abominable and unacceptable. After graduating from the University of Mumbai, she moved to the United States and was shocked to encounter the depths of poverty and inequality here as well, which had many parallels to that of her home country. These images affected her deeply and she decided to abandon her training in computer science and pursue answers to her newfound interest in systemic denial of access to social justice, both in America and points beyond. To that end, she earned a PhD in Economics from the University of North Carolina, followed by a move to Seattle in 2006, where she began teaching at Seattle Central College shortly thereafter. It was there that she surrounded herself with others who wholeheartedly rejected our country’s pathological obsession with wealth and status and replaced them with her own brand of compassionate advocacy for all citizens, not just the top 1%.

My path to revolution may have been markedly different from hers, but I’d reached the same conclusions that she had: tax the rich! Eliminate special privileges for corporations and billionaires, and demand sweeping reform to how business is done in the United States. Her incredible journey toward becoming what some have described, “the most powerful socialist in America,” was predicated, in part, on her remarkable conduct in the days leading up to her victory. She cut her teeth in the trenches of Occupy Seattle and then went on to launch an outrageously successful campaign to become a member of the Seattle City Council, whose most compelling hue and cry was to increase the minimum wage in that city to fifteen dollars per hour, which she deemed to be the lowest reasonable amount to compensate a full time worker, in order to elevate them above poverty level. And then, against all odds, she won! Not only that, she unseated a longtime encumbent, Richard Conlin, who was viewed by many to be untouchable in the race. By doing so, she became one of only a handful of socialist candidates to ever win council posts in the entire history of the United States. Then, she took her heartfelt commitments directly to Seattle voters, who agreed with her position and, in May 2014, became the first to adopt the fifteen dollar minimum wage ever seen on our shores. We who Occupied for this too, lit the Twittersphere up like a Roman candle when the votes were finally tallied and we realized one of our own had accomplished the impossible, so quickly. And it was not just OWS supporters who took to the streets and danced with joy, it was labor rights advocates across the country, many of whom I witnessed, clapping each other on the back and tearfully embracing, even as they wielded their FIGHT FOR FIFTEEN signs in front of WalMarts and McDonald’ses nationwide.

We saw Kshama’s spectacular gains to be Occupy’s as well, but there were scores of others who did not attain quite that level of fame, who also discovered superpowers and found their capes along the Occupy Trail. Consider Dorli Rainey, the tiny, 84-year-old, Austrian-born grandmother who was pepper sprayed by Seattle police as she joined in a protest there on November 16, 2011, along with hundreds of others. I ran into her at Occupy the Rose Parade weeks later, where we spoke before her scheduled appearance there. She told me that many of her friends who were in nursing homes and assisted living centers thought that she was both crazy and heroic. “They ask me—they say, ‘Dorli, aren’t you afraid that you’re going to be hurt or arrested with these people’ and I say no! This is what I must do—This is what all of us must do. Why would I want to be sitting around, playing cards or watching TV and waiting to die. This keeps me alive!” A photographer named Joshua Trujillo captured the agonized look on her face—dripping with chemical spray, as two younger protesters came to her assistance and held her steady. Shortly afterward, she told MSNBC interviewer Keith Olbermann, that the pain and stinging were gone from her eyes, but she still felt a heaviness in her chest and was battling a persistent cough, which I was all too familiar with. After that incident, which was blasted all over the Internet, she became the face of Occupy Seattle, and as such, found a much wider audience for her message than ever before. Around that time I also heard her talking with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now about her Occupy experiences. Go Granny, go!

And as for me, here in Okanogan County, Washington, halfway into my fifty-fifth trip around the sun? I am a little more arthritic than even three or four years earlier, and perhaps a little less inclined to walk headlong into a hopped-up army of militarized police than I was then. It’s been ages since I’ve seen so many colorful and intriguing humans gathered together, as I did on that adventure. When I first came home from my time with Occupy, I’d been confused by the volume of conflicting feelings I was having. There were days when I found it difficult to fold back into my normal, ordinary life, filled with normal, ordinary people. Certainly few people in my present could lay claim to explosively inspiring the kinds of questions and deep internal dialogues that many larger-than-life OWS cohorts sparked within me, then, though at the time, during the height of my fear and discomfort, it had been hard to come up with something even moderately attractive about some of the characters surrounding me, and I desperately craved normalcy and civility.

But, that was then and this is now—and these days, it’s no trick at all to come up with dozens of things I can not only tolerate, but even love about virtually all of them, even the red-eyed, foul-mouthed litterbugs; pitbull possessors; mentally ill; tone deaf midnight serenaders; the chemically dependent; and chicken wing combatants. And after all, wasn’t that one of the main points of Occupy—to push the boundaries of understanding, compassion, and tolerance way out, in order to create new visions of what was possible? No small part of the original appeal of joining OWS had been the certainty that I would be exposed to people and situations that would expand my worldview, shake up my reality, and force me to encounter opinions and personalities that challenged my narrowing notions in my staid existence at Pagan Place. Living in the country and learning how to get along with people of differing political stripes had been mostly marvelous, but I’m not proud to own up to the ignoble encroachment of some degree of provincialism and small-minded judgments, which had somehow managed to creep into my psyche during my time away from the liberal bastion of Seattle, no matter how hard I’d tried to resist them.

One of Occupy’s greatest gifts to me was the way it made me embrace some of the glorious contradictions I encounter all the time as I move through time and space. It meant relying on tweakers and crack addicts to warn me when trouble was nigh, tweeting out dog food requests for snarling canines who wanted to tear me to pieces, and sharing a laugh with a policewoman who’d just had a breakthrough about our shared goals, shortly after calling my friend and cellmate a cunt. I’d even shaken my head in wonderment when pondering how one of my fellow incarcerees, a six-foot-something white male with a low voice, high heels, miniskirt, and sharp adam’s apple, had not been beaten to a pulp by the OPD, who seemed eager to do that, for any reason, at all times. He had shaved his face and legs, applied makeup, and insisted to arresting officers that he was a woman. I didn’t have much of a problem with that, or sharing a cell and exposed toilet with her, but it knocked me off my feet to see Oakland Police be so evolved on this particular issue, while so backward on the rest. It gave me hope that even they could be trained into behaving with a modicum of civility and sensitivity if the majority demanded it. The Occupy Movement also facilitated my reaching the uncomfortable conclusion that I, even as a gay, black woman, am sexist too. Not only that—I’m racist, homophobic, looksist, ageist, and all that. We all are. It is impossible to grow up in America, be hammered with all the spurious, reprehensible messages we are inundated with, and be anything else. Yet and still, most of us doggedly refuse to acknowledge this disquieting fact. Instead, we have whittled the only responses to this inconvenient truth down to A) admitting we are these things, and being stoned to death; or, B) denying we are these things, when accused, and then being stoned to death. It is only because we stopped defining them as just plain bad people, that it is now perfectly fine to confess that some of us are alcoholics. Indeed, it’s common knowledge that the first step to recovery is admitting we have a problem, followed shortly thereafter by getting treatment, learning more about the disease, and finding ways to manage the unfortunate condition and stop offending. But we’ve never come up with realistic, kind, gentle ways to cope with our ongoing battles, as flawed human beings, with the “isms.” I was mortified when watching NPR’s Juan Williams being summarily dismissed, thrown under the bus, if you will, when he admitted to feeling nervous when seeing people in “Muslim garb” boarding the same flight he was booked on. Ashamedly, I thought, “there but for fortune go I.” If every one of us told the truth and were dealt the same consequences, there would be millions more people out of work than there already are. I, too, was something other than perfectly okay with the fact that Williams had been doing double duty as a commentator for both NPR and Fox News, and was not entirely happy with some of the comments he’d made prior to the career-derailing gaff that got him canned, but I was utterly baffled by how so many NPR listeners instantaneously stuck him right up there with Clarence Thomas, Herman Cain, Ben Carson, and Condoleezza Rice, as one of the most detestable Negroes in America. Millions of them could not fathom how he, a person of color, could harbor such unevolved notions. And he stayed canned, even after he went on to try and make it “clear that all Americans have to be careful not to let fears lead to the violation of anyone’s constitutional rights, be it to build a mosque, carry the Koran, or drive a New York cab without the fear of having your throat slashed.” I could be dead wrong here—I don’t know all that went on behind the scenes—he may have been a real backward, hate-spewing pain in the ass to his co-workers, but I’m trying to give him the benefit of the doubt by surmising that much of his ignorance could easily be interpreted as a predictable response to the barrage of hate propaganda that followers of Islam received after 9/11. Can’t we just admit that we are all, to some degree, influenced by the crap that hits us 24/7/365 in the Land of the Free/Home of the Brave Melting Pot we reside in? And then, after we do that, can we reasonably conclude that it’s not up to Muslims to disavow their religious beliefs, or look and act in ways that put our istic, phobic selves more at ease. It’s up to us to grow the fuck up, learn some shit, and go out and make some Muslim, black, gay, transgender, crazy, homeless friends. What is evolution anyway, but a naturally occurring anomaly/abnormality, or mutation, that winds up redefining a species in ways that increase its future odds of survival? The first guy who rejected the plumbing he was born with, placed an “s” in front of “he”, and insisted that psychology trumped physiology, changed us as a species forever. As did the first cop that broke with tradition and understood the rightness of allowing a person to be accepted as the gender s/he-they identified with; or the drug-addicted homeless vet who recognized he had a right to protest the pretense that thrust him into an unjust war, crippling him physically and emotionally for the rest of his life. These rogue individuals set in motion the future-altering butterfly effects that are necessary for us to progress, and thrive. The eighty-four-year-old woman who chafed at the idea of resting in a home until she died—who chose instead to risk her safety by rallying against injustice, was also one of those rare mutations that may be our only chance (as life-forms capable of rendering the planet to rubble at the touch of a button) to survive our own propensities. These exotic examples have the anomaly/abnormality thing in spades, and as such, should have spawned crazy adulation in me straight away for offering the only shred of hope I see for ferrying homonids safely through climate change/religious wars/nuclear proliferation/genocide, etc. In order to get to the point of gratitude and fondness, I had to take a few years to mull them over and deconstruct the quandaries they unleashed in my mind. Wouldn’t it have been so much better if I had gotten there right away? The beautiful thing though, is that I did get there. I did finally discover that one of my superpowers was adapting to those whose methods, madness, and message did not precisely mirror my own. They had undoubtedly stretched me, and helped me to rejoice in diversity, while strengthening my conviction to only use my newly discovered powers for good. And, as has been said, “with great power comes great responsibility,” and knowing what I now knew, made me feel more motivated than ever to dedicate myself to changing, at least some of the things I could no longer accept.

In order to do that, I knew I’d have to make some hard choices and decide on the one or two things I most wanted to do, and could pull off in the near term, that wouldn’t cost a lot of money, or involve risking life and limb. It was my friends at Occupy the Farm that hammered home the criticality of taking back control of our food supply by avoiding genetically altered produce like the plague, and never using chemical fertilizers or pesticides. In years past, I simply visited the nearest chain store that had garden seeds or plant starts on sale, be they hybrid, GMO, or whatever—paid my money, and put them in the ground. #OTF drilled into me, the radically revolutionary aspects of planting only open-pollinated crops, which would allow me to select the best and brightest producers in my garden to go to seeds, which could then be harvested, dried, and planted the following year. “Save Your Seeds,” was their mantra, and it has now become mine. They said that huge agribusiness and chemical companies, like Monsanto, had so compromised the food supply that ancient varieties of common grains and vegetables were going extinct and being replaced by toxic, “Roundup Ready” strains that did not produce viable seeds, but rather had to be purchased each year from these companies, who controlled the prices, quality, and supplies. Food crops in America, like corn and wheat and soybeans, were being genetically engineered to withstand the chemical onslaught of Roundup weedkillers and insecticides, that corporate farms drench our food in, and contained (among other really bad stuff) neonicotinoids, which kill pest insects and bees (and other pollinators) alike by making their stomachs explode when they are ingested. They are making people (particularly Americans, who’ve not banned them as many other countries have) very sick too, and account for untold illnesses that are associated with their consumption—everything from cancers, to Crohn’s disease, gluten intolerance, obesity, allergies, birth defects, autism, heart disease, diabetes, infertility, and the like. The list is long and being added to regularly. These and other depressing realities about how the planet has devolved and the 1% come to control everything we hold dear, continue to make me angrier than ever, even after my adventures with Occupy. However, at a certain point, I had to take inventory of my talents, tolerances, and weaknesses to decide what I could do to give meaning and purpose to those hair-raising experiences and put that sacred knowledge to the test. If I couldn’t compel Monsanto to label their deadly produce, I could refuse to buy it. Even though the conscienceless corporation had spent millions to defeat initiatives requiring them do so, I still had options to avoid and thwart the poison peddlers.

I started out by making a concerted effort to find open-pollinated, non-GMO, organic seeds to plant in my garden. I combed the Internet to find seed companies that specialized in exactly that. As it turned out, there was a local business in my area, the Glover Street Market, which sold products by Uprising Seeds and Seeds of Change, two of the companies I was attracted to in my online search. I’ve heard it said that we humans vote three times a day when buying and consuming food, which seemed to me to be a golden opportunity to get cracking right away to put some fresh faces in office. While I was off Occupying, I’d neglected my 880 square foot greenhouse, and the roof collapsed due to an unusually heavy snow load. Normally, I’d have been right there after every storm to rake and pull the snow from the plastic roof, but, in my absence, it did not get done. My first order of business was to extricate and reconstruct the splintered rafters, gas up the backhoe, lift them into place to secure to the frame, and repair the structure for use. Next, I brought over load after bucket load of manure that our horses had been busy manufacturing in their corral all winter long. Later that day I put up a YouTube video of me dumping it onto my garden, offering each “steaming pile of manure to my friends at Monsanto.” Shortly afterward YouTube removed it as “inappropriate content.”

I am proud to say that in the last two months I have not prepared a single bite of produce I did not either grow or buy from a local organic farmer, who employs the same methods that I practice. Last night’s supper featured an arugula salad, with sesame oil, garlic, rice vinegar, baby spinach, tamari, and toasted pine nuts. Every time I walk into my garden and select succulent greens, strawberries, beans, or vine ripe tomatoes to grace my table, I feel like I am doing something tantamount to printing my own money. The thrill of it consumes me. Throughout the last few winters, my family and I have enjoyed canned and frozen vegetables that I grew myself, as well as bushels of potatoes, beets, and carrots which were stored safely in the root cellar we recently built. Almost everything I planted this spring was from seeds I saved from last year’s bumper crop. I even fenced in an additional four thousand square feet and planted an heirloom wheat, which I will harvest and grind by hand soon. With any luck, I should be able to harvest at least one hundred pounds of whole wheat grain, which I will thresh by hand against a wooden box and throw into the breezy air to winnow in a basket, just as was done in this country for hundreds of years before modern machinery came along. When I checked today, thirty or so of the hundreds of wild asparagus seeds I harvested last year from a hillside, had germinated and were reaching their whispy fronds heavenward. What it ultimately came down to was this: I may not be able to abolish corporate wrongdoing, but I can grow a tomato so delicious and nutritious, it’ll throw you into a tantrum that’ll make your head spin off its axis and steam come out of your ears every time you have to choke down anything less.

And, there were lots of small things I found that I could do every day to make my immediate environment a better place to live. I’m not able to completely eliminate homophobia in my obscure micropolis or the surrounding farming communities, but I discovered I could help our first ever Methow Valley Gay Pride Festival become a ringing success by holding my rainbow flag up high and dancing my booty off on a June Sunday in 2014. I, along with my gay, bi, straight, trans, and non-binary friends, could shake my moneymaker to Madonna and The Village People, right there in broad daylight in our main street city park. I can keep smiling and ignore the occasional redneck gunning past us in disgust as we link arms and step out, to show everybody how groovy and fantastic it is to be loving, tolerant, and inclusive. And, I can forever cherish the memory of a shy teenager named Tiffany, with black hair, clothes, makeup, and fingernail polish, jumping up and down—crying and shrieking like a contestant on The Price is Right when she won the grand prize of a day spa makeover and pampering session, in our cross-dressing, “drag race” relay. After winning, she grabbed the microphone from the MC and breathlessly announced, she “finally felt like she belonged somewhere,” and that she was so proud and grateful that our valley had come together and done this so boldly, which, she said, had given her the courage to help start a GSA (Gay/Straight Alliance) chapter at our only, small, high school. Priceless.

A few months ago, I spoke up at a packed Town Hall meeting where a bunch of suits were toeing the water to take the temperature of our community regarding their hopes to construct an open pit copper mine on a pristine mountain nearby, which is home to a number of threatened and endangered species. Many of my friends and neighbors were there, politely questioning the Forest Service and mining experts about the possible harmful consequences of the mine, as well as expressing their doubts and concerns about the whole idea. Before my tenure with Occupy, I may have been hesitant to throw my two cents in, fearing I’d embarrass myself somehow by being too emotional, tripping over my tongue, or not having enough facts in order. I’d have kept quiet, for fear of reprisal, or thinking I hadn’t lived here long enough to have earned the right to speak up in a room full of locals, some who’d been in the Methow Valley for generations. Not so anymore. I thrust my hand into the air and bounced on the edge of my chair like a grade-schooler waiting to be called upon. When my turn finally did come, I said that I did not believe the company’s assurances that they’d run a squeaky clean mine that wouldn’t harm the ecosystem in any way, because I knew for a fact that no mine has ever in the history of humankind been able to do so. I said that there was intrinsic value in having a mountain left intact that didn’t have a “goddamn copper mine on it,” and that Flagg Mountain shouldn’t have to justify its existence by making money or creating jobs. And further, that we, the citizens of Okanogan County didn’t have to get caught up in that ridiculous argument. I said that the mountain’s only job was to stand there and be beautiful. I concluded by shouting that I “would throw myself on the gears of the machines before I let another jerk trying to make a buck destroy something I love.” Not once did I replay the scenario in my head that night, riddled with self-doubt and recriminations. I just closed my eyes, smiled, and slept great.

It seems that many of my comrades from the movement reached the same conclusions I did, as I observe them choosing sensible portions and taking manageable bites from their plates as they operate, post-OWS. I’m regularly seeing many of their current projects blossoming and coming to fruition. I just saw a post from an activist friend I met in Oakland at OGP, who was outlining her intentions to “Carpe the shit out of this diem” and get bodies in the streets to raise a ruckus over the recent construction of a building known as the DAC, or Domain Awareness Center, which is a surveillance hub that happens to be located very near where our commune existed. Several days ago, I saw that my Washington DC, Occupy the Supreme Court/Congress friends, Tighe Barry and Medea Benjamin, along with other members of their organization, Code Pink, were on the NBC Nightly news … again—this time for disrupting the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing in the Nation’s Capital, where members of Congress were trying to sell the idea of redeploying American troops and weapons to defeat the latest swarm of Muslim extremists called “ISIS” or ISIL, depending on whom you talk to (which stands for Islamic State in Iraq and Syria/Levant). This latest incarnation of the furious faithful in the Middle East arose in wrath-filled retaliation for US military war atrocities committed against them over the past decade. Medea, Tighe, and their co-conspirators stood before the panel holding signs, loudly calling out, and shaming individual hawks, like Republican Senator John McCain and Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel for relentless fearmongering and war baiting. Code Pink accused the committee of trying to foist another chapter of America’s endless wars onto our broke, obese, unemployed, debt-straddled, under-educated, over-medicated populace. She and others accomplished a brief halting of the proceedings by loudly shouting, “Don’t drag us into another war,” while holding a sign aloft that said, MORE WAR = MORE EXTREMISM. Their strident voices created such havoc in the room they prompted Democratic Chairman Carl Levin to pronounce, “You’re acting very war-like yourself,” idiotically, to the assembly of elected officials. Secretary of State John Kerry was so undone by their affrontery, as they chanted, “Your invasion will not protect the homeland,” that he began to engage in a rare counterargument of unscripted debate, saying that he understood dissent …” but that the protestors “should care about fighting ISIL” because of their record of committing rape, mutilation, and other barbarities against women that, “frankly comes out of the stone age, making a mockery of a peaceful religion.” Wow, I thought as I watched the video, if an aerial bombing campaign is going to be our new standard response to violent, women-hating religious extremism, maybe we could go after the NFL next … or even the Church of Latter Day Saints.

Practically everywhere I look there are signs that our populist revolution is not only far from over, but growing exponentially worldwide and poised to burst even more forcefully into the forefront of global awareness. Last Sunday, September 22, 2014, a crowd estimated as high as four hundred thousand people, comprising everything from the great unwashed, to captains of industry and presidential hopefuls, descended upon New York City and marched for hours to protest stultifying inaction on the urgent life-threatening crisis of global warming on our home planet. Marchers drew compelling, science-based connections between such occurrences as the out-of-control wildfires in the American West to the rapid spread of the Ebola virus in Africa to the onslaught of record-breaking temperatures caused by carbon emissions and unsustainable addictions to fossil fuels. Experts said that the heat was throwing everything out of whack, producing super-fires, super-floods, and super-germs that threatened mass extinctions to all life forms … including us. I was particularly receptive to their message after having had to evacuate my own family, along with our horses, bunnies, cats and goldfish, down the highway this past July, as out-of-control, record-breaking wildfires bore down upon us with unprecedented speed and fury as we raced to outrun the flames. Scores of my dear friends and neighbors lost their homes and their beloved animals as the fire consumed 360 homes around mine and devastated our tiny community—leaving it almost unrecognizable as I drive to our daughter’s school. Inexplicably, the network news, on the night of the largest climate march in history, was jam-packed with everything but that, as anchors devoted all but a few paltry seconds to detailing the intricacies of a man hunt for a “crazed cop-killer on the loose,” and a missing college co-ed, who just happened to be blonde, white, and pretty, from a Virginia campus. After those compelling stories of grave national security and importance, came the coverage of the latest barbaric ISIS beheadings against Westerners. The broadcast that evening seemed wholly devoted to hysteri-cizing the urgency to devote more massive-scale counter campaigns in the Middle East, as well as to chasten those who dare challenge our moral authority and military might.

The day after that historic rally, there were over three thousand, mostly young people, who showed up in Battery Park and surrounded the bronze bull, declaring their willingness to be arrested if need be, in order to attain their goals, which were declared, “To shut down Wall Street and end capitalism in America.” Go big or go home, I thought, as I read their optimistic mission statement and watched them through the lens of familiar Occupy livestreamers who noted that the NYPD had “wisely chosen” to eschew riot gear and other paramilitary shows of force that day. The streamers attributed the modified police attire to the unanticipated groundswell of activism by people of color in the wake of recent Ferguson, Missouri protests that had erupted after jacked-up law enforcement personnel gunned down a black teenager accused of shoplifting in that town. As I watched the wide-eyed kids in New York City, linking arms and looking up fearfully at cops for hours, my heart filled once again with compassion and a fervor to support their efforts to undo some of the damage my generation has done to them and their future prospects. As I monitored their uneasy, hours long-standoff with the cops, I checked the Internet for airline deals as I considered joining them if they were still there in a few days, which was the time it would take me to reach them from my remote perch. As I observed police slowly drawing a noose around them, and preventing them from re-entering after brief, “comfort breaks”, I even debated the relative merits of going astronaut style and sitting in an adult diaper with them, should I choose to fly out there and try to get inside the circle. Even if this particular stand was dismantled, I knew that others would soon arise in replacement, as it dawned on more and more of us that breaking the law was our only hope for survival. Even normally reserved college students in Hong Kong are amassing in droves to give birth to a new movement called, “Occupy Central with Love and Peace,” which urges its participants to demand fully democratic elections from Chinese leaders and “Disobey and grasp your destiny.”

My dear friend Laura Koch is now volunteering to defend activists like us with the Bay Area chapter of the National Lawyer’s Guild. We texted each other excitedly as we watched indie journalists cover the Climate Change Rally in NYC. “I’m afraid I’m not going to get much work done today,” she texted me as we glued ourselves to our social media with glee. Punkboy continues to advocate and agitate for the rights of the 99% both in the streets and from an online newspaper he calls, The Punkboy Times. One of his latest endeavors has been to call out a recent push by corporations and their political backers to create a fast lane for Internet users, who are able to pay higher premiums to providers to access them. He has even launched an online talk show called Wake Da FuQ Up Radio, where I have called in to chat with other guests and voice my opinions. A short time ago thousands of his followers were alarmed to see that he’d been arrested, along with several others, while protesting at Google’s San Francisco headquarters. They were trying to encourage the huge, multinational Internet service provider to be more vocal, proactive proponents of net neutrality, which is crucial to our ability, as citizen activists, to use social media as a means to quickly inform, organize, and coalesce people around an issue. Luckily, he was only detained briefly and then released, much to the relief of many of us, who were already discussing strategies to mobilize and help get him out of there. As soon as he got out he began an additional campaign to begin registering black voters to elect representatives who shared their concerns and would advocate for their best interests.

To be sure, the 1% is noticing. So much so, that they’re starting to complain—a lot. The ripple effect of Occupy is still evident and expanding. It never ceases to amaze me when I read about yet another bloated bigot complaining about the audacity of activists for daring to expose and confront them. The January 25, 2014 edition of the Wall Street Journal included a letter to the editor by billionaire venture capitalist Tom Perkins, who cried foul for what he perceives to be an alarming trend of unjustly demonizing the rich. He said that it was “absurd to attack the rich for doing what the rich do.” In that same letter he compared the persecution he suffers as a person of wealth in America, to that inflicted on the Jews of Nazi Germany. And then he likened the Occupy Movement’s injuries to him, to those suffered by Kristallnacht victims—the infamous night in November, 1938, which saw over ninety Jews killed in a series of coordinated attacks on Jewish-owned businesses and synagogues. Wow.

Panicky pronouncements like this reveal how opposing forces are getting to them—the engorged entozoa that have made things such an untenable mess lately and threaten to kill the host. Movements such as Occupy and the groundswell of focus groups that continue to spin off as a result are punching through the facade and hitting the hoarders where they live. Inch by inch, hour by hour, they are seeing the handwriting on the wall, in the form of more frequent and effective campaigns to end the wholesale theft of our futures. Today I read that Monsanto, feeling the heat, just announced what is called, an “accelerated share repurchase,” because of a 5% drop in earnings in the third quarter of their latest fiscal year. Much of that drop was due to plunging sales of their genetically modified seeds (especially corn) which numerous groups, such as GMO Free USA, have been tireless in educating the public about—never missing an opportunity to out them and the role they’ve played, among many horrors, in the rapid evolution of superbugs and superweeds all over the world. In an effort to stop the bleeding, the company is buying back ten billion dollars worth of their own stock, hoping to restore consumer confidence in their products.

We’re reaching and influencing them, the pompous plutocrats and overstuffed oligarchs, in countless ways, and they are responding in every imaginable fashion, from furiously striking out at troublemakers to keep a dying model in place, to occasionally making positive changes and forward thinking adjustments to how they operate. Many of us will be amazed to see how our past, present, and future actions have, do, and will continue to alter the course of history, just as a group of startled protesters discovered, once upon a time, way back in 1970, just days after National Guard troops killed four students on the Ohio Kent State campus during an anti–Vietnam War rally. Sometime around four thirty in the morning of May 9, President Richard Nixon approached a clutch of young people bedded down at the Lincoln Memorial, accompanied by his personal valet, Cuban immigrant Manolo Sanchez. In a bizarre chapter in history, the leader of the free world spontaneously decided to pay the campers an unannounced visit. From subsequent interviews with his former secretary of state, Henry Kissinger, we know that Nixon felt the country was falling apart, which had thrown him into a tailspin, and put him in a delicate emotional state. He’d taken to obsessively calling Kissinger at all hours of the day and night, for guidance, comfort, and reassurance. Nixon later recalled this as “the darkest period of [his] presidency.” His version of the interaction with the kids was captured on tape as he dictated his recollection to his chief of staff, H.R. Haldeman, shortly afterward, “… And I said I was sorry they had missed it because I had tried to explain in the press conference that my goals in Vietnam were the same as theirs—to stop the killing, to end the war, to bring peace. Our goal was not to get into Cambodia by what we were doing, but to get out of Vietnam. There seemed to be no—they did not respond. I hoped that their hatred of the war, which I could well understand, would not turn into a bitter hatred of our whole system, our country and everything that it stood for. I said, I know you, that probably most of you think I’m an SOB. But I want you to know that I understand just how you feel.” Until I read that quote from our former leader, I had no idea, and could barely imagine Richard Nixon giving a fig about what the country’s young people thought of him. Now, looking back, I can clearly see that the times they were a’ changin’.

After my wheat crop is processed, I’m thinking about joining up with a growing legion of antifracking organizations who are assembling worldwide to put an end to the wasteful, planet-frying practice of extracting deeply embedded energy reserves through hydraulic fracturing of fossil fuel seams. If some other gigantic wave of activism doesn’t grab me first, I’ve got my eye on a group of anti-Keystone XL Pipeline fracktivists called The Cowboy/Indian Alliance, who are helping to unite and bolster resistance networks in both Canada and the US. Their motto is, “Reject and Protect,” and they’ve already pulled off several well-attended, high profile events. I admire what they’re doing and wonder if I could lend a hand with upcoming campaigns. They were all over the S22 Climate March on Sunday and it thrilled me to see their faces and hear their voices.

Who knows where the journey that Occupy Wall Street started, will eventually lead me? I don’t, but I do know that the masses will eventually prevail, because we will not stop until we do. The one thing I am absolutely certain of is, I will never sit in my living room, do nothing, and be complacent again. Not only will we ultimately succeed in righting the ship, but in a sense, we already have. This revolution, as in all others, is won the moment We The Many recognize that the insults we’ve come to endure every day are far worse than anything the few can do to us. When that recognition reaches critical mass, as it invariably does, all the other pieces will fall into place. Hurled insults, or even tear gas canisters may discourage or slow us down, but we will keep coming. Neighbors looking askance at front yard vegetable gardens that have replaced sterile, weed-free lawns won’t kill anyone, but toxic turnips will, so plant and save heirloom seeds until Monsanto goes out of business. Register the poor and people of color in your area to vote. A revolutionary action as simple as moving money out of, “too big to fail” banks, with shameful foreclosure records, into smaller, community-oriented institutions, like credit unions, can be every bit as radical and effective as strapping on a gas mask and facing down a tank.

And I say unto you this day, it is my firm belief that the Occupy Movement will be judged as a phenomenon of great moment in American history—a watershed occurrence that changed the course of events in ways we have yet to clearly understand. It changed the national conversation from far-flung esoteric exercises in irrelevance, to monumentally important discourse about the urgent crises we must solve as a nation and a planet, right now. It’s greatest achievement may someday be determined to have been to redirect the country’s focus onto real problems, hurting real people, real bad. However desperately we may want to define its significance and portent, we cannot even hope to do so for perhaps generations to come. I don’t know about that—but I do know that I believe what Mahatma Ghandi once said, and that is, “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”