55 Days of Occupy Philly: day 43, Thomas Paine fiasco, rumors of eviction

11/16/11 Day 43
Weather -54 – 39 Rain

I will be posting these for each of the 55 days of Occupy Philly on Dilworth Plaza, from October 6, 2011 to November 30, the night of our eviction.

To view all posts to date, click: 55 Days of Occupy Philly.

5:15 Friend’s Center.
CoCo, It would take days lying on a beach in the sun to bake the weariness out of my bones.

Larry just came in—an announcement from the city that start of construction was “imminent,” that people would be coming tomorrow morning to relocate the homeless.
There won’t be much construction—mid-winter. Read “removal” is imminent.

Move – 24 to 48 hours—
anytime between tomorrow afternoon and Friday afternoon—if it happens at night, will be tomorrow (Thursday) night. Speculation: a daylight move perhaps possible—Ramsey putting a good face on his assault — to distinguish Philadelphia from other cop actions?
I will facilitate the interfaith proposal.

Fantasize – a council, planning for an invasion from outer space.

Legal Collective: no raid tonight.
Pat Gilespia –Phila Building Trades—expressed solidarity with us.
AFL-CIO, same, but if we impede construction, will have to step back.

     Pink banner folds 
     billows gently wind-blown  -- unreadable
     There is no Way to Peace
     multi-colored tents row on row
     multi-colored green 
     tarps
     circle below the spiral stair spattered
     with pigeon shit—all of this must go
     the tall man lurching as he walks bends
     stops bellows & moves on –
     MEDIC red cross – INFORMATION
     table empty now—daily schedule blank – wheel chair – WATER
     Please Sanitize Hands – rain soaked
     slabs of cardboard, plastic forks, spoons
     orange plastic buckets
           IMMINENT 
               … left undefined, the end game
     has always been in progress –
     playing out from before it all began
     Boycott Everything	 -- Shut the City Down
     -- the city – whose city – whose city
     bikes chained to railing—flag, U.S Marines
     ARMY –shirts – wave their arms LABOR
     & FACILITATION side 
     by side –hula hoops lean on SAFETY

GA in the Friend Center after Occupy Together meeting
–after a 2:00 afternoon discussion about what to do—given the notice to vacate fliers posted around the camp—at 9:00 we had to leave the Friend’s Center, continued the GA in the usual place in front of city hall—but no lights no mic— -back to people’s mic… past 10:00 before we came to a decision—to move across JFK, with a call for help from unions—whose support was tied to not blocking the fucking construction scheduled for the plaza… caught the police off guard—-hadn’t expected us to move after the Nov 11 decision—but no go. Told to go back—after dismantling the food station, carrying some of the tents across the street.
Carry them back.

Total clusterfuck.

Another discussion

——
I’m writing this blind—the poor light (Lucky 13) & left my reading glasses at home.
A fiasco—but leaves us with all the chips. The city blew its moral advantage—all ours now. We showed solidarity with the unions, we complied (or tried) with the city’s request to move–

& they chased us back

55 Days of Occupy Philly, Day 41

I will be posting these for each of the 55 days of Occupy Philly on Dilworth Plaza, from October 6, 2011 to November 30, the night of our eviction.

To view all posts to date, click: 55 Days of Occupy Philly.

11/14/11
Day 41
Weather 67 – 56

1:35 PM The Occupy press conference responded to the mayor—very strong. How much gets on the news—who knows. This was a skirmish in the battle to control the narrative.

A gorgeous day!

1:46 AM Raiding Zuccotti Park now – on livestream.

Destroyed all personal & community property. Tossed in a dumpster.

3:09 AM … arrests coming soon

23K watching livefeed from all over the world.

Dragging people off one by one… Allegra? How many people are there?
[blank] Allegra? [blank] Allegra….

Monday November 14, 2011
Day 41
We hear them...
     ...the machines

     of power, the Mayors don their armor

     Portland, St. Louis, Oakland, New York… 
     Darth Vaders by the

           score

                    one!

                              for the 1%

     can't they hear ?
     the hour glass -- the sand
     beneath               
                        the pillars

     totter

     to plastic pail drums --

     old Joshua's trumpets
     sound

     the living & the dead parade
     
                           surround 



     a thousand City Halls!

55 Days of Occupy Philly: Days 34, 36, 37

I will be posting these for each of the 55 days of Occupy Philly on Dilworth Plaza, from October 6, 2011 to November 30, the night of our eviction.

To view all posts to date, click: 55 Days of Occupy Philly.

Wednesday Day 36
11/9/11
Weather 72 – 43
11:00 AM Shooting a documentary on Passyunk. On what? Filled the parking lot—vans, buses—specially outfitted vehicles—this is a big budget documentary… was gonna say, ‘Occupation’ … and it almost is.
Bench in the sun. A breather—then back to work.

Two hours of Peeps mic last night… taking a fac. night off.

Direct Action meeting—well facilitated. Asks to send reps to CoCo

Point People = bottom liners

Meeting fatigue

CoCo – if only those with proposals go—there’s no neutral balance, no one concerned with process and not their own agenda.

Where have the drummers gone? When did they abandon us?
In their absence I feel the end draw near.

Thursday Day 36
11/10/11
Weather 62 – 45
A good breakfast. Work an hour on the inter-Oc thing—will work the rest of the afternoon.

Major fuss at CoCo – _______ from Direct Action threw a little tantrum—hijacked the meeting & took up the whole GA—at the meeting house (rain) full moon? The inter-Occupy plans are takng shape. OWS sending a march, 20 miles a day—to D.C. Be in Philly Saturday—can meet – hope with peeps from local meetings—then set Dec 10 for an all day conference. it’s happening. This—from the notice I sent out on Oct. 4. [a shame it was such a bust—like a corporate run employee meeting, complete with Power Point.]

     Thursday,
     November 10, 2011
            Be kind…
     … there are many wounded here
     the wars – ours
     & theirs

     here -- & past
     forgetting

     stalked, hounded, driven from

     beaten (body or mind)
     in fields, vacant lots 
         school yards, classrooms

     cowering by the kitchen stove…

     humiliated

    by teachers, parents, bosses, 
        all the bullies of the world

    wounded 
    body wounded 
    soul

    you think you know
    from their eyes
    think you can tell

    the way they hold their 
         bodies as alien things – or
         disguised – in penetrable

     passing through unnoticed
     the wounds – remember

     we have done these things 
     what has been done, we have done
     knowing & unknown
     to others as to ourselves

     what has been suffered – we have suffered
     what has been done – we have done

     be kind

     be kind

Making Art is a Public Act

Making art is a public act. The distinction between private and public art is false. As false as the capitalist idea of the private, autonomous individual. All art is public art.

I know that what I do—out of the deepest reserves of my being, appears, as I appear, as a distillation of the worlds of which I am made, of which I but a focal point—unique in my becoming, as each person is unique in their becoming—but does not, and could not exist apart and separate from that ecological fabric, any more than I could exist apart from my body.

The body of my being is not limited to this biological body (itself, a complex biome, a multiplicity of organisms, unique in its ever changing configurations), and is not a thing in a world of things, but a thing of that world of things, interfused with and never without them.

What I make, I make together–make unique, together. The fabric of the world of which I am a part comes together in my becoming, in the becoming of my art. A public act from the convergence of the world in and through my becoming.

The world I inhabit, and which lives through me—defines, controls, dominates—in its decadent, disintegrating, violent, suicidal late capitalist form. As an artist, I find no escape from the suffocating falsity, the ersatz poisonous lie that goes by the name of “success.” Showing in galleries. Selling to wealthy oligarchs for their private pleasures. I can reject all that, but it will shape me nonetheless, shape what I do, as much through its negative power as it would were I to embrace it. This is so, because there is no place in this world for art, except on its terms, in its control. Making art—being an artist, then, outside the systems and institutions that are that place, means living no place. No place to stand. Invisible, as one without public being.

You want to make this about money? …the problem of how to earn a living, how to support one’s art—and it certainly is that—but in a world where money, is not the means of existence, but existence itself (look at those living on the streets—how they do not exist in the eyes of passersby!)… in such a world, the problem of how to earn a living is but the surface—doesn’t come close to defining it.

One who rejects the false “success,” will come to understand that there is no other. That one has no alternative but to accept the unacceptable: to live and work as a failure. To make a failed art. An art that has no public being, because the public where it might exist, where the outsider artist might exist, doesn’t exist. Or doesn’t yet exist.

There is the romantic myth—of the individual who exists of and for his, or her, or their self alone. But that’s only another fabrication—a part of the capitalist lie. Because Making art is a public act. The distinction between private and public art is false. As false as the capitalist idea of the private, autonomous individual. All art is public art.

55 Days of Occupy Philly: Days 28, 29, 30

I will be posting these for each of the 55 days of Occupy Philly on Dilworth Plaza, from October 6, 2011 to November 30, the night of our eviction.

To view all posts to date, click: 55 Days of Occupy Philly.

11/2/11 Day 28
Wednesday I took the day off—first full day away from Liberty Plaza. 10 poems now—Songs of Occupation.

Uneasy sleep last night. Hope a day off will help.

Have to go to the bank, withdraw money—deposit in the credit union. Go to ACME to pick up a prescription. Go to a luncheon at KWH for Alice Notley (she was WONDERFUL!).
6:00 Occupy Together meeting.

For every cruel & stupid act—a replicate breaks off, a puppet demon returns to haunt.
Scold Boy—who cries out in the words of his accusers.

	Shame Boy—his near twin. 
	Sexer – sees with animal eyes
	& merges in age with X-man

		Praise Monkey
Wednesday November 2, 2011 
    Uneasy dreams... ... a call for bail  
             arrests at Comcast -- waiting 
    for release 
         plastic tarps -- 
         collapsed 
         broken lines 
         mattress drenched from Sunday's rain 
         
         balancing paper plates 
         of beans & rice 
               they watch us 

         the others     the others 
         coming home from work passing through 
       
         careful – careful … 
         not to soil their shoes

11/3/11
Day 29
Someone stole light & sound from the Tech tent—we did it in the dark with people’s mic – a good GA.

At Robins – no time to time my reading—busy till the last minute. The hand printed broadside of my poem will be beautiful when it’s framed.

Awful… I got on the train at Walnut—realized I’d left 20 broadsides—wrapped in brown paper—on the bench. Got off, Northbound train came right away—got back less than 10 minutes passed… gone. So I realized no money from this at all—and don’t even have a copy of the broadside.

Good news—the proposal to refuse to move was tabled—a long discussion, no decision.

The reading went well.

November 3, 2011
Not only what is here – hear     see …
… what our senses seize

    tenacious

in the will to know

glass towers     flocks of pigeons
lurch & sway of traffic

remembering

all the springs we missed

asleep 
the smallest flower 
on the forest floor

its seeds entombed – in centuries

wakened by a shirt of flame 

one among others – feathers
disheveled – foot clenched in premature rigor mortis

             even to itself

searching for food
at our feet – balancing

paper plates – brushing
crumbs – commodities 

exchanged

20 yards of linen = one coat

as a general rule – x Marks the spot
warm wool socks
are Capital

blankets 

valuable as gold

Accelerate Manifesto

Read the Whole Manifesto Here! Posted on Critical Legal Thinking – Law and the Political

03: MANIFEST: On the Future

1. We believe the most important division in today’s left is between those that hold to a folk politics of localism, direct action, and relentless horizontalism, and those that outline what must become called an accelerationist politics at ease with a modernity of abstraction, complexity, globality, and technology. The former remains content with establishing small and temporary spaces of non-capitalist social relations, eschewing the real problems entailed in facing foes which are intrinsically non-local, abstract, and rooted deep in our everyday infrastructure. The failure of such politics has been built-in from the very beginning. By contrast, an accelerationist politics seeks to preserve the gains of late capitalism while going further than its value system, governance structures, and mass pathologies will allow.

55 Days of Occupy Philly: Day 23 Angela Davis pays a visit

10/28/11 Day 23 Weather 51 – 37 Rain

I will be posting these for each of the 55 days of Occupy Philly on Dilworth Plaza, from October 6, 2011 to November 30, the night of our eviction.

To view all posts to date, click: 55 Days of Occupy Philly.

Thursday GA—Difficult. Assaulted by a Lone Ranger. Last night—pouring rain, in Friend’s Meeting House—much better. Tonight—our Occupy Together meeting. Information & development pouring in faster than can assimilate it. Meeting at COSI—Friend’s Center closed.

Opened an account with TruMark Credit
Union. Will close my Citizen’s Bank account as soon as rent & Comcast checks clear, and I can restore my SKYPE number. [A sandwich board sign in front of TruMark with a Guy Fawks mask, and invitation to join].

Angela Davis will be speaking at Temple & Dilworth today.

I haven’t had a whole day off from OP since before the 6^th.
Friday October 28, 2011
				Angela ...
     ... arrives at City Hall
     		                 Advent
     at Liberty Plaza
     Broad Street 
     whistles in the rain
                         	  Chants 
     from another time

     so little changed since then
     so much – a chance

     of snow

     hangs overhead
     waiting, weighted, heavy
     with voices --

                    Annunciation!

55 Days of Occupy Philly: Day 21

Wednesday
October 26, 2011
Weather
60 – 42 Partly cloudy

I will be posting these for each of the 55 days of Occupy Philly on Dilworth Plaza, from October 6, 2011 to November 30, the night of our eviction.

To view all posts to date, click: 55 Days of Occupy Philly.

Letter to City/State/Nation/World…Dear Ones …
     … among the stars, winding through back alleys
     boardrooms backyards fields plowed & fallow
     shattered glass we woke 

     last night we woke to a child’s cry
     to relieve ourselves     from dreams
     to the smell of smoke      to drums
     to helicopters in morning mist      to old men 
     foraging for rags and tobacco butts rich
     men setting the alarms lockstepping minds
     vaulting secret desires 

Dear World… 
     …last night we called 
     for clarifying questions, concerns of state amended 
     wings to woolen coats defied the northern wind 
     blew our tents like flags across the square, sang 
     songs unheard since the first
     king first 
     sent our children to slaughter our neighbors
     shackled our labor, heaped 
     wheat in towers while the people starved

Dear Wheeling Galaxies…
     … your billion sons & daughters
     on this speck of earth reclaim our commons
     throw off the shame of ownership, the prison state, release 
     love’s body, make all worlds 
     a home for all, hold 
     all in common – refuse!
     to end this song, refuse – to end
     this poem, this occupation – here
     begin again, here --
     here on the Commons of a thousand cities
     to begin again we rise, we rise again like 
     Adam in the garden of desire!

55 Days of Occupy Philly: Days 17, 19, 20

Weather Max and Min temps
10/16 – 66-50
10/17 – 57-45
10/18 – 53-38
10/19 – 55-35
10/20 – 71-47

Saturday
10/22/11
Day 17
If someone told me there was a full moon tonight I swear I’d start to take the folklore seriously.
…brought a proposal to the facilitation meeting—CoCo seems not to have met. With inexperienced facilitators, he virtually hi-jacked the GA—or tried to. A very frustrating, exhausting evening.

Already convinced, now doubly so, that we have to reconvene the noon GA—and get Tent City involved to bring us together.

Tomorrow morning—write for Tent City… newsletter—appeal to join working groups & help with the GA [which does nothing but generate petitions anymore].

Email concerns to Fac. list.

10/23/11
Day 18
Wrote piece for Camp newsletter.
12/24/11
Sunday
Day 19
First thing in the morning—begin day with email, gather info—correspondence—one to three hours. Did laundry. Red: Marx. Geo Oppen—wrote a poem. Back at City Hall at 4:00. Take the pulse. Talk. Listen. Gwen of Labor worried about losing Union Support if we oppose the construction. She goes to CoCo & takes the whole hour. No time to pee or get supper. Fac. super-efficient—15 minutes & we’re set for the GA. Time to pee—put no food left. GA went well. Discussed the arrests. Discussed the letter—a damn fine piece of writing & done by a committee—Droopy eyed young man grabs the Mic (the loud speaker Mic) goes on and on –after a woman hi-hacked it before him—when everyone else was doing People’s Mic. gonna propose for discussion—specially when not a big crowd—we turn off the Mic—NO mic, if someone has trouble with the rhythm of the People’s Mic—a facilitator goes out to help. Can’t let lone-rangers commandeer the mic for their personal agenda. Gives one person all the power.

Tuesday
10/25/11
Day 20
Down to my last $3.00—till next week. Another poem. Didn’t get off the computer till noon—not even time for breakfast–& lotta stuff I didn’t have time to read. Need to get up earlier.

Another poem. Came here (City Hall) at 2:30. About 20 after four now—crisp fall day, clear sky. Sitting at the Fac station. Rest for 30 minutes—go to Suburban Station restroom—Coco/Fac/… then GA.

Yes, we have made them…
the glass towers, the stone monuments
to every principle we have ever betrayed
a billion messages rising
invisibly…

what we choose
to ignore
has chosen us

the glass towers, the billions—
how they in turn
have made –
are making

us

their shadows
growing new powers

the planet turning
on its seasons

reaching hand to outstretched hand
raising
one another from our knees
taking up again the burden 
the terrible lightness of freedom

I will be posting these for each of the 55 days of Occupy Philly on Dilworth Plaza, from October 6, 2011 to November 30, the night of our eviction.

To view all posts to date, click 55 Days of Occupy Philly.

The Media’s Obsession with Locating Movement “Leaders”

Interesting… a top down view needs access to a “leader,” that is, someone assumed, through organizational position, perceived popular acclamation.. or just magic (appearance in Top media venues), to have access to and therefore, to represent, the amorphous otherwise undifferentiated mass “down there” (I like the sexual play on this–that makes the unknowable Mass ‘feminine’ ) It’s only through the mediation of such a ‘leader’ that Top Down observers can know or understand that mass blob. He (less often, she) becomes the personification of what they are believed to represent… or .. um, “lead.”
Where power enters in–the leader, then, becomes the means of manipulating, using and controlling that mass. No wonder the upper echelons in the Chain of Being become so befuddled by things like Occupy… or the current not quite yet, because still leaderless) intifada–or Black Lives Matter!
In dealing with hierarchal organizations, this would seem to be weak point–a “lack” that can be occupied and developed–an inside-outside position, like a space between the walls, to attack and pervert striated power structures.

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