This first post covers the 20 days from September 17, 2011, the first day of Occupy Wall
Street, to October 4, when the General Assembly at Arch Street Methodist agreed to begin the Occupation two days later, Thursday, October 6, on Dilworth Plaza, in the shadow of City Hall
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.
These are, for the most part, raw transcripts, drawn from more than 70 pages in my journal, supplemented by contemporary articles, and posts that appeared on my blog, Jacob Russell’s Barking Dog. I’ve done some minor editing, formatting, added photos I found on the web, and poems that I wrote during the Occupation. I’ve blanked names at times when I thought they might be hurtful. Actions matter more than personalities.
A journal is a record of immediate impressions. Where my views have changed–and I thought it important, I’ve added afterthoughts [in brackets and italics]. Whether those few weeks be judged as important or insignificant for history, for many of us who took part… in the assemblies, the working groups, the direct actions–they changed our lives, left a mark that we will not soon overcome: reason enough, I thought, to make this record (limited as it is, in point of view or insight, for how little I was able to see and record), available to public view.
–Solidarity/Love/Imagination/RESISTANCE!
August 26, 2015
September 17
… was my youngest son’s 32nd birthday. I was following the progress of my sister’s final illness, waiting for payment for some editing I’d done. Counting the days till my next Social Security Deposit.
It was the first day of the occupation of Zuccotti Park.
I had, on this day, yet to hear anything about it on the news.
September 22.
I had a tooth extracted. Couldn’t afford the prescription for penicillin. Learned about OWS from Twitter.
September 23.
6th Day of OWS
Rain. Drone of the fan in the window. Humid. Dark.
Watched demonstrations/ Wall Street last night—Promising. Unusual degree of creativity—semi-chaos for this stage—sustained this long. I hope they grow. How are they going to deal with the rain?
–Journal. Book 55. Page 6309
9/24/11 All day watching live feed of the Occupy Wall Street demonstration. After a week, still almost no media coverage. Sent links Tweets, posted on my blog. Watched as cops penned several women, then maced them. As many as 100p arrested when they marched to Union Square.
Went to the Chapterhouse reading. Others are not as into this as I am.
—
But Debrah Morkun is there! & CA Conrad is in NY & has been there.
Here’s a link to an INTERVIEW ON HUFF POST with Debrah and Frank Sherlock. I’m going tomorrow—Chinatown bus. Spend the day. Gather info.
Sunday, September 24, 2011
Driving through the Holland Tunnel on …
…the way to Occupy Wall Street for every tile worker’s
hand the trowel he held 32 million tiles in the ceiling
2.9 million on the walls
set
one
by
one
how many laid by one man in an hour
a day counting
them in his sleep beside his wife
in a walk-up in Bayonne
14 workers died building that tunnel…
not one of them
named Holland
—Page 6310
9/25/11
Sunday
On the New Century bus—2 way ticket in pocket—NYC & back. Dim light—lights not on yet–or AC—very hot—drenched with sweat.
I have poems to hang from trees in Zuccotti Park.
No Revolution without Poetry!
No Poetry without Revolution!
Across the Ben Franklin. Battleship New Jersey looks so small. NJ 38… Discount Mattress—mattresses hanging side by side—like Zoe Strauss photo—cover of City Real and Imagined. See the hi-way corridor of commodified ruins with new eyes. Twenty minutes out & its cooler, but not enough to dry the sweat. See a dime under the seat across the isle—wonder how I can reach it without drawing attention.
EZ Pass
Tag Holders and Cash Only.
Goldenrod by the side of the road. A few trees beginning to turn—telling us the earth is tilting on its axis toward winter. Language of trees. Did those neutrinos really exceed the speed of light?
–Page 6311
General Assembly
Hand signals. Agree.
Point of Process— –block—not approve but not block—
Mic Check!
Quaker style consensus.
A transformative moment for me.
Lucky 13
Loooong conversation with a machinist… not just what I saw—it changed me. Also wore me out.
9/26/11
Monday 7:25 PM
Peggy [my sister] in hospice…
… all day getting info out & together for Occupy Philly.
Just caught Michael Moore on live feed at OWS.
11:42 PM
Working on my account of Sunday at Occupy Wall Street. Have been writing for almost 2 hours—and still have to write about the General Assembly, post to my blog.
–2:23 AM Finished about an hour ago. Then discovered the FB Occupy site—had been posting only public status—on the web page,
Occupy Together – Philadelphia.
Then Deborah Morkun sent an invitation to the Wooden Shoe meeting – to organize a ‘rally.” A rally? Is that all this is about? Very disturbing—and so late, can’t get any clarification.
Relax… deep breath. No “organizers’ are going to usurp this meeting.
My points for consideration posted: 4:27 AM. to bed
9/27/11
Voice text from _________: my sister hanging on—comfortable. I have a feeling this will be the day.
Let the Second American Revolution be my mourning jacket
Page 6313
___________
September 27, 2011
Peggy Johnson Clark
April 8, 1946 – September 27, 2011
_________________
Today Cornell West & Amy Goodman at Occupy Wall Street. Beginning to get some attention.
Such contradictory emotions.
Comes in waves. I’ll remember something. Then—not numb. Not an absence of feeling. A quiet. A stillness. As a leaf on a tree, as a rock feeling the wind. Feeling time pass. Nothing is final to the heart—no wonder we invented after-life. This can’t be all there is, we tell ourselves.
Page 6315
__________________________
9/28/11
Wednesday
So humid—drenched with sweat.. hypoglycemic… stopped at ACME for a banana & an orange. Empty my ACCESS money. $1.65 till Monday.
1:20 AM
Wrestled a couple of poems from notes—rest of day—on Occupy Philly. Tomorrow planning meeting. First scheduled for Wooden Shoe—which holds maybe 50 or 60 people—changed to Arch St. Methodist—almost 300 signed up as Attending on FB, with even more “Maybes.”
Didn’t get that worked out till well past midnight, & without sufficient notice—decision was to meet at Wooden Shoe, then walk to Broad Street—even better—especially if we can get posters or flyers at Wooden Shoe.
Go to Wooden Shoe—arrive by 5:30. Pick up posters if available—go to Arch St. Methodist—don’t wait for group walk to start. Take subway, South to City Hall.
FBook’s hall-of-mirrors causing all kinds of confusion.
So…it’s 2:30 PM. Leave here at 4:50. Have 2 hours 20 minutes.
–Read—eat—try to stay off FB.
—-
1:48 AM
Have to print out report from my blog. Almost 400 showed up. We’re underway! Outreach/Planning/Administration (?)
My hours playing info editor/interceptor were useful.
Cops followed whole way from Wooden Shoe to North Broad. Cops IN the church lobby. No doubt in audience. 400 in the church?
… to bed
9/30/11
Report from last night’s meeting at Arch Street Methodist Church:
The first Philly meeting turned into an ad hoc General Assembly with all the tension and underlying threat of disruptive chaos one might expect from a gathering of some 400 people, no time get to know one another, no time to build trust and a sense of a common purpose—even if that purpose might be yet to be discovered.
Began with a sobering report from the legal team—they have our backs (everyone in this movement should be damn grateful and happy they do–they have a superb record of support for free speech in a town that often doesn’t hold much stock in the 1st Amendment… how many years did Lynn Abraham press her heavy hand over the courts here?)– but we’ll be the ones risking bloodied heads and jail time while we wait for them to perform their legal magic to get us out of the slammer.
It was kind of all downhill from there—depending on which way you take that—the laws of gravity on our side (easy going… ), or a non-stop slide to the pit of no return. I don’t say that out of discouragement—democracy is damn hard work, and not a form of labor most of us have any experience with. The real thing is more than pulling a level in a voting booth, or doing circle jerks in legislative chambers to produce endless iterations of the same old same old. Everyone in that room had at least begun to catch on to that—how the crumbs of reform tossed by Good Cop Democrats do nothing but appease discontent so the Bad Cop Republicans can keep steal most of us blind, and throwing as many of rest of us as they can in prison for laws they pass cause, like prohibition, they know damn well we’ll break them. Shit, when you got nowhere else to go with your life and ten minutes watching the corporate news is like a siren call to end it all & be done with it—a toke on a weed seems like a fucking Plan!
But knowing how to shape an egalitarian society, even in microcosm—the real deal I mean—it’s not gonna be easy going—not coming from where we do in the Land of the Wage Slave Sound Bite and the Savior who never quite turns out to be what we thought he was on the campaign trail. Cause an egalitarian society—arriving at consensus where everyone has a voice, where no one gets left behind or shoved outside the circles of power so the simple majority can get on with the business of trampling the rights of the minority, and the even smaller minority can steal us blind and… but we been through that one. You know the dope.
There are powerful residual habits we’re going to have to unlearn, and it’s going to feel like pulling teeth—in the old days I mean—before Novocain—when they did it with pliers and a shot of white lightning. We’re going to have to trust one another, trust that we can do this, that together we have the genus, the creative power that surpasses even the brightest individual—cause no individual can know what it is we want as a people, can know how it is we want to live together—since living together is our only fucking choice. And since it is, we better do it with love. And respect. And cooperation. And all those virtues the power hungry (or is it power-starved?) wage slaves and servants of those who think they own us and the earth and everything in on and under it—all those virtues they like to make fun of, like they’re signs of weakness.
Friday Up at 8:00. How deeply have I gotten myself into this? What’s going to happen to my quiet life?
Need to take pains to read & keep up with poetry.
Comcast down (?) Bad time to lose connections.
3 days till Soc. Sec. Gave coins to a homeless man. down to one dollar in pocket.
Internet ok when first turned on computer. Does seem to be Comcast.
I plan to spend a couple hours in the morning reading. Instead I fuss with the modem, take laptop to B2 Cafe—can’t find a network there–& screen near impossible to see outside. Come home. Definitely seems to be Comcast. It’s the “cable activity light” that’s consistently off.
12:22 PM
Took a nap. Tried again—got a signal for about a second—something’s changed… but doesn’t last. Couple moving in upstairs.
Woke from my nap—drowsy & walked to bank but didn’t shake it.
Listen to hourly news. NPR & head for the library with my laptop.
8:28 PM A day lost. Have to take the modem to a Comcast center.
1351 Columbus. 8:30. Saturday?
To bed at 9:30. Awake at Midnight. Read. A poem of sorts. 2:02. back to
bed.
10/1/11
Saturday
9:36 – Off to 1351 Columbus – hope I come back with a new modem.
Street work on Morris. 29 bus rerouted. Sign says, catch it on Broad. Veggie vender here hasn’t seen one for an hour. Been here a half-hour. Still no sign of it. Persist.. Persist.
2nd & Tasker. Modem (new) in the bag.
One. Thing. After. Another!
1:33 Outreach meeting at 3:00.
Draught Horse Restaurant.
My Soc Sec deposit made!
Long meeting—outreach. Need to work on this.
NY – cops trapped 300 on Brooklyn Bridge.
… here at L. 13 texted Gil. He had to work so not in NY today.
Phillies up 9-3 in the 8th. Halliday’s not given up a hit since the 3rd inning home run that put them up 3-0. Retried the last 20 batters.
—
Lucky 13
Shouldn’t have come back, but found my lost shoulder bat—use it to carry my lap top.
This was a crazy day. Half of it getting the modem & router working—the Outreach meeting. Catching up on Occupation news. Email.
Damask press wants to publish a 5 poem sampler of Chronic Chronos Kairos–& a broadside.
Sunday
10/2/11
700 arrested/ entrapment—Brooklyn Bridge. I suppose this is going to mean another arrest [for me] in the not too distant future.
10:18 Was up at 6:00. have to meet at Love Park for a Canvas Training session. (I’ll be one of the trainers). Time enough for a nap.
10:20 Most of these past couple of years—alone in my room, poetry readings, writing—growing into a new sense of myself. Woke up after I got home from New York—lost. Briefly. What have I done? What have I committed myself to? Still off-center at the first meeting Thursday. Today… went to Love Park. “Training” for canvassers, I was the alternative—the un-rapster. Let Steve do his spiel… I mean. Waited. While he talked. Said my piece (brief) & came home. Not for me—the street canvasser shit we were doing for Obama. Had forgotten to take my asthma meds—Advair—or BP pills. An excuse that was no excuse. But all that aside… felt a deep opening, a settling in. A letting go. This is what I’m going to do. This is for real.
Hand signals. Point of Process/block/approve/No, but no block/ Get on with it/
Wrote my piece on the Thursday meeting—gonzo polemic. Gonna do more of this. I was tired when I started—drowsy, I mean. But it took off. Took over. Gonna be the gonzo philosopher of this movement. Yeah, right….
Jacob Russel Poetry
10/3/11
Monday Planning: Robin’s
12 here so far. Good. Not too many… 10 more… and more… 50 or 60. A long meeting—second half we began to find the flow. We decided on an agenda, preliminary procedure—and that we would select a site & time for occupation. Tomorrow.
Gene—Points to me and says that I should facilitate. We’d picked facilitators. I declined. He had something other in mind—someone to “take charge” –to lead the way. I don’t know what made him think I might be one do this. I didn’t ask. But I took his concern about the undisciplined procedure to the point—people interjection—raising hands but not waiting to be recognized—as though I might do something. He had in mind that I speak up—take charge. I choose to lead by example—even if invisible. And to surround myself with a field of calm… was that what made a difference? I don’t know. But the second half was much more orderly—and at times almost as though my example—the concentrated calm—as though it
had an effect. I would hold my hand out, palms down, and the people would stop for the moment—stop talking out of turn.
After the meeting he took me by the lapel, asked if I drank—offered me a drink. I didn’t refuse. Led me to the Westbury.
10/4/11
Got to Broad at 5:00 met with group—facilitating welcome & agenda. Worked with them till 6:20. Took 20 minutes for everyone to get into the church & get seated—1000 people! And we worked through the agenda like we were born to do this—adjourned ½ hour early—all by consensus.
CITY HALL – THURSDAY 9:00 AM!
We fucking did it!
A thousand people!
1000 people came to the general assemble at Arch Street Methodist Church. Filled to standing room. The long difficult meeting night before—with only 60 in attendance… how could this work?
It worked.
Went through a potentially divisive agenda and made decision after decision—by consensus, chose City Hall for occupation, Thursday October 6 (today)… ONE day for all the logistics involved. Broke into Working Groups (committees) outside after. Meeting was over half hour early… ended by singing Solidarity Forever.
Turning point, when deadlocked between Love Park, Rittenhouse Square and City Hall, asked for a break—everyone turn to your neighbor and talk about this for ten minutes, give voice to what you think—and they gave voice, oh they gave voice, a sound like a great rush of wind, like a waterfall, the most beautiful sound I’ve ever heard, strangers deciding together, searching for that wisdom that is greater than any one of us. It was beautiful, beautiful…
People gathering at 4 points to walk to City Hall. We have Dilworth Plaza north to south.
Nibbles from the Powers, making nice, making use… this will be the beginning of a more difficult challenge, more trying than pepper gas or jail cells. Philly not New York. “I’m the 99% too” Mayor Nutter is reported to have said…fucking bullshit
Thursday October 4, 2011, Arch Street Methodist Church
A brief hesitation…
a single breath before
sea-sound
a thousand voices
pitch
& yaw
the tents across the plaza
sprawl imagination
grasping
more than human hand can hold
Annunciation!
Jacob Russell's Magic Names 