Occupy Austin Day 24 or 25

Occupy Austin finds it's time for a makeover.

Amazingly, after the arrests on Saturday night, and a few more on Sunday, the scene at the plaza is still alive, albeit tattered, with an air of Austin funkiness. Unfortunately, most of the core supporters and strategists of Occupy Austin are now banned from the plaza. While this is an unmitigated disaster for our camp, it gives others the chance to step up and hopefully get the movement going in another direction.

An interesting thing about all the camps throughout the US, is that the protesters, now completely surrounded by the uniformed fascists in every city, have actually built their own prisons in which they will suffer mightily in the coming months. That is why it is time for the protesters to go somewhere where they can work together, then present a better image to the community. Yesterday, as I walked around the plaza asking questions about the state of affairs, you could see many in shock from what happened Saturday night, but there were still plenty of street folks waiting for that cigarette or slice of pizza to arrive, oblivious to the disaster that had befallen our camp.

Since I am interested in fund-raising for the group, I asked someone who might know a little about the financial side of the movement, where the money would best be spent. Unbelievably, she said to get more food and water for the occupiers at the plaza. I looked at the "occupiers." What I saw was the bums who gave us a bad name in the first place, who avoided jail by just laying there and being lazy, and many of the people who worked very hard to make the movement work, but were now packing things up and milling around waiting for rides to somewhere-anywhere but the plaza. It gave the plaza the look of a busy bus station or the last day of summer camp, where everyone is saying farewell and waiting for the winds of fate to scatter them hither and yon.

We all felt like frogs in a cauldron, where the fire was turned up so slowly on us, we didn't know we were cooked until it was too late. We definitely learned about the psychological control of an angry mob by the fascists, and as the saying goes, "We won't be fooled again." But we have a choice, we can fight them like dogs, or work within a system that unfortunately favors the fascists. Nobody says we can't occupy the media, because the fascists have been doing just that for years. But that is an occupation that takes money, and that is where I want to work within the Occupy Movement. To bring the fight to the fascists on their turf. We have sat in the plaza for three weeks and allowed the fascists to bring the fight to us, while we became an easy target for their horrid and demeaning tactics. They have everything they need on their side to keep us under their thumb. We have to work smarter and be tougher in order to win this fight. At this point we have two choices, go to jail, or freeze to death, of which neither of those am I interested. But I am very interested in promoting the core beliefs of the Occupation movement.

On Sunday, King Acevedo, true to his passive-aggressive form of mind-fucking,  made a statement quoting Gandhi and MLK before releasing the protesters, who, like I said, cannot reenter the plaza. A small group of angry and passionate survivors marched from the plaza to the police station to welcome the prisoner release, but most folks didn't want anything to do with the cops, and especially didn't want to go stand around the police station. The release was still an emotional moment. While I recognized some of the folks being released, some of them must of shown up Saturday night for no other reason but to create chaos and get arrested, because they were completely new faces, to me anyway. Meanwhile, back at the plaza, the police presence was becoming overpowering. By Sunday night they nearly outnumbered the protesters.

I thought about the speech I wanted to give on day one, when I still thought this was a free country and I wanted so badly to express my thoughts and exercise my freedom of speech in a public plaza to a group of like-minded people hungry for change. Now I know, if I stood in that plaza right now and gave that speech,  in which I implore the police to stand with us instead of against us, I would be immediately arrested. Over 2000 people across the country now have police records from this protest, and not one of the war criminals, war profiteers, investment banks or hedge fund managers that caused the financial collapse in this country or control our government has gone to jail. Obviously, this is a fascist state we are now living in. To some of us, it's plain as the nose on our face. To others, they just don't "have time to think about these things." Or maybe they don't understand what freedom of speech means. It is the ignorant people who taunt and laugh at those attempting to exercise one of the basic tenets of our democracy that frighten me the most. While they talk about our troops overseas fighting for our freedom, they don't have the slightest clue what freedom really is because they are imprisoned by the straight-jacket of fascism and corporatism.

On Saturday's march to the Capitol, before the camp was raided, I caught up with my friend Carmen, who I profiled in day 9. When I spotted her, she had two large cardboard signs and some protest chants she had written. She was trying to get the few protesters at the back of the line to go along with them, but was frustrated because her small voice, with its beautiful Puerto Rican accent, was not being heard. And the tall folks in front of her, many in Halloween costumes, had relegated her to the back of the line. Her notes, scratched in blue ink on a scrap of folded notebook paper read, "Whose water? Our water! Whose food? Our food! Whose land? Our land! Are we afraid? Nooooooooo, we are not afraid."

I hollered, "Carmen!" and she was happy to see me and thanked me for the profile I had written about her. I asked her what was going on and she explained her disappointment that she couldn't get anyone to chant her demands. So I took a look at them and Carmen and I chanted in the loudest voice we could muster, "Whose water? Our water! Whose food? Our food! Whose land? Our land! Are we afraid? Nooooooooo, we are not afraid!" We chanted the lines over and over and louder and louder and let the voice of freedom ring out and echo against the glass and granite of the downtown buildings. Our cadence rang down the hollow side streets and the alleyways where the downtrodden sleep and newspapers blow on cold lonely nights. It rang over the capitol where the lady of liberty looks over streets where the mentally ill wander aimlessly in search of help, and it rang over the din of expensive cars and city buses filled with those too blind to see. It was freedom ringing and it was ringing for us, for you and for all the folks in this fight who are jailed, shot, humiliated, tasered, beaten and maced because, like Carmen chanted, "Whose land? Our land! Are we afraid? Nooooooo, we are not afraid."

At one point, Carmen was confident enough to stand in front of a group of bewildered diners sitting at a sidewalk cafe while she chanted. I was so proud of her. After we made it a few blocks, and were out of breath from exercising our First Amendment Rights to such an extent, Carmen looked at me with her beautiful face full of life and excitement. The bright autumn afternoon sun made a tear in the corner of her eye look like the most spectacular topaz ever seen, and she joyfully exclaimed, "Boy, did that make me feel good! Thank you, Tawdry!"  And I hugged the tiny fragile body of this beautiful woman, whose only mission on earth is to express love for her fellow man, and replied, "Thank you, Carmen."

As the march made its way down dirty 6th street, I noticed the police had abandoned us and were hot-footing it back to the plaza to begin tearing through our personal belongings and throwing them away. It was then I knew the end of the movement as we knew it was nigh.

Afterthought: This is the end of the segment about the birth of the occupy movement in Austin, Texas. The movement is by no means over and is going full force, albeit in a different more sophisticated form than before. I am proud to be part of the movement and am a passionate believer in the cause. We are the 99%! Carry on brothers and sisters!