Sexism in Occupy: An Analysis

  "This is no simple reform... It really is a revolution. Sex and race, because they are easy and visible differences, have been the primary ways of organizing human beings into superior and inferior groups and into the cheap labor on which this system still depends."-  Gloria Steinem, from "Address to the Women of America."  Quoted at the end of V for Vendetta.

First, let me emphasize that this is based on my own observations and experiences which are mainly limited to Occupy Atlanta. I do not pretend to encompass the experiences of women in Occupy as a whole, or even in Occupy Atlanta; there's far too much ground to cover, for one thing. My perspective is necessarily different from some other people's; but based on conversations with others, I am definitely not alone in my perceptions.

 I do think that what I have to say is applicable; not only to Atlanta, or to Occupy, but to how sexism and patriarchy function in general. It's sometimes disheartening, but should not be surprising, that the dysfunctions of society are often most visible in situations where people are working hardest to make change. That's partially because we have higher expectations of people who see one part of the problem to see all the other parts (which may not necessarily be the case). It's also because in most of society, those dysfunctions seem "normal."

 Secondly, let me make it clear that sexism, racism, homophobia, ableism, and similar "isms" are matters of pattern. They are not (only) personal moral flaws; they are collective social evils. What someone meant by a particular remark or action is less important than the picture that emerges when we look at the pattern as a whole; that they didn't mean it that way, or that women do it too, or that the same thing happens to men sometimes, does not contradict the fact that the particular incident is part of a sexist worldview and power imbalance embedded in our culture at large and internalized by individuals which also manifests whenever we try to get together and do anything. An individual act might or might not be classifiable as sexist (or racist, etc.); the overall pattern IS.

 This incidentally is why the Supreme Court ruling in the Lily Ledbetter case was so wrong-headed and stupid; they ruled that in order to have a case, she would have had to have filed within ninety days of the first, original incident of being paid less than a man for the same work. Aside from the fact that she didn't know until nearly twenty years later that she was being paid significantly less than her male colleagues, in order to prove discrimination in court you have to show that there is a pattern of behavior. That is, by ruling that a filing has to occur within ninety days of the first incident, the Supreme Court effectively made it impossible to prove gender discrimination at all. A singular incident does not make a pattern; out of context, it may not seem sexist at all. But what matters is the context.

That said, I can put the sexism I have either observed or experienced personally into three main categories:

1. Bullying. 

• Assault.  At least two incidents of apparent attempted rape (crawling into a woman's tent or into bed with her at the Peachtree and Pine headquarters), and another notable incident where a woman was grabbed by another Occupier right in front of someone who completely failed to react or help her fight him off.
• Attempts at physical intimidation.  This includes someone getting up in my face at General Assemblies and yelling at me and other people, once while I was trying to facilitate.  It also includes circling around the group in order to stand close behind me, using greater physical size to loom over me, or otherwise getting into my personal space.  It also includes overt threats of violence.
• Name-calling and other forms of verbal abuse and harassment.  Being called out by name repeatedly in GAs (which was supposed to be against the rules) and online; also campaigns of character assassination.  One particular individual is a constant source of rumors and made-up accusations, some of which are quite serious, and which are nearly always aimed at women.  I was told by one person (because I objected to his behavior) that I obviously had a mental problem and that he felt sorry for me.  This is both ableist in the worst sense (using a disability as an insult) AND misogynist (calling women crazy has a long anti-feminist history; several early women's rights activists were locked up in asylums. Also, see a dictionary under "Hysteria, etymology of"). 
• Interrupting, talking over, or shouting down women trying to speak at the General Assembly or elsewhere.  This was an ongoing issue; some individuals do it nearly constantly.  It was brought up numerous times by several different women, but the group as a whole did not seem to take it seriously and did not address the problem in any consistent way.
• Objectification.  This includes both inappropriate overtly sexual comments and more subtle "you're so pretty" type "compliments" which functioned either as a distraction from the serious point the woman was making, or an attempt to excuse bad behavior and/or deflect women's reactions to it.  It may be hard for some people to wrap their heads around why I group this with bullying, but consider that in a discussion of someone's constant and egregious harassment of me, I was told "he said he wouldn't mind dating you," offered seriously as "proof" that he actually liked me. (And that I therefore shouldn't be angry at him for harassing me.)

2. Dismissing women's perceptions, experiences, knowledge, and words (aka "gaslighting,"  "mansplaining," etc.)

• Some of these were related to ageism. Older women are not listened to and given the same credence as older men, with regard to our previous activism/political experience or in general.  Or a woman's word is disputed because it contradicts the popular and largely fabricated narrative about a division between "older liberals" and "young radicals."  One person got very angry when I said I had worked with Food Not Bombs in the past, and not only called me a liar to my face but apparently went around telling everyone else that I must be lying because (apparently) none of the current FNB volunteers had seen me there.  Never mind that the time I was referring to was a decade ago, and the people who were involved then DO remember me.
• Others had to do with women's reportage/complaints about bullying incidents; those usually took the form of "are you sure that's what he meant?" or "He seems like a nice guy to me" or well-meaning white knighting ("Let me talk to him!").  These can seem harmless at the time because a reasonable person does not wish to rush to judgment. The problem is what I call Schrodinger's Misogynist.  That is, men all too often do not take even dangerously threatening behavior seriously until it happens to them or another man; they take the reasonable-sounding-to-them position of "well, maybe it happened, maybe it didn't; I don't know, I wasn't there" regardless of how many women say the same exact thing.   And since the very nature of misogyny is that it is directed at women, the necessary preponderance of evidence required for a consensus that someone is a problem is never reached.   The incident I mentioned of a man crawling into bed with a woman did not result in him being immediately expelled from Peachtree and Pine; that happened, but much later and because of other behavior on his part, which was not affected by the Schrodinger's Misogynist quantum indeterminability field.

3. Attempts at asserting a power hierarchy, with men above women as a matter of course.

• Numerous men took it upon themselves to attempt to boss me around and tell me what I ought to be doing, or to belittle what I was doing, had done, or was proposing we do.  Quite often, the same idea suggested by a man would meet approval and zero flak.  Committees where women had visibly strong voices, including Legal, Media, Arts and Literature, and on occasion Accounting, came under frequent attack.
• Inside the Media Committee when it existed, there was more than one man who tried to exert editorial control over what I wrote or sent out, but who vocally resented it if I attempted to exert any say-so over what they were doing at all.  In more than one instance, they became belligerent because I insisted that they follow the same editorial process that we were all supposed to follow.  No less than three of those men decided to go "over my head" to the General Assembly with an issue that was definitely within the Media Committee's area of responsibility.
• From both inside and outside the Media Committee, I was often treated like a secretary...the person who was supposed to keep track of everyone's contact information, schedule meetings, and post things to the website, generally by people who were perfectly capable of doing those things themselves but who had more "important" things to do and so relegated the boring, routine tasks to me or other women.  In some cases, people refused to even learn how to post to the website because they "didn't like to" but thought it was perfectly fine to ask someone else to do it.
• I was also told to make coffee.*  For real. 

I hope it's evident from the examples I gave that this behavior came from a wide variety of people, of all ages, races, and political flavors; in some cases it came from women as well as men.  As my explanations about internalized patterns at the beginning imply, that doesn't mean it wasn't sexist; if it fits the pattern, it is part of the problem.

Here's what I've noticed:  1 and 2 reinforce each other, and support #3.  That is, intimidation serves to put women constantly on the defensive, raise their anxiety levels, and lessen their participation overall. I stuck it out for a long time but some women simply walked the first time someone got up in their face and plenty more left Occupy Atlanta as each woman's individual tolerance was reached.  Fewer and fewer women participate at all.  Gaslighting and other forms of dismissal undermine any attempt by women to fight the bullying or to assert a truly equal voice.   All of this is in service to a shadow hierarchy of men over women; in a supposedly "leaderless" movement, women are far more often attacked for stepping up and taking initiative instead of following men.  Men as a group are not subject to the same degree of hostility.  I have seen some of the same tactics applied to individual men, but less frequently and when it happens it's for much the same reason:  he is perceived to have "too much power" and therefore must be disempowered, belittled, and "put in his place."  The difference is that while the group has little tolerance for one man holding "too much" power for too long, it has no tolerance for women doing so at all.  Recently one woman, having attended the one year anniversary of Occupy Wall Street in New York, initiated making plans to have a similar anniversary celebration/action for Occupy Atlanta.  Even though she invited everyone's participation and was as inclusive as possible, she was immediately mocked for presuming to think of herself as a "leader."  Clearly, if you are a woman, in some people's eyes any power is too much.

"We are all leaders, or none of us are leaders."  - the Occupy Atlanta General Assembly Pledge, long  since abandoned.

That is a bitter pill to swallow in a movement based on the ideal of empowerment for all, just as being shouted down, or put down, or dismissed by other Occupiers is felt by me and other women as a uniquely painful betrayal.  This is not what we signed up for.  It's exactly what we were trying to get away from, in fact.  If we want to be put down, betrayed, belittled, dismissed, have our safety and well-being be considered a matter of no import, and have our organizational work taken for granted while decisions that affect us are made with minimal input from us, we could go join any existing institution or organization you care to name, including Congress.  Most of them would treat us better than this; not a few of them get more done. This problem isn't unique to Occupy, of course; it's not even an indictment of Occupy, except in the sense that we should expect and get a whole lot better than this.  But this is the way the world is.  All you have to do is look at how Hillary Clinton and Elizabeth Warren (and Sarah Palin for that matter) get portrayed in the media, compared with male political figures.  I personally have experienced all of the misogyny I have discussed here in other contexts, and worse.  It should be news to no one that Occupy is a mirror.  But if it ever hopes to be what it aspires to, it must do more than merely reflect the sexism, racism, ableism, homophobia and other manifestations of arbitrary power which infest the society at large.  To attempt to fight injustice while perpetrating it, to build a society around principles of shared power while exerting power over others, is a logical impossibility.  "The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house."  - Audre Lorde 

Occupy must do better than it has.  I think it can do better, and in Occupy Atlanta changes are already afoot.  A women's caucus has formed, and also a feminist group for men; there was a workshop on addressing sexism in activist movements tonight which was apparently well-received.  What happens next, I don't know. But in much the same way that Occupy is a mirror, if Occupy can dealt with these problems, it's a little more hopeful that the rest of the world can too.

Mary Wollstonecraft, author of "A Vindication of the Rights of Woman,"
published 1792. Not an actual quote.

*I have nothing but appreciation for all of the people who made and served food for us, including a plentiful supply of coffee, who in some cases saved food for me because I couldn't make it during the scheduled "dinner hour."  However, there is a vast difference between doing that work because you volunteered to, and being told to do it by someone who thinks his time is more valuable than yours.  It was a blatant attempt at putting me in my "place" which insulted both me and the work.

Feline Philosophy, Anarchy, and Art

"Of all God's creatures there is only one that cannot be made the slave of the lash. That one is the cat. If man could be crossed with the cat it would improve man, but it would deteriorate the cat." - Mark Twain

A side-effect of hanging around Occupy is that one winds up having to explain patiently to people that having a penchant for breaking things and wearing clothes you found on the bargain rack at Hot Topic does not make you an anarchist.  Sometimes you have to explain that to people who call themselves anarchists.  I don't look like I know anything about it, apparently.  I am middle-aged, chose to accord punk a decent burial rather than take up necrophilia,  and have a job, more or less, as an educator.   I vote, among my other peculiar habits, and my clothing comes in other colors than black.  That's all right; I reject the notion that political and philosophical ideas require membership in a subculture.  I also reject the idea that it requires a certain set of lifestyle choices, ideological catechisms, or a reading list.  Although I do habitually think about the systemic consequences of my personal decisions and I love a reading list, those are voluntary choices on my part.  (See what I did there?)  In other words....don't tell me what to do.

Let's start with a fundamental attitude.  Deep down in my bones, I believe that all power must justify itself to those it would exert influence over, rather than the other way around.  The power to pass laws or enforce them, to allocate resources or use them up, is always conditional and open to question; no other state of affairs is acceptable, or even possible except through manipulation, coercion and failure of the imagination.  When you put it that way, it sounds strangely like the Declaration of Independence ("....Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed")  and therefore ought to have the stamp of the hoariest true-blue American sentiment about it.  And yet in practice that fundamental world-view tends to bother people.  I have been told more than once in indignant tones that I have no respect for authority; I can only agree cheerfully, which seems to upset people even more.  I do not have respect for authority.  I barely recognize authority as a concept, except in the specific narrow academic sense of an authoritative source (and I'm well aware of how subject to debate that is). My compliance is never to be assumed, and my respect beyond that which I accord to all living beings as a matter of fundamental ethics has to be earned.  I do respect integrity, knowledge and logical sense, and will amiably ask that they be demonstrated before I put my full trust in a person or institution; I will less amiably point out when they have been breached.  This makes me a rebel, apparently, and very upsetting. 

Really, I'm no different from a cat, except that I talk more.  Cats are inherently anti-authoritarian.

So are artists, a species of which I am a member, cultivar writer.   While it's true you will occasionally find an artist espousing some authoritarian philosophy or another, they always mean it for other people.  (Nobody said an artist can't be a hypocrite.  We are like other mortals that way).  I never met a creative person though who took authority seriously as applied to herself.  That is because real art requires freedom and is governed by constraints the artist understands to be arbitrary even when she believes in them passionately, with the same total conviction that a six year old will lend to the rules of a game she and her friends just made up on the spot.  Even reality is bendable in spots.

Don't get the idea that just because I think rules are the product of fallible human minds it means I also think there shouldn't be any.  That kind of person always believes that there's such a thing as ultimate truth in human affairs, and that he or she knows what it is.  What I do think is that, acknowledging that rules are often arbitrary (a word with roots in the concept of rendering judgment), they are also functional in that they provide a container, a vessel for human interactions.  They can be useful, but they must also be subject to criticism and revision on the basis of how functional they really are, and that extends to all levels, the philosophical, the social, and the practical; local, national, and global.  This is also the business of the philosophical or theoretical arms of social justice movements:  feminism, anti-racism, queer activism, disabilities activism, etc.  That is not a coincidence.  As tiresome as that can sometimes be....like a four year old asking constantly "why? why? why do we do things this way?  why don't we do them another way?" it is essential.  All true and valuable change begins with a question.

Question authority.

How Not to Be A Radical

There are a lot of people in the Occupy movement; many of them are amazing, talented, imaginative, dedicated, and truly rad.  Some are...less so.

A number of self-proclaimed radicals hang around Occupy.  Much like "honest" or "nice," if you have to tell people how radical you are, you aren't.  Understand, I think being a radical is a good thing, because historically "radical" is a word people use for those who are willing to ask difficult questions and point out that the Emperor is in fact butt nekkid.  Without someone around going "Dang. This shit is messed up.  What are we to do?" no good thing would ever be accomplished.  That is more or less why I'm part of Occupy Atlanta in the first place.

However, from the vantage point granted to me by spending years running about marching in the streets and hanging out with the sort of people who also like to do that, and also due to having read some books, I have a few opinions about what being a "radical" is and especially how one can do so most effectively.  Or not.

I've spent a lot of time with some very focused, organized and accomplished activists, some of whom know how to civilly disobey with style.  I've also done my time in duress with many a poser.  Here are a few tips on how to spot your garden-variety faux radical:

1.  Capable of chanting "Off the pigs!" and asserting that this is a radical action without the faintest hint of irony or apparent awareness that that chant is fifty years old, and in that whole time it has accomplished nothing of note, but that it does tend to inspire revulsion in a large portion of the population.  Unable to draw the obvious conclusion from this.  (Note:  Lest you think this is a left-wing problem, count how many very public figures on the right advocate shooting liberals, "jokingly."  It's a vile sentiment no matter who it comes from.)

2. Prone to choosing actions, behaviors, and protests which serve to reinforce existing social and power structures, rather than the opposite.  Rich white kids using very confrontational tactics is a good example; they can get away with it much more easily than African Americans and Latinos.  This ensures that the latter will be marginalized, especially if those tactics become the central focus of the activist group and are seen as a source of authenticity.  African Americans and Latinos may therefore feel pressure to participate in activities which are more high-risk for them; they are more likely to be targets of arrest and to be more harshly punished...thus further removing them from any influence.  Bonus points if the "tactics" employed involve property damage, which is less of a concern the more affluent you are, and extra bonuses if the property damage is committed in a poor African American or Latino neighborhood.  Not only does this demonstrate a finely honed disdain for working-class (always reframed as "bourgeois") concerns with  how run-down a neighborhood appears and the relationship of that to safety, it also serves to ensure that none of the locals will wish to join the group, thus saving the trouble of having to address their concerns in person.

3. Thinks that being a Marxist makes you radical. I know tenured professors who are Marxists.  They have academic journals and conferences. It's rather like how Hot Topic killed punk:  If you can buy it in a mall store, it's no longer counter-culture.  Once you can be peer-reviewed in it, it's not radical any more. I am sorry to be the bearer of this news, which is several decades old.

4. Prone to highly intellectual, theoretical discussions about "radicalism" and "revolution" while being allergic to any discussions of practical import;  see Mouse council, re: Belling the cat.  Sometimes this extends to not being able to make decisions about food or shelter due to the weighing of political implications and ideological soundness.  Will write lengthy e-mails with footnotes and references about the plight of the worker under capitalism, but not do any actual work.

The ends shape the means; you cannot create profound change by reinforcing the power dynamics and narratives which support the status quo, even if you dress in black and shout hoary slogans from the Vietnam War era while doing it.  Never confuse offending people with changing anything.  Never confuse breaking stuff with changing anything.  Never fall in love with your own rhetoric.  Noise isn't action, theory isn't practice, and talk is cheap.

Inside Job

If you're curious about why people are protesting in the streets...watch this.

Inside Job, Narrated by Matt Damon (Full Length HD) from jwrock on Vimeo.

So, what's their game?

We've heard that mayors from eighteen cities were on a conference call about their local Occupations but they deny that they were discussing strategies even though police actions just happened to occur in different cities on the same nights.  We've also heard that police forces in various cities have been seeking advice and help from federal law enforcement but what they fess up to sounds relatively mild ("seek legal reasons to evict, avoid the press").  However, as Yves Smith of Naked Capitalism points out, the mere fact of coordination itself has serious consequences:  "National coordination vitiates the notion that policing is responsive to and accountable to the governed."

I somehow suspect they aren't telling us the whole story.  (No! Say it ain't so!)  I think that if you look at what is happening in the various cities, it's not only obvious that there is an overall strategy, but one can deduce what the strategy is from what they are doing...and it's anything but benign.

1. Fabricate or exaggerate safety concerns. Use them as justification for police action. This is what happened in Atlanta; we got a series of notices from the city claiming that people had put coat-hangers and bare wires into the power outlets and that our safety-rated heaters were fire hazards.  When someone showed up apparently carrying a rifle (at least one Occupy Atlanta participant says that he handled the gun and it was actually plastic), the cordon of police let that person walk on by...then used him as an excuse to come in and arrest fifty-two other people long after he left.  If the police stopped the individual to check his permit and see if the gun was loaded, then they had to know whether he was a threat and should have dealt with the situation accordingly.  If they didn't, they weren't doing their jobs.
This approach is evident in other cities as well; the justification for the recent eviction of Occupy Wall Street was a claim of "public health and safety concerns."   Which brings us to...

2.  Fabricate or exaggerate health concerns.  The non-outbreak of TB in Occupy Atlanta is a excellent example of this.  TB is actually relatively common among those without shelter (or, as one Occupy Atlanta person refers to homeless folks, "the recently foreclosed upon") because they often have compromised immune systems. It's quite rare in the rest of the population, but it's not surprising that a shelter for people who have nowhere else to go such as Task Force for the Homeless might sometimes wind up with cases.  However, there were none among the members of Occupy Atlanta, and our headquarters on the 4th floor was not even put on alert.  Reports of an "outbreak" at Occupy Atlanta are factually untrue on several levels, and irresponsible...especially since nobody called us to ask before running the story.
I suspect reports of "Zucotti lung" have similar origins.  A less histrionic way of describing it would be to say that people camping out in the wintertime in New York under stressful conditions are prone to catching cold. But if you put it that way, the New Yorkers would all be taking them chicken soup. "Zucotti lung" sounds exotic and awful and like something you want to stay away from.
This is mostly not being said directly by city officials; it's coming from the news media.  But Rocky, you don't mean to say that the media are in cahoots with the government?  Aren't they supposed to be the Fourth Estate?  Don't they have journalistic morals and stuff?
I think ethical journalism went out of fashion when Edward R. Murrow died, and lingered in the vicinity of Walter Cronkite until it went to the land beyond where dearly departed ideals frolic and moral courage is a term people use without snickering. I used to be less cynical about this...about six weeks ago, in fact.  Then I saw the difference between what really happens and how it is portrayed close up.  I've seen so many journalists distort reality in the past few weeks that I've gone past thinking they are just lazy or venal to thinking there is something more to it:

3.  Put pressure on the media to repeat what officials say uncritically and bolster the government's narrative.   Admittedly, most journalists don't need pressure put on them by local government; they get plenty from their corporate bosses whose interests are being served.  But access is information which is journalistic coin, and it is the leverage that all politicians use to exert control over how they are portrayed.  That's the carrot.  The stick is that journalists who don't play along are denied their traditional privileges and become subject to arrest and harassment.  In Atlanta none of the professional journalists have been arrested yet, because they are mostly dancing to the city's tune, but three student journalists were arrested on November 5 including an intern for a local weekly.  The message for all of the other journalists is clear:  This could be you.
Before someone accuses me of conspiracy mongering, I want to repeat that what I'm doing here is looking for patterns.  If something happens once, that's the local police department doing it.  If it's repeated over and over in different cities...I don't think it's a coincidence.  Especially since traditionally in this country journalists have protected status.  When was the last time a journalist was arrested in the United States?  They get arrested all the time in places like North Korea and Iran.  Not here. Until now.
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

Remember also that at least in the United States, the First Amendment is at the core of the Occupy movement.  If the police and local governments are willing to trample one part of the First Amendment, why would they balk at another?
4. Identify and isolate leaders in order to remove them. Exaggerate internal divisions and exploit them. Where they don't exist, create them.  This is COINTELPRO type stuff, and is a well-known tactic which Occupy groups have mostly resisted.  The city of Denver tried to make Occupy Denver choose a leader with whom the city could "negotiate" (this betrays either ignorance of how Occupy groups function or a deliberate attempt to subvert it).  Occupy Denver responded by electing a Border Collie mix named Shelby.  In Atlanta it has mostly been more subtle; there have been several attempts to isolate members of the group who are perceived to be leaders in closed-door meetings, which would tend to generate suspicion towards them within the group and also allow officials to play a "he said, she said" game with whatever story they wished to put forth. Some of the folks who do a lot in the group have been portrayed very negatively in the press and have been otherwise targeted...sometimes from within the group.  Not everyone who shows up has good intentions.  I had one overly enthusiastic woman sit down next to me while I was trying to work one day and quiz me about who the "leaders" in the group are.  "But you have to have leaders! Tell me who they are!"  I explained that no, we really don't.  According to Capt. Ray Lewis (Ret.) of the Philadephia Police Department, "Anybody who says that is a cop." We know for a fact that there are police infiltrators in the Occupy groups, both based on past history and because some of them have been outed.  
There are certainly internal tensions and disagreements in any large group of strong personalities, and some of them run deep.  But the organizational structure and decision-making process of Occupy groups is designed to resolve internal conflicts and create consensus; it's designed also to resist co-option which is counter to the goals of anyone trying to infiltrate. When external authorities use those disagreements to justify police action, or members of the group seek to subvert consensus and foster conflict rather than resolve it, both should be viewed with suspicion.  Mayor Quan's claim that the Oakland police's attack on Occupy Oakland was somehow prompted by the desire of members of the group to "separate" from anarchists is particularly ludicrous, since the heavy-handed, over-the-top approach the OPD used was pretty much guaranteed to bolster the anarchist position that the state is inherently violent and that if you resist coercion by the forces of the state it's only a matter of time before they escalate no matter how peaceful you are.  Thanks for the demonstration, Mayor Quan.
5. Portray Occupiers as violent whenever possible.  Attempt to incite violence.  If that doesn't work, simply claim violence.  You'd think that no sane person would employ this tactic, but it has happened in New York, Oakland, and Atlanta.  Whether or not protesters became violent in response...and in Atlanta they did not...the violence came from the police first.  This is the shadow of civil disobedience, and a cynical attempt to undermine it.  The moral authority of civil disobedience comes partially from the sight of peaceful, unarmed protesters being dragged away by police.  So if you can successfully incite even a handful of the protesters into reacting, or reframe their actions to make it appear as if they have, you can attempt to undercut that moral authority.  Mostly the tactic has backfired...but they keep trying.  All they need is one good riot, you know?
I believe that the police officer who drove his motorcycle into some protesters in Atlanta was trying to incite violence.  The reason I believe that is because it happened after the group had attempted to turn off of Peachtree St. in order to complete a circuit around the park; they were blocked by a group of police motorcycles and more or less herded back onto Peachtree, where they were faced with police on horseback and a SWAT team in riot gear.  The motorcycles circled around behind the main group of Occupy Atlanta people.  It was at that point that the police officer chose to drive his motorcycle through the crowd.
You can't tell me that a policeman whose real concern is public safety and keeping the peace can look at a mass of agitated people who are mostly facing the other way and think, "Hmm, this is a great time to try to drive through that."  Brandon, the person whom the motorcycle hit, was injured, both by the motorcycle and because the police beat him up when they arrested him.  In a display of Orwellian irony, he was charged with assault.  In the reality-based community, when you hit someone with a motor vehicle you are the one who gets charges.  But "Occupy Atlanta member assaults police officer" went all over the headlines.  Strangely, when the charge was dropped, that didn't receive as much press.

Any crimes that happen in the vicinity of an Occupation get attributed to the Occupiers...even when they are the victims. One of the consequences of living in a park is that it's public, which means anybody can and will show up.  Incidents that have happened at or near Occupations involving participants have gotten a lot of play in the press, but as this article points out, nobody asks the obvious question:  How do the number of incidents at Occupations compare to the general population?  Or, say, your average college campus? It's my feeling that, considering how stressful living outside under constant threat of arrest can be, the Occupations are actually astoundingly peaceful.  But I would like to see some real numbers on that. I can say from my experience with Occupy Atlanta that we recognize our responsibility to keep the peace and take it seriously...but I do not think we should be held to a higher standard than trained professionals whose salaries are paid by taxpayers.
There is in fact evidence that police are encouraging drunk and aggressive people to go to Occupations, and refusing to deal with problems even when asked.   The latter happened more than once in Atlanta, including when "AK-47 Guy" showed up and was within a few feet of former ambassador Andrew Young.  Occupy Atlanta people formed a human shield between the former ambassador and the man with the gun, after the police flatly refused to interfere.
There's a saying about never attributing to malice that which can be accounted for by stupidity, and I myself have often said that just because people with the same interests and goals behave similarly it doesn't necessarily mean they are in cahoots.  If it were just that all of the mayors and police departments of the different cities were doing the same things, it might just be that they were reacting to the same circumstances from the same mindset and copying one another in a form of police state mimesis.   But we know that they were in fact talking to one another.  I hate to be so darn suspicious, but when they say they weren't colluding I am disinclined to believe them.  There's one way they could clear all of this suspicion up, however.  That's by opening up records of that phone call.
Considering that members of Occupy Atlanta have had an Open Records request out to Mayor Kasim Reed's office and the Atlanta Police Department which they ignored well past the deadline and are now stalling, I'm not holding my breath.  I think it is in the public interest, however, that we know what was really said...and why they think it's so important to stop us. Who are they really answering to?

Occupy Atlanta Ate My Life and Other Comments

Hi there, Internets.  Remember me?

Sorry I haven't written.  This social movement/political/apolitical/cultural/activism whatsit came along, I got all curious and decided to go to a meeting, and...the next thing you know, it's six weeks later and I've been interviewed by Forbes, the New York Times, the BBC, some radio station in Berkeley I can't remember, several local TV stations, and WRFG. It's quite startling to be a middle-aged college professor with some poetry and fiction publications whose last TV appearance may well have been appearing on the Scholar's Bowl show "Toss Up" in high school, and suddenly finding yourself in the middle of some international news.  Bracing, one might say.  I should also point out that, of the Media Committee, I am the most camera shy and tend to avoid interviews unless there's nobody else available quickly enough.  This compared with the list I just reeled off should tell you something.

I do like radio shows where I can show my extensive nerdy side though, and was on Just Peace yesterday, in fact.  I appear to have interested the host, Heather Gray, greatly, at least she put up a good front, and when she found out I was a writer she said, "You're writing about this, right?"  I demurred and got all shifty-eyed.  I mean, yes, I'm a writer.  I write.  That is what I do, my raison d'etre you might say.  But I've been mostly writing press releases, statements and website copy.  I've been so busy...

She admonished me that I should be writing about all this, and so I am.  Better late than never, right?

Well.  Um.  Lots of stuff has happened.  For example, I know now that you should write your lawyer's phone number on your arm if you expect to get arrested, because they take all of your things away from you in jail.  I also know that Sharpie tends to not wash off very easily.  You have to body scrub that stuff.

Also, pro tip:  Don't wear contacts around tear gas. They absorb it and funnel that crap right to your eyes.  Glasses are the best look for the nerdcore protester.  (THAT WOULD BE ME).

I've not only met State Sen. Vincent Fort, I tend to make a beeline for him whenever he shows up because he's smart and observant and has smart, observant things to say on all topics. I've met a lot of interesting people...this movement is full of smart, passionate, opinionated, talented individuals.  It's a joy to spend time with them, whenever I'm not wanting to strangle them.  (Love y'all. Really. Pay no attention to the duct tape. It's for a, uh, art project.) 

I now think it's normal to keep my sleeping bag in my trunk because I might decide to Occupy something on the spur of the moment, and my friends regularly greet me with "Did you get arrested yet?" The mayor of Atlanta appears to know who I am now, in a "dang, here she comes again" kind of way.  I feel proud. I don't know how visible I am really.  It's like living in a fishbowl with a bunch of very opinionated fish.


I feel a sense of accomplishment, and urgency.  Every day is like a year, and if I'm away for 24 hours I call up all my Occupy friends because I miss them.  There's a community forming, the seeds of something genuinely new; it's more than a social movement or a protest, though it is also that, it's a cultural phenomenon which can hopefully grow stronger and get better and thrive and spread. Things are shifting.  There's a change in the wind.  Look up and see the sky.

This is what the Beloved Society looks like

State Sen. Vincent Fort @Occupy Atlanta protest

What a scary bunch of hoodlums we are.  Yep.  Have to run those people right out. Quick, get the riot gear!

Occupy Atlanta was raided earlier (last night)

The mayor told a whole bunch of lies and then gathered up some clergy to come talk us out of our escalating path of violence and gasoline-generator-related mayhem. /sarcasm

Said clergy came in today asking for a meeting time (5 pm) when we had a scheduled march posted on our website and everywhere else, ie a time they had to know we couldn't meet. We arranged to meet on Thursday at noon. The AJC and other outlets reported that we "refused" to meet with them, then later the police swoop in.

In other words, it was all theater and the outcome was predetermined. Welcome to the police state.  Don't believe anything you see on TV or read in a newspaper.  They're lying.

We live in interesting times

I have been volunteering for Occupy Atlanta a lot lately, which means my life has been very exciting.  That is, I have been on the radio, on TV, wrote an op-ed for Creative Loafing which caused some poor Randroid such distress that he hunted down my UGA e-mail in order to tell me how wrong I was, got quoted by the New York Times, have been hobnobbing with politicians, rappers, homeless people, Marxists, anarchists, and Libertarians, and currently have a phone number written on my arm with a Sharpie.  In case I get arrested. I sold a short story and wrote this.

How has your week been?