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The situation at Occupy Oakland continues to deterioriate:

A man was shot to death on Thursday near a downtown Oakland plaza where hundreds of anti-Wall Street activists have camped out for a month, stoking renewed calls by some city officials to evict the protesters.

It’s not clear yet whether the victim and/or shooter were involved in Occupy Oakland, or just near it.  Either way, this is bad press – something that Occupy really needs to avoid.  That said, this is dumb (same article):

“Tonight’s incident underscores the reason why the encampment must end. The risks are too great,” [Oakland Mayor Jean] Quan said. “We need to return (police) resources to addressing violence throughout the city. It’s time for the encampment to end. Camping is a tactic, not a solution.”

Quan certainly didn’t seem too concerned about wasting police resources on October 25th.  But there’s a larger lesson to be learned here: #Occupy is running out of capital.  If the movement doesn’t translate to substantive political action very soon, it will lose steam.

“Political action?” you say?  ”Politics is messy and full of special interests.  Politics will dilute the message and subvert Occupy’s grassroots, democratic nature.”

Well, yes.  But “politics” doesn’t just mean lobbyists and committee hearings (although those are pretty important too).  Politics is the process of organizing constituent groups around issues with specific goals in mind.  Occupy brought together a lot of people with a lot of ideas, and that’s been incredibly valuable in and of itself.  Now it’s time to make the jump to issue-based organizing.  That doesn’t mean we have to give up the incredible democratic and people-powered nature of Occupy, it just means that there needs to be some serious top-down leadership to put together real, workable campaigns.

For example:

…a few minutes ago the president sent the pipeline back to the State Department for a thorough re-review, which most analysts are saying will effectively kill the project. The president explicitly noted climate change, along with the pipeline route, as one of the factors that a new review would need to assess. There’s no way, with an honest review, that a pipeline that helps speed the tapping of the world’s second-largest pool of carbon can pass environmental muster.

And he has made clear that the environmental assessment won’t be carried out by cronies of the pipeline company–that it will be an expert and independent assessment.

That was veteran environmental activist Bill McKibben on the Keystone XL pipeline, which, thanks to an ongoing campaign including over one thousand arrests and culminating in a giant protest at the White House last weekend, looks decreasingly likely to be approved.  This is one of the environmental movement’s biggest victories in an uncomfortably long time.  It came about because a) there are a lot of people who care enough about the issues to go to DC and protest in person, and b) because a few people took charge and coordinated a highly visible event, paying serious attention to strategy and media outreach.

What can #Occupy learn from this?  That it’s not enough to have passionate people on your side.  If it were, we’d never have gone to war in Iraq.  We’d never have passed the PATRIOT act.  We’d never have assassinated an American citizen on foreign soil without anything even resembling due process.  And we wouldn’t continue using unmanned drones to carry out indiscriminate attacks on uncertain targets.

Occupy Providence donation receiving tent | photo by me

So far, #Occupy’s energy has been focused on physically sustaining the occupations.  That takes a lot of work, and the amount that’s been accomplished is nothing short of incredible.  But if Occupy wants to move forward and make a real political difference (like, dare I say, the Tea Party?), we need substantive goals and action strategies.  It’s clearly possible to turn people out for actions; Occupy Providence had a really strong presence a few weekends ago in a demonstration to support their continued occupation of Burnside Park, and have also been sending folks to Bank of America in groups to close their accounts and move their money to local banks.  But actions like this have largely been invisible to the media and not coordinated at a national level.  That can’t continue.

Living at Occupy Providence for a week was a really incredible experience.  I have real faces and experiences to consider when I think about the movement – faces and experiences other than my own.  I try to see things from the perspective of the homeless, the unemployed, and those who’ve been far less privileged than I in any number of ways.  The commitment and kindness I’ve encountered at Occupy Providence has been nothing short of inspiring.

I hope that others feel the same way – and I hope that inspiration moves us to question our assumptions about what it means to be a movement.  Grassroots support and centralized leadership aren’t mutually exclusive; rather, they’re vital co-components of any successful activism strategy.

I want desperately for #Occupy to succeed.  We need to define success and articulate a clear plan of action to get ourselves there.  Complicated problems require complicated solutions, so let’s not sell ourselves short.

Off to interview on my first morning

I don’t want to be blindly supportive of the Occupy movement.  I don’t want to blindly condemn it.  I don’t want to be blind at all.  In a movement as experiential as this one, joining in is the best way to learn.  I’m describing myself as an embedded journalist-activist, and, while I largely support the movement’s (ethereal) goals, I’m retaining some measure of aloofness.  From a journalistic perspective, this lets me critique the movement while being involved enough to feel like I’m part of a real and constructive conversation, rather than acting like a distant analyst with little connection the emotions and ideas this movement is bursting with.

My friend Noa and I arrived at Burnside Park at about 3:00 AM last (Monday) night, and after several interviews, fell asleep to the sounds of laughter and walkie-talkies, in a seven-person community tent (open to all; first come, first served).  As early as 5:00 AM, cars drove by honking in support of the signs all along the fence around the park.

I’ll be staying here for the rest of the week.  I’m posting now from the tent I’ve set up for myself and other Brown students.  Noa took all of the pictures here, as well as more which can be found on my Flickr.

Artemis: The Red Tape Army

Artemis (known to all here as “Ma”) is coordinating the Red Tape Army, which began as a small corps of medical volunteers, and has expanded its duties to include general hospitality tasks such as distributing blankets and food.  Another one of Artemis’ stated goals is to hug every single person who comes through the park.

Artemis, or "Ma," as she's known here and among the homeless

From 1999 to 2001, Artemis was homeless, living on Thayer Street on College Hill.  The Finlandia co-op often provided her with food, and she also recalls sleeping on their couches regularly.  From our conversation, it was readily apparent that she remains highly aware of the unique challenges the homeless face; much of her work here is in a sort of unofficial homeless-outreach capacity.  She buys the homeless “kids” $1 pizza at the nearby 7-11, and has brought a lot of them into Occupy Providence by helping them out in this way.  Her compassion for the many homeless who were already living in Burnside Park when Occupy came in, as well as for those who’ve joined after, is readily apparent.  She told me of a homeless man whom she helped out one night; he returned the next day to tell her “Because of you, I didn’t commit suicide.”  She says “That’s what it’s about – I don’t care about the political end.”

It would be easy to decry the members of the Providence homeless community as free-riders; they’re benefiting from the donated tents, blankets, and food and drink that Occupy is collecting and distributing.  However, the Occupiers consistently show an impressive amount of camaraderie with the homeless, who otherwise remain invisible to society in many ways.  This kind of solidarity through cohabitation and direct action is a testament to Occupy’s willingness to live out its principles of inclusion.

In yet another display of the pragmatism I’m discovering in all corners of Occupy, Artemis fully understands that we’re in a tenuous situation here.  Of the future of Occupy Providence’s physical presence, she remarked “The cops have been great, but we’re pushing it now.”

Felicia: “We need to be heard.”

Felicia, of the Red Tape Army

Felicia is a member of the Red Tape Army.  She was working the 2-8 shift when I talked with her outside the main medical tent.  She’s in business school, and got involved in Occupy on Saturday night.  She came back after church on Sunday, and has been here ever since.  I started to ask her about some of her reasons for being here, but was interrupted by a squawk from her walkie-talkie; all the medical volunteers carry one.  Once she confirmed that she wasn’t needed, we continued.  ”I can’t really pick one thing,” she responded when I named a few of the reasons others had given for their involvement.  ”We need to be heard.”

Felicia, too, underscored the message of respect for the police.  ”If it wasn’t for them, we wouldn’t be here.”  She also spoke about respecting the park and keeping it clean.  I asked her about next steps – she wants Occupy to start talking to politicians, joining and organizing rallies at the statehouse and City Hall – to be heard everywhere possible.

Going forward, a focus on visibility of the kind Felicia expressed will be vital.  If Occupy doesn’t continue to expand into new areas, to bring in new attention, energy, and ideas, it will stagnate.  To really be heard, we need to constantly look for new ways to express ourselves.

Dave Taveres: “I am a capitalist, but at the same time, that doesn’t give you the right to take advantage of people.”

Media & food tents

I stopped Dave as he walked along the edge of Burnside Park, observing the signs and the tents clustered inside.  He works in Pawtucket (he described his job as “blue-collar”), and has seen Occupy’s presence here when he takes the bus at Kennedy Plaza next to the park.  He’s worked a lot with the homeless in the past, and agrees with Occupy’s messages of opposition to corporate greed – he feels that the government doesn’t care about this problem.

His quote above is reflective of a lot of the sentiment I’m picking up here.  Many Occupiers communicate a genuine sense of betrayal – they really feel that they’ve worked hard and that society has failed to recognize and reward them for it.  Occupy is far from the only movement to hold this sentiment, but it’s a powerful one.

Annie: “These things take time.”

Annie has been homeless for the past 3 months, and declined to have her picture taken.  She became closer to Occupy last night, through Artemis.  She doesn’t know many of the Occupiers or the other homeless, and rightly observed that Occupy Providence is “a fledgling group.  It takes time.  These things take time.”

The homeless community seems to be a much bigger part of Occupy here than they do elsewhere.  I was particularly interested in hearing more about what they need from the movement.  Annie said that she could use help finding housing – but she acknowledged that Occupy has a lot of other priorities as well; “the peace movement, and social justice.”

“Winds of change.  Winds of change going on,” she told me.  ”I think a good socialist movement is necessary here in RI and throughout the country – it’s time for change.  It’s a movement whose time has come.”

I spent about an hour on Sunday afternoon at Occupy Providence in Burnside Park, interviewing occupiers, taking pictures, and trying to get a general sense of the tenor of the movement.  I was motived by dissatisfaction with most of the reporting I’ve seen on the Occupy movement.  The tendency seems to be to do some obligatory man-on-the-street interviews, and then turn the footage back over to in-studio talking heads to make points they were going to make anyway.  In other words, Occupy is being used to reinforce existing narratives about politics, social issues, and class.

Michael McCarthy speaks to the Occupy Providence General Assembly

Signs on the statue of General Ambrose Burnside

However, most social movements have compelling narratives of their own.  Occupy is no exception.  I encountered a multitude of viewpoints on a variety of issues.  Perhaps most informative were the responses that Occupiers gave when I asked for their opinion on potential problems with the movement.  I decided to do this because I wanted to break the paradigm whereby protestors state goals and pundits critique them.  I wanted to hear the movement’s critiques of itself: what might go wrong, what needs to happen to “succeed,” what “succeeding” will actually look like, and so on.  I didn’t get answers to all of these questions, but I’m planning to go back, and hopefully to camp out for at least a couple nights in the next few days as an embedded Occupier-journalist.

Here are some of the stories of the people I met today.  All photos are mine, except where otherwise noted, and are available under a Creative Commons license (details).

Gretchen and Arrash Jaber: “More than just politics”

Gretchen & Arrash Jaber with son

Gretchen didn’t specify her education level – she’s currently employed full-time as a mother (the couple’s son was at the tent with them).  When I asked why they were there, Gretchen told me she wanted to “be a part of making a change.”  Arrash has a bachelor’s degree and is currently employed.  He feels that the Occupy movement isn’t a purely political one – he listed “cleaning up the city [Providence]” as one of the things he thought local Occupiers could organize around, in addition to some more hypothetical concepts like uniting globally with the working- and middle-classes.

In my experience, when a nonviolent demonstration begins to treat the police as its enemies, it immediately begins to lose both moral and practical high ground.  During the hour or so I spent at Occupy Providence today, I saw Providence police officers engaged in friendly conversation with various organizers.  Arrash put words on this phenomenon: he wanted the demonstrators to respect the police and to talk to them.  I pointed out that the police are often part of the very same working class that liberal social movements commonly try to represent – he agreed emphatically.

The Providence Fire Department has also lent material support to Occupy Providence – they donated three tents, which were at the time of my visit being used for media.  The fire department had even gone so far as to label one of the tents (click for larger images):

Jonathan Lewis: “This is what an activist dreams about.”

Jonathan Lewis (front right) with associates | Image from Positive Peace Warrior Network

Jonathan is self-employed in nonviolence training.  He’s the founder of the Positive Peace Warrior Network.  After driving by Occupy Providence yesterday, he decided to return to camp out.  I asked him about the way forward – could Occupy’s success in physically bringing people together be translated into legislative action?  Would the movement’s grassroots energy need to be sacrificed?  He replied that it’s “not an either-or” – that it’s about “displaying unity” between these two fronts.  His enthusiasm for in-person organizing was balanced by this pragmatic approach to the messy process of electoral politics – another good sign for Occupy as it progresses.

Kyla Coburn and Andy Trench: “Targeted change”

Andy Trench and son

Kyla and Andy work together as interior designers.  They’d just arrived at the park with their two children when I met them.  Andy was largely on kid duty, so Kyla did most of the talking – Andy said they shared the same brain anyway.

One of Kyla’s primary concerns was message clarity – she believes it will be absolutely vital in order to move Democrats.  She expressed a personal desire to see Occupy coalesce around a message of “targeted change” toward corruption, rather than descending into a fiasco of “shaking a stick at the haves from the have-nots.”  As we talked, she repeatedly underscored that she wasn’t there in support of a platform of anti-capitalism, but one of anti-corruption.  This stands in strong contradiction to claims made by conservative media figures implying (or explicitly stating) that Occupy is a cover for socialists (gasp!) or something else equally scary and “un-American.”

I pressed Kyla on the details of message centralization.  By what process should this be accomplished?  At what level?  She wants to see Occupy’s message unified nationally and articulated into ten points to be disseminated, and is concerned that Occupy’s potential, namely its grassroots nature and wide appeal, could also undermine it as the “Republican media” (she named Fox News in particular) use soundbites to discredit the movement as a whole.

In too many cases, movements become bifurcated as organizers attempt to control the message while members seek to retain individuality.  The fact that the individual members of Occupy are concerned with this issue is a very good sign.  If Occupy does begin to articulate a national platform, I hope that individual members of the movement will be as receptive as Kyla was hopeful.

I’ll wrap up with a quote from Andy Trench, which was echoed by Michael McCarthy, one of the main organizers of Occupy Providence:

People can’t take for granted that other people are going to do that work for them.  They have to come down here and actually put that time in.

Occupy Providence is on Facebook and Twitter.  Connect with them there for ongoing updates, and stay tuned here for more interviews, photos, and thoughts on the movement as a whole.  I’ll also be tweeting during my camp-out in the park – follow me on Twitter @renaissanceboy.

About 30 minutes after writing my last post, I got mugged. On the side of a busy road, in broad daylight.  Ciertamente, soy un gringo!  I was using my phone outside the Instituto Cultural for a few minutes, and a dude ran up to me, flicking a switchblade out of his pocket.  Dame , dame el teléfono! — Give me the phone! Obviously, I did.  I’m mostly glad that he didn’t take my wallet or stab me – plenty to be grateful for.

A good friend of mine got me the book Whatever It Takes for my recent birthday. It’s about Geoffrey Canada and the Harlem Children’s  Zone, an organization he created that takes a fundamentally different approach to fighting poverty than any other I’ve ever heard of.  The book is a) incredibly well-written, b) dealing with subjects that are both fascinating and vital, and c) the only book I brought on this trip, so I’ve now read it cover-to-cover 3 times.

HCZ was created out of a frustration with the way that existing social service organizations intrinsically single out subgroups within poor populations to receive aid.  This is especially true (and especially problematic) in education.

For example, I grew up attending two wonderful charter schools.  I wouldn’t trade the education I received at them for anything, but it’s a huge privilege to have attended.  Despite the fact that charter schools are open to anyone, it takes a certain kind of parent to investigate alternatives to a district school, to enter the charter school lottery, and to commit to the extra work that attending a charter school often entails (transportation, etc.).  At their best, charter schools are laboratories for new ideas in education, prioritizing community outreach and underserved populations, but at their worst, they reinforce existing class and race divisions.  Dedicated administrators, like those at the schools I attended, have their work cut out for them in trying to avoid the latter.

This dynamic is present in lots of organizations, and Geoffrey Canada wanted to change it.  HCZ is comprised of a series of programs (parenting help, preschool, elementary, middle, and high school, and more), designed to provide a seamless “conveyor belt” of social improvement programs for children from before they’re even born to the time they graduate high school, and beyond.  It’s based on the substantial research showing that the earlier you intervene in an underserved and underskilled child’s life, the easier it is to get them back on track.  Canada wanted to change the lives not just of a few kids who he happened to reach, but of the entire population of Harlem, in a rigorous and scalable fashion.  HCZ gets far closer to that goal than any other organization I’ve ever heard of, and is likely to be the only way to make any kind of serious headway on urban poverty.

So once the initial shock of being on the wrong end of a knife died down (and after realizing that my mugger probably needs the phone more than I do), I got to thinking about the sort of society that creates people like him.  Obviously, being poor doesn’t excuse turning to crime — but lecturing about the moral failings of the poor doesn’t do much for society either.  In Mexico, as in Harlem, there are probably specific interventions, especially in the lives of children, that could drastically transform the way society treats its poor, and drastically increase their upward mobility.  Effectively, HCZ is a systems thinking approach to poverty, and it marks a much more realistic way of looking at the problem, one that we upper-middle class white Americans should try to internalize.  Given the amount of resources we have available to deal with poverty, we should be doing a much better job of thinking about how to allocate them effectively.

As promised, here are the two handouts that Mayor Higgins provided at the Northampton city budget forum last Thursday.  Both are PDFs.

City of Northampton State Aid and benefit Costs

City of Northampton FY12 Budget Issues

I attended a forum tonight on the Northampton municipal budget, and its relation to state budgetary processes.  The mayor of Northampton, Mary Clare Higgins, our State Representative Peter Kocot, State Senator Stanley Rosenberg, and City Councillor Pamela Schwartz (also the director of YES! Northampton, a group that advocates for the preservation and enhancement of local revenue to fund basic services such as education) all presented.

It was a really terrific overview of the challenges our community faces in balancing the budget without cutting local services such as education (which is the single largest expenditure in our town).  It was also immensely refreshing to listen to dedicated politicians who weren’t afraid to talk about the facts and back it up with data.  It’s a stark contrast to the anti-intellectualism so often proudly displayed at the federal level.  In other words, I like knowing that the folks I elect to my government have an actual interest in, well, governing.

Here are the notes I took, which are as exhaustive as I could make them.  I’m getting in touch with the offices of the Mayor and Rep. Kocot, who were both more than happy to provide me with a copy of the materials they brought with them, which are really instructive.  As soon as I get those (hopefully tomorrow) I’ll post them here as well.

Thanks to Tim Wu for the title inspiration.

AT&T announced on Sunday that it agreed to buy T-Mobile USA from Deutsche Telekom, in a $39 billion deal that will reshape the cellular telephone industry.

So says the NYT, confining their interest in the effects this deal will have on consumers to the following paragraph:

Already, some critics say the deal will result in higher prices for consumers. T-Mobile had offered some of the lowest rates in the county. While AT&T is expected to honor current T-Mobile contracts, it is likely that once those contracts expire, T-Mobile customers would be expected to pay AT&T’s higher rates.

…followed by:

Even so, AT&T’s bid will solve the problem facing T-Mobile USA, the smallest of the country’s four major cellphone service providers. Both companies operate on the same wireless standard, GSM. Through the deal, T-Mobile will finally gain a path for the next generation of cellphone data, known as 4G, by using AT&T’s forthcoming LTE standard.

Arguably, the reason that smaller providers like T-Mobile are having a hard time getting access to 4G infrastructure is because there’s so little meaningful competition in the wireless market to begin with (from my perspective, most of the competition is in marketing, not actual services provided).  This deal promises to make all that worse, not better.

The deal will also drive enormous cost savings. The combined company is expected to shutter retail outlets in areas where they overlap as well eliminate overlapping back office, technical and call center staff. Marketing costs could also be cut. Cellular carriers have been one of the biggest advertising spenders in the nation.

I wouldn’t hang around on the edge of my seat for AT&T to pass those savings on to customers.  Also, it would be nice if the NYT considered these “cost savings” from a perspective other than AT&T’s bottom line.  Consolidating retail, office, technical, and support staff = job losses.

Yet one more piece of evidence that what’s good for industry isn’t always good for the country.

Since there’s not really anything to talk about, I’ll just link you to this post I wrote for Jewschool.  Wouldn’t you know it, Alan Dershowitz is back again!

I’ve been using Apple products all my life.  I’ve always found them to be of terrific quality, and I’ve always been better treated by the company in sale and support terms.  I’ve also spent years as an Apple Certified Macintosh Technician.  I camped out for an iPhone 3G and spent a long time arguing AT&T into giving me a subsidized 3G S after the 3G was stolen.  I have just about as much loyalty to the Apple brand as anyone.

But I know which way the wind is blowing.  If Apple keeps going down the road of intense user control, doesn’t give up the exclusivity contract with AT&T, and continues to break with Google, I’m not going to stick with them.  Google Android, Chrome, and Chrome OS once it exists (not to mention more well-established software like Ubuntu, which I already consider second only OS X), are all completely viable alternatives.  I already have all of my email addresses (including MobileMe, which I get for free as a certified Apple Sales Professional) redirecting to Gmail, and it provides all the services MobileMe does, except for Find My iPhone, and for free.  See my general rule for computing.  It still applies.

So, while I think that Apple is still a generally moral company, one that is providing terrific services to its users, I hope they realize that down the road they are only going to be able to restrict us so far.  Google has done an incredible job of making it really easy to switch to their services, and as we offload more and more of our data storage and processing power to the cloud, that ease of transition and context-switching is a big advantage.  Either it will keep Apple honest, or I’ll switch.  I’m definitely not enough of a fanboy to stick with Apple when there’s a better alternative.  Until that point, I’ll continue to defend them as the best hardware and software provider, but I’m not blind to reality.

Thus, I publicly declare Apple not to be the infallible god that its fanpersons so often claim it is.  And I call on its directors and customers to take it in a direction that continues to provide good products and services, rather than one that treats its customers, as so many other tech companies have, as endlessly ignorant moneybags.  I, for one, will not put up with that.  We’re used to getting good value from Apple, and if we stop getting it, we’ll move on.

1. Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism.
2. Collateral damage.
3. The Internet Freedom Act.

What do these things actually mean?  Answers:

1. Illegal wiretapping (courtesy of the Bush administration).
2. Dead civilians (courtesy of just about everyone ever).
3. For-profit bandwidth throttling (courtesy of Sen. John McCain, #1 beneficiary of telecom lobby money)

Honestly, I’m pretty pissed of at Sen. McCain.  Every time I think he’s reestablished himself as a paragon of GOP morality in an ever-more-decadent political climate, he slips up again.  Given the state of rural broadband, there are a lot of people who can get service from only one ISP, and the idea that that ISP should have the right to control what that person does and doesn’t see is just ridiculous.

Dear GOP: The only thing your insistence on absolute (there it is again) government non-interventionism does is let someone else do the intervening.  If you don’t make it illegal for someone to take away someone else’s civil liberties, rest assured that someone will find a way to do it, and to make money off it.  Healthcare.  Social Security.  Internet.

America, wake up and smell the coffee.  The people defending corporations and saying that they need protection from the big bad government are getting paid to do so.  The reality is that a culture of profit in this country is deeply entrenched.  Government regulations aren’t changing that.  We are not poised on the brink of communism, despite what John Boehner, Sarah Palin, and Rush Limbaugh would like you to think.  This country is more firmly capitalist than perhaps any other.

So now, can we make it a little more moral?  Or is that too much to ask of you right-wing GOP extremists who care about nothing but where your campaign money’s coming from?  Now, I know I’m sounding like just another left-wing nutjob, but Matt Yglesias was right when he said that Alan Grayson had broken an unspoken rule.  And Barney Frank’s comment about Grayson was just as accurate.  If the left would just stop bowing to the GOP’s attention to minute details and stick to the moral message, we’d win.  I happen to think we’re right on both fronts, so I fully support and engage in debate on financial details of Democrat’s plans, but I think that the reason we’re bogged down in that is that we’ve lost sight of the moral message.  If we worked to reframe the debate in terms of “whose political morals are in support of the people?”, we’d practically have won.  If we can talk to Americans in terms they understand about moral differences, instead of leaving that entirely to the GOP, they’d listen.  Democrats have never been good at this – Grayson is refreshing.

Let’s follow his example.  No more dodging points and hiding behind euphemisms.  The right does out of dishonesty.  The left does it out of  inaptitude.  If we both stopped, we’d have one person saying “I want to ensure that corporations continue to profit” and another saying “I want to ensure that you have money to stay healthy”.

The choice is clear.