Liberty Plaza: A Homecoming

After two weeks on a road assignment to cover the Occupy movement, I suddenly found myself right back where I started...

I will always remember this November the Fifth as the day I finally returned to Liberty Plaza. Like the sleepless City itself, the home of Occupy Wall Street transformed and evolved in what seemed like the blink of an eye. The landscape had dramatically changed with the onset of month Two, but the constant buzz of purpose never left the movement’s ancestral camp. In fact, the sense of hopeful progress living here has grown even greater since the last time I was able to experience it firsthand.

For the previous few weeks, I had been on assignment, ostensibly to cover the Occupy movement in other American cities. Washington, DC; Raleigh, North Carolina; Atlanta, Georgia; New Orleans, Louisiana �" every place had it’s own juice, a brand of fire unique all to themselves. With the right kind of perception, you can easily see the motives that drive each individual…how the blood-energy they donate inspires the cause to continuously expand.

The Occupiers’ stories of surviving through shared hopes and fears were like reading about those little miracles that sometimes leak out from far away battlefields. At best, many of them lived beneath the constant specter of mass arrest. Thousands more faced rubber-tipped bullets, tear gas and paramilitary tacticsforbidden under the rules of foreign war. All the while, they remain overwhelmingly peaceful towards the increasingly aggressive forces surrounding them. The will to overcome violence and vilification seems to be unbreakable, one pervasive constant no matter where you look.

I watched lifelong bonds form between people who would never have spoken to each other just a few months ago. This is a movement of uncommon connection, the exchange of ideas between local strangers and global compatriots. In a single consciousness, People across the world are rising up against more than just infinite greed interwoven with political corruption and a shattered understanding of the American Dream; humanity is reawakening to what kind of power we are meant to have, just by reclaiming all of the rights we’ve let silently erode away.

“It’s not the banks’ fault that we are in this position,” Daniel-san said to me during my first conversation at Occupy Atlanta, “It is our fault for not coming together sooner.”

Not everyone wants to tell that deeper story, least of all, I discovered 36 maddening hours out of Raleigh, the founder of the ‘Truth Pursuit.’ Maybe it was the “terrified friends at Goldman Sachs” that pushed Mr. Stowers to suddenly “not (be) interested in the movement,” and that’s fine. Even though it is stunning how quickly a fledgling news organization that professes to reject the slanted operations of mainstream journalism so quickly falls in line behind them. No matter what carried on during a wild Autumn fortnight �" and there are enough stories about it to fill a book… - Fate decided that now was the time for me to be back in New York.

***

Liberty Plaza is something of a city-within-the-city, a symbolic and spiritual home built with a healthy mix of love and determination. Every Occupation inherits the traits of its’ native location. Here in Manhattan, a truly international melting pot, the movement is defined by constant motion �" rapid evolution that can not be seen anywhere else in nature. Tents have sprung up all over the park, bolstering the feeling that they have dug in and plan on staying, no matter what strategy Mayor Bloomberg concocts to destroy this amazing place.

Walking through the 33,000 sq. foot miniopolis, you hear the whirr of bicycle-powered generators. The chatter of a hundred tiny groups discussing solutions to the ills of modern America lays the back-beat. An eclectic mix of drums and sax from the far West end supplies the rhythm. Skyscrapers pierce into the clouds above as the volcanic swell of the ground-level movement rises to exceed their ambition. Sometimes, like an awestruck tourist, I will gaze up, slack-jawed and speechless; wondering how many of the penthouse moguls looking down are starting to sweat like Ecuadorian pigs. They can’t continue ignoring the heat coming from below much longer.

A couple of steps to the left of the thousand-volume OWS People’s Library, USMC Sergeant Shamar Thomasis giving a passionate interview. At the wrap-up, he shrugs off the question of whether he is now a spokesman for the Occupy Movement.

“I’m not the spokesman, but I am gonna’ keep speaking. You know what I mean? We are all human beings and (they) are losing sight of that.”

And there’s the heart of it. Buried between those few words are what you have to ‘get’ before you can truly begin to understand what is happening here. You can listen to a million different people tell you a sad story of being fucked over by the Man, what kind of change they want to the System, or how they are going to fight the Establishment, or not. Add it all up and you still won’t have the sum of why the People choose to Occupy, because that pushes a deeper button in the soul.

Regardless of any specific destination, the movement is going in the right direction and that’s what people want to be a part of. To be one small but powerful component helping to turn the Earth onto an opposite path…enough people have already seen that the one conceived back in the 20^th century is obviously headed for the bottom of a jagged cliff.

And the effort is working. The seemingly innocuous act of gathering together and discussing ideas has incited reaction from every point on the public spectrum. Real national debates are forming as to the limit of our political and economic standards. Serious tests to the First Amendment are being conducted, sometimes with heart-breaking results. The Wall Street-sponsored media, the two-faced politicians and other such useless parasites are taking up familiar positions. Above it all, the Voice is growing louder every day.

***

Over by the information tent, beside one of the main arteries pulsing through the park, two journalists were discussing the doldrums of their respective ‘Occupy’ assignments. Not that what they were covering was boring, but what they were being forced to actually report on were the most monotonous, retread aspects of what they were seeing.

“All my editor in Des Moines wants me to talk about is ‘Why are you here..?’ ‘What changes do you expect…?’ ‘Will you be voting differently now…?’, blah, blah, blah. But there’s so much more happening here. Everyone has already asked those questions, and like, if you don’t get it by now…”

I caught the conversation between roaming herds of bodies, probably wondering what I was doing just sitting around and smiling so much. I couldn’t help it. Having just lived that argument for three-thousand miles, hearing it from peers on my first day back was just the kind of poetic justice I needed to reaffirm that some of us are on the right track.

There are plenty of hacks out there, trying to force a sphere of understanding through square holes of boredom.  They can spend a lifetime drying out the periphery, but others �" the true artists with pens �" want to wade neck-deep into this ocean and speak directly with the holy ghosts within.

A spontaneous march started up, as often happens around here, first circling the park before heading north to One Police Plaza. This was intended to be in Solidarity with those arrested earlier that morning, for the heinous crime of pulling money out of their doomed Bank of America accounts. The scooter cops were out in droves, already setting up by the time we arrived. At the front of the line was a dude who seemed to be a littletoo comfortable with the police Captains hawk-eyeing the demonstration.

Mic-check after mic-check, he’d try to motivate the crowd with harsh words towards the officers before going over to shake hands again. This is breaking a cardinal rule: No matter how friendly a conversation may be, NEVER touch a police officer. Anything you say can be used against you, and any physical contact can later be twisted into an assault charge �" remember, these are the ‘protectors’ who are allowed to lie to coerce you into self-incrimination. Those who are so ambivalent toward this complex relationship always make me wonder…but every time one man’s anger subsided, the same chants came roaring from the crowd:

“POLICE / JOIN US / THEY WANT YOUR PENSIONS, TOO!”

“THE POLICE ARE THE NINETY �" NINE PERCENT!”

His speech that was supposed to “change the world” quickly dissolved into random and confusing shouts of misplaced anger. The crowd stayed with it as long as they could, but when the rhetoric turned to “killing the children” of those who oppress us, the masses inherently rejected what was happening and marched back home. Yes, everyone is encouraged to use their voice, but no one who encourages even the language of violence is going to make it very far here.

We got back to Liberty Plaza as General Assembly was wrapping up on the Broadway amphitheater. I chatted a while with Dani from Miami, who has been here two weeks and is looking to start up a self-defense class for women. She’s a tough Cuban firecracker who spends days panhandling, then goes to local markets and buys tampons, underwear and shoes for the other females who call the park home. For her, the mechanics of life here are simple: “It’s just about living together and helping out any way you can.”

The night ended back in the northwest corner, in a quiet circle around an inter-faith alter set up there a few days before I’d left. Some local cats were releasing soft vibrations from wooden didgeridoos. Our small group of twenty or so swayed gently, reflecting on our own recent experiences. A guided meditation began and soon, all of the ambient, irrelevant noise was gone. We grasped hands, focusing on the untamed energy swirling all around us. We took it in, channeled it through a powerful human conduit and then calmly released it back into the esoteric wild.

When the meditation ended, a feeling of shared love washed over my inner-self. The ajna was wide open, seeing everything, hearing all the voices chanting in my brain, as well as those cascading through others’. Together we’d created unknown new connections out of cold, thin air. Peace was victorious for yet another consecutive day.

I went back to the Bunker to do some writing, keeping a close watch on the twitter feeds, making sure that Bloomberg didn’t try to root out the Occupation like a coward under the black of night. The cannabis took over moments before sunrise and all the thoughts of the past melted down to reveal a clear path towards the future. To get there, all we have to do is keep this wheel turning…keep moving in the direction of right…let the angry and the confused cling to the old tyrannical methods of division and domination.

Because the Old Ways are meant to die out, it is the penultimate story of our world. Fighting this transition is a common, though pointless exercise, and you can only ignore it for so long. At the end of these stories, always, is written the untidy birth of a New destiny.

Having recently been born, the Occupy movement is, at this early stage of life, nothing less than infinite potential. The opportunity to help shape the next steps is open to all of us. Take it, leave it or continue to hide from it, but there is a wave coming - bigger, stronger and more powerful than you can imagine today. So don’t be surprised when a greater Fate washes you up to somewhere you never thought you’d be, just a few weeks ago.

Author's Note

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