Patch Blog: Reflections on My Day of Occupying the Courts

I woke up on Friday, Jan. 20 thinking I’d spend the day reading; I do have a huge stack of comics from the library and pages of research to get through.  That was the plan until I stumbled on a post on .  

I thought “Why not?” and gave it a shot.  Times like this I’d be nervous wondering about what to expect of where I’m going, but I’m feeling better these days and I’m actually more concerned about what I’m going to do when my barbershop closes.

This is how I try to manage expectations; I can’t let them get away from me.  

I hop off at Temple Street and walk around unsure of where to go.  The address was 225 East Temple St. and I thought I’d be able to see it from the street.  I end up following a group of people carrying signs.  If you're going to a protest follow the people carrying protest signs; that seemed reasonable.  

I get to the end of the block where about ten or so people are standing around a corner.  These are ralliers; I’m not so sure if this is the rally.  If it is, thank God I managed my expectations.  I get to talking to a veteran occupier while we stand around the corner.  Despite doing it “right”--finishing high school then going to college--she’s been out of work for three years.  To add to her situation she has multiple sclerosis and doesn’t have health insurance.  So she’s been through the wringer, and it’s tough to find that good old right wing indignation to the Occupy movement when you meet someone in a situation like that.  All I can do is silently feel bad.

There’s some confusion as to where the protest is exactly, so most of the folks on the corner head off down the street.  I head up the street to make sure it’s not there either and when I return the corner is empty.  For a second I wonder if they thought I was a narc or an infiltrator.  Now, that would be an awesome job. Getting paid to get the hippies all riled up would be a dream; busting them would just be gravy.  

I think about what to do next and decide to go to the bank.  I had to do some banking sometime soon, anyway.  I take a moment to watch a couple of people play chess before deciding to explore some more.  Maybe I’ll find the rally that way.

I find the rally; it's located across from the Los Angeles Mall.  Not quite a hundred people are standing around or sitting in front of a mic they have set up.  The area is taped off clearly defining a space.  We know exactly where we are allowed to go and not go on this piece of federal property.  A few cops are milling around the fringe of the rally to ensure we don’t cross those lines.  There’s an ABC reporter doing interviews.  She doesn’t stick around the whole day, but there’s a wandering cameraman getting footage who does.

The whole event is rather well organized, but a few details are off.  First there’s the problems earlier about the event’s location.  Apparently there was an initial attempt to have the rally at a different place; the organizers failed to get the permits and were forced to move.  It would have been an easy fix to have someone at both locations moving people along to the right one, but no one had the foresight beforehand or the thought afterward to make that call.  I know that's just small stuff.  

I finish a cigarette and I look for a trash can, but I can’t find one.  I wander about the area and there’s none to be seen.  The nearest one is around the corner by a bus stop.  I ask an organizer about it and he’s not the least bit embarrassed by the oversight.  He tells me something about a food tent that will be set up shortly; they’ll have trash bags.  No tent is ever set up, and trash just sort of collects wherever.  Now I don’t want to pick, but it would have been easy enough to take any empty bag call it a trash bag and there it is.  It’s silly I know, but I don’t imagine a Republican forgetting about the trash.  

Then there’s a girl running a timeline on court decisions regarding the personhood of corporations.  It’s not bad, but when I get to the end I ask the girl if she has a copy of the court decision in question on her person.  Surprisingly, she doesn’t.  

The whole event is about Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission and no one has the presence of mind to bring a copy of that decision along with them?  I know it’s all on the Internet these days, but please, if this was a high school project you’d get points off for forgetting something that important.  

Anyway, kudos to the organizers.  I know how difficult an event like that is to put together, and I hope everyone appreciates the effort required to make it happen.    The speakers start and I’m hearing something a little strange.  It’s the voice of dissent I think.  Unfortunately it’s the same voice of dissent I hear when talking with anti-abortion activists.  I imagine it is the same voice of dissent you’d have heard talking with anti-integrationists.  It’s the same old saw: “The Supreme Court cannot make that decision.  It’s supposed to be passive not active.  It’s supposed to take a strict interpretation of the Constitution.  It can’t be allowed to make those decisions for the rest of us.”  The same arguments are being used for completely different issues.  The absurdity is delicious.

There are a bunch of messages being transmitted here.  There are too many messages being transmitted for me to keep up with.  There are all manner of banners--some small and some large.  There are few that look well made and some others that are just plain bad.  My nephew who’s just started grade school could have done better work.  Despite the number of messages, I still get it.  All of them share the same anti-corporate, pro-labor, and pro-equality feeling to them.  

The best of the bunch are a series of print reproductions of ink on paper that look good enough to be etchings.  They’re done by Ken Allan Jones.  Full and rich with symbolism and meaning, they’re far more effective than that quirky girl wearing a sign around her pretty neck that says corporations =/= people.  I can dig the math but I’m disappointed by the lack of effort.

The first speaker ends his talk by calling me and my party evildoers.  I guess that’s okay.  I tend to think the other side’s full of idiots, but I know I’m not serious.  I’m chatting with a gray haired guy and he seems reasonable.  I ask him if that sort of language doesn’t get in the way of a real discussion.  He looks at me funny and I clarify.  I say that calling us evildoers is about as bad as calling us “baby eating cannibals." To this he enthusiastically agrees; we are all “baby eating cannibals."  I can only hope he was being “ironic."

I can’t help but notice, except for a few exceptions, that listening to these speakers is a lot like going to church, but instead of Amen or hallelujah they respond with “We the People."  It doesn’t have the militant punch of “Power to the People,” but it’s fine.  It’s like going to church but without the snazzy Filipino choir.  There’s a speaker saying quite a lot of things, but there’s no real discussion.  I make a few attempts to start a dialogue with other attendees and it just gets bogged down by emotion--righteous anger.  

I don’t agree with many things this rally represents but I do have the feeling that there’s something fundamentally wrong in this country.  Ideologically I am so far apart from this crowd I might as well be from Orange County, but I recognize that the only way we’ll find a solution to the problems this country faces is to sit down and talk it out.  Maybe I’m wrong, but my impression of this movement makes me think it has no place for me if I don’t believe exactly what they believe.  Maybe that’s the way it should be, but I’m pretty sure that’s not going to cut it.  We have enough politicians in Washington fighting for scraps and forgetting who elected them; we can’t let ourselves become a mirror to that.  

Or, maybe it’s the other way around. Maybe those Washington bureaucrats are behaving exactly the way we mean them to--they're a mirror of us.   For the love of God, if we can’t have a reasonable discussion about politics over a meal or a drink, should we expect our elected representatives to be better?

I take a break while someone talks about urban farming.  I don’t imagine that they’ll be talking about vertical farms; I figure it’ll be all about local grown farming and urban gardening.  The topic is interesting, but my bladder is full.  The nearest bathroom is at the Los Angeles Mall.  It’s the worst mall in the city.  It’s so bad that teens don’t hang out there.  I’m grateful it at least has a food court and I get to use the bathroom.  On the way out I notice a set of four coin-op games.  They have Super Street Fighter Alpha--I was never too good at it and hence never a fan of it--and they have Lethal Enforcers.  Now that’s a game I remember playing a lot back in the late 90s at that Glendale arcade off Brand--the one that’s still open.  I might as well take a real break and shoot some criminals in the face.  It’s a fun and absurd way to pass the time in the heart of our city--playing Lethal Enforcers.  

It’s the high point of the day.   

I get back to the rally and nothing is going on.  I ask some of the people who are sitting and waiting some questions.  I try to ask them if there will be more speakers.  It feels like some sort of faux pas or dare to ask a question of some random people.  

I give that up and head to the stage where there are a couple of people fussing with a coffin.  The gray haired guy is there and I ask him about what’s going on; thankfully he answers and tells me that the rally is on a break.  I get to talking with one of the people fussing with the red, white, and blue coffin next to the stage.  It’s for the death of Uncle Sam procession they’re having tomorrow out on the Westside.  It sounds like a interesting event, but it’s at 10:30 a.m. and I’m not too sure if I’m about that.  We talk about the mask they put on the dummy.  Apparently, you can’t find an Uncle Sam mask off the shelf.  They had to take a generic old man’s mask and modify it.  They did a rather good job with it, taking hair from back of the mask to give Uncle Sam his goatee and sideburns.

I move on to the back area and have a cigarette.  There, I finally have an interesting conversation with a young man about a lot of things.  Eventually we get to talking about the issues at hand.  It’s the kind of back and forth, two-way-street discussion people should be having.  I explained to him my values and fears and he talked about his.  We talked about the feeling that something was wrong with America and when I told him how I could find no solutions, he had some suggestions.  

We talked about some of the communities around this country that are experimenting with currency and printing their own.  And we had an actual discussion about the feasibility of bartering in today’s economy.  I’m not so sure of the effectiveness of these solutions but I’d be willing to study them and investigate them.

When the speakers start up again I make the mistake of sitting to listen.  It’s a lecture about the history of corporations that starts with their origins in Europe. It’s fine for the most part but I stop in my tracks when she suggests that our Founding Fathers left England to escape the tyranny of the evil ... British East India Company?  When she says this I look around to see if anyone else is having as bad a reaction to that as I am, but everyone else is okay with it.  I’ve had enough, so I leave.  

On the way out I take note of a cute little dog; it’s got a sweater on it.  The little dog’s a yipper and a jumper full of energy and spirit.  And as I’m heading out to my bus stop this little dog’s just starting to run around frantically and crazily chasing its tail.  It spins around and around in circles and I wonder if it knows that it’s even doing that.  If it even realizes that it’s running in circles, does it think that it’s actually accomplishing something?  Then I get to the bus stop and hop the bus back home.