Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
Heard on the radio today some of the difficulties of managing
donations when no one's in charge--OWS has received $400,000, mostly in
$20s. They need a couple thousand a day for food and such. All
expenditures must be approved up through committees and then by the
ENTIRE GROUP. They just voted to send $20,000 to Occupy Oakland--which
was probably a simpler, faster decision than to spend whatever they did
on storage lockers for themselves.

Plus there's the problem of who signs the check or the debit card in a
leaderless community. As NPR said, "money wants a leader, it seems."
  

    
Great - Toss the money to Oakland and now Oakland has to decide how to
spend that money through committee.
I suspect Oakland will send $2k to Sacramento so they can share in the
decision process on how to spend their windfall  :-)
  

    
#71: the police brutality videos they didn't remove are unrelated to
Oakland.
  

    
Last night there was an interesting poignant moment at Occupy SF
general assembly. just a few blocks from work here.  One man was
reporting on the thousands of dollars in expenditures needed to keep
porta-potties being emptied and a health-department compliant kitchen
cooking for the encampment. The porta=potty saga was complex and
expensive. He was saying "the Health Department will fine us X hundred
per day if we do not comply."   

A pale man with a black and white print bandana covering his face,
standing at the back of the gathering, asked "Who exactly is 'us'?"  

He was greeted with perplexed looks.  I almost laughed as I thought
about his bold implication of OWSsf being un-finable.   

He rephrased it to something like, "Just who would they attempt to
fine?"  

The calm, tired man who had been giving the report said, "They will
fine whoever ordered the porta-potties.  I believe that it the
Unitarians, and Answer, and Occupy SF on the contract, at this point." 


The masked character said nothing.  

The meeting continued.

To me it was a marvelous moment of Inspired Idealist Activist meets
Reality-Based Pragmatic volunteer.  These are the moments where what
can change now and how things work are made visible.  I was amused at
how I almost went for the anonymous fantasy that Occupy is 99% of us
and thus can't be fined... and how obvious it was that that is not the
case. (Black-bandana man, are you learning as you go? We have no way to
know.)  

Hooray for those who are raising money for the toilet cleaning,
kitchen plumbing and other non-glamorous services.  Thanks for taking
responsibility, providing the platform for the gathering. 
  

    
nypd raids liberty plaza - judge issues restraining order to allow
occupiers to return

http://noebie.net/nypd-raids-occupy-wall-street/

prior to the raid, the nyc general assembly posted on their site "you
can't evict an idea whose time has come"

http://occupywallst.org/article/you-cant-evict-idea-whose-time-has-come/
  

    

Live stream here:  http://www.ustream.tv/TheOther99
  

    
Over the past 2 days the Davis pepperspray video has been a sensation
everywhere.  The tv news even showed the spraying into the faces of
seated protesters. You have probably seen it by now. The video that
shows the non-violent reaction of the student crowd is longer, but
remarkably moving and revealing.  It's a don't miss, and to get the
full effect watch the whole thing unfold.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=WmJmmnMkuEM

In the course of looking at that and telling a few people about it, I
was pointed to an older video, about police provocateurs in Canada
using "Black Bloc" costumes to attempt to provoke a riot.  It shows one
example of something we all know happens.  It also underscores the
importance of citizen video witness, and of using the web to do
detective work and ask the right questions.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqiba2m4mbw
  

    
Very disturbing to watch that.  What is more disturbing is the amount
of high tech weapons and equipment they have.  I bet 2 things:  they
treat them like toys and the feds funded the distribution to local
police.  
  

    
Yes, disturbing.  But I highly recommend this footage showing the UC
Davis prez walking to her car.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8775ZmNGFY8. Powerful response by
students.
  

    
I don't know if it's still the case, but there used to be all sorts of
federal grants for local law enforcement to "up armor" their
departments, develop SWAT teams, etc.   The joke at the time being
"even the Berkeley Library Police have a SWAT team!"
  

    
Book him, Danno!
  

    
This is what the War on Terror has really been preparing for.
  

    

Exactly.
  

    
So far it's been about as effective as putting out a fire with
gasoline.
  

    

Puts the trainees in a bit of a dilemma.  They may have thought they were
prepared for "The Other," but what about neighborhood kids and 
grandparents?
  

    
How many cops does UC Davis need?  That video showed a pretty big
contingent.
  

    
I believe that those were both campus and city cops.