Lessons From St. Francis?

Cimabue's portrait of the Saint above is said to be a fair likeness of his appearance, largely because it was painted within a few decades of his death in Assisi, apparently with the advice of some of the brothers who knew Francesco in life.

There's something deeply sad and other worldly about it. The full-length portrait, in the Lower Church of the Basilica of St. Francis:

shows him with the Stigmata which he acquired toward the end of his life, well after the founding of the Franciscan Orders, and well after the time when the administration of those Orders had been taken from Francesco and put in the hands of Brother Elias, one of his first and most ardent followers -- and conveniently an administrative and architectural genius, though not necessarily a political one, as Elias himself would be removed from his position of authority over the Franciscan Orders in turn.

Cimabue's version of St. Francis is quite different than the more famous versions of Giotto in the same church; most of Giotto's versions show Francesco in a kind of mystical ecstacy, for the man had visions and heard voices after all. Today, of course, we'd call that a "condition" and label it schizophrenia, especially if its onset comes during the patient's early 20's, as was the case with the young Francesco. Medication and treatment would be advised, though a cure remains elusive.

But in Francesco's day, such a condition was considered either of God or the Devil, and appropriate tests and ordeals could be administered to determine which. In Francesco's case, he managed to charm the Bishop of Assisi right off the bat, so the tests weren't necessary, and from that point, the issue of whether he was possessed of demons or was a child of God simply wasn't an issue any more. With the Bishop's imprimatur, Francesco was pretty much left alone to develop his mission and calling as he and Divine Wisdom considered fit and proper and to gather about him such followers as he might.

His approach varied considerably depending on his state of mind. Francesco appears to have both bipolar and schizophrenic such that he was continually beset with contrasting states of utter joy and crippling depression. Add on top of this mental/emotional chaos his frequent physical illnesses and his penchant for mortification of the flesh and we have a picture of a man who must have had a very difficult time functioning at all, something that Cimabue seems to have captured in the portrait above. There is a definite "WTF?" impression about it.

Whatever his personal woes, Francesco's legacy is as vibrant today as his life's work was in his own time, though changes have been made to accommodate the Franciscan Orders to the needs and requirements of the Church. For their part, Franciscans have a mixed legacy through history, though apparently in Francesco's own time, there was no doubt about his and his followers' holiness.

Part of the Franciscans' mixed legacy has to do with their service to the Church and especially to the Spanish Crown in the New World -- which led to such unspeakable horrors against the Indians that even now the mind and heart recoils at what was done and why. The Pueblo Revolt in New Mexico resulted in the execution of 21 Franciscan priests (The Martyrs) who'd been sent to the Natives to save their souls, but wound up tormenting, exploiting and oppressing them -- on the orders of the Church and the Crown, of course -- sometimes quite as viciously as anything Francesco did to himself, if not more so.

Old Cross of the Martyrs in Santa Fe. Erected in 1920 in honor of the 21 Franciscan priests put to death during the first days of the Pueblo Revolt in 1680.

The issue for the Indians was not so much of an issue for the Spanish or their Franciscan missionaries, whose dismissal of Native interests and concerns was notorious throughout their era of conquest. I can't help but think that Francesco himself would not have approved of the highhanded and destructive behavior of the conquerors of the New World -- not that anybody who mattered would listen to him.

There was no real conception of a New World when Francesco lived -- except in the sense of that which could be acquired through Crusades against the Muslims, the Fourth of which got under way during Francesco's lifetime. That led to a remarkable encounter -- or perhaps a series of them -- between the Sultan of Egypt and Francesco at the Sultan's camp in the Nile Delta while a cease-fire between the Crusaders and the Sultan's forces was in effect. Francesco sought to convert the Sultan who had other ideas, but who saw the little monk (Francesco was said to be about 5'4") as a more appealing avatar of the infidel Christians, and with whom he apparently enjoyed parlaying. The Sultan was not converted, but he seems to have become enough of an admirer of Francesco that once the Holy City of Jerusalem was retaken from the Crusaders, the Franciscans were the only Christians allowed back in to care for the Christian holy sites, said to be due to the fact that St. Francis himself had provided the model of consideration and respect for the interests and views of Muslims, a characteristic that later Franciscans would have some trouble applying to the Indians of the New World.

Yes, I know, what happened wasn't entirely their fault, but it's much like the continuing problem of abusive police and military forces in our own day. Abuses become institutionalized far more easily than care and consideration, and failure to oppose or intervene in cases of abuse becomes just as institutionalized. Once that's the case, it is very hard -- almost impossible -- to change the dynamic without completely overturning the status quo. Franciscans may not have wanted to be, but they were participants in the abuses by their secular compatriots, and on some occasions might well have led the abuse.

Early on, though, Francesco and his followers had profound insights into the human condition -- both spiritually and temporally -- as it was in Italy at the turn of the 13th Century. They sought and put into practice another way of living, creating a Utopian spiritual and temporal world of their own in the midst of the crumbling mess being made of Umbria and Italy by The Powers That Be. Their Utopia was based on Poverty, Chastity, and Obedience (to God). They lived simply, served their fellow sufferers and nature, and expressed a joyfulness in life and creation that was practically unheard-of in connection with either the Church or secular powers at the time. The contrast between the simplicity of their lives and their joy in living compared to the misery that even the highest of the mighty seemed to suffer from was instrumental in building up the early membership in the Franciscan Orders, and that success inspired others to found Orders of their own; in Assisi, that meant the Poor Clares, founded by St. Clare, an admirer (and some claim a lover, but I think not) of St. Francis.

St. Clare of Assisi, the Patron Saint of Television, from a fresco by Simone Martini in the Lower Church of the Basilica of St. Francis in Assisi

The key, of course, for both the Franciscans and the Poor Clares was the simplicity and material poverty of their lives; they found it was possible to live well without striving in the material world. There was plenty enough for the well-being of all. They lived well enough on the surplus of the land and the gifts of their admirers that their communities became magnets for others would do likewise. And in their time, they were very successful.

A great deal of the material presence of St. Francis, St. Clare, and their followers has been preserved in Assisi and round about Umbria and Italy, so it is possible today to not only retrace their steps but to get a remarkably full picture of what their lives and their Utopia was like. And at least some of that picture was translated to the New World through the Franciscan missions that were established in California and New Mexico among other places.

It's actually remarkable to see how closely those missions followed the pattern set in Assisi and Umbria centuries beforehand. Each of the Missions was intended to be an expression of the Franciscan ideal. To an extent, they worked, at least for a time.

They worked to the extent they were joyful, let's say. And when their joy was interrupted, as it always would be, much as happened to St. Francis himself, they could quickly turn into miserable sites of suffering and death.

Yet there is something about the Franciscan mission wherever it has been extended that those who experience it don't want to lose. Much to the disgust of some, for example, Franciscans are notorious for singing and dancing and putting on shows, somewhat like the Mormons, but without the breeding. They have always sought to serve the least advantaged among populations, to lift up the weakest, to gently chastise the proud and the strong. St. Francis and St. Clare were notorious in their own time for feeding and caring for the lepers of Assisi, as many Franciscans today feed and care for those our current societies fear, denounce and despise. Their vows of poverty have meant they never lack for what they really need, and the community and companionship they find with one another and with those they serve has long been a model for intentional communities far and wide.

The ideal of a Franciscan community is to be as self-sufficient as possible, but as a mendicant order, Franciscans rely on the generosity of adherents and admirers as well as what the friars can do for themselves. In other words, they can produce for their own needs to a certain extent, but they can also benefit from the material surplus of the wider society. That surplus is ever-present.

Francesco himself demonstrated that repeatedly, but perhaps best known is the church of San Damiano outside of Assisi where he had gone to pray. The church was falling to ruin, and as he prayed, he heard a voice telling him to rebuild the church. He took it quite literally; accomplishing the task, however, seemed to him to require money for stone and building materials, which he got through the sale of cloth and his mule. But the priest at San Damiano refused the money, which he thought was ill-gotten, as the cloth he had sold belonged to Francesco's father. Francesco threw the money on the window-sill, so the story goes, and retreated to the church basement, where he stayed as a hermit for a month or so trying to understand what was wanted of him. Finally, he went back to Assisi to face his father's wrath, leading ultimately to the famous scene of Francesco's renunciation of his father and all his material things before the Bishop of Assisi, and his return to San Damiano as a mendicant and penitent. Shortly, followers came with stone and building materials, and the church of San Damiano was rebuilt from the generosity of those who had witnessed the scene in Assisi's plaza and had heard Francesco's call.

San Damiano became the initial convent for the Poor Clares, and Francesco moved on to repair and rehabilitate other rural churches and chapels in the Assisi region.

In doing so, the Franciscans often simply "occupied" vacant, abandoned, neglected, and run down buildings or took over land that was otherwise going unused. They didn't ask permission, they just did it. And from time to time, that got them into trouble with the authorities, both with the Church and secular authorities, leading to conflicts and struggles that would not be unfamiliar to observers today given the travails and attempts at repressing the Occupy movement.

Of course it helped somewhat that Francesco himself was a favorite of Bishops and the Pope in Rome and that the Franciscan Order had the imprimatur of the Pope; only two years after Francesco's death, he was proclaimed a Saint by Papal decree. Despite the political turmoil of the times, having such high level patronage was of immense assistance in establishing and legitimizing the Franciscans. So far as I can tell, Occupy has no such patronage from On High.

But the "occupation" strategy was very definitely -- and often successfully -- utilized by Francesco and the Franciscans as their movement grew.

Yet the minute Francesco was elevated to sainthood, what was left of the innocence of the Franciscan movement was lost. The Basilica of St. Francis in Assisi is a gorgeous pilgrimage site that contrasts starkly with the humble places where St. Francis actually lived and did his spiritual and temporal work. When parts of the Basilica's ceiling fell during an aftershock of the 1997 Umbrian Earthquake, killing four -- two Franciscans and two engineers checking for damage -- it was shocking (the video is still terrifying -- and seems to presage other events). The ceiling collapsed over the entrance and the altar -- ie: at opposite ends of the church. Repairs were undertaken quickly, and restoration was beautifully done, but the frescoes were lost from those areas of the ceiling that collapsed, and many other frescoes were damaged. In a sense, it was perhaps a reminder that Francesco would never have approved a church like that to honor his memory. It's too fine, too beautiful and far too decorative. Yet as someone from Assisi pointed out to him when he was railing against the fine accommodations the city had built for pilgrims who were already coming to Assisi in his lifetime, "This wasn't built for you. It was built by and for the Assisi Commune."

If there is a lesson from St. Francis for the modern era, apart from the spiritual, it is in the determination and persistence of Francesco to throw off the shackles of his past and adopt a new and simpler way of life, based on his profoundest beliefs in what was right and moral, and to hold on to his beliefs and practices through thick and thin.

Pax et bonum.

Simplicity, Intentional Community, and Infiltration -- or zOMG!!1 UR doinit wrng!!!

This post is prompted partly by my experience watching a good deal of the Austin, TX General Assembly and its aftermath last night on the Livestream (btw, all props to John, I think it was, who was handling the internetcast with aplomb and good humor and stuck with it throughout.)

ZOMG!!! Those poor people. Oh, my, fucking, god.

All right, now everybody who's tried it acknowledges that the General Assembly process, the participatory democracy that's at the core of the Occupations, is a BITCH (in a completely gender neutral way, btw) to learn and to do. It goes against every level of conditioning most of us have had most of our lives. Ideally, there is no hierarchy and there is no leadership in a General Assembly; there is a format, an agenda, moderators (sometimes with assistance), a recorder, and participants. That's it. Consensus must be achieved to move forward, and we're talking about consensus in the purest form. In the models from Europe and North Africa, there are no votes. Oh really? Nope. Consensus is achieved when no one objects to -- or blocks -- a proposal. Consensus doesn't mean, in other words, that everybody agrees; it means that no one is in sufficient opposition to block the proposal.

This is a concept of democracy that I doubt many people have ever heard of. There is grounding for not taking votes, but I'm not going to get into that here. Instead I'll link to the Quick Guide on Group Dynamics (pdf) which is the basic operating manual for General Assembly. Getting access to this document was not easy in the early days of #OccupyWallStreet. I found it through the Stimulator, and I wouldn't have found the Stimulator if I wasn't watching the balky and often offline Livestream from New York which sometimes used Stimulator clips as filler when the media team in Liberty Plaza was having yet another crisis.

The Quick Guide is now available at the Occupy Together Wiki site where you can also find a lot of additional helpful operational information, but to find it, you pretty much have to have a key. I got it from this post at Corrente. This difficulty of accessing the most basic operational information has meant that many of the Occupations are spontaneously arising but then they are flying blind. They may have seen the operations of a General Assembly and/or Working Group on the New York Livestream -- or maybe not. Not everyone involved can sit in front of a computer all the live long day and night absorbing Occupation information. And a lot of those who spend more time in front of a computer than I do have no idea this information even exists.

So it's no wonder many of the Occupations are having severe operational problems and some are floundering badly.

Back to those poor people in Austin. They have the format down, pretty much, and the basic structure is in place for General Assembly, much more so than is the case in Sacramento (which I'll try to get to before the end of this post), but they wound up not at a good place. That was so for several reasons that I could spot right off:

The Assembly space was set up outdoors on the steps of the City Hall, but it was arranged like a nightclub. There was a sort of rostrum or stage on the left where the moderators held forth and the audience (they were a passive audience, not active participants) sat quietly (well, until they wouldn't put up with it any more) in a semi-circle listening to the speakers who were using a club-caliber PA that was as loud as what you would expect at Open Mic night at the Comedy Room and which literally overwhelmed and overrode any other discussion or comment whatsoever.

The moderator said he was trained in conflict mediation, and yet was constantly trying to assert authority over the General Assembly, telling participants what they could and could not do or say and how -- or whether -- they could present their proposals or participate in discussion, interfering constantly, and otherwise ratcheting up the tension and animosity toward him and toward the process itself until it nearly reached an explosive level.

I'm a trained conflict mediator and meeting facilitator, too, and because I am, I will not, under any circumstance, volunteer to moderate or facilitate either a General Assembly or a Working Group, for the simple reason that I know, no matter how much I try to suppress it, my professional training and the skill set I have in mediation and meeting facilitation is going to emerge, and it is simply wrong for this process. I even hesitate to give advice. What I know how to do is not how this process works or can work, and even if I try not to, any advice I offer will have inappropriate elements that simply don't work and can't work in this kind of process.

Basically it boils down to this: while seeming to be "neutral," the mediator or facilitator is always in charge. At the core, mediation and facilitation are aspects of Authority. The Working Group and the General Assembly are supposed to be democratic bodies that eschew authority over others on an individual level. The Authority of the Working Group or General Assembly is that of the whole reached through discussion and consensus and not guided to a conclusion by a leader. *

They seemed to be trying to race to decisions or conclusions without adequate discussion or buy in by the Occupation participants. This led to more conflict, more attempts at "conflict resolution" -- rather than open discussion and development of ideas. This led to more hostility and conflict and so on. I was watching from 2000 miles away, and I could feel it in my bones. It was not pleasant, nor was it productive because people wound up focusing on individuals and their hostility toward them. I could spot what was going wrong but there was no way to intervene, and I doubt I would have done it anyway if I had been there. Each group has to work this shit out for themselves, and it's hard to do.

Much of what I was witnessing sounded like a group therapy session or even an AA meeting. Yikes! They seemed to recognize they were off track, but they couldn't get back on the right track on their own, and the moderator was not much help -- partly because he'd already inspired so much hostility among the group and because it seemed like he was on this therapeutic/recovery track too. Some of the others did try to intervene, but they didn't know quite what they needed to do to move the group back in the right direction without causing even more upset.

Finally, the Assembly was adjourned by the moderator -- who was quite huffy by this time. He acknowledged that the process was a problem for many of the people there and that the primary complaint was that it was taking too long and there were too many extraneous items; and, further, he acknowledged that many of the participants had a problem with his moderation of the General Assembly.

So, the Assembly broke up into Working Groups and Affinity Groups and the Livestream stayed with them. Some people were really angry at what they had just been through, but others seemed to take it in stride; things would work out in their own time, etc. That tends to be my attitude, but still... it is really tough emotionally. It is wrenching when you are so worked up and so angry at what is happening and you can't seem to do anything about it. You've got to get rid of this fury somehow or you're going to drown in your own venom. Oh how I know that to be true!

Some seemed to recognize it was misplaced anger, to boot. The source of the anger is outside the Occupations; it's found in the utter powerlessness of the People to affect the ruling elites through any conventional means, and what they were experiencing in the GA was an example of how what was driving the generation of the Occupations was being transferred directly into the Occupation itself. It was a very frustrating recognition.

The cameraman then went down the street to a coffee house where the Facilitator Working Group was meeting, "chaired" by -- facilitated by? I don't know -- the moderator (I think his name was Josh) who had just adjourned the General Assembly. There were moderators, facilitators, and other interested people in attendance, maybe fifteen or twenty altogether, and one just lit into this Josh fellow with a verbal chain saw. He took the floor, he would not yield, he was going to have his say no matter what Josh wanted or didn't want, and neither Josh nor anyone else could stop him.

He was furious, he was absolutely furious at what he had witnessed at the General Assembly; it took too long, he said it shouldn't take any more than half an hour, he was proposing that the time limit be a half an hour, and he seemed to be saying that he tried to make that proposal at General Assembly, but Josh wouldn't let him. From that point, he got pretty incoherent, but it seemed to be most about how manipulative and controlling Josh was trying to be, and how he would not let people state their case, he would interfere, he would restate, or he would simply refuse to allow someone to speak, and this guy just would not take it any more. Others were more subdued about it, and they tried not to make their criticisms personal, but it was clear that at least half and maybe more of those in attendance at this Working Group meeting thought that Josh had really screwed up. After a good deal of intense discussion about what had happened, Josh announced that he had a yoga class in the morning, he was tired, and this was not something he thought he could do any more. In effect, he quit. Many of those in attendance applauded.

As soon as he left, the remaining Working Group participants got down to business, discussed what needed to be discussed regarding future plans and moderating General Assemblies, came to tentative consensus on some issues, saved others for later, and basically ended the meeting on good terms.

After Josh left, nobody was officially chairing the meeting, nobody was leading the discussion, yet they were able to work through the matters they needed to, set others aside, and then go on with their lives.

The contrast between the hierarchical/authoritarian "leadership" model of running a meeting and the more free form leaderless model could not have been starker. It doesn't mean that one form is objectively better than the other. It means that one -- the hierarchical model --is not appropriate for this kind of endeavor.

I should point out that everyone I could see and everyone who spoke up in the Livestream of the Working Group was white and non-female-identified gendered (terminology can get a little baroque, eh?) Few were older than 35, most seemed a good deal younger, though there were a couple of old coots there for spice. I noticed, too, that at General Assembly, almost no one "talked Texan" (I hear more Texas-style talking in New Mexico than I heard at this General Assembly) whereas at the Working Group meeting, there was far more Texas talk. That got me thinking, too. Josh did not "talk Texan" but many of those who were challenging him did. The fellow who started off the litany of complaints, however, did not have a Texas twang. And I wonder if part of the issue with Josh was an identity thing: did the native Texans, in other words, see him as an outsider -- or even worse, a turncoat? People can get these notions in their heads and they can be especially corrosive when they're not conscious of it.

Yet despite all the internal dissension and turmoil in Austin, it was clear this was a highly cohesive group determined to make a positive difference in their own lives and those of others through the establishment of an Occupation and the intentional community that the Occupation inspires. I don't know how many were in total attendance, but I'd guess a hundred or so, and for the size and nature of the city that's pretty darned good. Many of them intended to stay the night on the City Hall steps. They would not be moved. It seemed to me from a distance that most of those in attendance were young and white and possibly from UT. There were a few people of color and of age, and some seemed to be old-line lefty activists, but it was not entirely clear that that was the case. I'm sure there was an anarchist or two, and there were probably members of other political factions -- at least one was a Ron Paul partisan, at least judging by his tee shirt. But it really doesn't matter what faction you're from unless you're trying to promote that faction unduly -- ie: it has nothing to do with the topic at hand. Otherwise, it's all good.

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In Sacramento, the Occupation is developing differently. Quite a bit differently, in part because of the Principal Issue: the arrests. There were none last night, I read, but I wasn't able to discover why before I started writing this. I suspect there was a decision at the GA that no one stay in the Plaza after 11pm, or whenever, and be subject to arrest. But I haven't found confirmation that was the case yet. Part of the problem with communications that afflict all the Occupations is that there is a super-abundance of information chaotically thrown out there in multiple fields and formats, and finding what you're looking for can be like searching for a needle in a haystack.

Last night, I was also following some of the action in Boston on the Livestream as their sub-camp was raided and destroyed by police while a hundred or so activists were arrested, some violently. There is so much going on. It's impossible to keep up.

Last night was the first night since the Occupation began in Sacramento when there were no arrests of Occupiers. There are plans tonight to ask the City Council to direct staff to cease and desist the arrest of peaceful petitioners for redress of grievance, or however they choose to word it. Talk about "baroque." They are about to be introduced to the utterly opaque and Byzantine operations of Sacramento city government. I haven't been closely involved with it in about 15 years, so maybe things have changed, but I doubt it. I know that some of the Occupiers are relatively familiar with how it works, but for others, the operations of City Government will come as a real shock. For example, they may think that the City Council or the Mayor have authority over city staff. For all practical purposes, they don't. They can direct staff, but they can't compel. The City Manager is actually in charge and is actually the decision maker. He is accountable only to the City Council, not to the public, and the only thing the City Council can do if they don't approve of what he is doing is fire him; but that can only happen if a super majority of the Council agrees. There have been reports that the arrests have been ordered by the City Manager, and the police are merely complying with what they are told to do. That's pretty obvious, but a couple of things arise: the Council can say whatever they want, and the City Manager can blow them off, and nothing will change. Second, it seems like the police are really tired of this nightly ritual, and they would very much like to defuse the issue. So my suspicion is that staff is working out some sort of quasi-accommodation such that the Occupation can continue without further arrests, but without official permission to "camp," and the city officials can get back to their important business of serving the interests of the NBA and other billionaires.

Sigh. That's how they used to handle these kinds of things; whether they will still do it this way, I don't know. There has been a lot of hostility between the City Manager's office and the Occupation.

As for process here, only the very basic outlines of the General Assembly and Working Groups are being implemented. There is a General Assembly at least once a day, and there are active Working Groups which report to the Assembly. This Occupation is not using the Quick Guide model of operation, however. Instead, they are using an informal version of Robert's Rules of Order. At least they were as of Saturday. I haven't been down to the Occupation since then. They're using it, I assume, because it is familiar -- and an agenda can be processed through real quick, lightning fast if need be. I got real nervous about doing things that way, it's gonna cause trouble, as it already has, over "leadership" issues, but so far, the Occupation has been able to keep modifying the rules so that no one person is The Leader, all are Leaders. The advantage I can see for this course is that things can stay pretty spontaneous, decision-making can be quick when need be, participants aren't discombobulated by a totally unfamiliar process, and the need for moderation and facilitation is limited, so people who are trained to do it aren't in a position to force issues or "agreeance." (A term heard at many Occupations. It is a Bushism.)

The focus shifts inevitably toward "doing something" -- events in other words -- rather than the process that leads to doing something. There are typically several marches a day, for example. There is a growing intentional community that is very simply arranged but which works very well. Of course it has to be set up and torn down every day because of the restriction on staying in the Plaza overnight, but the only real problem with that is that it is not an "occupation." It is a coming-and-going. Many "Occupations" are actually comings-and-goings and periodic events rather than taking ground and holding it. There has been no real conflict with the police, but there is -- at least as of Saturday -- no real liaison with them, either.

The arrests are frankly Agit-Prop Theater. They are staged and choreographed events, all very carefully worked out in advance with the legal team, volunteers for arrest, and whoever is in charge on the police end. From what I've seen, the police are actually using them as training opportunities for how to deal with civil unrest and demonstrations. They are varying their approaches and modifying their actions, apparently to try out different methods, and they have largely restricted witness access to what is going on and how they are doing it (which may be a violation of rights, among so many others.) The volunteers, the police, and the demonstrators are all playing their roles in a kind of nightly pageant focused on securing First Amendment rights of free speech and assembly and the right to petition the government for redress of grievance. Very straightforward.

No one has yet produced an ordinance, rule or regulation that authorizes closing the Plaza to the public between the hours of 11p or 12m and 5a. And no one has been able to justify the prohibition of an overnight demonstration or protest, when in fact the "public protest" ordinance is clear that public protest is a protected activity that does not require permits but is only subject to a fairly limited set of rules of conduct. That's all.

There have been some fairly intense personality clashes and people storming off in huff during the first few days of the Occupation, but really surprisingly little of it, and most of the tension that has arisen has had to do with "leadership" issues (as far as I can tell) -- most of which have been more or less temporarily resolved. Of course just bringing this very simple and yet very functional intentional community into being at all has been a major accomplishment which participants are very pleased about -- as they should be. The Sacramento Declaration of Occupation is still being modified, though I'm hearing there are efforts to rush it to completion for presentation tonight. I'm leery, but it's not my decision, and what I'm personally learning to do is to trust other people's decisions about the correct course of action -- and to let it be. This is an Evolution Revolution, and no one is in charge of it. No one has to be. It takes care of itself.

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The question of Infiltration has come to the fore after the story of the American Spectator editor who infiltrated the protest demonstration at the Air & Space Museum and helped provoke the overreaction of the museum's security staff, which in turn led to the pepper spraying of over 50 demonstrators, as well as some of the museum staff, and -- apparently -- the provocateur himself.

All I'd say is that infiltration and provocation by police and by political opponents is to be expected. The question is not whether it is happening, it is. The question is what you do about it, if anything. One thing I've noticed about almost all the Occupations I'm following is that there is no fear. They're really not afraid at all. They may want to think about being more on guard and more alert -- for example, I'm really uncomfortable with what happened on the Brooklyn Bridge. That was too much like "leading the lambs," and it would be good to find ways to counter that kind of thing before it happens or while it is happening rather than just letting it happen. The passivity I saw in the videos was alarming. But then, I'm old and I have memories...

I have said many times that as long as there are no secrets from one another the Occupations have nothing to fear from infiltrators or the police.

On the other hand, more and more alarm is being generated over the potential of "hijacking." Noises are coming out of the White House, for example, in "support." Sure. Right. Whatever. Democrats in Congress are cautiously exploring the possibility of potentially offering their "support." Whatever. Meanwhile, Republicans are hotly denouncing the whole thing. Whoa. Who'd a thunkit, eh? Media is cleaving in twain on self-interest and partisan lines. But the clearest signs of political infiltration and influence ("hijacking") are not from the Democrats, not by a long shot. Or by the unions. Or by the Marxists (ha!).

The most obvious -- and pretty successful -- efforts at infiltration and influence I've seen are from Ron Paul supporters, libertarians of all stripes, and something I'd never heard of before: The Zeitgeist Movement. And all I can say after looking at some of their material and watching a video or two is "WTF???!!!" This is a cult. You become a member of the cult when you can parse the complete gibberish its Leader spouts and then can Spread The Word. These people seem to be everywhere, and their gibberish is winding up in all sorts of Occupation documents and discussions. It's insidious. But then I've never been easily swayed by cultic nonsense. The closest I got to it was attending a couple of talks by a would-be cult leader who had been a follower of Ram Dass back in the day (he was still Baba Ram Dass back then). Gurus and cult leaders can be positive for people who need that sort of thing, but I'm not one of them, as anyone who's followed me around the internets has seen. I reject hero-worship and discipleship utterly.

Consequently, I'm attracted to a Revolutionary - Evolutionary movements like the Occupations almost instinctively. As I've said periodically, this IS the Revolution, whether we like it or not, whether we even know it or not. Once started, something like this cannot be stopped -- as many dictatorships have discovered to their surprise. On the other hand, where it will lead, no one yet knows. Not here and not abroad.

Everything's all in flux.

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*Frequently, there is no conclusion, there can't be. The matter isn't settled. This is one reason not to take votes and why a single individual can block consensus. In New York they've modified the process so that there sometimes are votes (90% rule for example) and they characterize a block as something so serious you really don't want to do it unless you absolutely cannot bring yourself not to. Someone who feels they have to block a proposal that is otherwise supported by consensus, and who still blocks even after extensive discussion and modification to suit the needs of the blocker, will generally face the 90% vote, and if the proposal is adopted, the blocker will have to leave the Occupation.

But in other cases, if the there is no consensus on a proposal, it will be tabled and be sent back to a Working Group or wherever it came from to be reconsidered and reworked. And it may then go back to General Assembly over and over until consensus is reached or the proposal is dropped.

It is a very slow and inefficient process for most items. Given the iconic use of the Human Microphone to communicate in New York, it also takes two or three (or sometimes four) times as long to state the proposal and conduct the discussions as it would if someone were using a PA system to address passive listeners.

And yet, the Human Microphone, as many observers have noted, is actually one of the keys that makes for a functioning intentional community at Liberty Square. The Human Microphone is a participatory tool par excellence. There's really nothing else like it. It is used in some other Occupations, but many do not use it, preferring to use bull horns and PA systems if they can, or to speak unamplified to a relatively close in audience.

OT: The Model Tenement

According to social theory at the time, from the late 1800's to well into the Mid-20th Century and later, the tenement was the primary social problem to be corrected. You can see from plans presented earlier that the typical tenement was very small: a 3 room tenement would run about 340 square feet; a 4 room tenement would be about 420 square feet. These are not unusual sizes for Manhattan apartments today, of course, but in the era in question, space used today for one or at most two people was considered (even by the reformers) sufficient for 6. Or more.

Households, of course, were larger then. But cramming so many people into such tiny spaces, without adequate ventilation or plumbing, was a recipe for public health crises, fiery tragedies, and all-too-frequent mayhem. Crime bred and flourished under conditions of overcrowding and poverty, and there was a real fear among the middle and upper classes that the masses would one day rise and put a stop to the frivolous ways of their betters.

The tenement was said to be the breeding ground and the center of all sorts of public health and socio/political problems. It was sincerely believed that correcting the tenement problem would solve many others.

Social reformers like Mabel Hyde Kittredge -- whom I have periodically mocked in these entries -- saw it as their bounden duty to improve the lives of their social inferiors and to raise them up from their state of abject misery. Their notions of what to do were not always wrong, by any means. On the other hand, placing too much blame on the tenement itself and being blind to the other social, economic, and political issues of the day was typical for many reformers of the day.

That focus on housing pretty much by itself led to the creation of many working class housing projects that were intended to improve the lot of the struggling workers and get them out of the miseries inherent in the tenement.

Many of such projects have since been demolished. For many of those who were transferred from the tenement slums to the Projects found themselves in an even worse situation than before. Their living conditions might have been marginally improved, but their social fabric and way of life was often destroyed, with nothing viable to take its place.

"If only they lived more like us," the reformers' thinking went, "they'd be more like us, and thus... less of a threat."

So Mabel Hyde Kittredge established Model Tenements in order to teach the residents how to live more like her own middle class self, give them something to aspire to, and to provide them with a foundation for living "better" regardless of where they found themselves. She recruited girls from the neighborhood -- and charged them fees -- to be students of her tenement housekeeping and other courses, and she opened her Model Tenements to view to anyone who chose to take a look, providing residents, tourists slumming, and other social reformers points to ponder over the intractable Problem of the Tenement.

Bertha Smith wrote "The Gospel of Simplicity as Applied to Tenement Homes" for Gustav Stickley's The Craftsman magazine in October, 1905. It detailed the efforts of housing reformers, and particularly Mrs. Hyde Kittredge, in their efforts to provide models and training for the dwellers of New York tenements.

And so, we'll let Bertha H Smith open today's lesson:



Uhhh, "the tyranny of things" is certainly a factor in practically everyone's life, but her assertion that house furnishing has led to more crime than anything else is... surprising. Of course narcotics were legal back then, but still...

Of course the point of this lesson is to convince the immigrant hordes that living simply is better in every respect than living in the tawdry and chaotic manner so many of "those people" did.


The problem, though, is that the "tyranny of things" was hardly as acute for the poor immigrant masses as it was for the middle and upper classes -- like Miss Smith and Mrs Hyde Kittredge. If anyone needed to hear the Gospel of Simplicity it was the members of those classes. But then, I think the Misses S and K knew that. Bertha Smith's article, after all, appeared in "The Craftsman," the monthly magazine of Gustav Stickley, and the veritable Bible of strictly simple middle class living even today. In other posts I have gone into some detail about Craftsman houses and the near religious fervor with which their owners regard them.

To be continued...