The Drought, The Poors and Economic Confusion

There is talk that New Mexico's economy is "turning around," this despite the continuing federal budget cutbacks due to the sequester and the various local and state government financial difficulties due to the Permanent Recession, the housing market collapse, and other more subtle -- and frankly more New Mexican -- factors; for example, The Drought.

But SpaceX signed a deal at the Spaceport the other day, so things are looking up. And Richard Branson isn't bugging out on the Spaceport like he seemed to be doing, so what's the problem?

Supposedly, private sector hiring and employment are up  for the first time in a long time, and government employment is stable -- so long as you don't count the sequester. In our own neighborhood, two of the long time empty places seem to be occupied again, or they soon will be, and another one is possibly going on the market shortly. So may be...

Things are looking up.

I've been reading a novel called "Not As It Seems," by a local writer, Ed Chavez. In it, he describes a drought in this area that began in 1941 and didn't break for 16 years. Locals feel we're in that kind of drought again, perhaps one that will last longer -- who knows, what with Climate Change and all -- and just like before, there will be massive social changes because of it. Part of the likely change is impoverishment.

Things may be looking up in certain sectors and for certain people, but out here in the country, we see clear skies, or clouds that try but don't drop any rain, and we see parched and seer landscape all around and dust and grit filling the air, blowing off the plowed but still barren farm fields. The signs are there, and those who remember the 1950's drought are feeling the weight of history. They know what could happen.

The Rio Grande is already dry below Elephant Butte, and water tables are dropping along the valley limiting irrigation water. Much of Southern New Mexico's commercial farming will be impossible this year -- and for how many more years to come? Nobody knows.

Many people have long pointed out how unsustainable Albuquerque is even in good times, but the city keeps trying to grow. It must do so under the current economic and political regime, a regime that doesn't accept "sustainability" as a fundamental principle -- as opposed to a temporary fashion. "Growth" is the only principle recognized. And perpetual growth is unsustainable.

Albuquerque is actually a relatively modest example of civic unsustainability. Phoenix, Las Vegas (NV), even Los Angeles itself strike me as more fraughtful examples, but we may see a prelude in Albuquerque to what could be in store for many cities in the Southwest and elsewhere as a new weather regime settles in for the long haul.

But things are looking up!

Albuquerque has the advantage of being divided into sectors and ancient barrios and villages. What is now a bloated cityscape grew from tiny beginnings more than three hundred years ago, beginnings that were scattered along the Rio Grande in the shadow of a dozen abandoned Indian pueblos and bordering the two remaining pubeblos, Isleta and Sandia -- the presence of which strictly limits the growth of Albuquerque to the south and north. Those beginnings are still there, whether it's Barelas or Los Ranchos, or any number of others that may have been absorbed by the Albuquerque metroplex, but which still retain their independent character.

In other words, it seems at least psychologically possible to "go back" to the cores of the city's parts. It's not that long ago, after all, when there were still fields beside Old Town, and Rio Rancho, among other suburbs, didn't exist.

On the other hand, when the previous droughts have come, people have abandoned the country-side for the relative comfort and prosperity of the City. At least in the City, they believed, they had a chance, whereas out in the country, they didn't. Without water, without rain, there was no future to be found in the fields, and depending on motor traffic for sustenance, as was the case, for example, along Route 66, is risky at best. When the Drought settles in, that's it. Despite the of best intentions, one can't really ride it out. By the time the Drought breaks, you've long been dead.

What to do, then?

The Drought forces those who depend on the land for a living to consider -- and accept -- some alternative, because the land simply can't provide for them. If they recognize that the City alternative may actually be closed off to them (it's already apparent that Santa Fe, for example, has rolled up the welcome mat -- for some -- for the duration),  then thoughts of escape out of the region altogether may be necessary. That's one reason why the Spaceport looms large in the imagination. What better escape than to space?

Well, except for the fact that you have to come back...

One of our neighbors actually works in California. It's a long haul back and forth, but he claims it's necessary, because of the lack of employment opportunity around here... he gets paid a lot more in California, too. They just don't want to live in California. They have an Airstream, the husband works for several months at a time, lives in the trailer, comes back for a few weeks, then he is off to California again. It's an... alternative lifestyle. And at least to my way of looking at it, it's an adaptation to reality. (Well, I should know. Like a lot of people, we've never worked in New Mexico. Almost all our current income is derived from California employment.)

As long as the roads remain open... this kind of alternative is open.

Because of the Interstate, there actually are some employment opportunities where we live now -- and more are coming due to the construction of another truck stop. But the local workers I've talked to are not that enthusiastic about their prospects. Pay is low. Poverty level low. And when you're working in a low-end store or shop where you can't afford to buy anything, it can be severely depressing. One of the workers I talked to the other day says she's going to school full time so she can have a career in the medical field, and she works two low-wage retail jobs so she can afford school and childcare. Thank god, she says, she'll graduate next spring.

Even if there were enough work for everyone who wants a job, this wouldn't be an uncommon situation.

She's poor and she knows it, but she believes her schooling and training should boost her at least one rung up the economic ladder -- so she can "breathe" she says.

I hope so for the sake of her sanity, her health and her kids....

But for so many others, there are neither opportunities nor a future. I've written many times that the Future -- as an image, an idea, a goal -- has been stolen from us by those who deem themselves Our Betters, and they have no intention of giving it back, under any circumstance. The Future -- as it used to be -- is now their sole possession, and their goal now is gaining immortality, so they can hold onto it forever.

The common people have no Future. And the young feel the loss more than any.

For many of the young, there is not only no Future, there is  no chance for one.

What will they do?

We see signs of an explosion of anger and despair, even revolutionary murmurings, but not -- yet -- overthrow of the prevailing system of financializing, looting, extraction and rent-seeking by the Highest of the Mighty.

Can't "overthrow" the system without something to replace it with, né?

Well, yes, actually, "overthrow" doesn't require a pre-existing substitute, but will "overthrow" ever happen?

We don't know; no one can foresee well enough to predict the (non-existent?) Future. But we have seen preludes to Revolution, and if we use our peripheral vision, we might see the prefiguring of a Future, not only after the Revolution comes, but what happens then.

In part, the past of New Mexico may be a guidepost to the Future -- if we squint just a little and use our imaginations to visualize what once was and what could be again.

Drought is the ever-present reality we face right now, a drought that may linger for many more years to come. We don't know. Life seems to go on as it always has, the rhythms of the seasons haven't changed, the wind still blows, and we pray for rain as the ancestors have long done. The ancient social and cultural roots in New Mexico have weathered many, many persistent droughts -- and much worse -- and somehow the rootstock has survived. Even flourished.

In other words, there is a cultural/social pattern here that ensures the society as a whole gets through pretty much anything that comes along -- even when people have to move from rougher areas to more benign ones, and various parts of the whole are abandoned temporarily or permanently.

I've mentioned the prevalence of ruins in New Mexico, for example -- abandoned sites falling back into the earth from whence they came litter the place, yet many get reclaimed in the by and bye as other people come along to make do in what was once abandoned. It's a cycle, as natural as the wind.

In the meantime, many, many alternative living sites and intentional communities are inaugurated.  Some of them persist. They all have their own quirks and individual characters, and yet they all partake of the spirit of place, so in some sense they're all united. If they depend on farming for survival, they may be facing existential difficulty due to the drought, but many don't rely on their farm fields and livestock to sustain them.

What I see happening, though I can't be certain about it, is that more and more New Mexicans are recognizing the unreliability of the various lifestyle props we take for granted and are shifting into another frame of mind about it.

One factor is the shift of economic expectations. This is as acute here as anywhere else. It's basically a matter of recognizing and accepting the fact that we don't really need all the devices and props we've become accustomed to in order to live well. Living well often doesn't require either material or financial abundance. A sufficiency will do quite nicely, thank you.

It can be confusing to shift expectations from over-abundance to sufficiency, however. That confusion leads to many missteps and misperceptions. So many of us are conditioned to expect more, more, more, more devices, more cars, insurance, cable, new houses, clothes, appliances, and so on. Few of us seem to know how to get by without them, or with fewer of them. So many of us assume that the lack of material and financial lifestyle underpinnings is the definition of poverty, and many assume that no one can live well without lots of money and lots of stuff -- new stuff at that.

The quest for lots of money and lots of stuff is what kept the overall economy going for generations. But now, apparently, that era is over. We might never go back to it, might never have the opportunity to go back to it.

There are now at least two distinctly different -- and quite separate -- economies, one that serves the rich with extraordinary, indeed obscene, abundance, generally through a combination of automatic payments (often called rent-seeking) from the masses, and what amounts to rounds and rounds of thefts from one another. It is medieval on an unprecedented global scale.

The rest of us, quite literally, have a completely separate economy that primarily operates to ensure the perpetual financial indebtedness of the masses to their Betters -- Betters who are becoming their Masters. More medievalism on an unprecedented global scale.

Then there are those who insist on separating themselves from all of it.

The fact that you can still do that is something of a wonder. As things solidify into neo-feudalism (but without the necessity of old-fashioned mutual responsibilities)  I doubt that the opportunities for alternatives and intentional communities and so on will be widespread or endure. The point of neo-feudalism is to become universal, with no alternatives available or permitted. This is certainly how conquest was conducted by essentially feudal Europeans in the New World. The Natives could submit, or the Natives could die. Often, the consequence of submission was death in any case. There was no way out.

Right now, we still have alternatives if we choose to take them up, but how much longer that will be the case, I don't know.

 There is likely to come a time when only a very special handful of people and communities will be able to withstand the pressure of becoming part of whatever social, economic and political future is being cobbled together for us.

But then, even at the worst of the previous feudal past, there was always resistance.

Things are looking up!

Democracy, Community, Consensus and David Graeber

David Graeber's Latest

There's been a spirited and extended discussion over at Naked Capitalism taking off from the reprint of an interview David Graeber gave to Lynn Parramore at Alternet. 

Graeber has taken on something of the sheen of a semi-divinity since the heady days of Occupy, an effort he had more than a little to do with, and some of his writings on the topics dear to the hearts of Occupiers everywhere have become modern classics -- maybe not Kropotkin level classics, but still.

His latest book is called "The Democracy Project: A History, A Crisis, A Movement." It's one I haven't read yet, but it is on my list, and it is available up in Santa Fe at Collected Works -- where I'll probably try to pick up one of their few remaining copies of Forrest Fenn's "Secrets of San Lazaro Pueblo" next time we're in town, so may as well pick up a copy of Graeber's book at the same time.

The discussion at NC is quite wide ranging, and it's not entirely about nit-picking Graeber or anarchism or Occupy. Nor is it some mindless speculation on the Nature of Democracy.

Instead, it strikes me as much more a discussion of "What do we do now? Where do we go from here?" than most of what I find online these days. I've said for some time that Graeber doesn't have all the answers -- nor necessarily any of the correct ones -- but he is trying to move the overall discussion forward, and in this case (ie: the discussion at NC), I think he's succeeded smartly.

The thing about Graeber is that he participates in these colloquies -- which aren't always friendly ones, believe me -- and typically he brings them a great deal of insight without a lot of rhetorical flourish and fol-de-rol.

He isn't doing this as if he were playing a game, in other words. He isn't in it for the points. Instead, he tries to open eyes and minds to possibilities, based on models of the past, his own studies of recent and current models, and wide-ranging thoughts about what kind of society we actually want.

Graeber's views he says are based in the Global Justice Movement -- and what kind of society some people on Earth already have or once had -- which in turn is based in mutual respect, democracy, community, and cultural, spiritual, economic and physical sustainability.

In other words, Utopia. Well, that's not entirely fair, but Graeber's perspective, at least in my view, does point the way to a Utopian future -- if only we could see and seize it.

Ultimately, of course, it's all about Dignity, Justice, Community and Peace, qualities of living that seem to be ever more elusive as our journey in this handbasket continues to race onwards toward who knows what.

In that regard, I'm still making my way through Arthur Kopecky's New Buffalo Commune journals, and I was struck by something he wrote in 1976 toward the end of his time there, [paraphrasing] "We can't continue on if we have to stay poor."

But, but, but... material poverty of a certain kind is the natural state of being for most of human kind for most of human history. If we are hard-wired for community, we are also hard-wired for some kinds of poverty. It is no great loss to be without (many) things. The conscious rejection of material goods is fundamental to many kinds of communities, especially spiritual and religious ones. The New Buffalo Commune grew out of a desire to transform wealth and abundance for a few into a sustainable and survivable way of life for many, and for a time at any rate, it seemed to be on the right track. But in order to sustain themselves and survive, the New Buffalo communards had to be financially poor. They never had much money (although individuals within the commune sometimes did, and that could be a source of tension). Things -- especially vehicles -- were always breaking down and requiring more and more money for continuing maintenance and repair. Living conditions at the commune could be primitive and uncomfortable, though again, individuals were often capable of creating very vibrant, warm and comfortable living spaces -- for themselves -- despite the lack of some modern conveniences and even the lack of money.

But they needed money to buy seeds, materials and supplies, to buy livestock, to purchase vehicles and maintain the ones they had, and to pay their property taxes among so many other things. The commune couldn't function without at least some money on hand, and too often, there either wasn't any or there wasn't enough to cover all the current and likely and unexpected expenses, no matter what they did.

So Kopecky came up with plans to put the New Buffalo Commune on a better and more consistent financial foundation, and that seems to be what triggered the eventually successful effort to get rid of him, an effort that ultimately led to the implosion of the commune. I'm not sure that's the case, however, since I haven't got to that point in the journals, but that's my impression from what I've already read -- both in the journals and in other sources.

New Buffalo failed as a commune, but the place is still there and has not fallen to ruin, much of the spirit is still there. I personally am not too fond of the Taos area, mostly because of the altitude, and I would probably not do well in a commune situation. On the other hand, I don't know. I've never tried it!

Intentional communities of all kinds can be found all over New Mexico. Some have been around for decades, generations, and in the case of the Indian Pueblos, for many centuries, even millennia;  others come and go, seemingly as transitory as the wind and the weather. Seems to me, it's all quite natural.

Graeber and some of Global Justice Movement acolytes appear to want to rationalize and codify the creation and sustenance of human-scale community and democracy. It's generally lumped together as anarchism -- but I'm not sure that's what it is. And I'm not sure that will ever be a successful/sustainable model. I'm not sure that's how human nature works. Human nature is not entirely rational, and it's not always amenable to codes and rules of conduct, especially if they are imposed by fiat rather than organically developed. There are ways to do these things (such as democracy), says Graeber, ways that work. I'm sure there are, but they aren't necessarily universal nor are they necessarily applicable to current conditions and peoples -- or at least not for very long.

I think we need to get beyond what's been done, go forth and find something else again, and it looks to me like there are many, many efforts under way to do just that.

What's Missing...

This is a video about a different commune, but the principles, ideas and practices are very similar to that of New Buffalo and many others.

I'm still plowing through Arthur ('Arty') Kopecky's New Buffalo Commune journals. I approach them with a kind of fascinated awe because this is the kind of primary historical documentation I am enthralled with. You should have seen me with the historical journals (and letters and all sorts of other stuff) of the California Gold Rush and subsequent Railroad Era!

The material provides a picture of the reality of what was going on -- as it was happening -- that isn't much like the mythical overview that's called History. LIFE magazine and the other media of the time couldn't capture the reality of this or much of any other historical moment in part because they weren't set up to do that. They're set up to create the overview and the myth. They don't have space or time to tell the story, and they are incapable of documentation as it happens.

Television and radio couldn't do it, either, in part because of their requirement for "distance." There are certain establishing shots that have to be done, certain camera angles that have to be preserved, certain interactions to undertake. One says and does things in highly specific ways for radio and television that don't reflect what is done and said when the cameras and microphones aren't there. Movies have the same problem.

Journals are sketches. They aren't the whole story. But they outline the various things that are important to the journal writer at the time, and from the sketch, readers can often build a much more complete picture in their minds' eyes.

Blogging has some of the same characteristics, though some of us bloggers are far more prolix than most journal and letter writers. Livestreaming of events such as the demonstrations of the Occupy Movement is much closer to the reality of what's going on in real time, but the streamer's and the camera's point of view is always so narrow that it misses most of what's happening and who is involved. Ultimately, it's barely even a sketch.

I have yet to visit any of New Mexico's remaining communes and intentional communities (there are at least 70, perhaps more, though the link lists only 35), but I know some unreconstructed hippies as well as others who have been part of these movements and their consciousness raising from time to time over the years. People like to think that the Back to the Land Movement was a failure, and in some ways it most certainly was. Living off the land is not easy for one thing. In some ways, it's probably not possible to do it the way it was once imagined it could be done, "independently" of the larger society and economy. Even a bare subsistence off the land is probably not possible, partly because of the very existence of the larger society and economy.

I think about this in the context of asking why so many Native peoples succumb to the presence of another material culture or society. And asking why -- and how -- so many survive. Why aren't they strong enough to resist?

But then I realized that was the wrong question. They do what they can to resist, but as the more powerful material culture spreads and takes hold, it becomes less and less possible for the Natives to maintain their own way of life in its midst. Ultimately they can't hold on; it's too costly and there are no longer enough resources available and accessible for the Native culture and way of life to be sustained.

Back to the Land was intended to reverse the process. It works up to the point that it doesn't. And when it doesn't, things fall apart, often disastrously.

New Buffalo was founded -- if you want to call it that -- by an absentee rich fellow who purchased some land in Northern New Mexico between Arroyo Hondo and Taos (around 9,000 ft elevation, which isn't exactly ideal for farming!) and opened it up to would be communards to come, do and prosper. This happened quite a bit back in the day. Land was relatively cheap (if you were rich enough) and relatively widely available. There were abandoned farms everywhere (it was a period of agricultural consolidation), and there were millions of restless young people "looking for to find" alternatives to their dreary programmed existence. Bingo!

It's not unlike the situation today when you think about it. The real estate market collapse has made millions of homes and a lot of land very, very cheap to buy -- if you are rich enough, if you have enough pelf to begin with. If you're not, it's not that easy at all.

Back in the day, those who had wealth -- especially young people with inherited wealth -- were much more willing to buy land and experiment with alternative approaches to matters social and spiritual than seems to be the case today. It was even possible back then for people of much more marginal means to pool their resources and set out to build a new-model community without the instigation or backing of wealthy patrons.

The rules are somewhat different now. Or so it seems.

New Buffalo had a rocky start, but it grew and it prospered as those who could handle the requirements of communal living and near pioneer conditions found it and stuck around. One of the things I've noticed about Kopecky's journals is that they are filled with physical, psychological and spiritual evaluations of practically everybody already on site and those who come by. Are they strong, are they young enough, do they have any weaknesses, will they fit, do they have anything to offer, can they handle it and get along, how close are they to the Divine? Can they cook or fix a truck or build things? Do they have any material goods they can share-- how about books? Are they creative? Are they lonely? Are they social? Do they know anything -- at all -- about farming? Can they operate a tractor, wrangle livestock, deal with the neighbors? What is their background? Are they crazy, drunk, whacked out on drugs? Are they just tourists?

Kopecky evaluates everyone -- even himself -- on an ongoing basis. Sometimes he strikes me as remarkably judgmental when something else is called for, but I realize he's trying to ensure that the community and the farm work as well as they can under what are truly difficult, borderline impossible, circumstances. He uses the tools he's brought with him -- from New York and California as it happens -- and one of them is his need to evaluate others -- and himself.

During the Occupy heyday, I was involved with quite a few people who were active in the field of alternative and intentional community building some of them with a great deal of experience doing it, others with an intense longing to be part of it. When The Farm became the center of the community formation process, a lot of people stepped back. It was in some ways just too difficult and scary. (It's a long, complicated, and ultimately very sad story that I won't go into here, but it mirrored some of what happens as intentional communities are founded -- and fall apart or are taken apart as was the case in this instance.)

"Evaluation" of participants is a fundamental necessity -- and it is one of the most difficult things to handle and get right. That's one of the reasons why it can take years to develop a well-functioning intentional community or commune. They don't happen spontaneously, though they may be initiated spontaneously.

I think about these things in the context of St. Francis and what he was trying to do almost a thousand years ago -- and the hostilities and hazards he faced every step of the way. I think about it in terms of the pioneers who went out West, whether to California or New Mexico or wherever, to make a new life (including my mother's parents and my father's grandparents). I think about it in terms of my own life and the quest I've been on all these years.

The motto we formulated as part of a visioning process for something to come:

DIGNITY, JUSTICE, COMMUNITY, PEACE

has yet to catch on, for reasons I'm not entirely sure of, but which clearly involve decades of conditioning toward indignity, injustice, individualism, and struggle with one another -- or war, as the case may be.

This is the legacy of Thatcherism and Reaganism, a legacy heavily propagandized for decades, with disastrous results everywhere, and yet with few or no alternatives anywhere. When New Buffalo and the other communes and intentional communities were being set up in the 1960's and '70's, the legacy -- and the propaganda -- that had conditioned their originators was quite different. The communes and intentional communities were generally honest attempts to realize the ideals we were brought up to believe in, ideals that could not be realized by submission to the material demands of consumerism and formal institutionalism and all that went with it.

But maybe there was something about those ideals that was out of whack.

Or maybe it's something else.

Back in the day, the ideals many of us were raised with and conditioned to believe in drove the demand and necessity for alternatives to the war and empire, the consumer, conformist culture we were immersed in. Back to the Land was one of those alternatives. But now, though people have the notion they need to do something like that again, it's proving more and more difficult to imagine it, to visualize it coming to pass, even though, perhaps, the opportunity to do it is greater now than it was in the 1960's or '70's.

Or maybe it is something else. I've said many times that the demonstrations of the Occupy Movement were the key elements of what was going on. They were demonstrations of alternatives to the cruelties and destructive tendencies of the Overclass, and they had a very, very powerful impact on people's imaginations of what could be.

Some of the demonstrations, however, particularly the governing and political elements that grew directly out of the anarchist roots of the movement, were deeply troubling to those who witnessed them -- as I and many others did. It was stuff we were not prepared for, and it showed how vulnerable these latter day spontaneous communities were to the vagaries of human nature and the predation of a certain class of individuals. I documented quite a lot of what I witnessed as things developed -- and devolved.

There was something missing.

New Buffalo is still there, but it's now a proprietorship, not a commune, called The New Buffalo Center.

There are archeological digs under way.

Historical documentation and speculation takes place. Kopecky is not the only one with recollections, after all.

We can't go back to what used to be, we can only go forward. But forward to what? And how?

 Still being worked out...

This Might Be Useful -- Then Again... Gar Alperovitz Yaks With Laura Flanders About "The Next Revolution"

Gar Alperovitz and Laura Flanders 

It's almost as if the United States has gone into a state of suspended animation as the People digest the New Normalities of gross inequality, injustice, and permanent recession for the many, unprecedented and indecent wealth, power and privilege for the few.

Yes, well. We've been circling this pivot point for quite a while now. Efforts at reversing the course of events or even slowing down momentarily have proved futile. The Government of the United States of America has completely divorced itself from the interests of the American People. It serves only the right sort of international rich folk and that's it.

The People simply don't matter any more -- not that they ever much did in the vast eternal scheme.

What then must we (the People) do?

This is Alperovitz's central question. And, unlike so many in the field of intellectualized revolution, he provides some answers, some of which are similar to ones I've mentioned in posts here and in other fora.

As a side note, though, I would take his solutions with several barrels of salt. The clearest indication that his solutions may be no solution at all is his reliance on the decrepit institutions of the failed system, including labor unions. I can understand why he does it, but many Americans are on a different path altogether. There is much ferment and experimentation going on throughout the land, many Americans are consciously withdrawing from The System and setting up their own alternatives, intentional communities are flourishing, permaculture is more and more widely practiced, cooperatives and even communes have experienced new life. It's an acknowledgement that our institutions have failed. Something else again is required.

People are figuring out ways to survive and even prosper under the cruelties and rigidities of today's ruling class and its handmaidens, just as they always have. The more conditions worsen for the many, the more creative solutions are -- sometimes -- found.

This is a kind of internal revolution that the Occupy Movement attempted to prefigure, and I think they got it right. It amounts to a paradigm shift, in this case away from the standard model of institutional finance and economics and ultimately toward something else again, something simpler, more direct, closer to the land, more democratic, community enhancing, and sustainable.

Disengagement is a form of revolution.

But disengagement ultimately is not a solution, it's an alternative. Alternatives tend to be supplements rather than replacements for deteriorated institutions and the theft of the commons.

I'm reading some journals from the New Buffalo Commune up by Arroyo Hondo, arguably one of the most successful Hippie communes from back in the day. It's still there, though not what it once was as it now has a proprietor, an owner in fact not simply theory (for tax and other purposes, the original commune had to have some sort of declared ownership -- hilarity ensued.)  Many of its aspects were learning experiences for the communards -- most of whom had no background in back to the land efforts or farming or intentional community building or even independence beyond the typical adolescent need for revolt.

That's not enough for a sustainable community, as the New Buffalo communards found out.

The problem is not that there is something intrinsically wrong with the alternative being sought -- whether it's a cooperative, a commune, a diverse intentional community or what have you -- it is that the participants are almost always conditioned throughout their lives not to engage in such alternative behavior. Americans were and are conditioned to obey, to submit to authority, and to gravitate toward powerful personalities. And there always seem to be a surprising few intentional or unintentional predators who gravitate toward alternative communities who almost inevitably bring them to grief and/or ruin.

The openness of so many of alternative communities and the inability of their participants to protect themselves and their communities from those who would do them harm has meant the end of all too many communities and movements.

Yet many communes and intentional communities persist and more are forming all the time.  As the United States continues its rapid de-industrialization, the cooperatives and worker-owned factories that Alperovitz highlights and favors become both more and less relevant. The United States is becoming a nation that makes nothing; nothing but foodstuffs and financial figments for the world. In a sense and highly ironically, the overclass is driving the return to the American agrarian past -- for those who can do it.

Many can't and won't.

Withdrawal

All day community sing, Pie Town, New Mexico, c. 1940; photo: Library of Congress, US Farm Security Photographs.

Millions upon millions of Americans have been forced into poverty since the advent of this Endless Recession, more millions every year it goes on, and strangely, despite the Occupy Movement and many thousands of NGOs serving the Poor, and hundreds of thousands of churches, and many tens of millions of concerned and generous Americans, there is no general outcry about the impoverishment of so many millions of Americans so quickly and so thoroughly as has been the case.

The official poverty rate today hovers around 15% or 16%, a historic high since the mid 1960's and it is growing. Like the unemployment rate, the "true" poverty rate is probably substantially higher than the official rate (the poverty rate is derived from the Census Bureau's Current Population Survey's Annual Social and Economic Supplement; the unemployment rate is derived from the Census Bureau's monthly Current Population Survey for the Bureau of Labor Statistics).

Homelessness is at a historic high as well, even as millions and millions of homes sit empty due to the banking and foreclosure crisis -- that goes on and on and on endlessly as well.

The Masters of the Universe have decided this situation is just right; they want no changes that might cost them anything, and they will have their handmaidens in government thwart any movement from below to adjust matters.

As we've seen over and over again, any serious effort to highlight the plight of the increasing numbers of Americans in poverty or to petition government for redress is met with ever harsher and violent repression.

The absence of a general outcry at the impoverishment of Americans may be due to official repression. On the other hand, many Americans don't have an intellectual, moral or emotional problem with increasing poverty -- as long as it doesn't touch them. As long as the problem of poverty is someone else's problem, what's to worry, right?

This attitude is yet another of the many legacies of the Reagan Era, and unfortunately, it's an affliction of Washington, DC that simply doesn't respond to persuasion or pressure from below. Reaganism took the place of Progressivism a generation ago now, and it doesn't look like the culture and the mindset of present day DC is capable of considering the consequences of poverty and of its policies that increase poverty. Even today's so-called "progressives" don't seem to get it.

I was chatting with my neighbor the other day. He's an older man, has had a couple of strokes, but he's doing very well all things considered, he is quite spry and able to get along well enough. He notices how poverty is increasing all the time, and how nothing is being done to reverse it. There are no jobs, especially for the young. So many people are homeless. Cutbacks everywhere, and the cost of living keeps going up and up and up.

He says that he learned to live simply a long time ago; because of his simple lifestyle, he hasn't been exposed to some of the economic struggles that so many people are going through. He doesn't need or want that much in the material world.

Some of the young people could learn from him, he says, but they won't listen. I say, "Well, you know, they have to learn for themselves; you can't really tell them."

"Yes, but so many want all these things that they don't really need, that no one really needs," he says, "and when they're too poor to afford it... If they could learn to live simply, it wouldn't matter. Not so much anyway."

How are they to do that? How is anybody to do that? This is the dilemma that so many Americans have been facing for years now: how to transition from a wildly over-consumptive lifestyle to one that is easier on resources and on oneself?

Withdrawal is one way, one that has deep historic roots in the American land and psyche. Withdrawal is at the foundation of some of the English colonization efforts; the Puritans, after all, were a "withdrawal" sect, as were many others who came to America for religious freedom (for themselves, not for anyone else, of course).

Historically, there have been any number of withdrawal sects since the Puritans; many aspects of the Westward Expansion of the 19th Century could be characterized as forms of withdrawal -- especially the Mormon trek to Utah and elsewhere in the West.

There was a very active back to the land movement during the Great Depression despite the Dust Bowl and all the other hazards inherent in trying to pioneer on marginal lands.

Of course, the rebellions of the 1960's gave rise to a plethora of urban and rural communes, ashrams and other forms of intentional communities, a surprising number of which are still around, all premised on living simply and withdrawal from the materialist and consumerist culture.

The original Franciscan movement was predicated on voluntary poverty and withdrawal from the violent and materialist society of its own time; many of its critics pointed out how easy it was for rich men's sons (and soon enough, daughters too, with the establishment of the Poor Clares) to "leave it all behind," but it wasn't so easy for someone who never had anything to begin with to do so. Someone who has endured poverty for a long time will not necessarily be so kindly disposed to the adoption of poverty by someone who has lived in luxury all their lives.

The issue of hypocrisy doesn't go away simply because one who is privileged declares one's sincerity in living "poor". One way the privileged can demonstrate sincerity is to withdraw from materialist society. The Buddha as an example...

One of the ironies of "living simply" -- that is to say, consuming fewer resources -- is that it can be very expensive. Various forms of energy conservation, for example, can cost individuals and households extraordinary amounts of money. If they don't have the upfront cash or credit, what are they to do? Even with various subsidies, reducing resource consumption can still be an extremely expensive path to take and often is only realistically available to the well-off and rich.

Part of the path of Withdrawal is to find ways to get away from the necessity for relative wealth in order to live simply and well. The pioneers and refugees in Pie Town cut their own trees, built their own log cabins and dug-outs, grew their own food, and insofar as they could, they lived as simply as possible -- without all the modern conveniences such as electricity and running water, for example. Basically, they substituted their own labor for the consumer goods and services that most people relied on. It was not an easy life by any means, nor was it one that very many of the Pie Town pioneers could endure for very long. Not so much because it was so tough at the outset - though it was that. Inability to endure this primitive life for very long had perhaps more to do with the fact that there was little or no hope for improvement; the situation did not get better. In many cases, the situation got worse. Pioneering ideals don't last very long when, for example, the weather doesn't cooperate, crops fail and you're going hungry because you can't grow anything to eat, or when you or your children are sick and there's no medicine or doctoring and you don't know what to do.

Thus many communities that withdraw from materialist society don't try to start anew from scratch, they utilize the surpluses and overabundance of the materialist society around them to create an alternative, an alternative which may or may not be a stop-gap on the road to something else again.

What happens when the surplus runs out?

That's a point that Americans have yet to get to. As a rule, though, people are highly adaptable to whatever conditions they find themselves in. If at some point in the future, the surplus of materialism is all used up, then people will adapt to their new conditions, whatever they may be.

The key is for there to be some kind of transition.

So. What Do We Replace the Collapsed Systems With?

Oakland Commune banner on General Strike Day, November 2, 2011. Image from:Anarchismo.net where there is as intense a discussion of what's going on as you'll find anywhere.

While my perspective on OO's Victory in de-legitimizing the authority of Oakland's civic authorities is still the minority view, the notion that something truly amazing -- and in the United States, almost unprecedented for a very long time -- is happening there is gaining traction. I'm not sure at this point that more than a few of Oakland's activists would agree with me about the "level-one victory" I've been writing about in part because there is so much more to do and it is premature to celebrate. It's still the "beginning of the beginning." (Of course I've commented extensively about the online tendency to be "always at the beginning" of something or other, as if there is no learning curve any more. "I'm beginnning to think..." "We've only started to..." "This is starting to look like...")

That said, the necessity of formulating and having ready something else again to take the place of the collapsed systems is becoming more and more critical.

Thanks to Pathman in comments, I got to thinking about and re-considering Gene Sharp's "From Dictatorship to Democracy," (pdf) and the larger picture he lays out. I haven't looked at it for quite a while, and in light of recent events, his pioneering work seems almost simplistic now. That's probably because so much of what he was writing about has simply been internalized over the course of the many uprisings and revolutions that have shattered the complacency of dictatorships around the worlds since the end of the Soviet period. We're in a new world now, and the past seems almost naive to us pioneers and Revolutionary Sophisticates (haw!)

Some things to keep in mind: we do not live in a Classic Dictatorship, nor are Oakland's civic authorities Classic Tyrants. We don't have a totalitarian system, for example, for there is still a remarkable freedom of thought and potentially a great deal of freedom of action as well. Though the levers and wheels and gears of our rather antiquated political system are currently frozen in place by their owners and sponsors, it is at least conceivable that they could be made to move again. And as I've argued more recently, many of the attributes of Nonviolent Resistance have been adopted by the Overclass in treating with the Lesser People, particularly Nonviolent Communications, which are now used by the Overclass as weapons against the People. (Again, this is a minority viewpoint about what's really going on; many colleagues in the field are horrified that I would even broach such a topic. But that's another essay for another time...)

In other words, lots of the elements of the Color Revolution process that Gene Sharp lays out don't apply directly to our situation, nor would they necessarily work if they did. (I won't get into the debate about the nature of those Revolutions at this point, except to say that what was done in the Soviet Union between 1991 and 1993 was a criminal betrayal of the People that will live in infamy -- and it wasn't the Communists who were doing it.)

The question remains: What do we do now?

Oakland already has something of an alternative system in place. It's called the Oakland Commune. This video doesn't really tell us as much as we might want to know, and it only deals with some of the activism of the Commune up to just before J28 but it gives us an idea of the scope of alternative systems thinking in Oakland that's been there for a long time and has been crystallized by the Occupy Movement:



An informed person observing from the outside would say, "Of course, this is basic Social Democracy."

In part. Communes are much closer to the People, and in theory they can be quite autonomous as well as self-governing. You can see the outlines of the structure of the Commune in the video; if you think back to the Black Panthers and how they operated and what they actually did (I'm old enough to remember... well, sometimes!) particularly their service to the community, you can see how the pattern for alternative social and political systems has long been in place in Oakland, and I would venture to say in many other cities as well.

Not all cities can adopt the Oakland Model, nor should they, as each city has a character and social consciousness of its own which can be developed on the commune or a cooperative basis; the elements are already in place in many cities through the networks of nonprofits that have proliferated over the last few decades of declining government support for people's needs.

The problem with the commune model or the autonomous collective in a civic setting -- at this time anyway -- is that it lives on the surplus of a materialist system, in our case, the leavings of American consumerism. You see that made starkly clear in the encampments. Obviously, that can only go so far before the surplus is used up. Then what?

I'm sure many would say, "Don't try to overthink it right now. It's only the beginning...." And that's right as far as it goes, but I would suggest that the question of "then what" is going to loom large sooner rather than later, and the answer may lie in acknowledging Oakland's strict class and social divides and doing something about them.

Oakland's ruling class perches in the hills, its working class drudges along in the flats, the rejects and those the ruling class deems to be parasites are disposed of in the marshes of West Oakland.

The Oakland Commune has stepped in to serve the people at the margins of this deeply divided class system, and that has caused more than a little heartburn among those who rule the roost. It's caused something of a meltdown among the city's officials, much nervousness among its long suffering working class, and what looks like stark panic among the High and the Mighty; yet the Commune includes participants from all those sectors. Support for OO activism appears to be much broader than the media wants you to believe.

The dissension over "violence" in the Occupy Movement, particularly as it applies to Occupy Oakland, really looks to me more like a class division, not an ideological one at all. The Oakland Commune is militant to be sure -- as it must be -- but that militance should not be conflated with a Violent Resistance Campaign because it is nothing like that at all. Note: OO activists are not openly armed, they do not demonstrate bearing arms, they do not threaten or use arms in their actions, they are not involved in nor do they advocate any sort of armed insurrection, nor does anyone involved Occupy Movement or Occupy Oakland advocate or engage in the use of deadly force to achieve their objectives.

Yet they are constantly beset by internal accusations of using or advocating or supporting "violence" and there are constant threats to withdraw support and participation if "violence" is not renounced forthwith and "violent" participants are not immediately expelled.

Yes, well...

I say this is more an matter of a class division than an ideological one because the constant cat-calling and hot-headed accusations are coming primarily from people who are socialized to be the teachers and monitors of Nonviolence in order, I argue, to control the masses and their use of Nonviolence. In this class based version of Nonviolent Resistance, Nonviolence is fine, Resistance is not. In fact, actual Resistance of any kind is defined as "violence," and occasional acts of vandalism, mischief, and provocative acts like "throwing things" are considered so "violent" that they either must be harshly suppressed and those who commit these acts must be strictly disciplined or expelled or support will be withdrawn.

There are people who insist that self-defense against police assault is "violence." Or that even confrontation with authority is "violence." Some of these people may be sincere in their beliefs based on the faith they have in the merits of Gandhian Satyagraha, and when that is the case, I have a good deal of respect for believers and practitioners. But given what I have experienced and have seen happen to others when that faith is challenged or alternatives to it are proposed, I sincerely doubt that most people insisting on others' adherence to "Gandhi and King" are true believers themselves. The violence of their rhetoric against any challenge gives them away.

These accusations, demands of strict adherence, and threats to withdraw support are consistently being used as weapons to control the activism of the masses and as attempts to ensure the masses do not develop effective tactics against the present ruling class.

There is Class War within the Occupy Movement. Surprise!

In Oakland, it's quite obvious.

Many observers and participants call the whole thing a distraction, and they have a point. It has become something like a typical Twit-War with mutual anathemas and denunciations flying, but with no particular object -- apart from virtual "control" of The Other.

It's nearly to the point of becoming a "meme," and thus a joke.

Meanwhile, I'm hoping to see many more demonstrations of that Better World That's Possible. The Oakland Commune is on the path of creating it -- on behalf of all of us.

Aggro

It's impossible to keep up with everything that's going on in these Revolutionary Times.

So I'm just coming across these videos that come from Way Back When: November 2.

Seattle; Direct Action at Bank:





In these videos, we see the extraordinary aggression of the Seattle Police in not only clearing a path through the demonstrators at the bank, but they continue their confrontation and aggression against the demonstrators to the point of absurdity. And they use pepper spray.

De-escalation is not in their play book, and it is obvious from these videos that the Seattle Police enjoy being aggressive with the people they are supposedly there to serve and protect. They like getting in their faces and acting like roided-up pigs.

In the comments to the video of the pepper spraying of the demonstrators in the previous post, note is taken of glee with which at least one of the officers is spraying everyone in the vicinity, even though the demonstrators are already in compliance with those all-important Police Orders. It doesn't matter. The police want to provoke mayhem.

In the Mayor's statement about that incident, he mentions the WTO protests of 1999 (and Mardi Gras in 2001) as excuses for the behavior of the Seattle police in 2011, but anyone who has followed those incidents knows that there is a strong suspicion of plainclothes police provocation. Whether it's true or not, I don't think we'll ever know, but at least the retired Seattle Police Chief who was in charge at that time knows and has clearly stated that it was the aggressive actions of the police that precipitated the destruction that took place during the WTO protests.

Escalation not de-escalation is their motto. Not for the purpose of arrest, mind you. Look at what happens in the second video above. There is a man who repeatedly confronts police -- one officer in particular -- and it's a pissing contest, mano-a-mano throughout. No arrest.

In the following video which was taken in Portland on November 7 or 8 by an outspoken opponent of the Occupy Movement -- someone who apparently thinks it discredits the Movement -- a demonstrator (whether with Occupy Portland or not, it's impossible to say) -- confronts a news crew:



This is textbook anarchist aggro, and really well done, though it's obvious the videographer doesn't get it. The demonstrator is in the news crews' faces constantly, repeating charges over and over, and verbally -- but not physically -- abusing them to the point where they cannot function at all. Which of course is the point of the confrontation. But there is more to it than that. The demonstrator is shaming them for being/serving the 1%. It is likely that the news crew had never thought that they were part of the problem not the answer. It never occurred to them how deeply resented they are for their service to the Overclass. And they get a strong lesson on the sidewalks of Portland by someone who won't shut up and won't go away. Of course it's rude. But it's meant to be an awakening. If any of those people have a conscience, they will not soon forget that encounter and like Norm Stamper, they might just come to a dawning that they have been part of the problem for many years. This is akin to the notion of "taking back" -- or "Occupying" -- the media; but at the same time, an opponent of the Occupation has provided the video of what happened. In other words, he was the media in this case. Much as the video streamers from the Occupations are the media. Anybody can be "media" these days, and the dinosaur Major Mass Media doesn't have to be "taken back" -- it was never "ours" anyway -- or even "Occupied."

It needs to be replaced.

I've been saying that for many years. Bit by bit it's been happening, but the march forward to a real New Media has been very slow, and many people in the so-called New Media have made whole blogospheric careers out of media criticism (not that they can take criticism themselves unfortunately.)

We're at last seeing an acceleration of the process of media replacement and renewal as part of this Movement-Becoming-Revolution. Video streaming, Facebook and Twitter have largely replaced legacy/traditional media coverage of the uprisings. It's axiomatic: you're not going to find real news from the standard outlets -- not even, in many cases, on the blogs. On the other hand, I am very leery of anything that appears on the Twitter feeds because the whole system is infested with provocateurs and there is much "not-news" that fills the feeds.

Finally, I'll bring up The Incident at Town Hall Seattle that was cited by DCBlogger at Corrente.

Oh my goodness gracious deary me.

This was another case of apparent aggro from the activists who went to the Town Hall with the intent (it appears) to disrupt, hijack, and teach those people a thing or two about what's really what.

It was rude, it was at least partially effective.

Some people were turned off by it, of course. Few people really want to be in the midst of a Revolution. Revolutions aren't pretty and they aren't nice and they don't follow the protocols of polite society or panel discussions. That's why they are Revolutions, hello? It is all on video now. See for yourself what happened. Start here: http://youtu.be/fk0eqlMjFU4 There are 21 total videos of the event on this page: http://www.youtube.com/user/Sweatshopfreelife#g/u all labeled "Occupy Town Hall". Make of it what you will.

I will keep saying, "This is a Revolution." "This is THE Revolution." It's happening right here, right now. And there's no stopping it, nor is there any controlling it. It is happening regardless of what any of us may think about it, and regardless of how we want it to proceed. Each of us might -- or might not -- be able to have some minor or perhaps major effect on it, primarily through our participation in the many activities of The Revolution, but no matter what we do or don't do, we can't make it go away and we can't make it go the way we want it to. Even those in the midst of it are finding that out, in some cases to their despair, in others to their delight.

I'm personally torn. I'm very excited by the fact that "it's happening." OMG, after so many years of whining about how apathetic and passive the American people are in the face of outrage after outrage, I am not only seeing them rise up in their multitudes, I am seeing astonishing levels of sheer energy and belief in the possibility of taking charge of our own fate and Building a Better Future.

But I see plenty of warning signs and cautions along the way; I've been very disturbed by some of the things I've witnessed -- though I don't really find the Aggro examples I've posted here to be all that disturbing, whether initiated by the authorities or by the activists. You have to have that kind of tension in order to move forward.

What has bothered me more are the evocations of the Period of Unpleasantness as I call it, when so many people went or were driven to their slaughter in blind obedience.

The most recent evocation was the destruction of the library at the Zuccotti Park camp.

I'm still coming to grips with the issue of destruction/liberation that is coming up more and more as the Raids continue and the piles of Occupy Debris grow. But passivity in the face of destructive aggression (passivity as opposed to non-violent resistance; there is a difference) really bothers me.

Enough blather for this installment. I must tour the Livestreams.

Dignity. Justice. Community. Peace.

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.

-----------------------------------------------------------

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.