I’d wanted to share this image, taken a few days ago at the Occupy Water Street event, but I lacked the words to accompany it. Fortunately, however, I just stumbled across the following quote by Phil Rockstroh, which I think we do quite nicely.
…When one attempts to stand against surging social and political tides, feelings of powerlessness can flood one with anxiety. Accordingly, a single individual can become inundated with feelings of unease and uncertainty. As a result, the social pressure to drown angst-creating individual doubt within the mindless certainties of a mob can become overwhelming. Often, brick by brick, in an attempt to withstand these powerful inner feelings and outward pressures, we build a structure of false consciousness… that we, often, mistake for our convictions, and tragically mistake this dismal dwelling for the whole of existence.
How then is it possible to withstand feelings of powerlessness?
Put one foot in front of the other. Write one word after the next on your protest sign. Make your life a flaming arrow aimed at the dry and rotted heart of the system or make your own heart a warm hearth of compassion for its victims, as you negotiate its cold realities. Thus, hope becomes a process of engagement, not a comforting lie; not the stuff of public relations hustlers and political hacks but a quality of honest conviction and persistent labor; and not a cynical marketing tool.
Relentlessly, from early childhood on, our hopes and longings are subject to commodification by the dream-usurpers of the corporate state. The process of mental colonization by the commercial hologram is as pervasive within us as was the dogmatic influence of The Church within the psyches of Dark Age peasants.
Make your life a flaming arrow aimed at the dry and rotted heart of the system or make your own heart a warm hearth of compassion for its victims, as you negotiate its cold realities. Thus, hope becomes a process of engagement, not a comforting lie; not the stuff of public relations hustlers and political hacks but a quality of honest conviction and persistent labor; and not a cynical marketing tool.
The present order’s litany of economic inequity affords few the option of committing the heresy of questioning (or even apprehending) the exploitative and destructive nature of the system. As an example, citizenship as defined by consumerism has created a landscape devoid of public space. (The attempt to redefine what constitutes public space is one of the many threatening aspects of the Occupy Wall Street movement to the current power structure.)…
One of the powerful attractions of the OWS movement has been its emphasis on reclaiming the public commons from the corporate state, and the dire need for cultural communion beyond the commercial sphere. Thus, for an atomized, alienated populace, the movement has provided a refresher course in the act of simply being human, on existing together in communal space…
And, with that very thing in mind — the desire to take back the public commons — about thirty of us reclaimed Water Street a few days ago, sitting around a fire, sharing good food, and exploring our overlapping visions for this community that we’ve chosen to be a part of, as our children dug happily in the hopefully-no-longer-toxic soil. I don’t know that the photo really conveys it, but it was really quite wonderful.
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Um, yeah, that was my melancholy thought: it’s wonderful to get all ypsitopian, and I’m truly glad you all occupied Water Street, in a good way, if only for a Saturday afternoon, since, for better or worse, it is already our own dark kind of “commons” (ie those of us who live in Ypsilanti proper share in the crushing debt) but I hope you washed their hands afterwards….
If I’m not mistaken, the sand in that area is clean. The bad stuff, is to the left of that, behind the fence. Still, though, I’d be sure to have those kids boiled.
Maybe it’s just the filter that you’re using, but the image looks really post apocalyptic. “These kids,” I found myself thinking, “could be building some kind of trap for the Hunger Games.”
I’d encourage them to keep digging. They could hit oil, and solve all of our problems. (From what Thayrone X says on his radio program, there’s oil everywhere.)
Kids at play, making up a world that they would like to see. Adults doing the same thing. At Water Street. Ironic. And beautiful.
It was a beautiful day. I’m glad you had a nice picnik.
When you burned the clothes that they were wearing, were there sparks? What color were the flames?
Alternate headline…. “Mark Maynard, Eating French Cheese, Forces Children to Forage for Toxic Grubs in Rust Belt Wasteland.”
Join us for a meeting under the bigtop at the vacant Sunoco at Cross/Washington today at 3. Among the things we’ll discuss:
May Day action
Foreclosure Resistance
Art parties
Building rehab/occupation –> community center
The upcoming Occupy Ypsi teach-in
and whatever else you’d like to discuss.