paradigms and marathons and ezines and more

Activism. I was thinking back on the the Occupy Oakland movement and 2011. Brought on by one of Lacey Reah's threads about MLK and demonstrations. I don't always feel like revisiting the year, the time, because I was in trouble and of no use to anyone and definitely not a political movement of any kind, yet I remember the buildup one day toward an imminent call-4-action. There had been posters stapled to telephone poles and canvassing all throughout Oakland leading up to it. I was in my apartment watching Democracy Now which was covering the event, and you could already hear the helicopters hovering over downtown. They weren't gonna leave after rush hour was over and the sun went down and the people began heading out on foot, by bicycle, by skateboard, bus, or train to Broadway and designated areas like the 14th and 19th street crosses downtown, subway stops near the lake. The organized protests were to be non-violent, but the city prepared for the worst kinda riot. I'm sure corporate lobbies were strong, what with all the infrastructure and banks and businesses situated there. The media would of course cover it all. The police were mobilized in force, with full gear and helmets and shields all up to make boundary walls that might enclose the protest in a demarcated area. This was many months before the most successful demonstration, which started in the afternoon and marched all the way to the Port of Oakland and blocked the trucks and stopped the million-dollar-a-day commerce from taking place for a couple of days. And after the Oscar Brown injustice, which set off a stream of protests and was (far from the first) precursor to all of the demonstrations we have seen lately in this country against police shootings. It had become a pretty regular thing for the city of Oakland to prepare for these events. Obviously the city is rich in history of demonstrations, being the home of the Black Panthers and neighbor to Berkeley and San Francisco. But the police force by this time was so corrupt and out of sorts it had been federalized, yes, the federal government took the Oakland Police under its jurisdiction by force of court proceedings! So there may have been extra weight behind them in the form of federal funds, but weaker local leadership.

None in the new millenium would get as much media coverage as the Occupy Movement which was of such national interest and concern five years ago. The internet allowed for speedy pop-up shop demonstrations and facile communication. Democracy Now provided almost a central organizing principle to the whole thing, or dressed it into larger, truth and justice-seeking themes. So anyway, what was I doing? Nothing worthwhile mostly struggling and depressed. I remember feeling excited nonetheless because the city was buzzing with tension. What was gonna happen tonight, downtown? All I knew was that I was gonna go, and I said I was gonna go and I never went. The story of my life that year, making plans and not following through. Addiction would have a chokehold on me until February 19th, 2013. Still, I felt like I was there; I talked to friends who went and I walked downtown the next day in the aftermath and saw all the vandalism that took place, mostly by renegade kids from the suburbs wearing masks. Broken storefront windows. Spraypainted everything. The only thing that looked more of a disaster was me and my life. It had been a night to forget for the Oakland PD. National coverage caught the cops implementing their weaponry, you probably saw it on tv. Looked  like the 4th of July, and sounded like war, the noise makers, the usual flares and tear gas and rubber bullets and tasers. It made for a new meaning for when-the-lights-came-up-on-broadway. That night a soldier who had returned from the war in Iraq was put into a coma when he was hit in the head by a flare shot. He would live to tell.

So what of all this? Why would I have anything to say about an event in which I did not participate? In a year in which I was completely broke down and out of commission? I don't know. All I know is the Occupy and the Oscar Grant demonstrations had a great effect on me. The demonstrations against the Prison Industrial Complex did, too, but that one was safe indoors in a school gym. The ones in the streets meant more to me and it's because I was in the streets back then, marginalized and easily dismissed, often desperate for a handout, some food, a couch, or even a word of kindness. Sometimes I think you almost have to be marginalized and feel that way, to really care about those who are marginalized. I say that, but at the same time I pause to recognize it's not a fair statement, because there are plenty of lawyers and journalists and politicians and people who never have been marginalized, who have stood behind the marginalized. We call them heroes. And having been marginalized I know how it feels and I have a real adverse reaction in my gut every time I hear the Occupy Movement dismissed as some disorganized dilute homeless and criminal encampment looking for handouts! It was decentralized (on purpose) and not disorganized at all, and there were all kinds of people and all elements of society represented among its advocates, including the homeless and people with criminal records! It was branded by the government as some kinda terrorist activity so they could use funds from Homeland Security to stop it. And non-violent protesters were treated with shock and force and tear gas canistry, and piggybacked upon by losers from the suburbs putting on masks and coming in by train and breaking corporate storefront windows and spraypainting crap all over! The media at first blamed the violent response on the Occupy protesters or smudged them all together, though to their credit many journalists properly admonished the City of Oakland for terrorizing the movement, injuring civilians and overuse of force once they saw the Occupy people out there scrubbing away and cleaning up the streets the very next morning. No, the movement cannot be dismissed so easily!

There would be too much pressure against it, ultimately, for Occupy to continue having viable non-violent demonstrations across the country. But a statement was made and boldly. At the very least the general public got their heads dunked in cold water. That the wealth of this country is concentrated in the hands of too few, and the rest of us are seeing a declining portion of that wealth over time. Most of us knew this beforehand, and little could be done about it. The Occupy Movement was not any kind of failure, in my opinion, for it proved that something happens when people come together to rally behind a common cause. People come to know that they are not alone in how they feel, that horrible malaise of economic disparity. This venting may not in itself, correct the underlying economic disparity, yet is a critical part of a greater process which continues to unfold in its own time! This critical process is what we know as a social paradigm shift and is happening all around us, over time. It is met with great resistance (as all change is) but leads ultimately to overall changes in individual/institutional perceptions, changes in worldviews and changes in our culture trending toward justice, trending toward greater consciousness, many of which are toward healing and wholeness, and reclaiming marginalized parts of ourselves and society. You can see this all represented already in your world, if you just look around. LGBT rights, for instance. And there will be many more micro movements towards the macro movement. As individuals we need only follow the prescient wisdom of the day and 'be the change you wish to see in the world'. To anyone who feels marginalized or discarded or hopeless at this time: Don't give in and please Don't give up!          - KatYa

My poetry was chosen for another ezine, you can find it here alongside some other good poets of the community -- Words On Fire Ezine .  Also, I am training for the California International Marathon this December and donated some money to the crown jewel of Sacramento parks - The American River Parkway (my favorite place 4 cycling). This will be my first marathon. I am up to 10 miles now. You can find the CIM here -- CIM! 2016.  Book #3 of my urban fantasy series should be out by October 31st, latest.

Dedicated to Occupy Oakland. 2011 -i-

Then as life goes you find you get into something so completely, what you do, your purpose, you get flooded by it, simply deluged. No matter how big or small, valuable or cheap, honest or sold... warm or frigid cold. You join a movement. Or maybe you just cheerlead.


Now you may be the one to yell out in pain of the betrayal, when injustice strikes you in the head and puts you in critical condition. Like on that cool Fall evening in Oakland, California, twenty eleven. The Occupy Occupation. The supporters of Oscar Grant. The soldier who went down that way, with a head injury.

The source of pain is not always physical. Yet completely personal. We get to thinking and we float. We don’t feel grounded. We get anxious. We see the river but do not want to confluence with her.

Unnecessary
Apartments get neglected
Androids are selected
Relationships hit the rocks
No more watches on the wrist
We cannot synch our mp4s
Or patch things up with a kiss
No more clubs. No more country
Everything in spade
No more dinners
Just pharmaceuticals
Lost your lucky jade


Then might you wonder, what must I do to survive?...
sit my ass down
 open my ears
occupy space
express shit needs expressing
stand head to head with riot police
gripping their tear gas guns
their stun guns
their revolvers
lets hope they aren't dyslexic
when the draw comes...

Oscar Grant lives!
tagged on walls all over Oakland
well into the occupation
of the plazas and the squares
ninety-nine percenters
everywhere

 Releasing a new kinda mix, from urban to the styx. Back on Broadway in the States. Class.
Not afraid to bare its lovely working ass.
Without judgment without question and without answers.

Then arrested
 atleast four score of them
Willing to go to jail
Excommunicate fear
Bucket head a canister and line it with baking soda
Breaking codependency with status quo
Laugh until your laughter turns to wet dew of tears
Fall then to the ground and be received with great thirst
Take a route down a root
Deeper

deeper deeper
deeper deeper

Moisture and humidity
feeling all life
holding it closer
to you

closer closer
closer closer

right up against yourself
right on

Into the company of
hundreds of thousands
of mostly decent honest peoples
representing even those
who were ordered
to stop them
and came
right

right up against themselves
right on
right up against ourselves exactly
where we
must
be

Citizen K (subsection D)

Who was this citizen #K ... and who gives a goddamn fuck, anyway? She too would be subject to the necessary scrutiny that any Org under constant threat of infiltration by the enemy required of its members. And yes, this was an exclusive Org. The defense of freedom was no ordinary task. No wafflers allowed. Same to any element unrelated or disinterested in the cause at hand. Background in advertising? See ya later. Witnesses to the revolution? Take a walk. Unless you have that light in your eye, that readiness we demand. No! birdwatchers need not apply. Investment bankers? Brokers? Well come on in, we need the ones who were insiders once and turned away forever. Potential secret weapons. They may know the enemy well! But are they akin to our cause? Come, come, let's talk. Veterans? yes, yes, we most certainly need purveyors and conduits of the imminent asskicking we are to prepare for the corporate slug. The proprietors behind them, shopkeepers and small business mom and pops? Yes yes! You know our pain so succinctly! Come to our table. Please.

Ace of spades carryied the flush. The Org. grew larger and larger in no time at all, despite one of two being turned away at the door. The leaders were many and came into clarity in no time. The others were drawn like magnets being magnetized. Clubs in the back sported diamonds, and threw darts at all the hearts. Half-alpha, half-numeric. Take a letter, take a letter! Oh, did you fail that test? Now you're numbered.

Halfway to her lips. Then citizen #K sang with them what had been held so close inside, close to her heart yet unable to breathe. Before now. Now the passsion spilled out like  the lyrics of economic injustices, bank fraud, white collar allowances and tax cut phobic politicos. Half-baked, her anarcho-socio-cap-in-your-ass-free range capitalism. Confessedly untried and untrue ideologies. Halfway out her shell and barely visible to the world yet, she offered all apologies. Everywhere she went, they locked arms with her. Less confusing, she believed, now there was some locus from which to act and, if necessary, act out.

Citizen K (subsection C)

The expectation was to defend the freedoms otherwise self-evident since the declaration of independence was emblazoned with signatures of the well known freedom fighters of the late eighteenth century, North America. Sadly, not one Native American put ink on this document. Which one could argue, demonstrated the self-evident hypocrisy of the time. Still, the natives would get their due, in time.

Okay. Anything less than complete immersion would be discarded. Anything other than Anarchy in its original form was unacceptable. The stakes were peak. No room for error. Whatever fell outside expectation became detritus, and emptied shells of varied ideas and opinions bore witnes to their having become decidedly nonextant.

The defense of freedoms was weighed down by nothing but its own failing in defending the uninheritable lands and deeds and rights of the native peoples it so subjugated or neglected. Nothing could stop the momentum of the settlers settling. Until centuries later, when a parallel could be drawn between the Indigenous peoples efforts toward reclamation of their history, as it had been often so brutally and intentionally destroyed, and the great Thirst of the 21st century middle class, in its push to hold on to a democratic principle within a capitalist nation under siege by coporate interest, omnipresent.


Said lobby was arguably omnipotent, for it came in interwoven in the fabric of human life and lifestyle. However, it was this exact possibility (presumed not yet achieved) which created the space for an uprising to counter. AKA The defense of freedoms by awakened and courageous defenders of freedom subsequently giving of their time and energy towards the cause, the aforementioned expectation....the defense.

This did not and would not and could not preclude an Offensive! Citizen K held in her heart both a yearning for and precognition of the mass awakening of the middle class, in momentum and movement toward reclamation of freedoms deluged and undermined and in effect stolen from them by conglomerate lobbied interests foreign to them yet immediately impacting their quality of life in diverse yet consistently toxic and unacceptable fashion.

Citizen K (subsection B)

Shadowing herself seemed a nice way to revisit her own capacities. Particularly the ability to map, self[ orient.  Only through her innate abilities, might she return to her natural homeostasis, then produce her beats proper. Still. All this inner work could not be possible unless she maintain her understanding of and parallax with the external truth. The locus, the place. The context in which she might exercise her rights and her powers, judiciously, in the world. All of which required not so much success on any level, but a more tangible, objective criteria...


A level of cash. A measure of cream. A maintenance of the corps vitality. Providence in the form of food and shelter, and, the new element recently introduced to the system (and still vastly misunderstood); nutrient psychopharmaceuticals. She knew about sustenance. She allied with providence. She had only to choose her method. How to proceed. And as the 21st century steamed on, metal theft on your local graveyard shift, USA, began to appeal to her as a means to this very end. Of course, her goal would be metallic reclamation. Not theft. Theft was a sentence they might give her, when they denied the claims. They always denied any existence of source ownership, placing reclamation efforts in jeapordy.



 Yet they themselves introduced nothing, no deed or title, to demonstrate any claim or ownership of the particularly vital material element at stake. This was the vulnerability through which the courageous might enter at great risk of material life, a point whereby the house of cards might be finally named and revealed, thus to take the monoliths down. Proof of insubstantiate cancer polluting our freedoms. Trespassing our rights. Destroying our country's original authenticity. The promised freedoms outlined and secured in the amendments and the constitution itself.

Follows . Nov 2011 post. Citizen K (A)