October 14th 2011

** UPDATE: Bloomberg hoses can't power wash democracy. "Cleanup" cancelled thanks to the work and presence of 3000+ people in the square and 300,000+ people all over. This is what happens when it's the people who are too big to fail. ***  

Of course you've seen the We Are the 99 Percent Tumblr (in fact I'm plagiarizing my own post from HTMLGIANT for the rest of this paragraph!), but here it is again. It’s PostFrankness instead of PostSecret. Camwhore angles repurposed for a who’s-there roll call in the deep effed.

Now I'm going to plagiarize myself from Facebook, and I'm not even going to add capital letters!

*** new york friends: drink some coffee, stay up late, roast some marshmallows, tell some ghost stories, save a populist uprising, and annoy your future grandkids when your great-grandkids beg you to tell them on the 3D iDingle chat how you were sitting in the park on that same October 14th their favorite history teacher talks about: http://occupywallst.org/article/emergency-call-action-prevent-forcible-closure-occ/ (seriously, of course: PLEASE STAY SAFE IN CA Conrad CAPS LOCK SERIOUS TIME, and READ THE STRATEGIES FOR NON VIOLENT RESISTANCE) — i feel like kind of a pringle for not being there myself right now, but i hope this here echo on this blue website means itself in the right direction ***

And look at that, my blog is blue too! Synchronicity. Seriously, yo: if you support the movement, please make sure to let your NYC friends know what's going down and know the seriousness of this. Jim Berhle is going to be there dressed as Santa. I will be waking up at 6AM to watch the Livestream: http://occupystream.com/. 10/14 isn't a cute looking date, but let's hope we learn what it will be there to mean.

And heck, since the rest of this is me catching this blog up with what I've said elsewhere, let me end by saying what I said to someone who said the following on HTMLGIANT: "I don't understand this. I live in the Bay Area. I am a dirty punk. oi. All my friends are dirty punks. We all have jobs and places to live. So are we the 1%?"

(Which is not at all an unreasonable testimony of lifestyle and experience, and a sentiment I think understandable by not only those who self-identify as DIY dirty punks but by all who aren't sure whether they can "relate" to the Occupy movement).

This is what I said: "sounds like you have made decisions in and about your life that make it hard to relate immediately to some of the stories on this tumblr, and i'm with you on that.

personally i make a choice not to have a car, not to have kids, etc. the dirty punk/gypsy lifestyle can be joyfully sustainable and always has been. carl sandburg loved the accordion players by the river. of course: it helps to be young and able-bodied and healthy in an urban place like the Bay Area with lots of cool cultural resources, excellent public transportation, and america's breadbasket for a babushka. but not everybody wants to (or is able to) live in those contexts, and that's not unreasonable.

i think a project like this 99% thing is about recognizing a large-scale collapse of the ability to lead certain kinds of lifestyles that shouldn't be unreasonable: lifestyles that enable raising and feeding children and caring for the rest of your family and living in your own house and taking care of your body without the entire social infrastructure stacked against you like some impossible video game puzzle where a handful use their cheat codes to make it harder for everybody else.

it's totally cool if you don't want to play the game—neither do i—and it's even more reasonable to point out that the game represents a pretty elevated level of privilege compared to the rest of the world. but neither of those things really negates the fact that it kinda sucks to watch so many people around you get the GAME OVER over and over."