A dispatch from Zuccotti Park about what being there was like, about the signs I liked (and those I didn't), and about Occupy's importance

Uleman, Jennifer K.

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HomeAbout��SubmissionsComment PolicyContact UsBooking��Advertising��PoliticsWorldU.S.CultureStyleEntertainmentSportsReligionHealthObitsOp-EdCollege FeminismsElementary FeminismsFeminists We LovePersonal is PoliticalThe Feminist WireThe Feminist Wire59,420 people like The Feminist Wire.Facebook social pluginLikei2222Tweet 4 Tweet 4 22 22Search by wordSearch & Hit EnterSearch by CategorySelect CategorySearch by MonthSelect MonthSearch by DateOctober 2011M T W T F S S« Sep  Nov » 1 23 4 5 6 7 8 910 11 12 13 14 15 1617 18 19 20 21 22 2324 25 26 27 28 29 3031  Dispatch from Occupy WallStreetOctober 17, 2011By Guest ContributorBy Jennifer K UlemanTuesday, October 11, 2011:   I went back down to Occupy Wall Streettoday. I’d been down on Saturday, for the first time, with friends Marcand Brooke and Miles. On Columbus Day I went again, on my own. Ihad other things to do, but as I woke up I knew I just had to go back.Today I found myself there again for the 20 minutes I had between onething and another. Yesterday, Columbus Day, I spent about three hours– more or less the same time spent Saturday. Both days were beautiful.Both days were completely energizing and exciting. Both days I raninto people I knew. Both days I talked to strangers. Today was greyerand quieter, I wasn’t there as long, but I was glad I went, even for ashort time.  Every time I go I feel better about the world than I’ve beenable to feel for a long, long time. “The Beginning Is Near”This is one of my very favorite signs, which I saw Saturday and againtoday.  (The signs, in general, are amazing.  There is a great collectionof photos of signs (among other things), here.)It feels like a beginning, like a new lease on things.One of the things an Occupied Wall Street Journal editorial note, “NoList of Demands,” says is, “we just got here.” There is an emphasis onprocess, on having a conversation, or on having lots of conversations.Yesterday I started talking to a man named John, and then saw aformer student, Joe, who was with his friend Jeff, and the four of usstood and talked about Žižek’s Sunday appearance, and theSituationists, and various European inspirations for occupations likethis one—and also about United States sources. We compared notes ondocumentaries we’d seen (The Examined Life; a documentary on theidea of Communism). Joe recommended Frederic Jameson’s collectionof exchanges (between Benjamin, Adorno, Brecht, Bloch, Lukács) onaesthetics and politics.  We talked about Brecht’s dislike of actors,about technique vs. expression.  This was our particular conversation,but you could overhear all kinds of conversations going on.At the same time that there is this emphasis on process, and a refusalto rush things, the organization is breathtaking. Zuccotti park, akaLiberty Plaza (its old name, and the one the occupation seems toprefer), is a very ‘urban’ park – lots of marble stairs and seating, someflower beds, some slender trees.  It’s just the size of one small cityblock.  The occupation has used tape to indicate corridors and sleepingareas.  There’s tape with a red and white arrow directing toward thefirst aid station. There are other areas: Kitchen (lots of free food, whichlooks pretty good really – there is always a line, and there are alwayspeople eating), Comfort (blankets, clothes), Art (sign-making), Info,Media, General Assembly. The first issue of The Occupied Wall StreetJournal has a nice map.  There are working groups, listed on a boardlike ice cream flavors, with an invitation to join:  Internet, TownPlanning, Art & Culture, Legal, Sanitation, Medical, Outreach,Comfort, Kitchen, Treasury, Media, Direct Action, and Facilitation.Yesterday, someone was lobbying for a Music working group toorganize money for drumsticks and heads. (There is a serious drumcircle.)  There are ‘camps’ – these seem to be informal groups ofpeople who have staked out territories and vibes. The Serena Campannounces “no judgments and no rules” and was very tidy.  The ClassWar Camp has an anarchist aesthetic: One of them yesterday wore asign that said, “Don’t take a picture: ask me a question.”  Yesterday,there was a guy sitting on the ground with a group of about sevenpeople doing a teach-in about something – he had an easel pad andwas saying things about Wendell Berry. Right next to them,unbothered, another group of seven or eight meditated. At one point,someone stood on the stairs where I was sitting and yelled “Miccheck!”  This is what you do when you want to activate (or reset – youcan see it happening in some of the videos people have posted) theHuman Microphone.  He yelled “Mic check!”  and people yelled back“Mic check!”  It wasn’t loud enough, so he yelled again, “Mic check!”“MIC CHECK!” we yelled back.  He had an announcement:  “Therewill be a direct training action” (“THERE WILL BE A DIRECTTRAINING ACTION”) “at 4 o’clock” (“AT 4 O’CLOCK”) “acrossthe street” (“ACROSS THE STREET”) “at the red cube” (“AT THERED CUBE”) “come!” (“COME!”).  There was clapping then peoplewent back to doing whatever they had been doing. “Shit Is Fucked Up And Bullshit”This is another of my favorite signs.  Those who know me know mightthink I would not like it for the same reasons I did not like the “RonaldReagan Sucked Balls” and “I Heart Cops Who Smoke Pot” sign – acarefully painted double-sided number, carried Saturday by a ordinary-looking woman my age.  Her sign totally got on my nerves. But mylove for “Shit is Fucked Up and Bullshit” made me realize it wasn’tthe crudeness or curse-words that made me embarrassed for/by her. Itwas the failure to be incisive. “Shit is fucked up and bullshit” isexactly correct.  Shit is fucked up: massive income inequalities,corporations making economic, environmental, health and otherpolicies, money for banks but not for healthcare or education, no relieffor victims of predatory lending practices, etc. etc.  And shit is bullshit,in the full sense so well-excavated by Harry Frankfurt: lazy journalistswho work from memos and press releases, lazy politicians who justsay shit, public discourse that is depressingly brainless, etc., etc. “We are the 99%”This is the ubiquitous sign. How much money do you have to make tobe part of the 1%?  According to a sign posted yesterday, $1,137,684(source: http://1of99.blogspot.com). That is a lot of money.  I’m notsure I know anyone who makes that much money. I know of people,yes, and I am sure I know people who know people, but I am really notsure I’ve ever, say, sat down to dinner with someone who makes thatmuch money. Ah, once at least: when, as faculty, I was invited to helpentertain donors at a fundraising dinner. Donors probably make thatmuch money. But I don’t really know anyone like that in my real life,the life where we talk about day-to-day things  Even my friends whodidn’t become academics do not make that much money.The only interesting thing about that is that 1% means one in ahundred, and one in a hundred is a lot of people. Most things thataffect one in a hundred people are things I regularly encounter. Iencounter a lot of people, but I do not encounter a lot of people whomake over a million dollars a year. This is not that surprising, ofcourse: people stick together by class. But it means there are a lot ofpeople out there for whom being in the top 1% is just normal.  All theirfriends are there too. All the people next to them at dinner on a regularbasis share their world.  They don’t all like each other, I’m sure. Thereare all kinds of people, in some senses, I’m sure, in the top 1% —liberals, conservatives, aesthetes, slobs, smokers and non-smokers,meat-eaters and vegetarians, urbanites and nature-lovers, travelers andhomebodies, people really into politics and people who are not at allinto politics, queer and straight, gay-friendly and homophobic, Jews,Christians, atheists (are there Muslims or Buddhists or Hindus in theU.S. top 1%?  Maybe some…).  The top 1% is pretty white, I feel sure,but not all white (Oprah, e.g.). Anyway, these people, of whom thereare a lot, can easily believe they are the world, or at least the UnitedStates. There are 311 million people in the United States, right now;1% of this is 3,110,000.  That’s more people than live in Chicago.  Atthe same time, for every one of them, there are 99 of us, and the waysthey want things aren’t always the ways we want them.As it happens, a disproportionate number of people in the top 1% livein New York City.  In August 2010, the (regular) Wall Street Journalreported that New York City is home to 667,200 ‘high net worth’individuals, who have over 1 million dollars of investable assets.  Thiswas more by a long shot than the No.2 city, Los Angeles, with just235,800.  There’s more on the 1% in this May 2011 Vanity Fair articlecalled “Of the 1%, By the 1%, For the 1%” by Joseph E. Stigliz. “The Heart Wants What The Heart Wants”Being down there has made me more emotional than I thought itwould. It is like being given permission to want things that it mightotherwise seem absurd or childish to want (you know: fairness, justice,truth, beauty, love, music, sky, rest – that kind of thing). Saturdaynight, after being down there, I was flipping through the New YorkTimes Magazine, and saw a Patek Philippe ad, one of those “You neveractually own a Patek Philippe. You merely look after it for the nextgeneration” ads I admit I’ve sort of admired, as ads. This time, I feltrepulsed.  Feeling repulsed felt like feeling like my true self again, orfinally, or something. Those fucking fuckers, I thought. (That’s anotherof my favorite signs:  It was black marker on a scrap of pizza boxcardboard, and just said “Fuck!”)(If you don’t know the Patek Philippe ads, you can find the one I meanhere.)22 22 Sunday, October 16, 2011:   I was out again yesterday for almosttwelve hours.  One of the best signs I saw Sunday was made to looklike a traffic sign, and said “Caution: People Thinking!”  The GeneralAssembly is an amazing instance of this, and of patience,thoughtfulness, respect, and collective intelligence.  “GeneralAssembly” is the OWS’s name for a general meeting (it’s also the “ga”in www.nycga.cc, one of OWS’s websites).  The General Assembliesare democracy in action.  (Some facilitators and others describe theprocess here.)  Many are now writing and posting, thank god, aboutspecifics – there are many things to be done to break the grip thatwealth has on politics and policy. I have done little of that here, but Ihope this dispatch, which started as an email to friends and family,gives something of the flavor of the occupation itself, and of theamazing newness the Occupy Wall Street “movement” has brought toa newly re-occupied public sphere.Some of you are in New York and some of you are very far away.  Ihope you can all occupy something, somewhere.  That’s another thing– the signs that say “Lost my job; found my occupation.”  Being therefeels like being, as Naomi Klein put it, part of “the most importantthing in the world.”  I hope you all can be part of it too, in whateverway, wherever you are. Jennifer Uleman is Associate Professor of Philosophy at PurchaseCollege (SUNY).  She is author of An Introduction to Kant’s MoralPhilosophy and various articles and reviews on Kant’s political andlegal theory.  She lives in Jackson Heights, Queens.Tags: Politics, U.S., U.S. Politics8 Responses to Dispatch from Occupy Wall Street1. Hortense Spillers on October 17, 2011 at 7:50 amThanks, Jennifer, for being there and sharing your views.2. Hortense Spillers on October 17, 2011 at 7:50 amThanks, Jennifer, for being there and sharing your views.3. Hortense Spillers on October 17, 2011 at 7:50 amThanks, Jennifer, for being there and sharing your views.4. Hortense Spillers on October 17, 2011 at 7:50 amThanks, Jennifer, for being there and sharing your views.5. Jennie Uleman on October 17, 2011 at 5:54 pmSo much more than welcome — my pleasure and an incredible honorto have TFW run my dispatch. Thank you.6. Jennie Uleman on October 17, 2011 at 5:54 pmSo much more than welcome — my pleasure and an incredible honorto have TFW run my dispatch. Thank you.7. Jennie Uleman on October 17, 2011 at 5:54 pmSo much more than welcome — my pleasure and an incredible honorto have TFW run my dispatch. Thank you.8. Jennie Uleman on October 17, 2011 at 5:54 pmSo much more than welcome — my pleasure and an incredible honorto have TFW run my dispatch. 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Dispatch from Occupy Wall Street

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Dispatch from Occupy Wall Street

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