Impressions on Occupy Boston

On Tuesday, October 25, 2011, I went to Dewey Square in Boston, just across the street from the Boston Federal Reserve Bank, to attend the OccuPoetry event at Occupy Boston.  All this week poets will be speaking between 2pm and 3pm as part of a series of scheduled events.  I was invited by well-known Boston poet Peter Desmond to read my poem Occupy Wall Street along with several other poets, including Ginsberg Award-winning poet Richard Cambridge.  The readings will continue through Friday if you are interested in attending, as well as interested in seeing exactly what it happening in the protest.  I had no clue what might be going on down there, and was very hesitant to put any stock in a news report that I had heard about from Fox 25 news.  Here are my impressions.

It’s a Hooverville for the 21^st Century.  A tent camp full of the unemployed and recently homeless.  They are mostly in their 20s, but there are several in the 30s and older.  Most of the 20-somethings have cell phones.  Adjacent to the tent camp is a garden which they work on together to grow food.  Closer to South Station is what would  normally be described as vendor tents, like what you might see at a craft fair.  Let’s call it Bushville.  These are the “beneficiaries” of the Bush Economic Policy™ and the two, count ‘em, two recessions caused by Republican Supply Side Economics.

These people are jobless, homeless, but not quite hopeless.  They like President Obama; they respect and still believe in him, but they want more of the campaign Obama than the compromise Obama.  They are sick and tired of the obstructionist Republicans and the lie factory that is Fox “News”.  They’re smart and aware of their rights.  They’re political without being ideological.  They’re peaceful, but on edge.  They are expressing themselves through music and poetry, and by growing food in the park.  These are not hippies.  Most of them weren’t even born yet when there were still hippies.  Sure, some of them grew up poor, but most of the people I met have some college education, if not a degree.  They are the displaced middle class.

Everything Limbaugh, Beck, the RNC, the Republican presidential hopefuls, the info-zombies of Faux News, etc., says about them is wrong.  They have clear needs and goals.  Make the bailout babies of Wall Street, the whining millionaires & billionaires, and the corporate overlords pay their fair share for a change.  Reinstate oversight and regulation of banks, Wall Street, and corporations because those jerks can’t be trusted.  Stop wasting money on useless wars, and spend the money instead on important things like education, health care reform, feeding the poor, taking care of vets, and job creation.  Read the Constitution and Bill of Rights, and you’ll clearly see that this county belongs to the people, not soulless corporations.  While I am paraphrasing, that seems like a clear and concise “mission statement” to me.

This is not and anti-government protest.  It is anti-corporate, anti-lobbyist, anti-hypocrisy, and anti-obstructionist.  These people want their government back from those who have taken it hostage and used it against the people it was designed to protect.  This movement is pro-people, pro-poor, pro-middle class, and pro-democracy.  It is respectful of our country and its traditions, and therefore as patriotic as any battle ever fought on this soil.  It is organic, leaderless, and real.  In other words, everything the Tea Party protests never were, which were clearly run by a lobbyist, Dick Armey, and the HMO/health insurance industry.  This movement is non-violent, again, unlike the Tea Party protests, which was as gun-toting as a Sylvester Stallone movie.

The guiding spirits of the Occupy Wall Street movement are Gandhi, Chavez, and King.  It is color-blind and inclusive.  It is not racist, sexist, anti-Semitic, or homophobic, despite articles in the conservative-leaning big media to paint it as such.  These are nameless, faceless American heroes who just want our nation to fulfill its promise unburdened by the clasping, grasping greed of a few who see life as a zero-sum game.  These people know that a rising tide lifts all ships.  I know this because I saw it in their kindness and generosity towards each other and towards me.

This little Bushville, and the Occupy movement as a whole, are also incredibly sad.  It should be absolutely unnecessary in a country as powerful, advanced, and wealthy as ours for a place like Bushville to exist.  Everywhere I looked there were words of hope and encouragement for the pro-democracy citizen revolts throughout the Middle East that made up the Arab Spring.  Here is Boston, and in New York and elsewhere, we now have an American Autumn to follow the Arab Spring.