Photos from Occupy Detroit Sunday night

I haven't made any signs yet because people keep making signs like this that perfectly sum up my feelings and so I just use them

Lots of people dancing around the center fountain last night.  Some to a bongo drummer, some to a boom box, some to a trombone and trumpet

Folks just chilling out on a Sunday night.  Behind them you can see the new food/comfort/medical tarp all set up.

Here's the inside of the new services tent, looking towards the food side.  Used a fire line to move all this stuff across the park earlier in the day.  Great example of cooperation and many hands make light work.  The new area still needs to be organized, but should be a lot better.

Lots of kids out in the park on Sunday.  Perhaps celebrating the freedom to draw on the sidewalk with chalk?

Juan's awesome cargo bike with a motor.

Another cook bike with industrial strength trailer.

Dancing in the evening light.

Chilling in the park with their kid.

Trombone!

Guy with tie and sweater helping homeless guy to get the fire started.

Screen printing more Occupy Detroit patches and other arts and crafts projects.

A fiddler and some other folks look at the map of Detroit where people are putting dots for where they are from.

Right on.

I assume this sign is leftover from the "International" rally Saturday.  Occupiers from Detroit marched down to Hart Plaza and waved across the river at some Windsor Occupiers.

New welcome banner.

The statue near one of the entrances to the park. Turns out this guy is AWESOME.  He was the mayor of Detroit that gave out land and seeds to poor folks during the depression of the late 19th century, basically the first proponent of urban agriculture.  He fought monopolists and land speculators (Matty Maroun anybody?) I can't find the quote of his that is now written in front of the statue in chalk, but here's another in the same vein: "Unfortunately the laws are generally on the side of the trusts and corporations laws made or purchased by them for just such occasions and so are most often the decisions of courts."  Things apparently haven't changed much in the past 100+ years.

A little union support.  Heard there were lots of UAW folks at the BoA protest Friday.

While I was holding a sign on Friday night a guy pulled his car over to ask where folks were.  I explained that since it was late many folks were hanging out either near the food tent or around some of the little campfire stoves that were going in the park.  He asked why we were there and I told him that we were there because we thought connection between corporations and the government had grown to tight and that the vast majority of people no longer had a voice.  He then asked why were protesting banks instead of the government then and I told him we'd probably do some protests at government offices too, but that this week we'd been protesting at BoA because of all the foreclosures in Detroit.  He said it seemed pretty silly to camp in a park if we were upset with the government.  I said that money talks with our current system but since we don't have any money we have to do this instead, and hey, it had worked since he and I were talking.  Then we said good night.

Saturday night before I talked to the skeptic I talked with a guy on his way to work at Ford Field for a long time.  He works for a cleaning company and would be working from about 10 PM to 6 AM to clean up after the Lions game.  Even though he has a job he can't afford a place to live so is homeless.  He's not without hope though, he got a Pell grant and will be starting a degree in Social Work in January.  He worries that he won't be able to finish his degree though because Pell grants are often under attack by the Republicans.  Having to shelter hop also makes things difficult.  If he loses his Pell grant he said he'd probably go into the military because that is his last option.  We talked for a long time about the state of politics and protest and Detroit and the wisdom of investing in people like him where such a little money can go such a long way

How do we relate to one another?

Addendum 4 hours later:
I feel like this is still not getting at the question(s) swirling around in my mind.  Though I can't really put my finger on it.  Things are better at Occupy now, set meal times and just generally trying to get everyone at camp plugged in, regardless of where they live while they're not there seems to be going well.  Also set meal times and closing down the kitchen in between those times is keeping things under control.  Hopefully we'll all start to relate to each other better as well.


My mind is awash with ideas, this is sure to be incoherent.

A city is a place where a lot of people of different backgrounds live together.  We all have to share this space.  We will interact with each other, but why and where and how are defined by the choices we make.  In a ridiculous example, I could, in the city of Detroit, choose never to share a meal with a black person.  I could choose to never smile at someone who does not speak English in the same way that I do.  I would like to say that I have already shared many meals with my black coworkers and smiled at lots of people in my neighborhood who are originally from Mexico and so speak with an accent, but these are extreme examples.

The more subtle come up all the time.  Do I assume the twitchy guy sitting at the bus stop is on drugs or has some sort of disease of the nervous system?  Depending on that assumption to I act differently when he yells out "Hey sister!"  Do I assume the former if he is black and the latter if he is white?  if his coat is dirty?  if he has all his teeth?  if it is a woman rather than a man?

This has come up most recently at the Occupy Detroit site for me.  A lot of people have been coming there for food.  There's a controversy because many people are getting meals who are not necessarily participating in the camp in other ways.  Some are also getting multiple helpings.  Many of these people are perceived as "homeless" (we really don't know where they usually sleep, and as a group that is spending its night in tents in a park I'm not sure we should judge).  Some have acted out in ways that have made folks think they are drunk or on drugs.  When I am serving food I have certainly been thinking things like "Oh, I bet that guy is homeless" and have noticed I think this most often about black guys.  Then there was a white guy working with me in the food tent who said that he had been homeless for awhile, and I realized that as seen as he had told me that, I started thinking "Oh, I bet that guy is homeless" about more of the white people coming up.

And do I treat the people that I think are homeless differently than the other people coming up for food.  When I am in a good mood and things are going well, I don't really think so, when I am in a good customer service mode I am nice to everyone.  When I was cold and my feet were getting wet through my socks and some folks by the fire were getting belligerent and I needed to go home soon and the next shift was no where in site?  I was short with everyone, but definitely more so with the people I thought were homeless and therefore taking advantage of the camp.  I realized it and caught myself, but still it was not a good moment.

How do we deal with this?  How do we change the way we make assumptions and how we treat people?  I don't know, but I suspect it means we just need to be aware of when we are making those assumptions and try to correct for it.  Thoughts?

Occupy Detroit

Last night I spent the night in Grand Circus Park with 30-50 other people (I'm not good at these sorts of estimates).  It was about 1/3 white young folks (like myself), 1/3 houseless people and 1/3 other.  I spent most of the evening in the food tent handing out hot dogs, beans and rice, beet salad, pasta salad, green salad and some veggie soup that some of us through together at the last minute.  Here's some photos I took before it got dark:

 Folks at the information table, there's a little library and we there is a website.

 Lots of tents.  I started to count this morning and I think I got about 30.

 Safety/Security Committee meeting.  There were some issues Saturday night due to a stolen lap tops.  Everything was quiet Sunday night as far as I could tell and everyone seemed pretty cheery this morning.

This is my tent and bike.

This morning we made a lot of eggs, bacon and potato for folks, and also had tons of bagels.  We also made an insanely large pot of vegetable soup to serve for lunch with grilled cheese, though I had to leave before lunch serving time.

It is pretty amazing how much things have grown since Friday night and how much better organized it is now.  I went by on Saturday afternoon and there were twice as many tents as Friday night and twice as much kitchen, then when I showed up on Sunday there was 3 times as much food and quite a few more tents as well.  There has been a lot of good outreach too, including a big meeting at the UU church on Saturday night and so it should be a lot more diverse soon.  Lots of more established activists signing on.  Below the break below are some photos from the big rally on Friday.

Why Occupy?

Here are some slightly edited ramblings from an e-mail I sent my mom earlier, roughly in response to this article

As far as my only feelings about the Occupy movement (and I've been hearing similar things in gearing up for Detroit), it is all about reclaiming power and a voice from the 1% (corporate power and the place where state power is being co-opted by corporate power).  That is why we "occupy" essentially, to reclaim a space in which to have "our" (everyone's) voices heard and to be able to meet openly.  While any occupy group might decide to support or oppose any policy (like in Detroit I could see some consensus about local city policies developing) most are trying not to work or talk about any divisive issues because the whole idea is that 99% of Americans (perhaps people more generally) can agree that our current system is broken and that our voices have been silenced by the 1% for too long. 

Addressing more what this op-ed is about, I think of the 1% not so much as being the people at the top but rather the institutions/policies/

structures/systems that are designed in a way that benefits the most powerful corporations and people while oppressing the rest of society.  And really, even the richest 1% of folks benefit when we are all benefited.  As Malik was talking about at our staff meeting Friday, it is not just people of color who are negatively affected by white supremacy, we all are poorer for not hearing diverse voices in our world.  I haven't heard any folks saying to kill or depose the richest 1%, we just want the 99% to succeed.

 

Even more succinctly stated (ripped from a press release by Occupy Seattle):

The purpose of the Occupy movements is to:
1. Give visibility to the 99% Americans who are fed up with the fact that our democracy is now in the grip of 1% of society.
2. Demand that our government representatives legislate to benefit the 99%.
3. Demand corporate accountability to the 99% of Americans.

Below are some rather poor photos of the first Occupy Detroit General Assembly meeting.  We started inside the Spirit of Hope church but there were way too many people there (since I wasn't in the back the photos don't properly show it), we all had to go outside to the playground/garden.  My new cameras night setting made the photos so light that you can't tell we are all standing in the dark.

Hey look I got a camera

And here are a few photos of my house to prove it

This is where I live

We have a garden out front

There are some old tomato plants still producing

 

And there are some small things that I just planted.  These are lettuce babies.

 

We have a nice porch for sitting on, plus you can look down the line and see everyone else's porches too.

There's a nice tree in the Northwest corner of the yard.

All my canned goods fit pretty well in our little pantry

Our dining room is lovely in the evening light.  I sit here a lot.

I'm going to take my camera to the Occupy Detroit organizing meeting tonight and will let you know how it goes.

#1*

Reason to use agriculture as a community organizing tool #1*
It is a great common ground for people.  Last night we ran a neighborhood work day at a Soup Kitchen garden.  Folks were there to work and to learn about how to get their garden ready for bed and plant garlic.  There were people of a large variety of ages, races, genders and backgrounds.  The sort of people that you would think might not have much in common, but for all of them they have gardens in common (and probably more that they don't realize).  But we were all talking like old friends in no time about worms and soil and compost and the finer points of mulching and how you cook Crowder Peas and what the best place in the garden to plant garlic might be.


* I sense a series, we'll see if it develops