Steve Iskovitz, a friend and former Green-Rainbow Party candidate for Cambridge City Council, is unable to publicly share his thoughts on the Occupy Movement and instead suggested that we post those of his friend, Pavlov Katz. I received this post a few days ago, finally got a chance to read it, liked it and decided to start posting Pavlov's thoughts. I am posting them uneditted.  His words are his own. You can find all of Steve and Pavlov's posts under the Occupy tag.

Hi everyone,

It's been a really long time since I last wrote. I left New York for a few weeks in early December, and returned later in the month. The timing wasn't too good, since very little happened around here during the holidays, and there was a lot of frustrating, idle time. One positive thing that did happen during that time, though, was that a lot of people worked on creating a sense of community among us who are staying at one of the churches in the upper west side. I'd originally thought of it as simply a place to sleep, and to simply leave in the morning and start my real day downtown at OWS. But some more insightful people saw it as more than that, as a chance to develop our identity as a group, a subsection of OWS. The original motivation for this might have been simple necessity– to reduce thefts and conflicts, but in any case, it's turned into an actual community, an opportunity to meet new people and work together constructively.

Otherwise, things were scattered and thin through late December, until New Year's eve. Earlier in the evening a few of us went around town, happy to get away from the uninspired atmosphere, but came back to the area and walked into Zucotti Park around 10 pm. Several hundred people were there, a low-level party. More people arrived steadily, and the absurdity of the situation became embarrassingly apparent. Here we are, 300, 400, 500 of us, in a park we lived in, a park from which we changed world history, until a mere six ago. And now we're surrounded by standing metal barricades which enforce arbitrary, stupid rules which are arguably illegal. Say, what about these standing metal barricades, anyway?

Eventually a few of the more daring–or bored, or angry, or crazy, who knows?– among us grabbed one of those barricades, detached it from the others, and pulled it away, dropping it ten feet away. Some private security guards contracted out by Brookfield Properties ran out and pulled the barricade back and re-attached it. A few minutes later on the other side of the park, someone pulls another, with the same result. Each time a barricade is removed, a crowd gathers and cheers. Some security guards appear ready to fight over them. As they grab the barricades back and swear angrily, it becomes obvious these people are not trained for this sort of thing. Soon enough the police pull them back and do the work themselves.

After a while a pioneering sort takes a barricade, but instead of dropping it in a random spot, drags it through the crowd into the middle of the park. Maybe no-one had done it before because they were afraid of accidentally hitting someone with it, but with some yelling the path cleared. Well, the police were not about to wade through the crowd to retrieve it, so they let it go. A few minutes later, someone dragged another to the middle. Then another. Soon enoughit simply became the thing to do. A sociologist would have loved it. I actually felt awkward and out of place because I wasn't dragging barricades. The ten-foot-long metal structures began piling up. Soon enough there were so many gaps that anyone could enter or leave the park easily. Someone climbed atop the barricade pile, then another. Soon a crowd of five or ten people stood on top of the five-foot mound, jumping rhythmically on it like a trampoline sort of. Drummers arrived. People were chanting, drumming, dancing, and bouncing on barricades. "Whose year? Our year!" "Occupy 2012!" More people arrived and the crowd became so thick the police seemed to disappear in the background. Someone set up a projector in the park and beamed images onto a building across the street. And that's how we brought in the new year.

It was indescribably fun. The numbers were on our side. We had a huge number of people, just as the police ranks must have been spread thin. I assume there were too many needed in Times Square and other areas. Bloomberg's "private army" (his term) couldn't spare one or two hundred troops, as they might have otherwise. So, we had our moment. The best thing about it was it was totally organic. I doubt anyone had planned it, and it didn't matter anyway. Through sheer inspiration and a little trial and error, we collectively hit upon a winning strategy, carried it out, and celebrated, all at the same time. This was the spirit that started OWS in the first place, and carried it through those early weeks in the park. Yes, there were working groups and on-line discussions even back then, but there was the crowd, the face-to-face contact, the infectious enthusiasm. Since the November 15th raid a lot of that had been lost. Through all our attempts to re-organize, we'd lost a lot of the human contact, so the New Year's party in the park reminded all of us who we are and what we're capable of. We broke the rules, showed the world we're still here, and hurt nobody in the process (and only a few of us were bruised by police).

Not long after midnight, though, the magic began to dissipate, and people decided to keep the energy going with a march around town. I bailed out after a few blocks, not seeing the point. Later, around Union Square, I think, nearly all the marchers left were detained and cuffed. Sixty arrested, some were simply detained and never processed, and all were out by early morning.

Over the next few days, sober reality began to settle in. I found out that Obama signed the bill on the 31st. Now anyone can be picked up for any reason, or for no reason, and held indefinitely. 2012 begins with the realization that the US is now under a state of martial law. Constitution, Bill of Rights, R.I.P.

There's an expression that says something like: "Don't sit and wait for the storm to end. Learn to dance in the rain." I'm starting to figure this out. There is an element of confusion nearly everywhere in OWS. About half of OWS meetings seem to include occasional shouting matches. How many arguments and potential fights have I helped defuse? We get visitors from other Occupy sites. They're surprised at all the conflict. The other night at a housing meeting, one such visitor said, "The rest of us around the country look up to you and try to emulate you. But you act like a bunch of children." Others say similar things.

I think a lot about this. Why is the New York occupation so much more chaotic than the others? Probably a number of reasons: We're a lot bigger. This is New York City, everything is more charged and intense here. The fact that we're a center of attentionn and that we're more dysfunctional seems like a contradiction, but in a way it makes sense. Things that happen here are more important, so people feel more strongly about everything. Also, we might attract people who want to be in the spotlight, whereas an Occupy site in the west or midwest might draw more quiet people who just want to work.

What I'm coming to realize and accept is that nearly every problem that could exist here does. I could write a book about the problems of nearly any group here. A bad decision here, someone who talks and doesn't listen there, a violent threat over nothing, an important task completely overlooked, young people over-relying on technology for communication, I could go on all day listing things.

I wonder, maybe every exciting, dynamic, important movement in history is filled with seemingly endless, ridiculous mistakes and problems. At other times I wonder if we're just a microcosm of American society, that we as a nation have become so detached from reality and common sense that we're incapable of correcting ourselves, beyond the point of no return. Or maybe I'd find the same problems anywhere. I don't know. In any case, I stay here because with all the problems, people still care, and most of are here for ideals, and with all the yelling and confusion and mistakes, we still manage to get things done, even in the winter, even without our park, and even with our money running out.

Thursday night a few of us were on the A train when five cops got on. They stood together for a few stops, then took up positions at different doors for a few more stops. They got off the train right behind us and seemed to follow us a way down the platform. It wasn't until we started up the steps that we noticed they were gone…I don't think they knew we were OWS. I think it's more likely that we looked freaky or poor, that we didn't fit in with Bloomberg and Company's vision of the new New York, and were letting us know.

Oh, one more thing: Police raided the Global Revolution building in Brooklyn a few days ago. Apparently they were the first group to livestream us. Someone I know was arrested for taking pictures of cops badge numbers. They're trying to take our "eyes" away. Okay, unfortunately I don't have a quite place to edit this, so I'll just send it out as is. Til later,

Steve Iskovitz, a friend and former Green-Rainbow Party candidate for Cambridge City Council, has started emailing his thoughts from the front lines of the Occupy movement.  Since this blog has lain dormant for so long, I decided to lend it to him.  I will post the backlog of messages about once a day and then start posting them as they come in.  I am posting them uneditted.  His words are his own. You can find all of his posts under the Occupy tag.

Hi everyone,

It’s been slow around here since my last post. Strange to say this, since up to recently things have been frantic.

We’re still hanging in, securing housing for ourselves and running meetings again. I went to a spokes council meeting the other night. It was kind of nice to see the process functioning. Spokes council is a cumbersome process, but it’s quite democratic. Of course, it’s a messy process, lots of arguments, and then the next day everyone else yells about the decisions made. Once you explain the reasons, they lower the volume of their yelling a bit. I suppose groups making decisions about how to conduct themselves is by nature complicated and controversial and always will be.

The past few days in particular have been difficult. A lot of people arguing, about all kinds of things. I think this is partly because we’re all stressed about not having a home, and partly because we’re confused about our mission at this point. With Thanksgiving coming up it’s unlikely much will be done about this in the next few days.

One on-going argument involves the kitchen and where to send food. I hear all kinds of rumors, and I don’t go to their meetings, so I’m not an expert on the subject, but it seems a big part of the conflict is about whether to send food to the park or not. Some people say eveyone needs to be fed, so send food to the park as well as the working groups and the churches where people are staying. Others say just feed the working groups and the churches and don’t feed the people at the park, because they’re not working, they’re just hanging around being unproductive. In a sense, this is a holdover of the old conflict that went on when we lived in the park, concerning the two “classes” of people in OWS– working group members versus homeless people accused of not being part of the movement but just hanging aroud for free stuff.

I think there’s another aspect to this conflict, and I’ve begun voicing it around here. The question of sending resources to the park underscores the fact that we haven’t really adapted to the raid yet. We have to ask ourselves this question: Do we want to “keep” the park, or not? If we keep it, we have to make a conscientious decision to do so, and make a real presence there, complete with political signs, tabling, a message, a point. Then when people show up they’ll see something of substance, something of us, a reason for being there. If we decide to abandon it, we should put the message out that the park is no longer ours, that that phase of our movement is over.

Of course, there are other questions within this larger one. If we stay there, just how will we maintain our presence, and if we leave, where will we go, how will we communicate our message. But these questions will be easier once we address the main question. Avoiding this question, I think, is a big mistake, because it leaves us halfway inbetween. It makes us look bad, and it wastes our time and resources.

The current scene at the park is really pitiful. The metal gates surround it, with entrances on either side street, not on Broadway. This discourages the public from entering the park, which surely is the point. I just walked by a few minutes ago on the way to the library here, and there were about 20 people inside, and 10 or 15 outside the gate on Broadway. The people inside were smoking or just sitting around, the people on Broadway had some signs, a 9/11 conspiracist, some religious speaker. There were almost as many private security guards, and a few police. Some tourists, a camera team.

It’s awful to even go by and witness this, which must be why so few of us do. It gives the impression the movement is dead, that the police succeeded in crushing us and that we’re simply gone. This is not true, but in the absence of a strong, focused on-line presence, this visual symbolism goes a long way.

Hmm, running low on time here at the library, so let me make this point: Losing the park a month or two would have been fatal to us, but by now we’ve implanted our ideas into the consciousness of the nation and the world to the point where that physical location isn’t so necessary. Just yesterday I talked with people who are organizing an occupation in Utah and heard about Occupy Newark starting up, to name a few. As one person’s sign said, “You can’t evict an idea.”

Okay, all for now, and hopefully I’ll have more substance for you all next time. Feel free to forward this around.

Steve

Steve Iskovitz, a friend and former Green-Rainbow Party candidate for Cambridge City Council, has started emailing his thoughts from the front lines of the Occupy movement.  Since this blog has lain dormant for so long, I decided to lend it to him.  I will post the backlog of messages about once a day and then start posting them as they come in.  I am posting them uneditted.  His words are his own. You can find all of his posts under the Occupy tag.

Hi everyone,

It's Saturday morning, things are actually quiet enough for me to sit and write. Here's what happened since my last, kind of frantic, message early Thursday afternoon.

I walked over to City Hall where I heard a rally was supposed to be held to demand Bloomberg's resignation. I just missed it, people had already left for Foley Square. On the way over I made another attempt to call someone here at the storage place, and by chance happened to catch him, and find out the space was open, so I turned around and came back here. Had I not reached him, I would have gone to Foley Square and then to the Brooklyn Bridge, and witnessed history, or gotten arrested, or beaten up.

You probably know better than me what happened there. I don't have video capabilities on this old computer. In any case, there were many, many people in Foley Square, and even more at the bridge, 5,000, I heard? Lots of pushing and shoving, hundreds of arrests throughout the day, I think. I was here helping restore the medical supplies shelf when one of the medics got a call that trouble was about to start, and we helped pack up bandages, etc. We were out of Maalox, which is used as an antidote to pepper spray. The shelf has thinned out considerably this week, since the police took the medical tent and all the supplies they had there.

Yes, for those who don't understand what this is about: the police confiscated and destroyed our medical supplies.

In an incident which got much more publicity than the medical supplies, the police also raided the library. It was quite a library. I found a number of really good books I don't usually see. (I'd taken out Matt Taibbi's Griftopia, the Battle of Seattle, and a Murray Bookchin book, all gone, since they were in my tent.) They had 4,000 books in the park. The police took them all the night of the raid. The library folks went to the Sanitation Department where all the confiscated items are stored, and recovered 1,000 of them, but many of them were in bad condition. All the periodicals, and tables to put stuff on, are gone. Their computers were smashed.

Interestingly, the day after the raid, they went back into the park and tried to set up a small version of the library. When it began to rain and they covered the books with plastic, the police said they weren't allowed to cover them, so they got wet and ruined. At another point they brought out some books and had them confiscated again.

I can vouch for the fact claim that the computers were destroyed. When I went to the Sanitation Dept to get my duffel bag back, I saw a few destroyed computers. They were actually bent in the middle, as if someone had tried to crush them. I found my bag and got some clothes back. The things in the pocket were pretty ruined, though. The lenses from my sunglasses had been popped out, and a container of powder had broken. I thought this could have been through carelessness, just the confusion of things being thrown into a pile. But someone else here got his backpack back, and a small computer tucked in the middle of it was smashed. He'd seled the pack with duct tape, which hadn't been open. The only explanation, then, was what we'd heard from others– that it had been run through a trash compactor. In retrospect, that must have happened to my bag too.

This information needs to be spread and understood. Anyone who believes the mayor had us kicked out of the park to protect the neighborhood or to protect our safety should understood that these stated reasons are simply lies. Bloomberg is trying to silence and destroy our movement. His troops attacked out headquarters, stole our supplies, and is doing what he can to see that we don't return. He has targeted high-profile organizers for arrest. It isn't just Bloomberg, of course. The crackdown on Occupy sites around the country has been co-ordinated on a federal level. This has been reported in the media.

I read an interesting editorial saying, essentially, that Bloomberg is helping our movement in the same way that George Wallace and others helped the civil rights movement, by attacking it in an ugly, clumsy, transparent manner and turning people who might otherwise not care into supporters.

This morning I actually took some time to read some newspapers. The NYT, as far as I could see, has absolutely nothing about us. The Daily News, which has been providing much more coverage, today has an incredible quote from Bloomberg. Says the Daily News:

The mayor, on his weekly radio show, defended his decision to evict the park protesters in the wee hours of Tuesday morning.

"One of the surest signs we did the right thing is that nobody in the city, as far as I know, is calling for the return of the tarps, tents and encampment of Zuccotti Park, the mayor said.

"Now there are protesters that are probably calling for it. But I don't know of any elected officials who have stood up."

This statement is wrong in so many ways it's hard to know where to start. Nobody is calling for a return to the park? What? All kinds of people are, and what? Protesters aren't people? Only elected officials are? And even the last statement is wrong, since there was a city councilman arrested and beaten the other day. Presumably, he's calling for our return to the park. The statement demonstrates a total disconnect between Bloomberg and most of the city, an absurd level of arrogance, a cartoon character of the 1%.

I just overheard Zach from the library, with the big sideburns, who you might have seen photos of, across the room now, sorting through the mangled books. "You've got to love it when the books that are destroyed are really ironic." Like what, someone asks. "Peace in a World of Conflict… You can't get any better than destroying a book like 1984. It's almost like they did it on purpose because they thought it was funny."

Okay, as far as the movement in general, we were hit hard Monday night, and again on Thursday during the actions. This week has been spent on damage control. Most people, as far as I know, are still in jail. We're still scrambling to deal with housing for us. Four churches are putting people up. I've been staying in one on the upper west side. Kitchen has been sending meals to the churches, and we've been sending supplies.

The situation in the park is weird. There are metal police barricades around the whole thing, with one little area for entering and exiting. This morning I saw 20 or 30 people there, yesterday evening there were more. The police won't allow large things in, like pans of food, or shelves of books. Enforcement is arbitrary, keeps us off balance, and makes it, for the time being, impossible to build anything in the way of a movement there, which surely is the intention.

I can't imagine any possible legal ground for police policy in the park. What possible justification, how could the regulations be written? Lawyers are working on it now, but in the meantime, we can't do much. Aside from all the arguing and confusion over logistics, by people who haven't slept enough and have recently gotten out of jail or beaten up by police, people are generally positive about things. Everyone understands that Bloomberg and his police look awful now, in the eyes of most of the country. They made absolute fools of themselves, and despite media reports that "police clash with protesters," or of some reports of nearly equal numbers of injuries between police and protesters (???????), by media outlets which until recently refered to the mayor as "and advocate of free speech," most thinking people understand the truth. We stand for average people in the is country and against criminal banks and multi-billion dollar theft, and have been attacked for it, by a police force run by the 12th richest person in America.

We took some hits this week, but we'll be back. Just how, we haven't figrued out yet. In fact, last night we had the first meeting we've had since this happened. It took until then to even get the chance to get together and talk, and we'll need to talk a little more before we address some big questions: How much energy do we spend trying to take back the park and making it again our center? Do we look for another location? Or do we decentralize, with the idea that the park as a central location served the purpose of embedding the idea of our movement in the eyes of the country and the world, and is not needed any more. People have been talking about squats. Can we use squatted buildings as our new center, or centers? We've been thinking of Tahrir Square as a model, but every situation is different, this is not Egypt.

Riot police have been posted outside the storage space here. Building (teacher's union) security has been nervous, tightening up the rules some. I'd thought things would return to some sort of normal after the raid, but it looks like things have progressed to a new stage…It's funny, I always read these critiques of our movement, often by 60s left people and others often on our side, saying we need leaders to "emerge" from amongst us. They don't understand: Leaders are easier to target. Though we are officially leaderless, as in any collection of people, certain ones take on more responsibility and receive more attention than others. And this week, such people have been targeted for arrest. And doesn't anyone remember what happened to Martin Luther King, Fred Hampton, and others? Thanks for the advice, but we're going to do it this way.

I hear another argument brewing. It's been quiet for almost an hour! Til next time,

Steve

Steve Iskovitz, a friend and former Green-Rainbow Party candidate for Cambridge City Council, has started emailing his thoughts from the front lines of the Occupy movement.  Since this blog has lain dormant for so long, I decided to lend it to him.  I will post the backlog of messages about once a day and then start posting them as they come in.  I am posting them uneditted.  His words are his own. You can find all of his posts under the Occupy tag.

Hi folks,

A quick one, if I can finish in 14 minutes.

Got back into the city around 8 a.m., and spent the morning running around Broadway, Wall Strreet and surrounding streets and intersections. Kind of reminded me of DC demos around'00 and '01, but without the tear gas, fortunately.

People blocked entrances to Wall Street, and there was a huge crowd behind the NYSE, on Exchange Street. Cops only allowed people with work IDs through the barricades, but at times there were so many demonstrators that the police blocked everyone in, which was a victory for us. Someone said the start of the 9:30 NYSE was delayed, but it looks like that was not true. So we didn't actually prevent the official start, but did delay a lot of people, presumably, cause a lot of headaches, and made headlines again.

The scene in Zucotti Park is crazy. Barricades everywhere, police keep changing where you can enter and exit. All kinds of commotion. Cheers of victory, shouts of anger, irritation at this barricade and that. After a while I wonder, where is all this headed, what are we accomplishing, what should we be doing?

But we're temporarily disoriented, three days since our eviction, and where do we even go to talk with each other? Hopefully over the coming days we'll answer some questions: what do we do next, etc.

Police are being annoying, at times brutal, most of us have been able to avoid direct confrtonttation and arrest. Just move when they tell you to, then go back ten seconds later when they've walked away. Cat and mouse.

Storage unit closed today, hopefully we'll be in tomorrow. Okay, 6 minutes to go, will try to send to as many people as possible. Send this report anywhere you like.

–Steve

Steve Iskovitz, a friend and former Green-Rainbow Party candidate for Cambridge City Council, has started emailing his thoughts from the front lines of the Occupy movement.  Since this blog has lain dormant for so long, I decided to lend it to him.  I will post the backlog of messages about once a day and then start posting them as they come in.  I am posting them uneditted.  His words are his own. You can find all of his posts under the Occupy tag.

Hi everyone,

It turns out I was wrong when I said the solidarity march with Oakland went off without incident. I found out after I wrote that there were some arrests, 14, I think, including a guy I work with in the storage room and another guy I know sort of. Both were out the next day.

I finally got to watch the Oakland videos I sent you all a few days back. Awful. Shooting “non-lethal” gas canisters at people’s heads. Even a teddy bear can be lethal if you shoot it fast enough at someone’s head. Protesters came back again and again and eventually re-took the plaza. Others came out in support of the original occupiers. Presumably it was this popular response that caused Oakland’s new mayor to make the bizarre statement that she supported the goals of Occupy Oakland and would minimize police presence. She’s on their side! With friends like that, who needs enemies? Then the next day or so she came out and said they have to obey the curfew and be out of the park at night. You have to wonder what’s going on behind the scenes in that mayor’s office.

And there has already been talk of Marines supporting the Occupy movement, but when the Oakland police shot the Marine Scott Olsen in the head with a canister, sending him to the hospital, I think more Marines are coming out in support. Some Marines joined a march in New York the other day regarding this…Police have moved in military-style on Occupy Denver…and Nashville, Tennessee has joined Albany, New York in key public officials refusing orders to arrest protesters..

These two phenomenon interest me greatly: a) cracks in the system; If police, prosecuters, etc., begin refusing orders against us and it really spreads, it would be incredible. b) massive popular reaction against police crackdowns; This seems to happen every single time. This puts the authorities in a real bind. If they do nothing, the movement sustains itself or grows gradually. If they react against it, the movement swells dramatically.

Aside by James: In nonviolent strategy, these instances of police refusing orders or former or current soldiers joining protesters are examples of undermining the support of those in power.  Such instances are vital for nonviolence to work.  Using violence has the opposite effect as it tends to increase the support for those in power or at least the acquiescence by different groups to those in power.

Okay, enough speculation, now back to the situation I’m involved in: It got pretty cold Thursday night, putting a strain on us. The folks in medical are working extra hard with hypothermia issues. Friday night I spent my first night in a tent. My friend and co-worker was going to let me in on their tent, but ended up losing his spot. I had a spot but no tent, so they moved their tent to our spot. I had to clear out a massive amount of stuff to make space. Most of it, as it turns out, was garbage, some personal stuff I set aside, and managed to squeeze the 4-person tent inbetween the nearest camper and the borderline with the sidewalk. The feeling that night was so strange. The police have been leaning down on us more over the past few days. Bloomberg making these statements implying that arrests were inevitable, and Friday morning the fire department came in and took our gasoline-powered generators. (Used for media computers and I think for the kitchen.) So there was a weird kind of excitement in the air Friday night. It was partly a Friday night in Manhattan vibe, partly the electricity of a coming storm, and there were loud sirens now and then. Could have been coincidence– fire trucks answering a call that happened to take them past us– but I doubt it.

Younger protesters said that day that because of such signs they felt arrests were inevitable. When I hear this I remind them this has been happening on and off since the day I arrived, and that it’s almost always theatrics. It’s true that they might crack down on us, but if Bloomberg decides to make this move, let him. I hope he doesn’t, and none of us want to be beaten or arrested, but if they try to crack down on us in any big, dramatic way, it will be a big mistake. I don’t know how many thousands showed up that Friday morning a few weeks back during the threatened cleaning crackdown because I wasn’t there, but I’ve heard estimates between 2,000 and 8,000, and that was at 6 in the morning! I don’t know of any contingency plans with unions, but I’m almost certain that such a move would be met with a show of force among unions and working people, “99%ers,” that– planned or organized or not— would not soon be forgotten.

I’ve gone to a lot of demonstrations in my day. People who don’t go to them have sometimes called me brave, and I always quickly corrected them and told them that, no, I’m not brave, that when things get tense, I always looked for a way out, that I was never on the front lines when the police visors went down. But even I don’t feel afraid this time, and so Friday night in my tent, even with the rain fly down so I couldn’t see out at all, I could hear and feel the spirit around the park. We all heard the sirens, we all knew of the police huff-and puff, and we also knew each other, if not by name than by face. And we’d proven, collectively, night after night, that we were staying put. One of my tentmates was asleep, the other out late, but I laughed out loud with this feeling, this sort of liberating bravery, this feeling that I was doing something that mattered more than me. At one point an “ohm” swept through the park, everyone humming or chanting a single note. I joined in.

Saturday morning it was snowing and sleeting. I had to walk back and forth to storage and the camp a few times, and one time the sleet seemed to be driving horizontally at me. It was rough. I’d thought I’d slept off a coming sickness, but after just a few hours I could barely stand up, and realized instantly it was time for another break. The cold is also aggravating the fact that I need to attend to another dental detail. So Saturday evening I arrived at family’s here in New Jersey, only to find that they are among the 600,000 (?) Jersey residents without power. As it was explained to me, it’s never snowed this much this early in the season, and since the trees still have leaves on them, they took on an inordinate amount of snow, so trees and power lines are down all over. It might be another four or five days before I return to the city.

Oh, I was planning on writing more about this issue, but I guess it will come off as a footnote: They got more tents in the other day, and distributed them randomly, not wanting to discriminate in favor of the working groups and against the homeless. The result is that after distributing 20 or so tents, not one new tent was seen in the park that night, or so I was told. This suggests they simply leave the park as soon as they’re distributed. I’ve been trying to make this point to people there: People with nothing better to do can hang around and when they find out something good has come in, can get their friends to all go over and get one, while the people who work 10 hours a day in the kitchen or 11 hours a day in the storage facility or all night on security shifts and sleep in the day aren’t around to load up on free things. They need to proactively target the working group[s, seek them out, ask them what they need and make sure they get them. Good, cold-weather sleeping bags are coming in, and I hope they don’t get squandered. I made this point to some people involved and I think I made some headway, but soon after I had to bail out.

…Not so satisfied with this report, but I’ll send it out as is. I have more thoughts on the theft issue and about danger from within, which hopefully I’ll be able to express soon. A couple details I forgot to include: The woman who put out the famous video that started the whole Tahrir Square occupation in Cairo was here, gave a workshop, and did an interview with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now, which you can watch. I didn’t even know she’d been there until the next day. Also, the other day there was scheduled a march from Tahrir Square to the US embassy, in support of Occupy Oakland!

One last point: Bloomberg made a statement at one point that we’ll run off at the first sign of winter. I highly doubt it. Some people might flee, but we’re getting zero-degree sleeping bags in, and there are some tough, committed people there. In fact, the snow the other day left the camp more inspired, just knowing we survived it. The more we survive difficult conditions, the more focused and inspired we become. Okay, that’s all for now, and feel free to forward any or all of this information, use my name or not, it doesn’t matter.

Steve Iskovitz, a friend and former Green-Rainbow Party candidate for Cambridge City Council, has started emailing his thoughts from the front lines of the Occupy movement.  Since this blog has lain dormant for so long, I decided to lend it to him.  I will post the backlog of messages about once a day and then start posting them as they come in.  I am posting them uneditted.  His words are his own. You can find all of his posts under the Occupy tag.

Hi folks,

The big news around here the last week is that our camp is being flooded with mentally ill, homeless, alcoholic and drug addicted people from around the city. I’ve heard several rumors: that the police take people from Riker’s Island and deliver them here, that when police find drunk people in other parks they take or send them here, and that word is simply getting around among the city’s homeless that we have free living space, free food and free clothes. I can’t speak to the method by which these people are arriving, only that they are. Perhaps if any of the city’s army of journalists, who now busy themselves examining our operation with a magnifying glass, plastering their front pages with headlines about inequities between Occupy Wall Street and other occupations around the country, or details about controversies in our kitchen, and spend a minute or two investigating these rumors about how and why all these troubled people in need of care are showing up at our doorstep, that might be nice!

I’m only on the receiving end. Just this morning, a woman in front of me dumped a cup of soy milk onto the ground in the serving line. I decided to keep an eye on her, and a minute later she pulled a tarp off someone’s tent while it was still raining. I managed to get the tarp back from her and alert someone that she needs to be watched constantly. This is the kind of work I did back in Boston, and it’s really not that hard. Just hang around with someone all day and keep your eye on them, talk with them, divert them when they’re about to mess things up. I didn’t mind doing it back then, when I had nothing else to do, and it was my recognized responsibility. But we’re all busy with other things, and this type of thing is becoming an ever-increasing burden on our operation. As you can imagine, many of us have stories similar to mine, some much more difficult, like dealing with irate crackhead guys, etc.

People who are almost certainly paid police provocateurs have also shown up. Last week we had a family day and night, when families with young kids actually camped here. A corner of the park was taped off and provided extra security. It happened to be near a huge artistic sort of sculpture structure at the corner at Broadway. A really crazy guy came around the structure in the middle of the night. I heard (rumor) that some protesters actually alerted the cops to his presence and the police did nothing. Then (and this part is pretty much established fact) the dude climbed up to the top of it and began yelling. Quickly the police evacuated the area around the structure, supposedly to guarantee the safety of the people below, who just happened to be the families with kids. By 5 a.m., I’m told, mostly all the families were gone. So much for family night. The crazy guy in question had never been seen before and has never been seen since. There are other stories of supposed provocateurs showing up. So far we’ve handled them all pretty well, with few incidents.

But how long can we sustain this? As our movement has begun making progress, it has been saddled with this tremendous burden. As a counter-move, the kitchen has decided to shut down for three days. The plan is to see to it that food gets to the working groups get food. I think this is a brilliant response. Each working group recognizes and appreciates its own members. This plan would “dry up” the supply of free things to non-productive people in the park. Maybe they’ll go elsewhere, word will get out that it’s no longer a free party here. No doubt there will be problems with this plan, some arguments about who gets how much, logistical problems, etc., but something absolutely needs to be done, or all our resources, including our own sanity, will be drained.

It’s interesting to step back and look at it philosophically: One thing (among many) we’re protesting is the fact that the society, including the city here, is not taking care of its needy. So in response, that very system sics its own needy, its own troubled people, examples of its own failure, upon us in order to defend itself against us! It’s not hard to see the similarity between this and the military, for instance. Instead of taking care of its own poor, we invade other countries. But how do we staff the army of invaders? With those very same poor people. We don’t educate people properly, and thus have an ample supply of uneducated people who don’t know what they’re getting into when they join up! In this way they system can use its own failures to perpetuate its own existence.

Well, we’ll see how this new plan works out.

Elsewhere, Oakland, which can barely afford its own police, pooled police from all around central California to perform a military-style invasion against Occupy Oakland. They don’t mess around in Oakland! I haven’t seen the videos yet, but here they are, and remember, as they say, “This is what democracy looks like.” 

www.occupytogether.org

Occupy Atlanta was also busted, with many arrests, though it was all reported to have been very civil.

The mayor of Albany and Governor Cuomo ordered Albany police and New York state troopers to move in and shut down and arrest Occupy Albany, but guess what? The police and troopers REFUSED ! Occupy Albany is still there. This is the most hopeful news of all, and is a bit like what happened eventually in Tunisia, I think, and Egypt, though in that case it was the army who turned. Someone told me just today that when police drive by Occupy Buffalo, they either give them the thumbs up, honk their horns, run their sirens, or bring them coffee. Similar report from Cleveland.

Last night there was a march around town in support of Oakland. It was loud and spiritied and sounded like a lot of fun. I was too exhausted to join it (went to sleep early and slept good and long) but I heard it went off without incident…So, good and bad news coming in from all around, hard to summarize, even harder to predict what’s coming. Well, I’ll end with one last comment: I doubt they’ll try here what they did in Oakland, but if they do, they certainly won’t hear the end of it. We have a lot of support all around the city.

(Any or all of this report can be forwarded, attributed or not.)

Steve Iskovitz, a friend and former Green-Rainbow Party candidate for Cambridge City Council, has started emailing his thoughts from the front lines of the Occupy movement.  Since this blog has lain dormant for so long, I decided to lend it to him.  I will post the backlog of messages about once a day and then start posting them as they come in.  I am posting them uneditted.  His words are his own. You can find all of his posts under the Occupy tag.

Hi folks,

It’s been a while since my last report. I’ve had internet access troubles. I’ll pick up where I left off about a week ago:

I visited Occupy Pittsburgh again on Monday afternoon (October 17), and it had grown considerably since Saturday. I went back that night to wait for my 5 a.m. bus, and it had grown again noticeably since the afternoon, and during the few hours I was there two more tents went up!

While there were some similarities with the New York site, I took note of the differences. It was much more relaxed. There seemed to be no tension at all with the police. Protesters would walk over and talk with the cops, it was all very friendly. The site stil had a lot of space, they could use megaphones, and they had tents, so life there was much easier than at Occupy Wall Street in New York. Some people talked about the idea of making straw huts there, and I thought about how, as the anthropologists and sociologists say, different conditions result in different cultures. The Pittsburgh site can grow in a different way because conditions allow it. Likewise, all kinds of things could come from other sites around the country based on different climates, space, relationships, etc.

I got off the bus in Harrisburg and spent the morning at that city’s occupation site. Considerably smaller, there were only two people when I arrived, about ten by the time I left at noon. I was told they have 100 or so by there evening General Assembly (GA), and about ten people sit or stand around for the overnight, since they’re not allowed to camp. I was told two or three smaller towns in Pennsylvania also had occupation sites!

That evening I got off the bus and visited the Philadelphia occupation. It was huge, spreading across the City Hall plaza, two or three times the Wall Street site. I was told there were about 350 tents, about 600 people. It was incredibly relaxed and positive. All the facilities– kitchen, distribution, info, etc., operated out of huge tents.

Although all three Pennsylvania sites I visited were more relaxed, I didn’t feel quite right at any of them. Maybe because I was new and didn’t have a purpose at any of them, but also the slow, relaxed atmosphere somehow didn’t feel right to me.

The instant I arrived back in Zucotti Park in New York I felt I’d returned home. I prefer the excitement and vitality of it, and the feeling that I’m in the center of it, since all the occupations around not just the country but around the world are all currently centered around it.

But I learned from the Pennsylvania sites that it was not necessary to be constantly frantic. Somehow in my first six days in New York I’d come to associate occupation, excitement, chaos and constant crisis as inherently connected, but I realized during my five-day break that that had just been coincidence.

I returned to working in the storage facility. Throughout the week we managed to get things more under control. The storage space, like everything else, was brand new just a few weeks ago, but now we have our routine down fairly well, and we’re all much more relaxed about it. Other people come in in late morning to help out with our crunch time, when we pick up shipments from the UPS store, and help open and sort them. By late afternoon it’s down to just the core group for other tasks.

Somehow, the media has discovered us. Tired of just the freak-show-in-the-park angle, they’ve taken a fascination with the inner workings of the operation, and take innumerable pictures of us opening boxes, of shelves of food, etc.

Overall, though, the occupation site in general seems to be settling in a little. After a few weeks I’m finally learning to distinguish who’s who. I’m beginning to recognize and get to know the long-termers, the different working groups. It makes it a lot easier. For example, a lot of the different departments manage their own stuff. That means they come over and organize it themselves, and they come and get what they need. This saves us a lot of time and confusion. The transition to this system at first resulted in multiple cases of theft, but we’re getting a handle on that now.

On the larger scale, Mayor Bloomberg has changed his tone considerably. A week or two ago he was talking about how we have a right to be there, he has no problem with us, etc. Over the past few days he’s been saying we’ll have to go soon. Local media has ,ade inferences of some impending police crackdown. Last night a mentally ill man came into the park and started some sort of ruckus. Two cops crossed the street and entered the park, as though in response to this. It all looked, to the rest of us, like a thinly disguised attempt at provocation. Our folks managed to get it under control quickly enough, thwarting whatever plan it might have been. I saw the guy walking around today too.  Last night we passed a cop on Broadway, coming back from storage, and he stared at us. Up to now, they’ve pretty much ignored us, so I think it’s all part of an attempt to scare us and get us to give up. It won’t work, though, there are too many experienced activists here who know all these tricks, and our community support is deeper than ever.

In fact, the “no-tent” rule is being violated more and more. Every night a few more people put them up, and there’s been no police response to this. There’s been a lot of talk, in fact, about the no-tent rule being a human rights violation. The Red Cross, I hear, has come out with a statement to this effect, and some local clergy also, taking the human rights approach to this. The weather has been getting colder. I haven’t had a problem with this, though rain is still a bit of a problem.

Oh, and on the tent issue– while I was away the medical folks put up a tent. The police came in to take it down, and there was some kind of a standoff between police and occupiers. Jesse Jackson happened to be in the park at the time, and someone ran across and alerted him. He came over and stood in front of the tent with the occupiers, and the police backed down, and the medical tent has been here since. This story reminds me of the Republican National Convention in Minneapolis in ’08, when the police attacked the medical tent and shot tear gas canisters inside the tent. Medical facilities are important, delicate areas, and apparently the police feel they can dismantle a movement by attacking them there, despite the fact that doing so even in wartime is a violation of the Geneva Convention.

Elsehwhere, they arrested 130 in Chicago yesterday. I heard a rumor that there are 10,000 people at Occupy Portland (Oregon), though I haven’t researched this. Occuy L.A. is supposedly larger than ours. I met someone from Buffalo who said they’re going strong there and that they have a fire pit, and when the police drive by they wail their sirens and wave in support! Someone who was in Occupy Cleveland(I think it was) said the police hardly ever come there but when they do they bring coffee for the occupiers!…Public opinion around the country is running in our favor…Someone from Hawaii just sent us organic macademia nuts and dried bananas grown on their farm.

So, all kinds of different things happening all around. I hope the folks in Chicago are out of jail and doing okay. Lots of details, I shouldn’t have to wait a whole week before my next report. All for now,

Steve

(Any or all of this report can be forwarded, attributed or not.)

Steve Iskovitz, a friend and former Green-Rainbow Party candidate for Cambridge City Council, has started emailing his thoughts from the front lines of the Occupy movement.  Since this blog has lain dormant for so long, I decided to lend it to him.  I will post the backlog of messages about once a day and then start posting them as they come in.  I am posting them uneditted.  His words are his own. You can find all of his posts under the Occupy tag.

It’s by pure chance that I was present for the first day of Occupy Pittsburgh.

There was a march to Market Square downtown, and a rally there, which I caught the last hour of. Then they marched over to the occupation site, a small park a few blocks from downtown, near Uptown and not far from the Hill District. A few people set up tents immediately, someone brought a table, which quickly became filled with food, and after a little while, the General Assembly. I want to say it was the historic first G.A., but actually it was the third of fourth the group has held, but it was the first on the actual occupation site. It was all much more orderly than OWS in New York. Partly because they were allowed to use a megaphone, but mostly because it was much smaller (though the first ones in New York were probably smaller, too). Also, there weren’t two, nor even one drum circle on the edge of the park.

It’s funny, the other occupation sites around the country seem to have tents and amplification, only New York is denied both, making it the most difficult, yet New York is still by far the most important and the most exciting. Anyway, so the working groups ran through their policies– basic stuff like no violence, respect the grounds, they reached consensus on doing protests downtown twice a week and talked about some of the institutions they’d march to. This was interesting because the park where they are, with the owner’s permission for the time being, I think is called BNY Mellon (Bank New York Mellon), and the very first protest is going to be down at the headquarters of– that’s right– BNY Mellon!

I suggested they go up to CMU and protest the flood of military money and research there, not the least of which is development of drone technology. The idea wasn’t too well received, because CMU is several miles away and up a long hill and they don’t want to march there. I hope they reconsider and take a bus or something, because this is a great opportunity to raise awareness of this ill collaboration between elite higher education and futuristic death technology. (I made a sign at the Market Square rally that said, “CMU: No Autonomous Killer Drones.”)

But it’s not my call. I’ll have to leave such decisions up to the Occupy Pittsburgh people. It’s great to see this happening in my hometown, conservative as this place is. But New York is the epicenter. Wow, they rallied all around the world, now inspired by Occupy Wall Street. Even in Hong Kong, and Santiago, Chile, as well as Europe, and all over this country.

I was impressed with the Pittsburgh people, though. They understand completely the concensus process. They use the exact same techniques they do in New York. It’s as if they all attended the same seminar, but they didn’t. I’m a little curious how this technique and the values system that goes along with it can be adhered to so precisely in so many different places at the same time. Just so that I’m not misunderstood: I’m completely in favor of it. It’s a highly developed method of organizing, and it’s incredible to me that this method is practiced so widely and so proficiently. How can this be? Is it some kind of generational shift? Does it have something to do with the new communications technology? They’ll put their own local stamp on it, of course. One girl said she had to leave to watch the Penguins’ game, ha-ha. I just hope they can find one person to stay behind on Sundays to watch people’s stuff while the rest go off to watch the Steelers.

BNY Mellon said they could stay at least until tomorrow morning. I think they just want to make sure the people don’t trash the grounds. I get the sense that if they tell them to leave, they’ll just leave, so it’s totally different from OWS and Brookfield Properties in that sense. And they say there’s a church a few blocks away where they can stay if they need to, though there’s really nothing like a permanent, visible site…Compared with New York it’s all strangely civil. 

(You can forward this if you like, attributed or not.)

Steve Iskovitz, a friend and former Green-Rainbow Party candidate for Cambridge City Council, has started emailing his thoughts from the front lines of the Occupy movement.  Since this blog has lain dormant for so long, I decided to lend it to him.  I will post the backlog of messages about once a day and then start posting them as they come in.  I am posting them uneditted.  His words are his own. You can find all of his posts under the Occupy tag.

Hello folks,

I left Zuccotti Park and Occupy Wall Street Thursday afternoon to come back here to Pittsburgh to take care of some stuff for the weekend. For simplicity’s sake, I’m just going to go chronologically, picking up where I left off last weekend.

Indeed, things did get back to “normal” at the end of the weekend. Actually, even Monday, though a holiday, felt more workaday. The problems I complained about so much in my last story went away soon after I wrote about them. I think there was one or a very small number of thieves, who must have left after a day or two.

I began volunteering with the people who receive, store and distribute donated items. From the time I started, Monday or so, to Thursday when I left, the operation has mushroomed. Daily donations have maybe doubled or tripled during that time, and we got a huge space donated to us. The day begins going over to the UPS store where donations are sent. Tehy get mad if we don’t get there early enough, because we get so many boxes that they almost block access to the store! How many boxes? Maybe 400 a day? Just a wild guess. It takes three or four of us about three trips with the carts or dollies to take them all to the storage space. Pushing a cart through the sea of pedestrians for five blocks down Broadway past Wall Street itself to the space feels like some kind of archetypal dream experience. Down around the back, wave to the security person to let us in, up the freight elevator and in. The security guards and elevator operators are all on our side, ask us how we’re doing, are we ready for the rain, etc. All around town this solidarity that still surprises me, accustomed as I’ve gotten over the years to hostility from average people for whatever issues we’ve supported in the past.

We open boxes, sort stuff, send some things back to the park and store others. Communication isn’t perfect, but enough  people go back and forth that things tend to get to where they’re needed. What do people send? Every type of clothing you can imagine, and a lot of it is quite nice. Jackets, fleece, hoodies, socks, rain ponchos, etc. Granola bars, peanut butter, food of all types, sharpies, duct tape, medical supplies, bottles of chewable vitamin C, sleeping bags, hand-knitted hats and scarves, you name it. It comes from all over the country– Oregon, Florida, Michigan, everywhere. A guy sent a box of food from Puerto Rico! (Speaking of distance, one volunteer came from Hawaii, specifically for this.)

Personally, I like working in the storage area. I can only take crowds and noise for so long, but mostly I like to be effective, and I can get a lot more done without having to wade through a crowd to walk a distance of ten feet. I usually work til around 5 or so, go back to the park for dinner, then return to the space and work til around 11. Besides, there are plenty of people who like holding signs and having their pictures taken. Yes, there is NO SHORTAGE of people who like to have their pictures taken! I don’t mean to sound negative about the crowds. It’s good to have a lot of people. It’s the price of success. Just as the painfully cumbersome process of trying to reach consensus at the General Assembly meetings. (“I move..I MOVE…I MOVE…that we table this issue…THAT WE TABLE THIS ISSUE…THAT WE TABLE THIS ISSUE…til tomorrow…TIL TOMORROW…TIL TOMORROW.) Impatient as I am, it feels so ridiculous to me, standing in the cold rain listen to procedural statements when I could be doing constructive work, that after about five minutes I run off. But that’s me. Fortunately, others have the patience to engage in what really is a historic process. These meetings, and the way they’re conducted, are changing history. Even the cumbersome process of repetition so that everyone can hear, is a beautifully creative response to the stupid, spiteful rule that prohibits us from using amplification. And I notice that some people really ENJOY being part of the human mic. I saw a young guy who I guessed wasn’t a full-time occupier but a New York resident who came in after work or something. He was maybe 22, and he was all smiles as he enthusiastically repeated the speaker’s words, as if participating in a choir or chant. I would have thought he would have felt embarassed, that it would somehow seem goofy, but he didn’t feel this way at all. Just as it was hard for me to understand how he could have enjoyed shouting with the crowd, you might have trouble understanding how thrilled I was my first full day when, bothered by some trash on the ground, I found where the brooms were kept and began sweeping up. It was important for me to see  the expression on the guy’s face and to think about it. Because it means to me that everyone takes something different away from this movement, just as everyone has something different to contribute.

Ultimately this kind of thing interests me even more than the Wall Street greed that we’re standing against, though again, that’s just me. People say, “We know what you’re AGAINST, but what are you FOR?” I would say, “You want us to answer you in words, or in actions?” Come to Zuccotti Park and see how we take care of each other. People have donated food, others have donated their time to cook it in their kitchens, others pick it up and deliver it here, others serve it. These people work all night cleaning when the space is clear, these people do security, these people are working with the media, I’m over there with the guy from Cleveland and the guy from Minneapolis and the girl from North Carolina opening boxes and running supplies over, those people are handing out sweaters to people who are cold and umbrellas on rainy nights. This guy takes a bunch of us out on a cardboard run so we can stack the cardboard under our sleeping bags to keep us a little elevated and dry in the rain, that guy let me use his phone to call Greyhound for the schedule. The other morning there was no sugar or cream for the coffee, so I rushed the few blocks to the storage space, found some honey, soy milk and rice milk and ran it back to the kitchen.  So that’s what we’re FOR, taking care of people. We’ve got 1,200 people sleeping in a space so small, if you roll over you might land on the person next to you, yet if someone arrives and needs a space, we move over and make more space for them. I haven’t seen one fight all week. A few shouting matches which were quickly de-escalated by whoever happened to be standing around at the time.

And to address a criticism that’s been made of past protest movements: We’re not all white. My first few nights I camped with all Chinese or Chinese-Americans.There are lots of blacks and latinos camped there. Locals and out-of-towners. And there are homeless people living there. There are some mentally ill people, some alcoholics  Some media have criticized us for this. Criticized us for allowing people who are down and out or troubled in some way to camp in the park with us! 

“But who’s funding you???” There might be some rich people giving some thousands here and there, but a lot of it’s probably $20 bills and $50 checks, and peanut butter from Missouri and band-aids from Tennessee. “But who’s in charge???”…The questions themselves illustrate the inability of people who think within the terms of traditional politics to understand us. They don’t even know what questions to ask. Q: If President Obama showed up here right now, what would you say to him?” A: “The kitchen needs help in the serving line.”

The other night I told a young “occupier” about my experience during the “anti-globalization” movement back in 2000 and 2001: We seemed to be forming a new culture. Internet networking, consensus meetings, convergence spaces, free meals, an evolving sense of global justice, and the sense that we were communicating, through our actions, with similar movements in South America and Europe. In April of 2001 in Quebec, we helped stop the Free Trade Area of the Americas dead in its tracks. Then 9/11 happened and we went on the defensive. Instead of successfully stopping “free trade” treaties and creating a vision for a better world, we were unsuccessfully attempting to stop wars, becoming paranoid over police-state eavesdropping techniques, watching the world slip into chaos and envisioning hellish a future of autonomous killer drones. And withdrawing into ourselves. For ten years! Then some loser, a total failure of a human being, lights himself on fire in Tunisia and burns himself to death. What a pitiful jerk he must have felt like at that moment! But from that desperate action from that pitiful loser jerk comes Arab Spring, European Summer, and American Autumn. It sounds like some crazy story from an old DC comic book or a children’s fairy tale, but it really happened.

I’d thought that the culture that disappeared after 9/11 had died. But it didn’t. It had just laid dormant, and now it’s back. We just picked up where we’d left off ten years ago! With a few differences, like: Now half the people in the crowd have video cameras in their pockets. Years ago a police commander could spray pepper spray in the eyes of three hippie protester girls and no-one would care. . Next thing you know there’s a thousand people in the streets for each one of them. “Whoops,” the police might have said. “Oh well, we’ll make up for it by…arresting 700 people on the Brooklyn Bridge!” Now we’re front-page news around the world. “Whoops again.”

Now I’m starting to wonder: Maybe we can occupy the research facilities where they’re developing the autonomous killer drones, or the factories where they make them.

Okay, just to wrap up my chronology: As I was getting ready to leave Thursday I became aware of the emerging threat. Brookfield Properties said we would need to clear the park in sections Friday morning so they, under police guard, could clean it. This is the technique they used to get rid of “Bloombergville,” a similar but much smaller occupation that happened recently. I hated to take the easy way out and leave, but I had a previous commitment. They called out to their supporters, and a big showdown was to occur Friday morning. How many thousands of people were there to greet the police? How many arrests would have resulted? 3,000? 5,000? The mind reels. But Brookfield and the city backed down. They knew they could never have pulled it off. What would have happened if they did? Some kind of general strike across the city?

Tomorrow (Saturday) is to be a global day of action. Occupy Pittsburgh might start then. Something’s going on in Harrisburg. Philly’s going, DC’s going strong. Sorry this was so long. All for now,

Steve

(Any or all of this report can be forwarded, attributed or not.)