I voted for Dick Gregory for President of the United States once. It was 1968. On October 6th I heard him speak at a rally in Washington, D.C., and he told the audience that he is about to turn 80. That says something about how long he and I have been looking for change in America, and why we were both in Freedom Plaza with the theme of “occupy D.C./occupy America.”
There have been some changes in the last 40 years. A Black man in the White House was a revolutionary change, but the revolution ended with the election. Given the hopes aroused by Obama, it feels like we’ve been going backwards ever since, but actually things have stayed pretty much the same as during the Bush years.
Being in Freedom Plaza gave me hope that Americans – the 99% who aren’t rich – might wake up to the reality that our government is lying to us in order to maintain control over us and the rest of the world. Our numbers weren’t staggering; maybe just a couple of thousand, but we were YOUNG, Hispanic and Black as well as old-timers and White. And we were all committed to a NONVIOLENT protest.
We were more upbeat than angry, but none of us was fooled: too many were unemployed, in debt, foreclosed, or veterans of meaningless wars. (Vets for Peace initiated this D.C. uprising.) We know the score. We know we are the vast majority, and we know we are fed up.
I think you know the things we’re fed up about : bailing out banks and not homeowners, wars and occupations, climate change, student debt, no jobs/corporate greed, foreign policies that exploit poor countries, etc.. I won’t try to name them all, nor do I want to delve into them. But I want to give you a feel for the crowd and the color and the energy.
Julie was one of the first people I stopped to talk to. She had on a pink top and was sitting in a chair holding a sign that read “Join the occupation. Take back our nation.” At her feet was a spread a large blue tarp with some bundles around its periphery. She said it was the spot chosen for overnight sleeping by a group from Texas and she was watching over their gear. I asked if the group was going to risk arrest by sleeping in the Plaza, or was it going to be allowed. She didn’t know. She wasn’t from Texas. We started to chat, and her story came spilling out.
Julie worked for 31 years in Washington. Then she developed a strange neurological ailment that affected her vision and made her arms and legs numb. She had to stop work and apply for Social Security Disability. There is a five month investigation period before one gets a yes or no to the application, during which creditors will wait. After five months, she got a “no,” and a rental property she had was foreclosed on. It was supposed to be her nest egg. She appealed the decision, this time with legal help. She got a second “no” because, while her vision impairment was confirmed, there was no known cause. Her legal advocate was so furious that she pulled strings and got the denial reversed. By then Julie’s own residence was two days away from foreclosure. In a flurry of frantic paperwork, she saved her home.
Being a social worker, I had heard enough stories like Julie’s to know she was telling the truth. And that there were hundreds like her, all hidden from public view – having their own private nightmares. Julie added that her loss was compounded by not being able to work, nor even read because of the vision impairment. Julie is fed up. I thanked her for telling her story, and I moved on, feeling that Julie’s experience is one example of how our systems don’t work to reward effort and to affirm life.
From 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. I roamed the Plaza to see the range of issues people had brought there, and I listened to speakers and musicians on the big stage at one end of the Plaza. One woman artist from Salt Lake City gave a terrific speech, with no notes, that I don’t remember one word of. But there she was young, articulate and all the way from Utah!
David Rovics sang his songs with lyrics that as usual reach into the heart and conscience. The Raging Grannies, hip hop artists, a hill- billy band, Emma’s Revolution, Chris Hedges, Ted Rall calling for real revolution, protesters from Wisconsin and Wall Street, and young Afghani peace activists, both on stage and skyped from the hills of Aghanistan, whose motto is “the blue sky covers us all.” Young leaders skillfully facilitated a general assembly open to everyone there, where decisions about how to proceed during the night were decided by consensus.
An Ethiopian-born American woman held a sign that read, “I will believe corporations are people when Georgia executes one.”
These are just some of the events and people who moved me to believe that this could be the beginning of something new and indestructible – a real democracy.
