Author: mopress

All Trick No Treat

By Greg Moses

The Rag Blog / Dissident Voice / CounterPunch

If on the Friday before Halloween you could pull yourself from the temptation of ordering a $17 risotto among jam-packed downtown luncheoneers, then you could walk a little further to the west side of Austin City Hall and catch a free viewing of the noon sun as it stopped to warm a heap of oversized sleeping bags right outside the picture window of city council chambers.

Probably the architect who west-walled the council room in glass was suggesting something about democracy, so you wondered for a minute how that impromptu pile of cozy bedding looked from inside and how long the sight would be tolerated. Out on the west plaza meanwhile a well-bred dog concentrated on the art of warming, stretching its front legs out in such a way as to flatten its tummy across the sun-stained stone, stretching, and coughing just a little bit.

Of course it sounds too perfect that the only other thing you heard was the quiet melody of guitar strings being finger-picked by a youngish man whose presence, style, and musicality seemed to account for the dog’s single-minded attention to relaxation.

Now at what point exactly during the fourth weekend of Occupy Austin did the Austin Police swoop down to scoop up all these sleeping bags and dump them at some pre-authorized location? By Sunday afternoon a shoeless young woman will be trying to explain it all, pointing to her feet and saying yes, that’s why she has no shoes, because they were lost in the sleeping bag raid.

And sure enough on Sunday afternoon when you walk back around to check out the view near “democracy window” there is nothing but bare stone.

Rounding the corner to the south plaza on Friday, you saw a dozen folks sitting in various places upon the amphitheater to your upper left and another dozen people gathered in the plaza before you. Beyond the plaza, and around the sidewalks, perhaps another dozen sat, walked, or stood. Three dozen in all, up, down, and around.

A shirtless man with a bicycle mocked you on Friday for gaping at the scene, then turned his attention to two middle aged men with really cool bikes who were also just looking at things.

Where the east steps of the amphitheater met the plaza was an empty metal bookshelf labeled “Free Library,” not too far from a line-up of books sunning themselves on a warm block of stone. Sitting also on the stone was a young woman deep into the art of making a sign from poster-board and magic marker.

“The police took the bookshelf, too,” explains the barefoot woman on Sunday. “I think they called it a permanent fixture.”

On Friday also you recall making notes about the food table that was serving free lunch on the lower deck of the amphitheater. “Mom’s Work” said a sign behind the table as food was being served by a healthy looking blonde.

“They didn’t come for the food table until midnight Saturday,” the barefoot woman explains on Sunday. “There was a new rule about no food from 10 pm to 6 am, so we were kinda giddy about it when they didn’t come for the table at 10. But the rule didn’t go into effect until Sunday, so that’s why they waited.”

Although the food-table arrests were not the first arrests for Occupy Austin, they were the first to be met with a unified and organized response. As the barefoot woman was informing me on Sunday about the overnight arrests, she wondered how she was going to march barefooted from city hall to the county jail.

Thinking back on Friday, you got the impression that the occupation camp was mostly glowing on the question of police relations. The Austin Police Chief had come to Thursday night’s General Assembly with some encouraging words and promises. Folks were chatting Friday about how Austin was an exception to the police attacks that had rocked other occupations.

Not that police had been exactly kindly up to the fourth weekend of Occupy Austin. For example, the “flag man” of the movement who wore a Veteran’s Administration tag around his neck and who camped out near the front sidewalk with an American flag said the cops warned him once that if he put his head down to sleep they would arrest him. After 36 hours of sleepless occupation he walked several miles to the VA facility before he felt safe enough to close his eyes.

After the food-table take-down, the police came back.

“Oh I don’t remember exactly what time it was, maybe between two and four in the morning,” says a trusted witness.

“One group of cops lined up at the top of the amphitheater.”

“No, there were two lines of cops at the top of the amphitheater,” says a friend.

“And they had another line of cops over there,” says the trusted witness, pointing to the sidewalk along the east side of the city hall plaza.

The cops swept southward down the amphitheater and westward across the plaza.

“It was ridiculous, because we have been moving to that side two or three times a week so that they could power-wash the plaza and amphitheater,” chimes in the friend. “Then last night they also changed the order of the power washing. Usually they wash the amphitheater first so that it has a chance to dry first and we can go back to sleep. But last night they washed the amphitheater last and we had the feeling they did it on purpose so that we would have wet spaces to sleep on.”

By the time the police intimidations were over with, nearly 40 people had been arrested. They were being bailed out all day Sunday, and at 4 pm it was time to redouble the support group that was assembled at the door of the county jail.

After a brief double-check via an iPhone map, organizers led 60 marchers north, up Guadalupe, from city hall to the county jail. Our barefooted marcher carried a sign taller than her that read: “Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing’s going to get better, it’s not.” Signed by, “The Lorax.” Next time I will see her, she will be educating a television reporter who doesn’t appear shoeless to me.

“Shame on APD, Occupiers must go free!” chant some 60 marchers as they step past prime retailers and polished tour buses. “It’s the War Economy,” declares one protest sign as marchers pass a couple of banks. Small cars honk friendly notes as they pass us going south. Then as the last stragglers of the march finish crossing Fifth Street a big white gas-guzzling combo SUV pickup monstrosity lays on its horn and gas at the same time, nearly threatening to run ‘em down.

After marchers pass the John Henry Faulk city library and take a turn around Wooldridge Park, they are greeted with cheers from the branch occupation at the county jail. The merged rally is easily 150 strong. In this hour of triumph, the arrests themselves have energized the movement to a new plateau of solidarity and determination.

“Free Speech Dies, [The Police Chief] Lies,” chant the occupiers. They recite the First Amendment in unison.

The Bail and Jail Magnet for the occupation announces that $400 has just been posted for two more releases, a third release is pending after that, and a supporter has donated pizza! Boxes of pizza are stacked five high on a bench.

“This is what Democracy looks like,” chants the crowd as a lead organizer points to them. “This is what Hypocrisy looks like,” they chant as he point to the jail house door. All this is going out via live stream on the occupation’s trusty laptop, which has been marched up here, too.

“What happens when people violate your constitutional rights?” asks an organizer. “Do they get arrested?”

“They get elected!” answers a backbencher, cackling.

At that point the door to the county jail opens up and out come three jail trustees in blue scrubs, walking a dog, supervised by a uniformed deputy. The four of them take the dog to a grassy patch where he knows just what to do.

Two television crews break down and return home. A third crew arrives with a satellite truck. The air is swooning with the smell of hand-rolled tobacco.

Then we see our first liberation. Out from the glass doors of the jail strides a young man of stocky build, green t-shirt, desert camo pants, black bandana tied around his neck, and topped with a broad, flat Mohawk. He looks good to us, and you can tell we look good to him. He saunters toward the back benches where the jail veterans are sharing stories. Someone passes him a Coke.

Another stocky young man about this time is talking to the live stream about getting in and out of jail. Inside, they told him there were too many people in jail. He said he told them that’s an easy problem to fix. Just let the folks who didn’t do anything out.

When organizers report three more arrests back at city hall, I walk south to check it out. At Wooldridge Park, three women have set up a table to give food, socks, undershorts, and t-shirts to a line that is already 60 men long. A man is asking for extra socks that he can give to his girlfriend. Down 9th St. near the Hirshfeld-Moore House I catch the back end of a Zombie march. Then it’s past the Texas Observer on 7th, under the porch at Betsy’s Bar, and down a stretch of Lavaca that stinks like puke and grease. At an upscale hotel, valets are lining up a Prius, an Audi, and a BMW.

“Yes, two guys got arrested here about ten minutes ago,” is what I hear from several people back at city hall. “They were fighting. Then while they were being arrested, another guy kept talking to the cops and wouldn’t shut up, so they arrested him too.”

It’s close to 6 pm Sunday and the fourth weekend of Occupy Austin is coming to a close. The last jail release won’t be live streamed until 9:22 pm. Meanwhile Bob Jensen is leading a few folks to the West side of city hall for a teach-in on toxic economics.

Occupiers on the plaza are already debating the meaning of today’s arrests and planning further actions to seek divestment of the city from Bank of America. Everybody is thinking about the next move.

Even the Weather Turns Spiritual

By Greg Moses

DissidentVoice / CounterPunch / The Rag Blog

For Bernice King the timing of things must be spiritual. There must have been a reason she says for Hurricane Irene to move in on the August schedule and force a delay to October so that when the monument to her father was officially unveiled Sunday, it would be presented to a nation properly prepared.

For Martin the Third, time also seemed to flow spiritually from the season of his father’s death right into the economic justice movements that are springing into view across the globe inspired by Occupy Wall Street. It was an economic justice movement that occupied Martin Luther King, Jr. the day he took his last fall.

Occupying the only memorial on the National Mall not dedicated to a President nor a war, the stone-hewn image of our beloved American prophet transfixes our national conscience upon renewed possibilities. Tourists banned from the Washington monument due to earthquake damage will be compelled more than ever to stop looking at where we came from and go find out where we’re going.

The weather in Texas also had been holding out. Sunny skies greeted the opening-day festival for Occupy Austin on Thursday, Oct. 6, and stayed for the sidewalk picket of Bank of America that Friday. When the storms finally hit Austin on the second Saturday of October they broke the harshest season of heat and drought on record, pouring down their pent-up refreshments all over the first weekend of Occupy Austin.

It wasn’t an easy night for Occupy Austin organizers who showed up to the matinee edition of Sunday’s General Assembly with fatigue and desperation barely contained. What they needed was unity right away. But the thing about real organizing work is that you don’t get what you need when you think you need it most. And so you learn in real time how to stretch yourself across an abyss because somehow it still seems easier than falling apart.

What was most interesting about the first stormy weekend of Occupy Austin had to do with the issue that churned this predominantly white movement nearly to early dissipation. It was the issue of the indigenous peoples and what any real economic justice movement should do about that?

Although the Occupy Austin General Assembly had passed a resolution in support of indigenous peoples on that stormy first Saturday, it was an expensive lesson in the deep rootedness of all problems American. And for weary organizers who showed up for Sunday’s aftermath, there was a real fear expressed that the occupation might have already seen its last hour.

So it wasn’t an easy meeting up at the City Hall amphitheatre, where the west-side railings were still wrapped in black plastic as an improv windbreak. But eventually things worked out. A set of Unity Principles was adopted that would keep the compass of Occupy Austin fixed upon its “true North” purpose as an action guided by the example of Occupy Wall Street.

On Columbus Day, a banking holiday in America, the indigenous movement staged a symbolic protest outside Bank of America and then rallied at the Texas Capitol against a half millennium of occupation. On the Saturday after Columbus Day, the 9th Annual Indigenous People’s march stepped off from the Alamo, joined by folks from Occupy San Antonio.

Meanwhile city officials from Austin to New York were working out their own unity principles, and their word of the week was “sanitation.” On Wall Street the sanitation issue became international news and city officials backed down from their ultimatum that the occupied park should be cleared for proper cleaning. In Austin a few arrests were reported during the sanitation action, but the movement was too young and sparse to make much of an issue out of it.

As Occupy Austin entered its second week this past Friday, Oct. 14, organizers were looking more rested, wholesome, happy, and relaxed as they mixed themselves into the festival of people that array themselves around the Guitar Cow at City Hall Plaza. On my third visit to the occupation I still count more than one hundred participants, about forty of them beginning to look like regulars.

Folks sit up in the amphitheater, hold signs along Cesar Chavez St., mill about the stone plaza, or arrange themselves into small groups on the limited grassy area near Lavaca St. Huddled up against the East side of the amphitheater is another tiny patch of grass that supports knee-high stone blocks. This is where some of the more “official” occupation activities take place, like a food table, an info table, or a small organizing meeting.

On the second Friday of the occupation around 5:30 pm about a dozen mostly young folks are discussing strategies of nonviolent communication. This is a survival skill for the occupation movement as any casual visitor to a General Assembly will see. Either this movement will be able to organize itself through group discussions or it will fall apart.

And this is worth remarking in our age of social media. What all the Facebook, cell phone, text message, and Twitter technology has created here is an electrifying need for face-to-face solidarity.

Among the dozen participants who hold handouts at this nonviolence workshop, you don’t hear the usual questions such as what’s nonviolent communication got to do with me? Instead you hear voices who are up to their necks in the need for this skill, and you listen to questions eager to understand how it works.

Just as I’m catching the flow of discussion about the distinction between a request and a demand, up comes a visitor to the occupation who wants to know if we are anti-corporation.

A young man who I recognize as an organizer points to the sky in a gesture that appears to signal something like hey dude that’s not what we’re here to discuss, but one of the facilitators of this workshop checks him with a glance before addressing the questioner.

“How does it make you feel when you hear the words anti-corporation?”

“It pisses me off.”

“When you think about the corporations that you are familiar with, do you think of them as addressing the kinds of problems that we are here to solve?”

No. Clearly our questioner has a lot of corporate experience and he shares with us his mental checklist. One by one, we listen to him tell us how none of the corporations that he knows personally could be counted on to join this movement for economic justice. They all have something else in mind.

“Well, we’re here discussing nonviolence,” says the facilitator.

“I grew up with nonviolence,” says the questioner, a remark that sort of calls attention to his Black skin.

“Nonviolence?” says a white guy who is walking his bicycle through the occupation. “How far are you willing to take that?”

“The question sounds vague to me,” says the second facilitator. “Can you make it more clear?”

“I mean how would you respond if someone was doing violence to you?”

“With compassion,” answers the second facilitator introducing a longer answer that involves Gandhi and some core principles of self-protection.

Soon enough we’re back into the flow of our workshop on nonviolent communication and very pleased to have such handy examples to think about.

Out on the plaza a three-piece band is putting out a vibe. The keyboards hit at the opening chords of “Higher Ground” and soon enough the keyboardist is singing, “People!”

It feels good to see the organizers smiling and chatting casually during this Friday evening festival. The skin that seemed so drained last weekend has come back flush with life. They’ve had a chance to shower and rest and eat and get to know each other a little better.

Back on stage the guitar player strikes a few hard chords and asks us to sing along if we’d like.

“Once upon a time, you dressed so fine . . .”

And suddenly it’s like people don’t walk past each other any more, but everybody checks out everybody else’s eyes just to make sure they’re sharing the feeling. The keyboardist and bass player dig into their notes. And everything is suddenly new all over again.

Note: The following letter by Raul G. Garcia to the Editor of the San Antonio Express-News has not yet been published there.–gm

Dear Editor:

I would like to offer a rebuttal to columnist Scott Stroud who recently wrote a piece (Express News, September 1, 2011) on former La Raza Unida Party candidate for governor of Texas, Ramsey Muñiz. Apparently Mr. Stroud got the “facts” from the wrong people who appear to harbor agendas that pass for truth. No wonder the Express News has started to fall apart in the last two weeks, with the departure of two editors, two staff members, and Stroud himself who is high tailing it to Tennessee. This is what happens to a newspaper when gossip and rumor replace the truth.

Stroud has maliciously done a disservice to the Muñiz family by implying that Muñiz himself harbors no hope of parole. The truth of the matter is that if there is anything that drives Ramsey, family, and friends it is the hope that one day he will be free. It is this hope which will destroy even the chains of a life sentence, for this is what Ramsey has suffered in the last 18 years. Neither Stroud, nor his misguided informants have an inkling of what it means to survive in the cages of America, so it’s easy for him to dispel the importance and value of hope which resides in the heart of the Muñiz family.

Stroud, who suffers from a lack of knowledge regarding appeals cases in judicial history, points out that Muñiz has no chance of being set free. The same was said of Nelson Mandela who was a prisoner for 27 years for his struggle against apartheid in South Africa. The voices of defeat said the same thing about Nobel Peace Prize winner Suu Kyi, recently released after 14 years of imprisonment for her leadership in the Democracy Movement in Myanmar (what used to be Burma).

In the last few years we have witnessed in the United States a number of prisoners released after being falsely accused for a deed they did not commit. The U.S. judicial system does have its own flaws, as acknowledged by former Supreme Court Justices Harry Blackmun and Sandra Day O’Connor, especially with regard to the death penalty. According to a study by professor Hugo Badau from Tufts University and Michael Radelet of Florida State University, there have been 28 innocent individuals executed in the country before 1973.

Another study that came out in 2001 conducted by a group of Columbia University law professors, led by professor James Liebman, showed that out of 5,400 death penalty appeals cases, there were errors in 3,600 of them. This was a study that included a 22 year period between 1973-1995. These were death row appeals cases representing 34 states. Some of the prisoners were exonerated from death row, and others got reduced sentences. The point is that the judicial system is not perfect, and it has also erred in matters other than life and death.

Muñiz has been sentenced to life imprisonment without parole, a sentence that is basically a death sentence, yet, he’s never blown up a federal building, nor has he murdered, lynched, raped, or exploited the financial life savings of working people. On the contrary, Ramsey gave his life for his people, for the poor, and in the process helped others become professionals in their own field.

The Houston Chronicle just recently (October 5, 2011) reported how law abiding citizens have been deceived or tricked into transporting drugs without their knowing it. The report states that prosecutors and a federal judge have conceded that law abiding people have been used in this way and are now being set free after a review of their case. Can columnist Scott Stroud prove that no one else planted cocaine in the car Muñiz drove, a car that did not belong to him? So who is hurting Ramsey Muñiz’s case? The weaklings who want him to admit guilt, and the media which acts as judge, jury, and prosecutor.

The time has come for all lovers of justice to rally behind Ramsey Muñiz and his family. The bashing of our people through the media should remind us of the past, of the way our Chicano brothers and sisters were likewise treated by a reactionary mentality which once again is overtaking America. Our heroes and heroines through history did not teach us to be vengeful, but to be as compassionate as possible, and never to lose our sense of justice.

Let us embrace our brothers and sisters who sometimes, because of circumstances, need us more than ever. Ramsey Muñiz still carries with him the spirit of La Raza, a spirit full of courage and spiritual hope, a spirit which still battles, from the dark dungeons of America, those who have succumbed to greed and power. It is this spirit of his freedom that should unite us in the outside, for THE TIME IS NOW.

–Raul G. Garcia

Note: Raul Garcia and Ramsey Muñiz attended Baylor University at the same time. Raul went on to teach philosophy at the university level and Ramsey attended Baylor School of Law. In his article above, Raul Garcia responds to a recent article printed in the San Antonio Express-News on September 1, 2011. It was written by an employee, Scott Stroud, who mocks the suffering of Ramsey Muñiz and his family. Stroud expresses hateful sentiments about a man who fights for his freedom after 18 years of wrongful incarceration. His carefully chosen words reflect a total lack of respect toward Ramsey Muniz, his family, and many others who suffer greatly and face a death sentence -life without parole. — Irma Muniz

by Doug Zachary

Certainly you all have heard about the risks taken and the suffering endured by several Code Pink Members and their allies in Washington DC at the hands of ill-trained police defending the public’s right to salivate at the sight of military drones. The authorities behaved in an unreasonable manner and they will be held accountable in the courts.

I’d like to share with you all (briefly) an understanding of the two camps in DC (Occupy DC and Oct2011) — their differences and their necessary confluences. Below is the report I have sent to VFP Austin. Thank you for allowing me to post here.

I have just returned to Bastrop from the Washington, DC occupations; I hope to return after taking care of some family obligations here. There are two foci for the protests in DC; the Veterans For Peace-led activity that has been in the works for many months at Freedom Square and the Occupy DC action at McPhearson Park. The Freedom Square activities have emerged from the vfp action team that began building toward this with the 2008-09 actions on the ledge of the national Archives building and the banner drops at the Newseum among other places and that has morphed into the Oct2011.org coalition (Within which CP has contributed much.). There were VFP chapters from around the country represented here.

The differences between the two encampments in DC are striking. The average age at Freedom Plaza is well over fifty; at McPhearson Park the participants were half our age (or are we twice theirs?). We are veterans of the nonviolent movement, many — if not most — of us have been at the barricades in some form or another since the American War against Viet Nam. The younger people are products of the more deeply alienated generations that followed us. There are many liberals and even more Socialists (of every stripe) among us; the youngsters at McP are the radical, ultra democratic Left (I found myself drawn over to their activities and attitudes.)

There is a lot of process knowledge, if not wisdom, among us at Freedom Square. That said, some of the best facilitators among us were in their twenties. All decisions are being taken in consensus and as you all can probably imagine . . . it is thorny. Using Freedom Square as a base we have launched demonstrations and actions around the city including a very dramatic anti-drone action at the Aerospace museum that turned violent (police violence) when several members of Code Pink and allies were pepper-sprayed without any justification whatsoever by the private security guards there. There will be a lawsuit and the victims will prevail.

Although I had been on the planning committee for this activity as VFP, I attended and participated with about a dozen of the original Winter Soldiers from the Vietnam Veterans Against the War. We did an action at the Wall that was very moving and attracted a lot of attention from the citizens visiting the Wall, including a Westy’s Warrior or two who glared but did not venture to speak to or at us. At the Wall with all these old comrades, I did not descend into the usual anger that has characterized my previous visits there; it was a healing experience.

I would have to sit at the keyboard for another five days to tell all the wonderful stories from this action. It was and is a profoundly moving experience.

I am going to be involved in Occupy Austin and also hope to go to Wall Street soon, but my main focus will remain the VFP presence at Freedom Square. I would encourage any of you who can make this trip to do so.

Note: originally posted to Austin Codepink, re-posted by permission — gm