OccupySacto.org

This is in todays Sacramento News and review. Some of the issues that are mentioned have become erroneous or incorrect due to the constant police harassment that we have experienced while training to fortify our encampment. Please forgive me if anything I wrote under-represents anything, but since it was an opinion piece I felt free to be myself.

I did not accept pay for this piece, although monetary compensation was offered.






http://www.newsreview.com/sacramento/dont-hate-us/content?oid=4618023

here are a few misconceptions about Occupy Sacramento that I feel the need to clear up. First off, there are not any overarching left- or right-wing political ideals endorsed. This isn’t a protest that allows for borders that small to separate us. We all agree on one thing: Economic crimes need justice. The “1 percent” is not a symbol of the rich. The 1 percent is a symbol for the very corrupt few who have been allowed to lead our country into a brick wall. This isn’t a witch hunt to scalp successful people or the wealthy.

Corporations are not evil; the problem is that there is no accountability that protects the many from the few sour apples that are evil. We are demanding accountability from the companies that sought to make gains from our communal losses.

The world has awakened to find itself, lost, scared and in grave danger. This is a call from the human spirit; nobody thinks this world is good enough. Together we can make it better.

Another misconception is that Occupy Sacramento participants are all homeless drug addicts or students living and breathing utopian ideals. That is resoundingly false. The reason people believe this is because of the sheer amount of homeless people that reside on the streets of Sacramento. There is only one homeless shelter in the downtown area (and it is always full), the police and city government have given up all hopes of helping. This is an “our” problem, as there are hundreds of homeless in the downtown area.

College students are a key part of the movement, but they make up about 10 percent of the hard-working occupiers that make up the core—we are nurses, veterans, lawyers, doctors, teachers, sales people, chefs, artists, state workers, bus drivers—the list goes on and on. The bottom line is that we are daring to dream of something better. If you think the world could be better, then you are already one of us.

Now here is a fact to be put in the open. Each day, with a few exceptions, we have fed every single homeless person in downtown Sac. The reason that there isn’t a 24-hour-a-day center for food and shelter in Sacramento is because our city council is too busy considering subsidizing a new Fuddruckers to recognize this fact. If we are allowed our constitutional 24-seven peaceful assembly, then, as a by-product, every hungry person in downtown Sacramento will be fed and given a blanket or other essential items. Also, the park is cleaner than it has been since the city removed the roses, and we have the ability to change from “wino park” to Cesar Chavez Plaza. In fact, we can make the park a beacon of safety and education in our community.

Who is the 99 percent? You are.

As I write this, another government-bailed-out-agency, American International Group, reported $4.1 billion in losses. That’s bad news for taxpayers, since the U.S. Treasury still owns a big chunk of AIG. This is the group whom we loaned $182 billion—and it was involved in more credit swaps and crooked collateralized debt obligations than your average bear.

So you can keep telling us dreamy hippies to get a job while the world economies crash, or you can offer yourself to your community and fight the rising of the tides. Come ask me why I occupy. The answer is worth a trip to I and Ninth streets.

Well said!!

Gary, this was a really excellent and clean piece of writing. Very glad SN&R picked it up - it puts to rest some of the myths the 1% like to propagate about the Occupy movement.

My own vision for the evolution of the park and Sacramento Occupy is that we concentrate on becoming stewards of Cesar Chavez Park as the permanent home for public assembly and protest in Sacramento, rather than continuing to try to be the single 24/7 full-time occupiers of the park. As stewards, we can encourage, facilitate and support all types of organizations and progressive efforts to utilize the park for their own issue-centered protests, and as a staging ground for their marches to the Capitol and rallies of protest to City hall. We have hundreds of parks in the city for recreation - Cesar Chavez should be the one reserved for First Amendment exercises.

(a few of my other notions are lined in my 'Parting Words' topic on this BB)

How neat! I have literally been saying the same thing in my own circles since my local involvement began on October 19th. I would like to do nothing more than help achieve a platform for local interest groups. Left or right wing, I simply want to help organize and export the ideas of these yet to be created groups, while connecting and promoting the freedom of speech, peaceful assembly, and rights of said organizations.

This is one of my beefs with the local attitude of "accept OWS demands", while I agree with every single one of them, they have not been rigorously tested, polled, and planned in the local community. The globalization of war and economy has failed us and as an information guru I feel that the globalization of ideas will always have the risk of alienating local communities.


We need a separate part of the forum for progressive discussions into what actions we can be doing to achieve this "stewardship". If we march for them, they will march for us. I mean, even on the more dramatic side, I would be honored to help organize a local tea party, right wing event, we know better than anybody, that the goals of the members are not being adopted by the right-wing candidates.

I need to go back to my writing.

Lets derail this thread into a discussion about how to involve local groups, in theory, planning, action. Should we consider a citywide polling system, a paper, facebook , twitter campaign to more aptly understand the local community and begin the phase of asking the community which actions we should be taking, rather than creating them in-house. I feel intuitively that anything that ties 1.3 million people together is better than any idea we create which has a certain amount of 'sympathy' and yet still fails to pull warm bodies into a winter rally.

Gary, I very much support a special section of the board where new progressive ideas and papers can be presented, discussed, embellished and perfected. Perhaps a start on what I call 'z-axis' thinking - new approaches and ideas for the future.

I also encourage you to contact Nathan (if you haven't already) and volunteer for his proposed "Planning & Pollicy Committee" where I think many of these ideas will be worked on and developed for GA to consider. I think he is going to try to get the group going sometime in January and formally present it to GA to have it created.