Beginning to settle but not quite - still: it's time to Occupy

I'm in that really weird never-never land between feeling at home, but in a new place and almost in the right time zone but kind of jet lagged, and having started teaching but still not sure how to make copies for my class, etc.

And now too the Occupation of Wall Street, so will be down there tomorrow with my friend Christian marching in solidarity with the 'other 99%' - meaning all the rest of us besides the bankers/millionaires and billionaires.  It's exciting.  Christian and I have marched together since San Francisco in the mid-1980s with Act Up agitating for recognition of and cure for AIDS epidemic (favorite slogan: we're here, we're queer, get over it!), then again agains Gulf War I and now this.  Over 25 years of protesting...something comforting in that.  And I'm ready now, ready again to fight.  Meaning fight for the American Project, which has since gotten conflated with the American Dream, which is just a delusion.  The American Project, in its purest form, has to do with real democracy and representational government, which has been corroded by corporate money, etc. to the extent that no average person's concerns can be heard.  The Tea Party itself is funded by corporations, and is not grass roots like it pretends to be.

So, there are these kids downtown, trying out consensus decision making (which I did in college, too, so I know how hard it is) and not sure what they are asking for but definitely know something is wrong.  Is that enough?  Who knows.  Is it better than people shouting at each other and waving guns around at town hall meetings?  You bet it is.

It brings to mind the famous Gandhi quote (which may or may not be from him according to Wikipedia, but like who cares, it's a great quote):  First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.

I love that the kids are using Arab Spring as their model, that they are committed to non-violence and that more and more of us, the disillusioned, the ones who have protested for years or just plain folks who've had their home taken away or been fired or can't find a job in the first place or whatever, are beginning to trickle downtown, too.

I've begun teaching interpersonal communications at Bronx Community College, which is another way I'm doing what I can do to make the world a better, more just place.  Probably because I got where I am through education and not money, I feel that's one of the best possible ways up and out of dire poverty. However, if there are no jobs for the kids I'm teaching at the end of the education, it's all a bit pointless.

So, I will go and march, make my voice heard, and will probably be ridiculed along with everyone else who thinks there's a chance, a slight chance, that things could change and that maybe, just maybe, we could stop coddling the moneyed and powerful interests in this country to the detriment of the rest of us, the 99%.

But there's gotta be something for the kids I'm teaching to aspire to and they have to focus on their work and their survival jobs, so it leaves it to folks like me to go march (after I've marked their papers and quizzes), for me, for them...for all of us.

Occupy wherever you are!