Images from OccupyLA

The Welcome Tent: OccupyLA -- 21 October 2011

The Free Library: "A library is not a luxury. It is a necessity."

The Meditation Temple

First Aid and Massage

Shower

Tents on the lawn around LA City Hall

Pumpkin Head Patch

Animal Rights posters

OccupyLA 2

     Hallowe’en is a week away and as the #OWS movement grows, I see several things happening in response that are a bit scary, and others that are quite hopeful. Although the police response in some places --Chicago & Oakland-- has been terrible, the latest surveys say that 60% of those polled are in support of the #OWS movement. I think that is amazing! Next week there may be lots of parades, and perhaps some marches? more occupations? It is the moment for “Trick or Treat!”
     This is the season for harvesting, and All Hallow’s Eve is a domesticated version of powerful old rites we used to employ to stay in tune with the seasons and cycles of life on earth. It is Nature’s downtime, a frightening time of long nights, harsh weather and gathering what we will need to survive until spring comes. To think we are immune to these rhythms is an example of our hubris and arrogance. To believe we can have it our way all the time is equally arrogant. And, we should realize by now that, even if we could live in the sunshine all the time, there is always a shadow side. By the same token, every dark cloud has not just a silver lining, but the potential for lightning.
    (I know my tendency to use metaphor may off-put some. I will endeavor to avoid anthropomorphism and pathetic fallacy. Another habit of mine which may annoy others is the citation of authorities. This is a reflection of growing up in a second-generation Jewish American family where the Talmudic tradition of argument still survived, albeit in somewhat tarnished condition. Whenever someone said something outrageous, there was always someone else to ask, “Is that so?” You’d better have an answer and a good argument, or forget it. Over the years, my readings have led me to some unusual authorities whose original thinking --or so it seemed to me at the time-- persuaded me to include their perspective in my understanding of How It All Works. They will be mentioned and referenced from time to time. If you’re not yet acquainted, I commend them to your kind attention.)

*                                       *

    A few days ago I went to see the Occupation. I wanted to stand and walk on land that had been taken, liberated, as we once said, from the State. It was exhilarating! After work, I walked to the open market across the street and bought a couple bags of apples. I went down into the metro station and took the red line to the Civic Center. Came out on Hill (thank the gods the escalator wasn't out of order) and walked a couple blocks down Temple, through a small crowd of Michael Jackson devotees outside the courthouse. As I reached Spring St., I encountered a crocodile on its way to the Federal Reserve. I might've gone, but my leg really hurts after a block or two, so I walked on to have a look at the Occupation. The lawn surrounding City Hall was covered with tents, posters, cardboard, an apparent hodgepodge of colorful shelters. As I moved around, I saw there were paths, areas set aside for specific activities. The food area gratefully accepted the apples. Dinner was a couple hours away and there weren't any snacks.... There's a church nearby that has offered its kitchen three days a week....
    For me - walking around the occupation, observing the occupiers, chatting with strangers - it was delightful. Nothing much was happening, just an afternoon with a few hundred people occupying the public space around the seat of municipal government. Some people were playing music. Quite a few groups were talking/discussing.  I caught the occasional whiff of grass burning. There were people at the various service areas, first aid, food, library, media.... It’s a little village, a temporary community of strangers sharing their stories and making a new story together.
    Are the times a’changin’? as my brother mused?
    A friend asked, “How can the Occupation citizens actually achieve change?”
    Another friend wondered, “How long do they think they can keep this going?”
    These are three facets of the same conundrum: How to get from Here to There. Each question looks at the problem from a different angle. The more perspectives we have, the fuller will be our understanding of the problem and the better our chances of finding viable solutions. At least one hazard may be that we drown in too much information. Clearly, it’s all about change, changing the social order to something more just than what we’ve got now.
    Change will come. That's given. What we want to consider is how we shape the change. As my brother suggested, wouldn't it be cool if people changed, instead of demanding change? One of the things that will happen in these occupation actions is a transformed sense of personal power and personal responsibility among the participants. I know this from both experience and observation. There is great value in seeing "ordinary people" create a sustainable community out of nothing but passion and good will. An example I saw was a "charging station." Someone had set two solar panels on the west lawn and constructed a power station for people to charge their cell phones, batteries, etc.  They were also running a sound system, playing unremarkable music....
    So, in the Buddhist sense, change will continue. In the marxist sense? Here, I think we're seeing a stage in the process, a potentially significant moment. As I understand the evolution of the "General Assembly" concept (from the 15 May Movement in Spain), everyone who participates will experience democracy, not the phony thing we now call democracy. This is a teachable moment.

    23 October 2011
Eagle  Rock

Occupy Los Angeles 1

  During the days of awe...
       Saturday was Yom Kippur and tomorrow is (observed) Columbus Day. I haven’t been downtown yet to the tent city at City Hall. I have watched a few hours of the live-stream from New York, LA and DC. This is so exciting! Thousands of people have taken to the streets and are occupying public spaces in a dozen cities! The Occupy Wall Street action began three weeks ago, in response to Adbusters’ call. (The magazine is one of my favorite occasional periodicals.) The common chant, “We are the 99%,” has broad resonance. To me, it appears that small communities of activists are staking out space, staging marches, attracting attention from the police, and quickly outgrowing the space they’ve occupied. The handful of “organized” people in New York said they’d begun with supplies for two weeks, but run through everything. Volunteers, donations and a spirit of generosity were providing for people’s basic needs.
     The live-streams have been moderated by various participants, across a wide range of perspectives. Interviews invariably begin with, “Why are you here?” Answers are as expected: “I can’t find a job.” “I lost my house.” “I can’t pay my student loans.” People who have been badly hurt during the current economic upheaval have come with their grievances. They are seeking redress. They have seen the top 1% get richer and richer while the rest of us continue to lose our personal and common wealth. As yet, I have not heard any single demand arise. General Assemblies are forming at each occupation, and people are talking, but no list of demands, agenda or manifesto has appeared. There are certain to be documents and drafts of documents circulating. I want to see them! And I want to find the best, most interesting ones and send them around.
      This is a teachable moment, a pre-revolutionary moment.

* *

What is being taught? What is being learned?
     Every learning situation is different and unique, but there are fundamental questions the learner and the pedagogue should raise. The answers will be displayed in several dimensions, from recorded “hard data” and well-defined objectives to ephemeral observations of how learners “feel” and the identification of teachers’ unconscious biases of teachers. What is taught and what is learned are sometimes not the lessons we intended. What we observe about this “teachable moment” ought to help us figure out how to best take advantage of the opportunity.
     The teachable moment arises in situations when our vulnerability and our trust in authority are challenged. An example of a teachable moment, taken from my student days, may be helpful. By the fall of 1967 I had decided to defy the government’s order to report for military service. Like many young people, I had no interest in taking part in the war in Vietnam, or any war, but I registered anyway and was issued a draft card. I suppose it was meant to rouse some sense of patriotism. As a student, I completed the forms to postpone my service. My cooperation wasn’t coming from allegiance to the flag or any semblance of duty to my country. It was motivated by fear. I was afraid of the stigma of “refusing the call,” as well as the hardships of incarceration for refusing to serve. I knew this, intellectually and viscerally, but it wasn’t until another student talked about it that I understood how that fear was reinforced and used to manipulate us.
     The student, David Harris, asked the men in the audience (it was an anti-war rally) to take out their draft cards and read what it said on the back. Basically, it was a threat to fine the registrant (me) up to $10,000 and imprison him for up to five years if he destroyed the card or failed to comply with Selective Service orders. This piece of paper was the material reinforcement of the fear I was meant to feel. It was a symbolic and physical instrument of state power and social control. By law, I was required to carry it in my wallet. The draft card was a teaching tool, and what it taught was not love of country, but fear.
     As Walt Kelly sagely observed, “We have met the enemy and he is us.”

* *

Things to do? Something Is Happening ...
     The Occupation (#OWS) appears to be very fluid. As learning environments, each occupation is unique, but all are temporary, mobile, open and inclusive. Very different from the usual classroom. Who are the teachers? Who are the learners? What are the “objectives” and who defines them? What is the curriculum and who decides that? Is there a trend toward discussion, away from lecture? How are arrangements made for “class meetings”? Is there a class project? a practical application of what’s being learned? Are there links to other “classes” at other occupations? I think there is a great deal of useful information and experience that can be shared, but making the connections between occupations is essential. This could be a first attempt to distribute power (information) horizontally on local, regional, national and global scales. (More on this from Jeremy Rifkin: The Empathic Civilization, & YouTube.)
      The first point to understand, I think, is that this is not the revolution. There is no foolproof recipe for revolution -- each is unique to its time and place -- but there are some common features that precede the overthrow of the state. One of these is the “oppressed classes” (the 99% ?) beginning to get past the divisions that have separated them. Antagonists are forming coalitions. A feature yet to come is the broad understanding that privilege is power. The practical work of building alternative and parallel social structures to replace the state that’s about to be smashed must continue or be initiated. These are some markers along a possible path toward a fair and sane future.
       I hope the lessons of the Occupation are clearly stated and shared as they emerge:

•  This is what democracy looks like: an open, inclusive and transparent process.  
•  All sovereign state power is the expression and exercise of the will of the privileged: the law will always protect power and privilege.

We have to do our homework.

9 October 2011

Eagle Rock

XVIth Century North Indian Poetry (1)

July 3, 2010    
 My first encounter with Indian poetry was Tagore's Fireflies. I was reminded of Japanese haiku, and didn't go much further until one summer in Laguna, years later, I took a private class on the Bhagavad-Gita with one of the local yoga teachers, Florence Bercut. She adhered closely to Sivananda's (?) instruction and was steeped in Vedanta. 
    The course was a revelation to me. I recalled Firefliesand prowled used bookstores for a long time before I found Gitanjali and Poems of Kabir in Denver. Then I learned that Robert Bly had done some translations of Kabir, what he calls "versions." I acquired some anthologies of Indian literature and started reading. Again and again I returned to Kabir and the other bhakti poets: Mirabai, Nanak, Surdas, in much the same way I come back to Rumi and Rilke, Traherne and Hopkins. And here I need to point out that I can read only the last pair in their original language. For the rest, I must rely on the skill and insight of the translators, their poetic aesthetic and knowledge of the path.
     Rilke and Rumi are available in numerous versions: academic, scholarly transliterations, stiff imitations, liberal interpretations and "channeled originals." Thus far, I haven't found a satisfactory text that is faithful to both the poetic language of the poet and the ecstatic consciousness represented in the poem's content. A tall order, I know, yet Coleman Barks does it often with Rumi, Mitchell and Poulin sometimes with Rilke.
     I've been reading Bly & Hirshfield's versions of Mirabai and Kabir (Beacon Press), and also In Praise of Krishna (trans. Dimock & Levertov). These praise songs and poems from the Bengali celebrate the Divine Incarnation of Lord Vishnu as Krishna and his lila (play) with the gopis (cowherds) of Vrindaban. There is a rhythm in the language and vitality in the imagery that I completely miss in Tagore's translations.
     There was a recent article in the New Yorker magazine about Tagore. One of the observations the author of the article offers is that Tagore tended to tone down his own verse for his English readers. It seems likely he did the same to Kabir.  

Durable fragility

     My appreciation for the fragility and durability of this physical body has deepened profoundly over these past weeks. Having not been a patient in any sort of house of healing for many years, since last Independence Day, I've been hospitalized six times for fairly serious health matters, undergone three surgeries and can anticipate three more. 
     I'll become Medicare eligible in about three months, so in the meantime, I want to continue to heal and recover as much strength and endurance as possible. I am witness to the body's remarkable capacity to endure --first the illness and its painful symptoms, then the application of remedies, and third the process of recovery.That is durability.
     At one frightening point in my recent confinement, it became painfully difficult to breathe. Fluid around the lungs had so inflamed them that inflation became painfully sharp. Panting through the episode as pharmaceutical compounds dripped into my arm, I felt the precious worth of every cubic inch of air. That is fragility.
    These antinomies seem to suddenly abound. The paradox and ko-an are everywhere I seem to put my attention. A book just came to my library by Lewis Thompson, Black Sun, and it is all antinomy and paradox. Jean Liedloff's Continuum Concept explodes premises with paradoxes. My body becomes a ko-an when the envelope that contains my heart is flooded and a-flame. 
     Today I feel good. So grateful to be here, to be alive. Enjoying very much this mysterious and magical moment.

A Profound Moment in History

Late August, 1998. Pasadena.

    "We're living through a profound moment in history," my friend, Andy, told me the other day. 
     His parents, one Russian, one Polish, named him Anatole, but he grew up as 'Andy.' He knows how I resist this media wave, fixed on the Millenium. The numbers are irrelevant, relative, arbitrary. If you follow the Gregorian calculations, it's a thousand years. If your calendar reckons time from the lunar months of Abraham, or the flight of the Prophet, it isn't 1998. Some of us mark the passage of time from the days of the Pharaohs or the first dynasty of Atlantis. A few remote communities may be beyond the reach of Y2K angst altogether.
     "What makes this bundle of years so special, O Wise One?" I asked. "Sure, we're in it. That makes it important, but think about what our grandmothers lived through!" I said. "Global wars. Global depression. Global transportation... And their grandmothers lived through wars, the Civil War, the Boer War, the Restoration of the Meiji dynasty, the Suez Canal, the Third Republic! Every moment in history is profound, Andy, to the people who live it!" I paused in my rant.
      "For sure, man," he said, "if I can describe it." Long pause. This is an articulate guy, so, I wait. "It's got to be gaining momentum, Luz. Just look at this week --
      "The liberal leader of the most powerful state on the planet admitted to the world that he lied about what he was doing with a young woman on his Presidential staff. This same leader, the year before 'ended Welfare as we know it,' and claimed savings of hundreds of millions of dollars for tax-payers. Later that same week, he gave orders to send 100 Tomahawk missiles ($1,000,000 / unit) into northern Africa and eastern Afghanistan. And that's just the American highlights...
    "McGuire and Sosa both had homers. Yeltsin fired his Cabinet. Aung San Suu Kyi is barricaded on a bridge in Burma. Serious earthquake in Japan. Heavy flooding in China. Armed insurgencies in Colombia, Angola, Indonesia, Mexico...." Andy stops and looks at me, question on his face, It's bad, right? 
     "Sounds pretty normal," I said. "The wave is not crashing today, Andy. Last week it was bombing the embassies in Africa. Clinton came back from China. Roy Rodgers and Frank Sinatra died. There's your historical marker," I offered.
      Andy sighed, "Yeah, what a voice."
      "Sinatra."
      "No, Roy Rodgers." 







 

Education I, concluded

The way we reward teachers and students is so peculiar, and the way we pay for our schools is so unfair. Education is something we all benefit from, it is common wealth. Turning it into private property or auctioning it in the marketplace, both are obscene.
     Re: mental health. In too many schools too many teachers experience "burn-out." Consider the growing numbers of students and teachers who take prescription drugs to help them get through their days at school. Why is the number of school-age suicides not declining? 
     Re: quality of service. Why is it so difficult to  keep good teachers? Why does the number of students who drop out of school keep growing? What does your neighborhood school look like? Is the environment well-kept and clean? Do the buildings appear to be safe and maintained? Is the school open or fenced? Do the classrooms have enough books and desks for every student? What about the school district next door?
     Re: virtue. Although test scores mean a lot to the people who have the power to allocate resources, scores have little to do with education. Education is about cultivating the minds and character of the next generation. The root sense, of virtue, is of strength and knowing what is right, a sense of justice. There are, I believe, many virtuous teachers and students who want to gain virtue, but the spiritual crisis that seems to permeate American culture makes virtue an unprofitable commodity.
     For most of my life, I've been a student or a teacher. My experiences in many varied learning environments, my apprenticeships, my readings, and observing and thinking about education, have not brought me enlightenment or practical recipes that will save education in America. (My apologies, what were you expecting?) There are some people who have also been plowing this field, working this mine, shoveling shit at times, but wanting to get out of this catastrophe and into the Next Thing.
     In recent times, The Whole Earth Catalog stands as a sort of benchmark, an encyclopedic collection of the most interesting non-mainstream ideas and heresies we could find. It remains a great example of a Tools resource. Other interesting bits came from Paul Goodman and Michael Harrington, Joe Chilton Pearce, Bucky Fuller and Marshall McLuhan. There are many more in my list of great teachers, and they are not all male. But for now, I offer these giants for your (re) consideration ....
     Be well.
             Luz