October 26, 2011

Dear Friends:
First of all, many thanks for your various messages and offers of support. I know I cut a somewhat radical figure, walking through the world as I do, tough as nails, toughing it out, fearless. But as many of you know, some of this is cover for something deeper: that is, despair. I am by nature and nurture, a hopeful person. But hope erodes. At first it was the difficult 80s, when greed and aggression spread like a virus. Then it was the 90s and some kind of hope. We thought we had a president who understood us. I still think he did. But he made some major policy decisions that turned out very badly. I will cite only NAFTA at this point. Then it was the new milleneum. It started out feeling as if we were being attacked from the outside. It did not take very long for me, at least, to understand the extent to which we were being attacked from within. President Obama did give me hope. I never thought I would live to see an African American man become president and I still get a positive charge every time I see him behind that podium. I think it is important in many ways that our first lady is a beautiful black woman, and that Malia and Sasha are growing up in the Whitehouse to end all white houses.
But of course, President Obama has been a disappointment. He has disappointed so many of us—whether it be regarding environmental issues, LGBT issues, banking issues, federal regulatory issues. I nevertheless refuse to throw the baby out with the bathwater. I think the Obama candidacy sparked something that had not be seen in a very long time. I am not going to call it hope, I am going to say it was a sense that someone in power actually cared about the likes of you and me. Sadly, I do not think that is true. But the end of that truth provides an opening to a new view. It does not matter if those with the vast majority of wealth and power care about us. We care about us. I have seen this every day that I have been at Occupy Providence. I have seen humans caring for other humans. I have seen humans being aware of their natural environment. I have seen people who would normally not give it a second thought picking up their cigarette butts and putting them in the trash (in this, I include myself). I have seen people wait and wait and wait their turn to speak at meetings. They wait and they speak, and in the meantime, they listen. They get frustrated, they leave, they come back. Right now, our resources are limited and so we find ourselves mostly in the situation of hoping and waiting for people to join us. We all know we have to reach out, but we are stretched thin. But  people are leaping into the breach. Example: on Sunday, a group of Episcopalian ministers came down and held a worship service. I ran into one of them today, “Father” (LOL) Jennifer. She is beginning to take on outreach to other faith-based communities to get them involved.  She is just doing it. And that is how things are happening at OP. I do not need help, personally. I am getting home on a fairly regular basis to switch out clothes, do laundry, have a lovely dinner with Diane and Red. But this movement has needs. We need each other. Finally, I want to reiterate this one point: the “movement” has been critiqued for lacking a specific message and purpose. To a certain extent, this is true. There is no one specific message, policy initiative, or focus. To me, THAT is the most revolutionary part of the whole thing. We have been trained to listen, learn, think and speak in soundbites. In “Occupy” there is a very organic and unaggressive refusal to be captured that way. This is so deeply resistant. Think about it: FB, Twitter, the newsfeed, our world, everything designed and packaged and ready for the soundbite. The soundbite itself discourages dialogue, critical thinking, and complexity. To refuse that is to say no, loudly, peacefully and profoundly. It is a relatively small group in Providence. But the implications are profound. And as always, we need reinforcements. Tents are cheap right now—on sale and everything!  You don’t even have to sleep out. Just claim space. Just stop by. Listening to St. Vincent’s latest release lately. Cliched as it is, I can’t help but be captured by this lyric: “It’s not a perfect plan, but it’s the one we got.”
Namaste, Mary