This song was written so early in the process of what I now recognize as a profound political transformation which has still not yet run its course.  There are some ways in which a certain naivete is apparent, like the lyric “we ain’t settled on a story yet, ‘cuz the conch keeps going ’round”; clearly the voice of one disillusioned and disappointed by the current order, but lacking conviction in any other framework for justice.  Still, that’s who I was when I penned it, and it still seems apropos regarding the perennial tensions between forces militant and nonviolent, radical and conciliatory within the movement.  I am not bringing this up to pick a side, only to note that we are all a part of this, and no sect has sufficient clout to exclude another, nor should we.  Solidarity must be more than a slogan.

Download the song for free, share it with whomever you think might appreciate it.  If anyone wants to use it for some relevant purpose (video, etc.), just write me at shareef at shareefali dot com.

Lyrics:

Mic check! Mic check! 
Let me know I’m not alone! 
I’m a witness to this movement, 
Manhattan to San Anton. 
We ain’t settled on a story yet, 
‘cuz the conch keeps going ’round. 
Like Jesse said, we need a gathering, 
not just another crowd. 

Mic check! Mic check! 
You know there’s always been a war! 
Black, white and brown don’t wanna scrounge 
for table scraps no more! 
Best come up with what we ask for. 
Someday always comes too late. 
You wonder how to do it faster? 
Allow us to demonstrate! 

World keeps on swinging, and a mighty arc it makes. 
So no, I don’t know how long a revolution takes. 
But it’s better to burn long than to burn too hot or bright. 
Brother, leave a light on, we could be here all night! 

Mic check! Mic check! 
Hey, is this thing even on? 
Sometimes I can’t hear my voice, 
been screaming for so long. 
You say you don’t hear a message, 
but that’s ‘cuz you’ve plugged your ears. 
But I know my brothers and sisters 
all receive me loud and clear! 

Mic check! Mic check! 
Hate to occupy your time. 
Then again, maybe that’s one more thing 
you’ve taken that was mine. 
You’re scared you’ll topple from your totem. 
No, I don’t feel bad for you. 
I know you’ve got ninety-nine problems, 
but guess what? We’ve got problems too! 

World keeps on swinging, and a mighty arc it makes. 
So no, I don’t know how long a revolution takes. 
But it’s better to be misunderstood than to never make a sound. 
Sister, bring a blanket, we’re sleeping on the ground!

The biggest obvious accomplishment is the tour, which, despite some small setbacks and things to do differently next time, was amazing and incredibly reaffirming of my path.  In doing so, I met what was arguably my most ambitious goal of playing at least twenty out-of-town gigs.  I played twenty-four on the tour.

I succeeded in recording and releasing both a full-length album with the band, Holy Rock & Roll, and a solo EP, How To End The War.  While the latter was not a full-length as I had originally intended when I conceived of it last year, in truth I think I produced a better record than even I had envisioned, which was more of a B-sides/oddities/release-and-be-done-with-it effort.  Instead, the general trend has been that each release I’ve been as or more proud of than the last.  I also surprised myself by how much my voice has improved over the course of just a year from when we recorded The Once & Future Boyfriend (which I’m still totally proud of).

The most notable case in which I didn’t meet the goal I set–I won’t call it a failure, because I don’t think it is–is in songwriting volume.  I had set a goal of twelve songs, which is what I managed in 2010, and I only wrote half that.  However, I realized in May when I was planning the tour that the scale of my undertaking was such that if I wanted to be successful with it I had to put something else on the back burner, and from a practical point of view of having more than enough repertoire to gig with, I made a conscious decision to set songwriting to the side for a few months.  I got back into it in October on the train, and wrote a song for each of the last three months of the year.  Here are all the tunes I penned this year:

1. You Don’t Have To Stay
2. Tucson
3. The Tenderness In Me
4. Witness
5. Ain’t Nothing Sweeter (Train Song)
6. For The Rest Of My Life

Notable features about the songs I wrote this year:

• Two of them, “Tenderness” and “For The Rest Of My Life” were purely diatonic, and “Tucson” almost was too, save for a little chromatic run.  I think the last time I wrote diatonic music was in high school, but it took a decade of songwriting to figure out how to craft a song with other thematic elements strong enough that chromatic color didn’t seem necessary.  At the same time, “Ain’t Nothing Sweeter” is as tonally interesting as anything I’ve written.
• The last three songs of the year were all under three minutes.  As a writer who used to not be able to do it in under five, but has always admired concentrated brevity, I consider this a great accomplishment.
• In “Witness” I had my first purely political song.  And in case you didn’t see it, Amanda Palmer retweeted it, which pretty much made my year.

Not least of all, this was definitely my best year for updating this blog semi-regularly, with thirty-five new posts, more than I published in all of 2009 and 2010.  This is largely due to being involved with the Occupy movement, which for all its complications has been nothing short of transformative for me.

Goals for this year, then?

1. Tour the Northwest in the Spring again.  And maybe the Northeast in the Fall?  I have a three-quarters-baked idea about seeing how long I can couchsurf across the Eastern Seaboard.
2. Play more high-profile local venues.  I’ve got the drop on this one, with my upcoming first appearance at Bottom Of The Hill on January 18!
3. Record and release another album.  Because why not?  Release early and often, that’s my motto.
4. Get the fuck out of debt, completely, so I can  quit my job and tour forever and ever.

Okay, go!

I was immediately heartened by the teeming crowd that turned out for the early shift starting at 5:30 at West Oakland BART.  I had expected a band of maybe 100; while I’m no crowd-counting expert, my good-faith estimate for the morning was more like 800-1000.  We shut that mother down, and then I retreated to my house to run my toes under some hot water in the tub and nap fitfully for two hours.

I got back to Oscar Grant Plaza around 3:30, in time to hear Scott Olsen address the crowd; I got to meet him later that evening, and stammered something about how we all admired him.  As we marched down to the Port for the second time that day, I became aware that this was our biggest showing since the day of the General Strike.  Though in actuality it was a bit smaller, it was nothing you could tell while in the thick of it.

In response to police repression of other #D12 actions, it was decided that we would shut down the 3 AM shift to which much of day’s work had been pre-emptively rescheduled.  So after dinner and another hour and a half of sleep, I returned again, this time to the Matson terminal at the base of Market Street.  There was no drumming or sound system, only a lone clarinetist screeching through “Misirlou” and “Walking After Midnight”.  Nobody chanted; while I think some entertainment or other participatory activity (other than walking in a circle) would have been appreciated, everyone seemed to know that the chants were not going to cut it.  Eventually, I broke off with a group of about twenty cyclists to block another entrance to the terminal.  We did a ‘biking picket’, and things quickly got very silly.

“Let’s do two concentric circles!”  ”Going in opposite directions!”  ”It’ll look so trippy from the chopper!”  ”Let’s do a figure 8!”

I consider Monday’s action to have been a great success.  Of course the media has already settled comfortably into the narrative that just happens to maximally highlight tensions between the Occupy movement and our closest natural allies in labor.  Should anyone wish to understand these tensions on a serious level, I recommend reading the open letter from an autonomous group of port truckers; the excellent, even-handed summary from Labor Notes; and Hyphy Republic’s account of the Port Shutdown and micro-history of Occupy Oakland (be sure to read the comments as well).  But now that we know that we’re not dead as a movement, the question looms as tall as before: what next?

For the past several weeks I’ve been reading up on my Marxism, and really feeling the concept of dialectics (from Hegel et al): that reality is always churning with tension between opposing forces and only appears static for relatively brief moments, and that from these contradictions a new, synthesized reality is born, supplanting and even obliterating what was before, but nevertheless has a continuity with (and even a debt to) its predecessor.  Through this lens, I’m kind of awed by the unpredictable chain of developments the Occupy movement has gone through.  As I’ve seen it, Occupy has been:

• A highly collaborative compiling of personal histories of hardship, from debt to unemployment to unfulfilled economic promise.
• A disorientingly diverse outpouring of grievances and demands from activists mainstream and marginalized, serious and decidedly not.  Mostly leftist, but a few right-wingers and off-the-spectrum crazies.  Repeal Glass-Steagall.  End The Fed.  Legalize Hemp.  Forgive Student Loans.  9/11 Truth. Say Yes To Class War.  Sometimes I miss the creative signs.
• A squat turned ad hoc human services drop-in center, stepping in with little to no formal training to meet basic needs that capitalism and the state have both washed their hands of.
• An organic populist movement dangerously close to being tamed into a Democratic and/or non-profit industrial complex street fair.
• A heated, wounding internal struggle between pacifists and militants and their sympathizers.  As an aside, it’s remarkable how much of a non-issue this has become; apparently the number of folks who are philosophically amenable to property destruction far outnumber those zealous enough to engage in it.
• A heated, wounding external struggle with law enforcement over human rights to speech and assembly.  For all the radical charges from the earliest stages of Occupy, I mark this as the moment when the movement at large transcended itself and its fixation on only the most recent widespread economic injustices.  People were shocked not only at the degree of police violence but the logic behind it at all.  Eyes were opened, and questions asked about the true nature of the state and of our society.
• A splintering off into autonomous, only loosely affiliated contingents focusing on direct coordinated actions, forgoing the proposal process and official sanction by the General Assembly.

It should go without saying that I haven’t a clue where this going next.  Many of us are feeling weary, but that’s not to say that we won’t still come out in force for something we think is well conceived and orchestrated.  But as great of a success as the Port Shutdown was, I think most of us know that our target must be different next time.  No single direct action we can take will bring the 1% to their knees, though I like to think we ruined their day.

For my part, I would like to see a ball get rolling on some sort of national congregation of the Occupy movement, which could even be the germ for–dare I say it?–a revolutionary party.  This idea has floated around since at least sometime in October, when it was all so exciting and new, and despite the repression it seemed momentum was really on our side.  Still, I think a lot of us didn’t believe we would still be here two months later, yet here we are.  But I want to do more than just surprise our former selves; I want to dialectically evolve into an ever more empowered, conscious and potent force for revolutionary change.

Who’s with me?

So.  The tour.

I loved it.  Every bit as much as I thought I would.  The heart of the tour experiment was really, “Is this really the life you want for yourself?” and the answer is an emphatic yes.  Of course, it was much different that I expected in many ways.

Transportation was remarkably easy.  I loved riding the rails, even wrote a song about it.  Friends often helped me out with rides, but when that failed I could always figure out public transit, or just hoof it.  More than once I decided to walk more than two miles to my next stop, having nothing but time.  The biggest snafu of tour was of course the rail pass debacle, but I done sent in for my voucher and hopefully that’s all getting squared away.

I was very lucky to have friends in every place I visited, who were wonderfully hospitable with lodging and sometimes food as well.  And I got to reconnect with some folks I hadn’t seen in five, ten, and even twenty years.  It’s easy to talk shit about people today being hyperconnected to randoms from their past via social networks, but I think if we’re brave enough to actually engage with each other despite the gulf of time between our previous acquaintance and the present, it can be really rewarding.

I loved playing music almost every single day.  On one hand, playing to mostly strangers who don’t have any investment in you can be unnerving; you have to win it every time.  But this also makes the songs new to you every time you play.  I never got bored of my material.  It was interesting which songs I found I liked to play every night (there were four that made it into every set; can you guess?), which ones I liked to play semi-frequently, and which I only played once.  Bottom line, I think touring is the absolute best training a performer can get.

UPDATE: I decided to rank my 24 shows on this tour into three categories: Good, Fine and Janky.  I’m pleased to report that the most populous category was Good, which had 11.  There were 7 shows I’d classify as Fine and only 6 that I’d call Janky.   And even those were fun. 

I loved all the new places I saw.  Hands down favorite: New Orleans.  I’m particularly drawn to pretty cities: NOLA, Portland, Seattle, obviously SF.  But there was a lot of character in every town I visited, and every stay was too short.

There are a number of things I’d do differently.  I wouldn’t bounce around back and forth between cities on the East Coast like I did, even though it’s technically feasible.  Rather, I think next time I’ll just have my tour either stop or start with that whole region, and maybe spend a month or two on the seaboard.  I wouldn’t do any epic legs of travel, like New York to NOLA or LA to Seattle, mostly because it’s nearly impossible to get truly restful sleep on the train.  I did, however, get some great reading and blogging and writing done while in transit, though it was mostly all in the second half of the journey, and I had to make myself do it.

Here are some stats:

I spent a total of $641 on daily expenses over forty-eight days, coming out to $13.35 a day.  This broke down further to an average of $5.19 on food, $3.58 on travel and $4.58 on miscellaneous expense.

Between merch, cover charges and tips, I made $574 over 23 shows (I’m not counting the Amsterdam show, since 1) I was visiting with family and not yet spending my own money and 2) I didn’t make any money).  This comes out to an average of $10.78 on merch and $14.17 on cover and/or tips.  So, not quite breaking even on the day-to-day, but not bad.

I can’t wait to do it again.  I’m looking at either a Pacific Northwest or Southern California tour (or both?) in the spring.  Who’s coming with me?

I guess you don’t.  Instead, Wolf and producer Nick Stargu have created a very different sonic experience from her live performances.  Rich swells of chamber strings, gently whining electric guitar lines and other ephemera are woven through the songs, but her guitar and voice–that unmistakable voice–are always the centerpiece.  This extended palette also reveals a broader range of musical influence: far from just a folksinger, Wolf draws on the jazz, gospel and soul traditions as well.  If seeing Wolf Larsen live is scripture, then Quiet At The Kitchen Door is a canon of Renaissance paintings.  The beauty and poetry of the stories* is not diminished but transformed as it’s translated into a new media.

Similarly, many of the song-stories on Kitchen seem to be retellings of each other**, like a folk tale that has different endings depending on how far the storyteller has wandered.  In one version, the speaker wistfully leaves her lover; in another, she begs the beloved to stay.  Our hero longs for companionship; or perhaps he succeeds in resisting its charm.  In her first single “If I Be Wrong” Wolf follows in the tradition of Jeannette Winterson’s Written On The Body by defying gender, and in doing so makes the listener question what we think we know about the character or its creator.  All we’re left with is the bare essence of the song: a plea, not for love, not for forgiveness, not even for understanding, only for a shared presence.

Quiet At The Kitchen Door sounds terrific, and has remarkable balance.  Just when the serenity of long-form songs like “Kitchen Door” and “If I Be Wrong” seems almost too wonderful to bear, there’s the relief of a dainty, playful palette-cleanser like “Maybe, Baby” or a rough-around-the-edges romper like “Wild Things”.  My all-time personal favorite is “Jedi”, a lyric of which I once asked Wolf to write on my guitar.  A sword inside a song.  This is the weapon that Wolf wields, and Quiet At The Kitchen Door is the sound of her running you clean through.

—

*As an atheist, I shamelessly reserve the right to invoke religious tradition whenever it seems rhetorically poignant.

**This is the part where I begin to wildly conjecture about the meanings of the songs.

1. I firmly reject the notion that property destruction is tantamount to violence.
2. The mere fact of property destruction being illegal does not mean that it’s unethical or ineffective.  It’s illegal to camp in most public parks, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do it.
3. Occupy Oakland has not, as a body, made any resolution of nonviolence.  From what I’ve observed, OO is in the minority in this regard amongst other Occupations, but how sizable that minority is, I don’t know.
4. What OO has resolved to do is to “respect a diversity of tactics” and, despite strategic differences, maintain solidarity in the face of assault by the State and Traditional Media.
5. There were reports of certain zealously ‘nonviolent’ protesters using actual force and violence (specifically, throwing chairs) at other protesters who were defacing Whole Foods.  As one person put it at the OO debrief Thursday evening, “I don’t know what kind of fucked-up definition of ‘nonviolence’ you’re using.”
6. As one protester remarked, “Respecting a diversity of tactics goes both ways.”  People who want to take militant action need to recognize that their actions have a effect on everyone in the movement.  This is most obviously exemplified in police retaliation, but another example I heard was if one group were hypothetically to occupy a building (thinking about the winter here) and risk misdemeanor trespassing charges, another group starting fires could potentially put them at risk for felony arson charges.
7. A number of people have called upon Occupy Oakland to disavow property destruction and anyone who employs these tactics (notably, I’ve seen this mostly from folks who do not consider themselves to be part of the movement, but outside commentators).  However:
   a) this is pretty clearly in violation of both the letter and spirit of #3, and is (fairly, I believe) taken as a betrayal by some;
   b) from what I saw Thursday, support or at least sympathy for these tactics is too widespread for this to be feasible.
8. It seems to me that one of the reasons OO hasn’t committed to nonviolence is a lot of folks involved, specifically young men of color, have had to contend with violence from police their entire lives, and aren’t coming from the same mostly white, middle- to upper-class, formally educated culture that the nonviolent protest tradition is rooted in.
9. On the other hand, the anarchist culture that is so eager to embrace Fucking Shit Up is overwhelmingly white and male, as were most of the folks I saw speaking out in favor of it on Thursday.  If the voices of women and folks of color were being sufficiently encouraged and amplified (and keep in mind that Oakland is one of the most diverse cities in the country), would this approach seem quite so popular?
10. I want this movement to be inclusive, but I think there’s a distinction between inclusivity and mainstreaming.  I’m not sure that I think property destruction is an effective tool for change, but if it’s not unethical (I’m not sure on this one, but let’s assume for the sake of this argument that it’s not), then I think it’s a legitimate expression of anger.  Compare this to certain incendiary verbal expression:  the statement “Fuck The Police” may alienate some people, but I’m firmly opposed to repressing passionate speech in interests of being more palatable to a mainstream audience.  We need to be seeking solidarity on what we stand to gain from transforming/toppling the system and knowing our common enemy–not how we express our outrage.
11. All I feel (sort of) sure of is that it’s important for all of us in the movement to be conscious of the effects that one’s actions have on all of us, and on our future as a movement.

If anyone thinks any of these notions are rationally or ethically flawed, I certainly welcome your comments.  Though I reserve the right to take a long time to reply because I’ve already out-debated myself for the day/week.  Seriously though, let’s dialogue on this.

I want this to go on for a long time. I want us to never stop. Until when? Until we get everything.

Now maybe you’re thinking, that’s ridiculous. You can’t possibly hope or expect that this movement will lead to getting everything you want, from a truly progressive taxation system to breaking up of TBTF banks to permanent security of social welfare programs. And my response is, so what? That’s what I want, and I have tremendous moral authority in demanding it.

You might say, Shareef, you’re never going to get all that, you might even end up going home with nothing. So what? We’ve been asking for too little and going home with nothing anyway for so long, why would I do my dreams of the world I want to live in the dishonor of asking for anything less?

You might say, Shareef, that’s all that is: a dream. It’s never going to happen. To which I reply, you know what else will never happen? Working folks of all political stripes in this country will never rise up en masse in protest of the oligarchy. Protest will never be reinvented in a way that confounds our existing political and media power structures. Fuck your never. I want what I want.

The Occupy movement aligns with a lot of ideals that the Left has held for a long time, but it doesn’t belong to the Left. And that’s fine. Political ideologies shouldn’t exist just to carve out identities and tribes, but because their proponents actually hold them to be good for society and the world. Of course on the Left we’ve long thought that our ideas should have broad appeal to 99% of people, and this movement is borne of all of our shared outrage, if not strict agreement upon the solutions. But these distances between us are miniscule compared to the chasm between Doing The Right Thing and whatever the fuck our so-called leaders have been doing for decades. I don’t think I’m alone in having lost faith in the conventional channels of power. At best we find our leaders hapless to Do The Right Thing; at worst we can’t believe we were so naive to think they ever meant to do it in the first place. So don’t ask me what my demands are; you know what you were supposed to have been doing all this time. Don’t tell me you’re ‘on the side of the protesters’; if that were true, none of this would even be happening. We’re out here because we would be fools to buy any longer that anyone in power has our interests at heart.

The public trust has been violated, not once but many, many times. Let us not even dream of forgiving that for a long, long while. And if anyone in power should wonder when we’re going home, here’s my answer at least. We’re not. Not until we get everything. Now if you’re worth a damn, by all means try to prove it to me, but I’m through holding my breath. We’re going to go ahead and build a better world with or without you.

One last thing. As the movement has continued to grow, the comparisons to Egypt have grown more frequent. There are those who roll their eyes at this claim, but this reflex towards skepticism (and often towards inaction) is one that many of us are reconsidering and unlearning, myself included. Yes, obviously there are huge differences, but just yesterday Egyptian activists chose, independent of any direct influence from Occupy Oakland or any other branch of the American Occupy movement, to march in solidarity with our struggle. Clearly they have no hangup about identifying with us.

No, we’re not trying to overthrow the regime of a personal dictator. But we are railing against the progressive undermining of our government and society by the corporatist campaign that’s been waged, mostly successfully, over the past half-century, which is a different kind of tyranny. Are we afraid to call this a revolution, and ourselves revolutionaries? If so, is it because of our global privilege? Do we perceive ourselves as being insufficiently downtrodden to warrant revolt, or do we think we’re too ‘civilized’?

Maybe these are just projections of my own insecurities, but I’m determined to cast them off. Naomi Klein said that we should treat this as if it’s the most important thing in the world, because it is. I’m through pretending not to have a dream.

I’m on my final train, from Eugene to Jack London Square. I’ll publish this as soon as I get home. I’ve already begun mentally drafting a logistical summary of the nuts and bolts of the tour, which I’m eager to review and share, but right now I want to talk about Occupy Portland and some other broader reflections on the movement.

When I got to Portland last Sunday, the occupation was my first stop. Immediately I was impressed by not only the size, which rivaled New York (when I saw it at the end of September) and Los Angeles, but with a more extensive infrastructure of tents and overhead tarps stretched between the trees. This was in marked contrast to Seattle, as were the organizers’ relations with Portland police. I overheard some folks who had kind words about the local force, but still I felt incredulous (and this was even before the horrific events in Oakland on Wednesday), until I witnessed one interaction I witnessed swayed me at least a little. I was hanging out by the Peace & Safety tent when two foot patrol cops approached. They explained that there were some folks smoking weed on the sidewalk. They were willing to look the other way, but only when the smoking was done inside a tent and out of public view. The organizers thanked the officers and asked if they wouldn’t mind if Peace & Safety went and talked to them instead of the cops, to minimize any unnecessary confrontation. The police agreed that this was an acceptable course, and the issue was resolved without any further fuss. This may seem like a small affair, and that’s because it was, because these particular officers worked cooperatively with community members to find a solution without the usual dramatic heavy-handedness. I’m grateful Portland’s mayor and police force have been able to do this well so far, and I hope it continues.

But every Occupation has its challenges, and Portland is no different. Each place I’ve been has had its share of homeless and street folks, some of whom have apparently come more for the food and shelter than for the cause. I think this is both to be expected and embraced: homeless folks are among those savagely victimized by economic injustice. Often they have been for quite some time, and I think supporting and honoring populations and communities who have been under the gun since long before the current ‘mainstream’ crisis began is one of the most important things this movement can do to be inclusive and more universally meaningful.

That principle being stated: Occupy Portland has had to deal with a lot of issues apparently coming from members of this population, namely fights breaking out, theft and drug abuse including overdoses. Their Peace & Safety team seemed like they were run ragged doing a lot of babysitting, and were having to call in authorities to assist, whether cops to settle a fight or an ambulance. This was limiting their ability to focus energies on organizing actions, and threatened to harm the thus far positive relations with the law. I was asked if I had seen any creative solutions to these kinds of situations in other Occupations, and I was embarrassed not to have much to offer. I really think it’s a conundrum. I believe in offering care and assistance to vulnerable populations, but I don’t want to see any Occupation jeopardized by an inability to maintain a physically safe environment. And don’t forget that there is, in fact, no way to actually kick any one ‘problem’ person out of an Occupied public space.

I did have the honor of being asked to contribute a piece to the website Seattlest.com, which you can read here (a lot of it revisits what I’ve already written on this blog, but perhaps more organized). Tuesday night I spent glued to Twitter, wringing my hands like a worried mother. Feeling powerless and frustrated, I went down to Occupy Portland on Wednesday to work it off. I scrubbed dishes, made PB&Js, dumped dish water into urinals–then, put on some latex gloves and unclogged those same urinals by hand. Good, honest work.

Here on my couch in Oakland, I’ve decided to break this blog in two.  Shamelessly idealistic second half to follow.

Occupy Bellingham doesn’t start until the 28th, but I did get to spend a few days at the occupation in Seattle. I went down for the first time to Westlake on Wednesday morning. Approaching the small park from the north, at first all I saw was police cars and municipal workers. My impression was that the authorities had succeeded in dispersing all the protesters, and my heart sank. But as I wandered to the south of the triangle, I gathered that a small band–no more than two dozen–were trying to get their bearings, evidently after a sleepless night and a recent order to clean up their belongings. Mornings are pretty rough at all the occupations, I think, but the police repression, which includes restrictions on tents and sleeping bags, coupled with inclement weather is a real doozy in Seattle. As I’ve written, the biggest immediate challenge/goal for this movement (as I see it) is to survive the winter, and Seattle’s got it rough. I hope they’re able to find some creative solutions, and I hope those of us elsewhere are also thinking about how we might be able to help them.

Anyway, I spent half an hour or so wandering around, trying to meet folks and be of assistance, eventually helping to carry a tarp bundled around several packs and sundry personal items across to the other side of Westlake. Then I had a vague assignment to truck six blocks down to City Hall, where some other folks were occupying to see what they needed. I did, but pondered whilst I walked, why are they occupying two spaces when one of them is so sparsely populated that a newcomer couldn’t even tell there was anyone still there?

Before I remark any further, let me pause for a moment here and be clear: I don’t mean to be overly critical. Each occupation is facing its own unique challenges due to geography, local politics, demographics, etc. and I don’t purport to know the best solution. I’m only getting a snapshot of each city’s efforts, and despite having sat in on some GAs and working group meetings I haven’t been a full participant in the consensus process for any of them (nor should I). I’m certain to have a skewed perception due to my unfamiliarity with the finer dynamics between the local occupation and the authorities, and within the organization itself. But I have full faith that they’ll work any issues they have out, and all admiration and respect to them for hanging in.

I got down to City Hall, where there was another small group occupying, albeit with a little more infrastructure, owing apparently to a recent permit to occupy there from the Mayor. Some people seemed to feel that they had his support, but I felt skeptical after hearing about their harsh intolerance of camping. There had apparently also been some fracturing within the group, with the more anarchist crowd holding down Westlake and a more inclined-towards-compliance group opting to set up at City Hall.

My spirits rallied as the afternoon rolled around; people seemed to be getting themselves together and I shared my song with a few people who were very receptive. I took a break in the afternoon to have coffee, whiskey and indie musician shop-talk with my buddy Matt Hart from The Local Strangers, then headed back down for the General Assembly. One of the organizers who’d seen me perform my song earlier invited me to open up the GA with it, which was thrilling and gratifying. The GA was well-attended, probably 150-200 folks, and I was impressed by the organization and patience of the group, as well as their decision to use progressive stack. I stayed through the discussion of one proposal to move locations. Pros and cons were weighed, arguments and objections were made, and nothing passed, but I was heartened by the ability of the body to govern itself.

There are more reflections about the movement forthcoming, but I’ve almost arrived in PDX. Show tonight at Ella Street Social Club! See you there.

On the train from Los Angeles to Seattle, a 34-hour juggernaut that takes me right by home. Though I hadn’t been particularly dreading this leg, I’m not totally feeling it right now, partly because I feel sore from the pushups I did yesterday. Physical fitness has suffered a bit from the tour, and I’m looking forward to having a chance to get back into the habit. In short, this is the first time I’ve felt kind of weary of the road, which is okay. I’ve less than two weeks of it left, and I’m still excited for the places and faces I’ll see in the Northwest. Also, I think the Southern California route is one of the prettier stretches of travel so far, and I’m about to catch a bomb sunset over mountains here in the observation car.

Los Angeles was great. Both shows were really strong, not least of all because I was joined by my wonderful old friend Robyn on two songs: harmonies on “My Weakness”, where none had been before, and “The Tenderness In Me” as a duet. Friday at Old Towne Pub was the test run, which went pretty well, and then we killed it at the house show at Seb’s Sunday. That was my most collaborative show yet, with Robyn’s dad Dennis Garrels joining me on “You’re A Fox” with some stanky trombone, and closing the set with Wolf Larsen on “If My Love”. Wolf and Seb’s sets killed as well.

I got to check out two different Occupations while I was in town. I went to Occupy LA on Saturday for the huge march, which was huge as expected. Reaffirmed my feeling that marching and chanting is all well and good, but the real strength of the Occupy movement is discussion and community-building. Attended a free class on universal health care, which mostly covered what I already knew but was valuable anyway. Wandered around for a bit, taking it in. It was about on the scale that Liberty Plaza was when I visited on September 30, maybe a tad bigger.

I was pleased by what I saw there, with just a few footnotes. The food area was not nearly as expansive as New York’s, and they were really insistent on only accepting donations and giving out only prepackaged items. At first I thought this was for fear of litigation, which seemed a little silly (whom would you sue? the volunteer with the bandanna and the cutoff jeans who wasn’t there anymore?), but maybe it was for fear of shutdown by the health department. Which would be understandable but unfortunate; the bustling kitchen in NY was one of the most hospitable features of that occupation, which is what I think this movement needs.

There was also this pop indie band who played on the Roccupy LA stage, who were pretty good actually, but the only statement they made to the crowd pertaining to the moment was a generic “don’t forget to vote” sentiment, which I felt frustrated with. As I mentioned in a previous post, my disillusionment with electoral politics has grown by leaps and bounds as of late, but has been replaced by renewed faith in self-empowerment via community building. I think engagement in that process is still a good thing generally, but I’d like to see more people shift their focus away from it. Not because everyone has to see things the way I do, but I think the less one hopes that voting will fix everything and engages more in other ways of improving our communities and our lives, the less disappointed we’ll feel when the political system runs itself into a ditch, as it’s so very liable to do.
Someone announced that Occupy Long Beach was occupying for their first night that night and anticipated a standoff with their police force; conveniently enough, I was planning on taking the train down that way to see a friend, and I was dropped off right in front of their park. The cops had already put up huge floodlights over the occupied park and were announcing on the bullhorn every few minutes that the park was closing. The plan in the group was to move their tents to the sidewalk, officially off the grass and onto a public thoroughfare which was wide enough so as still to allow foot traffic. The cops came back with more obscure ordinances, forbidding not only tents on sidewalks but also lying down and sleeping. I couldn’t help but remark (sarcastically), “Good thing there’s been this war on homelessness for so many years, so they have all these laws on hand to bust out on protesters on a moment’s notice.” The occupiers knew that, at a minimum, it would be lawful for them to continue to march and demonstrate through the night, and that’s what they did. For my part, I excused myself to hang out with my friend once it became clear that the police would not force them to disperse. I visited them again the next morning, shared some Indian leftovers with one organizer, and sat in on a tactical meeting for about an hour before tackling the long commute back to North Hollywood.

Something I’m concerned about / interested in is the fine line between coalition-building and having the movement co-opted by other powers. The latter is most clearly questionable in the case of any candidate for political office, which almost across the board I think is suspect. By contrast, I think most would agree that the movement benefited (both in PR and in actual strength) when unions joined on en masse. But there’s plenty of gray area too, with organizations like ANSWER, environmental and other advocacy groups joining in. While I’ve so far had an attitude of attendance being almost always a good thing, I’m leery of seeing occupations turn into a street fair with different groups each pushing their own interests, however noble they may be. I don’t want this movement reject their participation out of hand, because I think there’s probably a lot to learn from more seasoned organizers (there are plenty of these in OWS, but also plenty of novices), but I also want the vision and purpose behind these congregations to be unified and not either splintered or guided by a specific group pushing a predetermined agenda. I’d love to hear anyone else’s thoughts on this.