July Poetry, Day 27 – Rich Quatrone

A little bit of political outlaw poetry tonight, April is the foolish month ~ Rich Quatrone

 

Occupy Galway photo by ZD Blue

 

April is the foolish month

By Rich Quatrone

http://outlawpoetry.com/2012/06/06/rich-quatrone-cheap-tricks-four-other-poems/

how do we occupy our hearts
when our hearts are so damaged and hurt

i used to tell students who complained
of broken hearts your heart should be

broken every day by life; it’s a broken
life you have to be wary of.

so occupy wall street, main street, fleet street,
drum beat, no heat, no food, no rent.

occupy get bent, he went, you lent and
bucky dent, occupy the present.

how do we occupy a broken heart
when hearts are broken by life itself

how do we occupy washington when
the place we live is bought and sold

how do we occupy the old who have
nothing to lend and see the end?

Why Fox News and conservatives think women are stupid and lazy

The logic of conservatives forces them to think women are less intelligent and lazier than men

Recently a piece in CNN by Nina Easton of Fortune magazine puts forward all too common refrain of conservatives and their network Fox News.  This is the idea that people who are upset about the wealth gap in America and the greed of the 1% are just jealous, whiney, losers.  You see from their perspective, the reason people are rich is that they are smarter and better than the rest of us and just plain work harder.  You see to conservatives the idea that they are not better than others and morally superior is unfathomable.  There is no luck involved, where you start out in life is irrelevant, they can’t conceive that America might actually be a country that does more to support and maintain the wealthy than to support the basic living standards of the poor or provide opportunities to the poor and middle class.

See considering that America might not be the most perfect nation ever created or conceived of violates another core conservative principle, that of American Exceptionalism.  You see according to conservatives there is something uniquely and inherently special about the United States of America.  This is fact is actually code for America is God’s chosen nation and that of course would be a Christian Protestant God.

However, these underlying principles of conservatism deny many very real facts about America.  I think the biggest one involves healthcare.  If America as conservatives claim has the greatest medical system on earth, if Americans are so special, than why do we have such a horrible infant mortality rate in this country?  We have the 28^th lowest infant mortality rate and that is behind countries like:  South Korea, France, Japan, the Czech Republic, the United Kingdom and even Cuba.  That’s right the United States ranks behind, non-Christian countries, socialist leaning countries, countries with socialized medicine and even communist Cuba.

Back to Nina Easton’s article, if the reason the rich make more money than the rest of us is that they are smarter and work harder, how do conservatives explain that women make 77% of what men make?  Well, let’s use typical conservative logic, since you make more if you work harder and are smarter, I guess that conservatives must believe that compared to men, women are lazy and less intelligent.  Can’t imagine why the GOP struggles to get a majority of the women’s vote.

 

Global College Crisis is now leading to deaths

Global College Crisis is now leading to deaths

As many of you know from reading this blog I work in education, specifically at the community college level.  Now I can have worked at the four-year level but fortunately a lot of the students at that level would be successful in spite of our best efforts.  The few that wouldn’t were the reason I was there but they were too few and far between.  I decided to work at the community college level because this is where the rubber hits the road.  A high percentage of the students we see every day are educationally and financially disadvantaged, we routinely work with folks who utterly and completely let down by the secondary system, folks who have screwed up and are trying to make their life right.

In California where I work the budgets have been shit for the last three years and we have gradually cut and cut and cut in response.  Today was the first day of school and we had classes that seat 25 people with 28 extra people waiting in the hopes of finding a seat.  At the end of this week I have a department chair who will come into my office and tell me about the over 500 students who couldn’t get into classes in his department this semester.  At our community college alone, we will deny access to over 5000 students this semester.

My school is not unique, there are estimates that the 112 schools in the California Community College system will turn away over 670,000 students this year, that’s not a typo.  We cannot, world-wide, continue to tell young and sometimes not so young, knowledge hungry people that they cannot be educated because we don’t have space.  This is the type of problem that creates the knowledge and wealth gap, that creates the inequity that fuels the anger of the Occupy movement.

Where does this lead to?  Well we may have gotten a little bit of a preview in Johannesburg, South Africa where students trampled each other trying to be first in line to get to some of the few remaining seats in classes available, check out the link below: 

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/11/world/africa/stampede-highlights-crisis-at-south-african-universities.html

Occupy Wall Street has a long US tradition

Occupy Wall Street has a long US tradition

There have been worker revolts in the United States pretty much as long as the United States has existed.  However the revolts took on another tenor in the late 60’s.  During the civil rights movement these labor disputes began to be focused racial on blacks.  According to Howard Zinn’s, A People’s History of the United States, in 1966, seventy poor blacks occupied an unused barracks on an air force base.  After this event had been resolved, much in the way many occupy encampments were resolved this year a Mrs. Unita Blackwell said,

“I feel that the federal government have proven that it don’t care about poor people.  Everything that we have asked for through these years had been handed down on paper.  It’s never been a reality.  We the poor people of Mississippi is tired.  We’ve tired of it so we’re going to build for ourselves because we don’t have a government that represents us.” 

It’s amazing how 45 years in this country doesn’t seem to change much, this statement, albeit most likely with a little better grammar, would not seem even remotely out of place today.

Again from Zinn, during this time period A. Phillip Randolph advised the president, “ The Negro’s protest today is but the first rumbling of the ‘under-class.’  As the Negro has taken to the streets, so will the unemployed of all races take to the street.”

This is what the Occupy movement is about, not some socialist ideal but an opportunity for people to be treated fairly and decently in this country.  That of course is based upon the idea that it’s not fair or decent that the 1% of the nation live like gods while there are so many people hurting, that’s why people are in the street.  Now that may be a socialist ideal but basic common decency is a socialist ideal I can get behind.

The First Amendment is only valid during daylight hours

The Occupy movement has been told in New York as well as in many other cities that you can only protest during the day.  So I guess your first amendment rights only operate during daylight hours.  The link is to an article about the court decision:

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2011/1115/Judge-tells-Occupy-Wall-Street-You-can-t-sleep-in-Zuccotti-Park-anymore

So you can protest as long as you do it in a way that doesn’t disturb or interupt anything, so to be clear you can complain as long as no one can hear or see you.

Government using police to crack down on the Occupy movement

Over the weekend governments in several cities decided to crack down on the Occupy movement.  I’ve been hearing and reading lots of comments in the news about how it’s time this thing ended.  They made their point now it’s time for them to go home.  At Harvard the campus allows Harvard students to occupy a place on campus, but keeps gates closed to keep non-Harvard occupiers out, apparently we have elitists even within the 99%. 

In Berkeley, police decided to end the protest and proceed to stab protestors in the guts with batons the video at the following link is pretty brutal:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NSat-nRefXY

The government is scared and so now it will oppress and deny people their first amendment rights to protest.  The protest was acceptable and cute when it was in one park in New York.  Now that it has gone global and there are Occupy protests in many major US cities the government has called out the goon squads.  This does nothing but ramp up the violence, and although many people in the movement quote John Lennon on the mistake of using violence, at some point when the man is cracking your skull open, you’re going to swing back.

People are being injured, are being killed, an Iraq war veteran was shot in the head with a tear gas canister and then people who went to his aid were blasted with a flash grenade.  This is starting to seem like war.

As I watch all of this going down I wonder if this was what it was like watching the civil rights movement happen.  There are a lot of similarities, the mainstream media painting protestors as radicals, trouble makers, fringe elements without popular support.  Denying that the movement is active, or sizable or focused.  Every time they ramp up the oppression they make more people like me want to go out and join them.

Below is a link to an article about several of the crackdowns

http://www.cnn.com/2011/11/13/us/occupy-movement/index.html

 

Remember remember the fifth of November

Remember remember the fifth of November, gunpowder, treason and plot
 I see no reason, why the fifth of November, should ever be forgot ~ English Nursery Rhyme

Most people in America know this nursery rhyme from the movie V for Vendetta.  However the rhyme celebrates a very real historical event in England and the subsequent celebration since 1605 of Guy Fawkes Day. 

For those who have not seen the movie, the gist of it, in the future a repressive and evil government has its thumb on the people.  A figure emerges wearing a Guy Fawkes mask to stick his finger in the eye of the government through a very public explosion.  The film has a familiar plot, evil government, emergent hero who takes on the government, but this plot is familiar because it resonates with people.

It is certainly resonating with the folks in the Occupy Movement.  Over the last several Saturdays as I’ve visited the parks I have seen many protestors wearing Guy Fawkes masks and as you’ll see below, several signs related to the film.

 

This all leads to a very interesting thought, November 5^th is coming, next Saturday as a matter of fact and I have a feeling that this Saturday could be a very interesting day.  My suggestion to you is to go out and buy a Guy Fawkes mask this week, they’ll be cheap since Halloween is over.  Put on the mask and take a walk in your neighborhood or downtown in your city.  Don’t do anything disruptive or legal, no need to carry a sign, just take a walk in your mask.  Let the corporations and the government know that you’re out there, that there is more to the angst and anger than the people in the parks.

Remember remember, the fifth of November and lets write a new end to the rhyme.

Occupy Wall Street comes to Sacramento

Occupy Wall Street comes to Sacramento

Several weeks ago the Occupy Wall Street movement came to Sacramento and unlike Wall Street, the folks Occupying Cesar Chavez park have to leave the park each night.  The technical rule is that they have to leave by 11PM, but usually the police wait until midnight each night before coming in and clearing the park.  During the first couple of weeks of the encampment, the protestors each night would inform the police of who would stay and be arrested, then the police in overwhelming force and with riot gear on would flood into the park and arrest the non-resisting demonstrators.  The show of force seems a bit overly dramatic as there have been no reports of resistance or trouble.  It also seems that the police know this as during the day, there are only a couple of officers present at any given time in the park as the protest has been very orderly.

Last week for the second time Occupy protestors went to City Hall, across the street from the park to ask for permission to occupy the park over night.  The protestors during the second week were indeed on the agenda and were denied the right to camp overnight in the park.

I’ve visited the park during three of the last four weeks on Saturday and the first two weeks the park was active and bustling, lots of signs and protestors and the second week lots of media.  This past Saturday the energy seems to have waned a bit and there were a lot fewer folks in the park.  Perhaps it was because it was Halloween Weekend or perhaps what happened in Oakland has people spooked, we’ll have to see next weekend when I visit again.

This past Saturday I have to say it was really nice to see volunteers in the park feeding anyone who needed a meal, that included protestors as well as a number of the downtown homeless population who reside in and around the park.  No matter what the political aspirations of the protestors are, their presence is doing some good for the homeless if no one else. 

 Below are a series of images I’ve taken in the park over the last couple of weeks: