Occupy Atlanta General Assembly – after the arrests, and moving forward

After Tuesday night’s arrests, Occupy Atlanta held another General Assembly on Wednesday at seven, this time in Centennial Olympic Park. They met in the shadow of the CNN building, in an ampitheatre with a small square of green in the middle of it – which we soon realized was artificial grass. At seven, when the GA was convened, there were about fifty people present; by the time it closed, at least ninety had shown up.

The Occupiers met on Wednesday night to reflect on the arrests that had happened on Tuesday; to discuss their emotions; and to decide how to move forward. I was struck by how much more solid they seemed in their resolve: firmer hierarchies were established, and there was a sense of differing levels of knowledge – plans to re-occupy are apparently being kept kinda secret from the general body of the group.

Diversity, a constant bugbear of this movement, is improving. Last night, the moderation and facilitation team was not white and male at all, and a wide diversity in age, race, and sex was represented at the General Assembly. This movement is expanding beyond the primarily white, primarily male, primarily college student base that appeared to establish it in Woodruff Park.

The Pledge

They began the General Assembly reading out the pledge of the Atlanta Occupation.

Oddly, while the pledge affirms a commitment to diversity – they reject homophobia, transphobia, able-ism, and racism – it does not mention sexism, something which becomes increasingly relevant when emotions and energy run high in encounters with law enforcement.

It says, also, that Occupiers “disagree without being disagreeable” – an essential idea in a movement that must maintain social cohesion while dealing with a wide range of opinions.

The most important provision, I think, is the one that they “do not accept physical or verbal violence.”  To affirm this in their pledge is to reject any allegations of violence on the part of the movement. There is a diversity of people and opinions in the movement, and one person’s action, one person’s lost temper, can destroy the movement in the public eye. To disavow any violence, of any kind, is to proclaim that that action is the action of one person – not something that is encouraged by the Occupiers at large.

Relocation

The most contentious announcement was that the offices at 60 Walton would be closed to anyone who was not either on a committee or directly working with a committee for the foreseeable future; the facilitator explained that they were having to move headquarters to the fourth floor. Having dealt with theft and vandalism in the past, the donors of the office space had asked to keep it closed off for the duration of the move.

Kasim Reed

One person stood and told us that the French embassy would be holding a banquet at Hotel Melia that night, and that Mayor Kasim Reed was the guest speaker. He suggested that, after the General Assembly, the protesters march to Hotel Melia and protest outside.

I believe – and voiced my opinion, later – that the Occupy movement loses strength when it puts too much focus on the mayor and the police. They are the most clear and direct antagonists, but they are not who the movement intends to address – at least, not so far as I know. The Occupiers risk making Mayor Reed and the Atlanta police the scapegoat when the supposed issue is economic inequality.

The Arrests, and the emotions associated

From there we segued into a discussion of the arrests and the events of Tuesday night. The first person to speak had been an arrestee. He questioned the use of violently anti-police chants, saying that the police became more aggressive and less professional after violent chants.

“Please refrain from any hate speech against the police,” he said, “especially when you are not the one getting arrested.”

Another rose and told us that if we were vegetarians or vegans, we ought not expect to eat in jail, and that if we had medication, we ought to pester the jailers as much as possible to get to it.

(Later on, I heard they’d been served rather awful baloney sandwiches in jail)

In court Wednesday morning, we were told, the city prosecutor tried to request a bond of $500 per protester arrested; the Occupation’s legal team successfully fought back, defending the first amendment rights of the Occupiers – and the judge took their side.

A man in the back rose and said, “The events of last night got this protest to my ears; it got me off my ass to do something.”

On the periphery of the Assembly, reporters with cameras – occasionally shining obnoxiously bright lights – sidled along, taping the proceedings. On the street, the CBS, Fox5, and ABC2 news vans were broadcasting.

Occupy Police

The police produced their own debate last night. After an older fellow told us he thought the police had acted very professionally, a man with a thick accent (African?) said that no, the police did use force.

“My hand right here is injured,” he said. “They used pressure points.”

We learned, later in the Assembly, that an Occupy Police movement has started – and that some Atlanta police officers had been reprimanded for refusing to take part in the eviction. The young guy from CopWatch I’d interviewed about a week ago told us that, when he made a flippant comment to one of the police on Tuesday night that at least they’d be getting overtime, the officer said, “What, you think the city has money for overtime?”

Another person shared a rumor that this was coming out of the police’s vacation time.

Re-Occupy Atlanta

Last night the General Assembly also discussed how and when to begin re-Occupying Atlanta. Some wanted to occupy Hurt Park that very night; others wanted to rally at Woodruff (closed and barricaded indefinitely for “maintenance”) and march to Melia.

We learned that there is a search committee that has been scouting out locations for new Occupations – both indoors and outdoors – for the past few weeks.

We were warned, by a filmmaker named Ira McKinley who had traveled down from New York City to document the Occupation, that we had to act quickly in beginning a new Occupation, or we risked losing media attention.

“Everyone in this nation is watching you,” he said, “so you better get it together.”

Among other things, we discussed guerrilla occupations, in which each time an occupation site was broken up, they would quickly move to occupy another site; and flashmob occupations, in which at a designated time each day protesters would occupy a new site briefly, interact, protest, and then move on.

We learned from the search committee that they had found a way into the old Bank of America building, which could make for a symbolically potent Occupation site, and that Pine on Peachtree – a homeless shelter in danger of eviction – had designated its top floor for Occupy Atlanta use.

There’s got to be some question about using indoor sites. They are less deliberately visible, and they risk losing attention. Then again, winter is coming, and practical considerations must abound. Pine on Peachtree is a strong choice, but the message may get muddled there. The Bank of America building might prove an invisible site for Occupations.

A young man pointed out that Atlanta is, next to Detroit, the second most vacant city in the country. He suggested using small scale Occupations as an anti-foreclosure tactic.

The question was brought up of re-occupying Woodruff Park – it seems that that’s one site some of the protesters had a sore spot at losing. They used the metaphor of a war, and not giving up territory that you’d taken.

Taking territory, though, and holding it, is the tactic of a very old style of warfare that is mostly defunct. Especially in an age of new media and public officials who have learned to neuter protests, the Occupy protests must keep evolving to remain relevant, and to think in old protest models is problematic.

Besides, someone pointed out, if they re-occupy Woodruff, the city would likely respond with maximum force.

Let them, another man said, “because if the police respond with maximum force, our peace looks even better.”

We were told that 35 tents had been salvaged and were waiting on pallets, ready to be shipped out within half an hour to any location chosen.

Outside Eyes

Besides the news cameras, whose bright lights were a continuous source of annoyance, the mayor had a representative present and observing at the General Assembly.

A helicopter did two very close sweeps, shining its own bright lights down on the GA – whether it was there for unrelated reasons, I don’t know.

As the meeting went on, very loud dance music began to play from the speakers in the park – almost too loud to speak over.

I’m gonna just leave you with a quote, from a very thin, very old-looking man in an army jacket, who began by apologizing for his violent behavior when he first came to Woodruff Park:

“First, I want to thank Occupy Atlanta for getting me off crack cocaine; second, now you have to teach me to be peaceful – because I don’t know.”

And the police cleared them out | Occupy Atlanta, day 18

I returned last night to Woodruff Park. I have to forewarn you: I didn’t have a notebook with me, so to write this, I am relying on my own memory, a few notes I made on my cellphone, and a number of videos and pictures I made on a friend’s iPhone.

The mayor had asked the Occupiers to meet with local clergy at five o’clock on Tuesday; the Occupiers contended that the offer was made in bad faith, since they already had a march scheduled for that time – information that was publicly available – and would not be able to meet then. The most generous way this was played in the media said that the meeting was lackluster; the most unfair claimed that the protesters deliberately refused to meet with the clergy.

People were getting twitchy. For some of the afternoon, a man had been wandering around the park with a very large gun (I’m told an AK-47) slung across his back, talking to people. The gun was legal and permitted, and the man said he was making a point about First and Second Amendment rights; nevertheless, the presence of a very large and obvious gun in an already tense situation did not help matters much.

When we came to the park at 1o:00, the barricades had extended, though they were still open at each end. There was a constant noise of helicopters overhead – and I am told that there had been all day. There was a circle assembled on the ground of protesters talking to each other, and tents being packed up and carried away.

A man in the circle asked who, sitting there at that moment, was willing to get arrested. He raised his hand, and no one else did.

Sounding defeated, he said, “All right – if we can assume that no one in this circle is staying in the park, we need to discuss what we’re gonna do to support those that do.”

Police Presence

We left briefly and came back to the park at 10:50. First, we decided to make a walk around the park, and count the police solely at the park’s perimeter – eighty-four in total, most of them clustered at the south edge. The barricades were still open, and spectators had gathered at the edges of the park to watch what happened.

CopWatchers were walking the edge of the park and asking each police officer for a name and badge number. They did this in sets of three: one CopWatcher talked, one filmed, and a third stood at a distance to film the other two.

I spotted a man in a suit walking through and talking to each police officer, pointing out positions and making plans; yes, it looked like arrests and police action would definitely happen that night.

The revolution will probably be on YouTube.

Cameras were everywhere last night. Mostly cell phone cameras, taping bits and pieces of what was going on, in the hands of spectators and protesters alike.

The news media were strolling the grounds of the park with their cameras – not to mention the large mounted cameras on their vans.

Photographers were out in abundance.

CopWatch, of course, filmed as many police interactions as they could. The Legal Observers were filming too, in the same neon green hats.

I didn’t expect it, but the police also had cameras: designated men and women in police uniforms simply standing to the side and taping police actions, especially at any location where spectators were wielding cameras as well.

The Crowd

We stayed firmly outside the park after 11:00, to avoid arrest ourselves. Within the park, the circle of people willing to be arrested had assembled again.

This time, the demographic of that circle was substantially older, and the circle was higher energy: rather than sitting silently with locked arms, they were talking – loudly enough that we could hear them from across the barricade. They were also drumming and playing guitars.

Most of the crowd was clustered at the west side of the park, on Peachtree Street. It had flowed, amorphously, across the barricades: some still on the inside and crossing, and some on the outside. More stood across the street. It was composed somewhat of Occupiers, but also spectators walking through. A lot of them were residents of the apartment buildings around the area; a good few of them were drunk, and either arguing, joining in on the chants, or laughing and taunting.

Whenever that got too out of hand, the Occupiers would begin chanting, “Don’t feed the trolls!”

I spoke to a friend of mine from early on in the Occupation, who was still on the inside of the fence. He said that they were certain that the police would be breaking up the protest – but that they already had plans for what action to take next, though he would not tell me what those plans were.

“Are you ready to see something incredible?” he asked. “You’re about to see a phoenix burn up and rise from the ashes.”

A few of the spectators were heckling the police; one yelled, “Go five blocks south and you find crackhouses! Why aren’t you there?”

The police began setting up spotlights on the east and west edges of the park. Within the park, they announced over the loudspeakers that anyone still in the park would be arrested; that any items left in the park would be confiscated by the police; and that protesters should exit the park. A few police officers went from tent to tent, waking anyone inside and telling them they had to leave the park.

There’s a section of wood fencing they’ve had in the park for a while now, with “What’s your story?” painted at the top, and many many different answers written in sharpie across it. I spotted two police officers stopping to read it, pointing at individual pieces, conferring, then walking away.

The Occupiers outside the barricades beat bucket drums and led chants.

“Whose streets?”

Gradually the crowd on the sidewalks spilled out into the street, taking up more and more of Peachtree Street. The streets leading to the park had been blocked on all sides by police and police cars. The street to the east of the park was barricaded off, and news vans had been asked to move elsewhere.

So far as we could tell, the police intended to move protesters from the park to the east side, where they’d process them and load them up – but it looked like they had neither expected nor planned for the growing secondary protest on the sidewalks.

Those that did not intend to be arrested were leaving the park, and ferrying their tents and supplies over the barricades.

Then a phalanx of motorcycle cops appeared to the north of the park, and a roar went up from the crowd. They circled around the park and then approached up Peachtree, from the south, but they were blocked by the protesters in the street – so rather than go through, they circled up and around in the street.

The crowd from the sidewalk poured into the street, walking toward the police on motorcycles and slowly pushing their circles back, further and further, chanting all the while, until they had retaken the length of Peachtree Street along the park.

The crowd cheered, and began chanting:

“Whose streets? Our streets!”

Arrests

Arrests had started in the park. They were done, so far as I could tell, as by-the book as possible. Protesters sitting in the circle had their arms carefully unlinked from each other, then bound together with zip ties. Some cooperated and walked away with the police; others had to be carried. Whenever one protester was removed, the circle tightened up, linking arms again.

At the east edge, they had set up their processing center: a bus to load the protesters onto, and a folding table and chairs set up on a large empty plaza. There, they emptied the arrestees’ pockets, placed everything in plastic bags, and – if I saw correctly – finger-printed them each as well.

The crowd on Peachtree Street were still chanting, a few police officers in the park standing and watching them. When they chanted, “Hey hey, ho ho, these fascist fuckers have to go!” a few of the officers flinched, and stopped to confer among themselves.

Meanwhile, an argument had broken out in the crowd: a young woman that I recognized from the Process group was remonstrating with the crowd, reminding them that the Occupation rejected sexism, and that sexist language against female police officers was still sexism. A violent argument nearly broke out when one of the spectators began making fun of the arrestees, but a chant of “Don’t feed the trolls” put it down.

Another woman spoke up using the People’s Mic, saying that those waiting to get arrested asked that the crowd outside remain non-violent; a third pointed out that this protest belonged to the crowd outside as well, and that they ought to remain non-violent for their own sakes.

Mounted Police, and Riot Cops

At the north end of Peachtree, eight police on horses took up station. They did not block the street; they did not move; they simply very largely and obviously stood there.

A column of about fifty police in riot gear marched into the park from the south while police in the park were clearing some of the detritus. What purpose they served, I do not know: almost all the protesters had already been arrested.

Meanwhile, the crowd was debating its purpose; it was well past one o’clock and the protesters inside the park had been arrested; outside attention had fizzled; the police did not appear to intend any more action. They decided to march to the jail, and to chant outside it, to give support to those inside.

As of today, Woodruff Park is barricaded and indefinitely closed.

Growing tensions at Occupy Atlanta – notes from Monday, day 17

Pressure has been slowly building on the Occupy Atlanta movement over the past week, and last night, it finally came to a head, as police forces arrived at Woodruff Park and arrested 53 protesters, as well as clearing out the tents and barricading the park for the foreseeable future. Previously, the mayor had announced he would allow the protesters to stay until the fourth of November.

Most of my account of the events leading up to last night’s arrests is based on hearsay and news reports; I’ll keep the information as brief as possible, without any of my own analysis or interpretation.

On Saturday, there was to be a hiphop festival at Woodruff Park – one that had been scheduled for six months. Perhaps a conflict was expected between the festival and the Occupation; instead, the festival organizers sympathized with the Occupation and said that they would hold the festival around it.

On Friday night, at midnight, the mayor’s office told the organizers of the hiphop festival that they would have to pay an extra fifteen thousand dollars for security, given the new action in the park; the festival organizers, unwilling or unable to pay, lost their permit. Vendors coming to set up booths in the park on Saturday, then, were told by police officers that they would be arrested if they did so; people walking to the park for the festival were told by the police or park ambassadors that the festival had been canceled. Some performers, however, decided to perform anyway.

The mayor’s office cited increasing danger in the park and rescinded their earlier decisions, saying that the Occupation would be dealt with soon. They mentioned the use of a generator in the park (against guidelines), drug use, and said that the Occupation was a danger to the city.

In the past week, I’ve stopped in on the park irregularly, to count the increasing population. Tents were appearing at a rate of five to ten a day – I estimated some ninety over the weekend.

On Monday afternoon, police department workers erected metal barricades around the perimeter of the park, though they left the entrances and exits open – with further barricades that could be pulled across to close them.

Monday Night

We came to the park to see what action the police would take. It was a chilly night, and I was suspicious to see virtually no police in or around the park. The  tent that had been made from a donated hot air balloon had been taken down.

It was 9:30 when I arrived, and while there were a number of people in the park, there was no sense of purpose to it. Most were milling around with their signs, and honestly, the atmosphere was a bit like a party: I saw a lot of committees’ bottom-liners chatting, smoking, and generally relaxing. Two old homeless men played chess on an overturned bucket outside a tent and argued with each other.

A few homeless men and women were curled up on the ground sleeping. Someone had erected a sign at the entrance of the park that read “Drug and Alcohol Free Zone”. It’s wise for the Occupation to set a clear standard about what is and is not allowed in the park; not only can they enforce it socially if they say they’re publicly against it, it gives them a shield against inevitable outside attacks.

A few Park Ambassadors stood at the south side, watching. At the east edge, I counted two Fox 5 news vans, two ABC 2 vans, and a CBS van.

The Boy Who Cried Wolf

Maybe it’s because there didn’t seem to be any definite resolution to clear them out that night, but I had a sense of a boy-who-cried-wolf effect: the city had promised to clear out the Occupation so many times, it was hard for the Occupiers to take it seriously.

Then again, maybe it was a greater resolution: the men and women in the park had had over two weeks to get accustomed to the idea of getting arrested, of dealing with the police, or of being evicted at any time. The threat no longer produced the same level of tension.

There was a General Assembly, but only a haphazard one, and in the margins, a man with a guitar was playing an acoustic version of “Such Great Heights”.

“We need to be proactive about getting supplies for re-encampment,” someone said, and the Assembly seemed to agree.

“Asserting your rights is the best way to avoid getting arrested.”

At the north end of Woodruff Park, a small platform stage was set up, and a few volunteers from CopWatch in their bright orange t-shirts were giving an impromptu “Know Your Rights” training – which, they assured us, could act as a prerequisite for us to go to formal CopWatch training later.

One held a sign with the three sentences they teach people to use in the event of an encounter with a police – the only three sentences:

• “Am I being detained or am I free to go.”
• “I do not consent to any searches.”
• “I would like to speak to a lawyer.”

Two of them acted out a simulation where one accidentally bought weed from an undercover cop; the third explained what they had done wrong in their interaction. A Park Ambassador watched from behind.

Cutting Zip Ties

I spoke to a friend of mine who, as it turned out, was working as a medic that night. He wore white armbands with a crudely stitched red cross, and a red cross on his cap, along with a backpack full of supplies.

He told me that he’d been cutting zip ties holding together the barricades – so that if people had to make a hasty exit, they’d have a way out. As soon as he cut a zip tie, though, he’d come back through to find it replaced.

My friend was prepared to deal with the use of pepper spray or tear gas. For pepper spray, he said, they had an eyewash (antacids mixed with water) and alcohol wipes, to clear the residue from the skin. Besides that, he said, they could only instruct on aftercare: get rid of the clothes, care for your skin, and so forth.

“You’re giving the cops the power.”

At 11:05, there didn’t seem to be an increased police presence – or an increase in protesters. I passed an impromptu soccer game.

At the north end of the park, the Know Your Rights training was just wrapping up, with CopWatch explaining that asserting your rights, while it feels difficult, is necessary for those cases when you deal with corrupt or brutal police officers. They argued that many people do not assert their rights mostly because they do not want to anger a policeman; they want to just make the encounter as brief and easy as possible, simply so that they don’t have to inconvenience their lives.

When they do that, the CopWatchers said, they give the police too much power over them.

They opened the floor to the audience. One man told a story about a time he said he’d been unfairly arrested

“If the police want to put you in jail, they’ll put you in jail.”

As of 11:30 Monday night, the mayor’s office had said they would take further action only after meeting with local clergy, and sending clergy to meet with the Occupiers.

Occupy Atlanta, day 10: Copwatchers; the young and homeless; and the elderly and idealistic

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

It’s sunny now in the city of Atlanta, and with nicer weather has come a more festive atmosphere in the park. There are people splayed out all over the place, playing music, talking, or working. The Occupation continues to grow substantially; from sixty-one tents on Friday night, I count seventy-one tents today. The park’s actually started to look crowded.

At some point the city caved on sanitation and delivered seven porta-potties to the edge of the park. I wonder if, when an inevitable court case comes out of the eviction, the fact that the city provided the Occupiers with logistical resources will be used as evidence that the civic government accepted their presence.

Two tents have taken up the village square, and are being used as an impromptu church, with an altar set up and a congregation singing. To the west side of the park, a frame of PVC pipe has been built and dyed patterned fabrics hung from it to make walls; here, people are commemorating Sukkot, a Jewish holiday that marks the time that the Israelites were supposed to have spent in the wilderness after their exodus from Egypt.

There’s a new screen tent attached to the Media tent, with a colorful sign on it that says “Child Care”; on Saturday, apparently, the General Assembly reached a consensus that they would provide free childcare at the park.

From somewhere, I can hear Spanish guitar music playing over a stereo.

There’s a length of wood fencing on which people can share their stories; on it someone has pinned Dilbert cartoons.

There are dogs everywhere now.

The Tea Party’s Most-Wanted Communist

I’ve been hearing rumors about an adversarial relationship with the police fostered by CopWatch, and so I’ve come to the Occupation today with the intent in mind to find a CopWatcher and interview him or her. CopWatchers are identifiable by bright orange shirts, cell phone cameras, and a slight air of anarchism. Most of the protesters are marching down the Martin Luther King memorial for a rally; luckily, I find a CopWatcher that’s staying behind.

Erika has black hair and classically styled tattoos, and tells us that after a photo of her with a sign from a rally appeared online, the Tea Party named her one of its “most wanted” Communists.

She hasn’t done any CopWatch for the Occupation; in fact, this is her first full day out here. She went to a “Know Your Rights” training some time ago, which was followed by a CopWatch training – and she has acted as CopWatch for some of the Troy Davis marches. She believes that CopWatch exists to hold the police accountable and prevent police brutality.

“I’m probably not the best person to talk to about CopWatch,” she tells me.

Erika hasn’t seen much of the police at this protest, but everyone seems to believe that they’ll be coming on Monday.

At least, everyone is saying they will.

“They say they are peaceful and they are peaceful.“

I’ve been interested to see how the homeless are doing with their usual haunts occupied; the two older homeless gentlemen I speak to, though, only tell me that they think it’s a very fine thing that these people are doing – and that’s about it.

Instead, I stop and talk to an older woman I see passing by, who has a shock of dyed red hair, bright pink nails, a floor-length skirt, and a thick accent. Her name is Lucy, and she is from Colombia originally, but she has lived in Atlanta for 37 years.

Lucy is a lot like me, in what she gets from this protest: Lucy is a curiosity-seeker. She’s been out here most days to see what’s going on, including the Friday of the first General Assembly. Most of what Lucy cares about are our wars overseas: adamantly, she tells us again and again that we must stop the wars, and that she hopes that the protesters will force politicians to finally do something.

She likes the protesters, though – as long as they are peaceful. If things ever get violent – which, she is quick to add, she doesn’t think they will – she will be gone as quickly as she can be.

Good homeless and bad homeless

I see a skinny kid in a baggy hoodie, torn up chucks, and ripped jeans, and ask him if he’d take a moment to talk to me. His name’s Michael; he’s 21 years old, and homeless – he’d been living and sleeping on the streets before he found the Occupation – literally found, as he stumbled across it while he was walking to the hookah bar on Sunday afternoon.

Michael’s here because he wants to establish change; he says that the government keeps people brainwashed, and because he knows the system is corrupt. The first time he was ever arrested, he tells us, he was 12 years old, and it was on false charges. He tells us he went to juvie because the system is corrupt.

Michael says he’s been arrested 11 times since then, and only twice has he ever been guilty.

Michael works with Tactical Unity these days, and Tactical Unity “basically keeps the peace”. He says to me that the homeless in the park aren’t the problem: there’s good homeless and bad homeless. The bad homeless are the problem, he says; they bring in drugs and liquor, steal, and get in fights. On the other hand, a lot of the people most involved are “technically homeless”, and they work pretty damn hard.

Mostly they try to politely discourage the “bad homeless” from hanging out in the park; if they get to be a real problem, TU fetches an Ambassador – fancy title for a park police – to escort them out. That’s an interesting relationship. This is an organization squatting illegally in a public park; they are at odds with the city; a great deal of their rhetoric is anti-cop; and yet, their own mediation specialists call in the police or their equivalent when they reach the end of their capacity to solve a problem.

Michael is actually thriving here. He’s sleeping well, and he’s sleeping a lot; normally, he tells me, he has to sleep on MARTA trains. He’s been eating well, too. But he doesn’t imagine the Occupation will last.

“If we got the help like LA did … ” he says, referencing that the mayor of LA has allowed protesters to stay indefinitely. Instead, though, he gives it a week.

I ask him what he’ll do then. LA, he says. I ask him if that’s for another Occupation.

No; he’s going to LA to train in fiber optics, just as soon as Bank of America will unlock his account.

CopWatch, round II

As I’m walking back to headquarter, I pass a young guy talking animatedly to a man about the ideals of the movement and about CopWatch. I listen a while, then ask if I can interview him. Sure, he tells me – as long as I don’t use his name.

CopWatch’s work is pretty simple: they monitor the police, get badge numbers and names, and tape interactions. They hold police accountable.

I tell him I’d heard there was an altercation between a CopWatcher and a policeman that came to file a report when three volunteers had their laptops stolen from HQ. He alleges that the person that called the police in was actually an informant; the CopWatcher, who was a potential witness to the theft, simply absolutely refused to give the police officer any information.

That’s standard CopWatch policy, he informed us. Since CopWatch wants to operate in risky neighborhoods, they maintain legitimacy through total non-cooperation. When pressed, he says that a CopWatcher would cooperate in the event of a subpoena or a warrant.

I ask him whether he believes the police have any part in this movement, and – after insisting that this is his opinion, not CopWatch’s – he tells me that the police’s role is to protect the upper classes; in a society where the workers controlled the means of production, he believes police would be redundant.

“Historically,” he says, “the police are last to join a revolution, because their duty is to enforce their own oppression.”

All oppression can be removed, he believes; he is an anarcho-Communist in the school of Kropotkin. He wants to see a true revolution, in which workers take over the means of production and manage them themselves.

He’s also got the most realistic idea of what the Occupation can and should accomplish of anyone I’ve spoken to yet.

He doesn’t see it lasting more than another two weeks. But the Occupation represents a break from capitalist society, he says – an existential break, if not a temporal one. He believes that its purpose is to get people involved and get them talking to each other, to forge new relationships, and to help them break out of the mindset of the capitalist system.

That’s a pretty good point to hammer in. He doesn’t believe that this Occupation will do much of anything, in the here-and-now, and he doesn’t believe it will last much longer. But out of the community they’re building in Woodruff Park, there will be strong enough bonds to begin building a real movement that will go much further.

 

Pictures from Occupy Atlanta, day seven

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

On Thursday my friend Kari and I took pictures at the Occupy Atlanta protest.

October 13: Day 7 of Occupy Atlanta

I come back to the park on Thursday afternoon, early, around four. It’s a warmer, sunnier day, and the Occupation has really started to have the air of a village – people busily going about what they’re doing, people lounging about, and – of course – a constant population of spectators. There are more tents now – up to 47, from 33 on Tuesday night. There are specialized tents now, too: the balloon tent, sure, and the medic tent, but there is also now a designated Media tent in the middle of what I’ve got to call the village square.

When I arrive, there’s a gaggle of about fifty people ranged together, speaking through the People’s Mic. I’ve forgotten; this is the Georgia State student walkout. One student is speaking: a girl complaining about the student loans she’s had to take out to fund her education. She decries the Board of Regents, who she says have raised the salaries of officials while cutting education and salaries for faculty.

There aren’t many faces here I recognize; maybe the student walkout has drawn in a whole new set of protesters. There’s also not nearly enough people or ambient noise to justify the use of the People’s Mic. Previously I’ve speculated that the People’s Mic may generate consensus and agreement: when people speak someone else’s words out of their own mouths, I suspect that inevitably they’ll begin to agree with those words far more easily. Today, it seems like the People’s Mic is acting not for an immediately practical function, but to create a sense of solidarity.

A friend of mine, a GSU student herself, comes out to join me as I review the protest.

“Woodruff gave this park to the homeless.”

A big burly black man with a beard comes up to me and if I’d like to give him five words, so that he can freestyle a poem – which we can tape. I laugh and say I’m feeling a little too pessimistic to do that, but I’d like to interview him, if I could.

His name’s Craig, the Little 5 Poetry Guy – and he’s shocked that I’ve never heard of him. Craig is homeless and normally sleeps under bridges, but lately has been sleeping in Woodruff Park with the Occupiers. He’s slept in Woodruff Park before.

Woodruff Park? I ask Craig. I tell him the protesters have renamed it Troy Davis Park.

“That’s a slap in the face,” Craig says. “They should rename the whole justice system.” But the park, he says, should stay Woodruff Park. He tells me that Mr Woodruff designated the park for the homeless, and that it’s an affront to change that name.

Craig doesn’t like calling the Occupation a movement; a movement, he says, has to have leaders. He says he feels the ideals of the Occupation, but he thinks that the Occupiers are focusing on the wrong thing: it’s not the corporations, but the entire political system.

As to the almost police action on Monday night? “It was an act of terrorism,” he says. The police, he feels, were there to intimidate the protesters – intimidate and nothing more.

I give him five words – yelling, confusion, tent, balloon, students – and he freestyles a poem for me.

Demands

I notice a lot more dogs running around the park now. The Demands committee is meeting under the shelter they constructed from the hot air balloon. I’m surprised: there’s a lot of them, sitting in a circle, while an old homeless man curls in the corner sleeping. They’ve set up a whiteboard full of ideas in the corner, on which they’re editing and refining statements.

There’s probably a lot more appeal to the Demands committee; I can’t help but compare it to the consistently overworked Logistics and Tactical Unity committees. But a lot of this protest is about expressing political voices, and the Demands committee is the only part of the movement that is focused entirely on political voice. If you want to express your voice, the Demands committee is the place to do it.

Demands is struggling. Per the previous night’s General Assembly, they must prioritize a one-sentence statement to express the Occupiers’ desires. No one seems quite sure, at the moment, how to handle that; one woman argues that they must focus on denouncing the prison-industrial complex for marketing purposes.

I am told that, eventually, they put together an entire list of different people’s statements, and presented those to the GA.

Tactical Unity

We wandered up to the village square to take the look at the Media tent, and I spotted Hector. Hector is a tall, broad Hispanic guy who I met at one of the early planning meetings. At the time, he sat with Logistics, and spoke of his expertise in encampments from his army experience. Now he’s the “bottom-liner” for Tactical Unity: that means if something goes bad with TU, the responsibility for it ultimately falls to hm.

Tactical Unity’s job is to mediate inter-personal conflicts and conflicts with the police; Hector agrees, laughing, that the name sounds a little Orwellian. They wear blue armbands, blue PLUR buttons, or camo jackets to mark themselves apart.

Of course, I ask Hector what TU has been doing – have there been any major conflicts?

A couple of physical altercations involving the homeless, he says: one homeless guy tried to steal a tent pole, and when a woman went after him, he hit her with the pole; in another incident, a mentally unstable, pregnant homeless woman got in a physical confrontation and had to be handled by outside authorities.

As he talks to me, Hector passes off his half-smoked cigarettes to a homeless guy who comes asking.

The homeless have been a problem, he tells me, but they can’t exclude them from the park. I tell him what Craig said about Mr Woodruff; Hector shrugs and says that since he was a Coca-Cola executive, he’s all right with taking his name off the park.

I’m pretty sure the most relevant question is whether there’s a game plan to deal with the police, should the police get involved. There’s guards posted at either end of the park at night, he says, and they each have whistles to alert the Occupiers if the police show, so that they can begin to take steps for defense. At that time, he says, they’ll establish a barrier of men and women with linked arms: Hector wants to see the park held against the police, if and when they come. He wants to intimidate the police symbolically through their solidarity.

I ask him about Cop Watch;  he tells me they’ve had some trouble with Cop Watch conflicting with invited police. In particular, three volunteers had their laptops stolen from HQ at 60 Walton Street, and when a police officer was called to file a report, the Cop Watch volunteer at the door was less than helpful.

“The camera doesn’t lie,” Hector says, “but it depends on the situation you create.” When I ask if he thinks Cop Watch is trying to provoke an incident, he says he really doesn’t know.

Tactical Unity has its own problems to deal with: for one thing, Hector points out, they’re mostly white guys, and white guys in what looks like paramilitary outfits – not good for the image. He brought a bag of camo jackets for TU to wear as uniforms; misfortunately, anyone who saw the bag decided to grab a jacket, so there’s no consistent image.

Besides, Hector tells me that he doesn’t want uniforms. He’s afraid that too many people joined up with Tactical Unity because they wanted to wear a cool uniform, and they haven’t necessarily embraced reconciliation as the primary method of conflict management.

Hector’s always seemed like a moderate, intelligent voice to me; I ask him why he doesn’t participate more in the General Assemblies.

“I’m here to serve, not make ideology,” he says. “I’m a bottom-liner.”

Hector’s wishlist? “Radios,” he says, “and a Tactical Unity tent.”

Young Joc, Teamsters, and the new process

We stop to talk to Everic, a Radical Faerie down from Tennessee. He’s chilling under one of the improvised tarp shelters, with a bunch of guys and girls with dreadlocks, piercings, and guitars. Everic tells me that the rapper Young Joc came by on Wednesday, and brought them a lot of chicken and potato salad.

I ask him how things have been going at General Assemblies, after the abysmal mess I’d seen on Tuesday night. He tells me the energy of the thing seems to go up and down day by day, but there’s a new process now that will hopefully sort things out. First, they’ll make announcements; then, they’ll rehash the agenda, and the working groups will break up to discuss different proposals for about forty minutes, and return with their conclusions.

On Monday, he tells me, the mayor intends to clear them all out of the park – but now, the Teamsters Union has offered to join them and help defend.

Wishlist: A Sense of Purpose

After losing myself in downtown Atlanta for a while, I find my way to headquarters at 60 Walton Street. You enter and two people guarding the door ask you what you’re there for; after they radio’d ahead, we were led to an elevator that opened onto the Occupy Atlanta HQ office.

It’s a large open floor-plan, with a few tables and chairs, a book cart, and a number of fliers and old protest signs. In the back nook, there’s shelves upon shelves of food, a pair of minifridges – one of them elaborately painted with peace signs – and a microwave.

At one of the tables, I spot Sophia, one of the women who’d been moderating and facilitating on Tuesday night. She’s working on the Process working group, which determines how consensus and assemblies will work.

She tells me that on Tuesday night, people actually proposed that, when men are being addressed, they be handled by male moderators and facilitators – because they’ll respond better to that. That, she says, or they suggest that women address the Assembly in a more conciliatory or mild way.

Sophia’s having none of that.

She’ll be moderating the new process, and agrees to email me to tell me how it goes at the General Assembly.

As to problems with factionalism, she says that most conflicts are over work: the night shift resents the day shift, and everyone who is involved in working groups often resents those who are not.

I ask Sophia if she has a wishlist. “Yes,” she says. “A sense of purpose.”

Logistics

I catch my friend Roar breezing through headquarters – a tall post-gender bad-ass with a beard and no eyebrows. Roar’s been bottom-lining for Logistics lately, and that’s the information I really do need.

The money’s coming in, he says, but they want access to the Troy Davis account – and while it’s been offered to them, they need more information to actually get access to it. The arts collective that I thought was donating food is actually selling it to them, just to cover the cost of supplies: it costs about fifty dollars per meal, and out of that they feed about four hundred people a day. He estimates about 150 constant occupiers, divided between the park and sleeping space at HQ.

What Logistics needs, Roar tells me, is managing minds: for instance, plenty of people are willing to make laundry runs, but they don’t have anyone properly organizing it to ensure that everyone’s clothes get back to them.

Their wishlist: walkie-talkies and soy milk (the fastest thing to go).

Oh, and Excedrin. Roar needs Excedrin.

Occupy Atlanta: Day five, October 11

I will admit that I have delayed somewhat in writing further on Occupy Atlanta; I am ambivalent on the movement itself, and have debated whether I ought to try writing about it.

I returned to Woodruff Park on Tuesday evening, to see how things had gotten on since the police action on Monday night. Mostly, I had hoped to see whether the solidarity and activist spirit that had swelled on Monday night had survived into the next day.

I found the camp more subdued; after all, it was a drizzling day again, and many of the Occupiers had sat up the last night, debating and defending their protest into the small hours of the morning. I counted thirty-two tents, in the middle of which an impromptu bucket drum circle had been set up.

“There are a lot of Burning Man types here.”

I spotted Amber, a young woman wearing a yellow poncho that read MEDIC sitting out front of a tent. Amber came to the General Assembly Friday night believing she was only attending a protest; when the Occupation began, she decided to spend the night, and returns each day to lend a hand. She identifies herself as a registered Republican, but agrees with what she considers the core principles of the movement: that society is corrupted by money.

I asked her if she’d had any first aid training to serve as a medic; she told me that she’d taken First Aid and CPR in college. The medics, she told me, are only prepared to handle minor injuries like cuts and bruises; anything larger requires they send for the hospital. Particularly, recently they’d had to deal with a mentally unstable homeless woman with a broken leg, who’d been sitting in a pile of soiled material and refusing to move, refusing even to allow them to call the hospital. Eventually, they’d had to resort to legal channels to find help for her.

On the subject of the previous night’s police action, she told me that they had moved the Medic’s Table out to the sidewalk, and tried to stay neutral throughout. They hadn’t made any particular preparations for dealing with related issues, except to tell people to bring swim goggles in case of tear gas.

Amber said she thought that there were a lot of “Burning Man Types” at the Occupation: utopians with some experience in communal living, who found the idea of experimenting with it in an urban setting exciting and interesting.

When I asked if she needed anything from donors, she said the most frequently requested item was chapstick – but blankets and sweaters for warmth would not go amiss.

“To every county in this country and beyond.“

I went to watch the General Assembly, somewhat smaller than on other nights that I had seen it. A large portion of the protesters, I understood, had just returned from marching on Bank Of America – in which they took over Peachtree Street, accompanied by FTP, Jobs for Justice, Rainbow Push, and members of the Teamsters Union.

The General Assembly was back to using moderators and facilitators heavily again, though this time they were people I did not recognize at all: an entirely new set. When I came by, they were slowly and patiently explaining the consensus process again.

One woman announced that she would be setting up a meditation tent, to help people deal with their emotions and more effectively practice non-violence.

A man stood and told the Assembly that he had come from Canton, GA requesting information and education, so that he could begin an Occupation there, saying, “I believe that this movement can – and should – spread to every county in this country and beyond.”

That’s an interesting idea: franchise the Occupation, so that each new one is educated and sponsored by one that came before it. Hopefully, it could help future Occupations more quickly and efficiently deal with the demons of preparation and logistics before they begin to cause problems.

I stopped to talk to a young guy with a beard holding a sign that said, “Know thy enemy.”

“My friend made it,” he told me. “I’m carrying it for her.”

His name is Brian, and Tuesday night was his first evening at the Occupation, though he’d been following the group’s Facebook page and following the Occupation at Wall Street for some time. He felt like the material online made the movement look disjointed, and so he’d come to the protest in person to get a firmer idea of what was going on.

“I’m here for curiosity,” he said.

Brian doesn’t believe that the Atlanta Occupation is in line with the Occupation in New York – only that the two movements share a name. When I asked him what he thought of the Atlanta Occupation’s preliminary demands, he said he’d been unable to even find them.

“Not Bank of America!”

The good news is that the Occupation is getting money! Money is – or was, as of Tuesday – flowing in to the Atlanta Occupation’s coffers. Custody of the money, though, was less positive news.

The account holder no longer wanted to hold the account. Instead, the General Assembly were presented with two options: either they could take the Troy Davis defense account, which had been offered to them; or they could seek non-profit or PAC status, and open their own account.

And there’s the real problem here. Sooner or later, an organization like this can’t work off cash in a box alone – it starts to require accounts, and it must track its funds, and it must entrust someone with those funds. But to do so, the Occupation has to seek legitimacy in a political and financial system whose very legitimacy they question – in fact, questioning that legitimacy is the foundation of the Occupation.

So I’ve got to wonder: how well can you have a counter-cultural movement that is financially supplied before the need to legitimate those finances requires it buys into the dominant culture? Certainly it’s not safe for someone to personally escort large sums of money around downtown Atlanta, especially if it becomes known that that’s what they’re doing. But even money kept stably in a lockbox becomes vulnerable eventually.

Pulp Fiction

In the meantime, I noticed a homeless man laying on the ground, curled into a fetal position on his side, talking to himself. I’m not quite sure what to do, but the ground was cold and wet – surely not comfortable. An itinerant preacher tried to grab my attention, and I waved him away. A circle of us stood around the homeless man, unsure what to do.

I came in closer, and gradually I realized that he is summarizing the movie Pulp Fiction, including quoting lines of dialogue at the appropriate points.

Then Park Security rushed in – to remove or tend to him, I don’t know – and I went to find a member of Tactical Unity. TU is meant to handle all conflicts with the police, and to mediate conflicts between Occupiers, and they mark themselves out with camo jackets, PLUR buttons, or blue armbands. I grabbed three different guys in camo jackets, asking if they’re with TU, but all three said no. When I came back, there was a TU volunteer dealing with Park Security.

They asked us to move away to give the man space, and we did.

Three Women

When I came back to the Assembly, there seemed to be a problem with the process – one man was calling for the facilitators to step down and allow someone else to take their place, suggesting it would only require a temperature check (an informal vote-taking).

One of the moderator/facilitators spoke up:

“It is important for the people moderating or facilitating to be a bit aggressive or nothing will get done. It is difficult for us as three women to do this for long without being told we are being rude.”

The issue of minority representation continues to be a problem for this movement. I laugh a little, I’ll admit, whenever they talk about the lack of queer representation. I can see several queer people I know personally any time I look across the crowd, and most of them speak often. But the problem that the face of this movement is inevitably white and male crops up again and again – and, in this case, the problem that some of the Occupiers seem less willing to respect a face that is not white and male.

I can’t help but speculate that this is more than just the moderators’ issue: I wonder if this is an expression of tensions and strife breaking through, and just happening to coincide with this moment.

I was answered by a proposal: one man suggested the movement go from a one hundred percent consensus to a nine-tenths consensus, saying, “This is how they do it on Wall Street.”

This would allow decisions to be made more quickly, and prevent a small minority from blocking a decision. Then again, that this was proposed means that small minorities blocking decisions has happened consistently enough to become a regular frustration.

His proposal was put away; after all, it was out of order at that point. I lost myself in a discussion of non-violent tactics with a man in a camo jacket, and eventually, as night fell, went home.

Occupy ATL, Monday night, part II: Police Action

We returned to Woodruff/Troy Davis Park just before eleven o’clock last night, waiting to see what sort of action the police would take. The news vans were out in full force – I noted ABC Channel 2, Fox Five Atlanta, and CBS, all watching and waiting to see what would happen. At the General Assembly earlier in the evening, the camera-men had moved in to get some close shots of the discussion, and protesters began yelling at them – aggression that was quickly and effectively calmed. A few people covered their faces with shirts or jackets, and asked the newsmen not to film them.

“End the war, tax the rich, how to fix the deficit!” 

The rain had cleared away, and with it most of the chill of the evening. The now-warmer park was more heavily occupied; there was a huge contingent of protesters congregated on the walking paths surrounding the park. Moving in toward the center of the park, though, the scene was absolutely surreal.

The tents and gear had been mostly cleared away or clustered down toward the south end of the park. Tables had been laid on their sides, outward from the tents, forming an impromptu barricade to the south, against which the Occupiers had leaned a number of signs. Someone strung red caution tape around the central encampment.

At its periphery, you saw the reporters, in suits and nice coats with microphones, either speaking to the cameras or waiting for something to happen. Closer in, all action was obscured by a shifting ring of camera men and photographers on foot. At the very center of this ring, the protesters who were prepared to be arrested were sitting, waiting – much more silently than anyone else, with signs or without.

I confess myself a cynic, and I know that, really, there wasn’t a hell of a lot of risk. The legal team had already established that an arrest tonight would most likely end in a punitive fine. But still: as a people, we are extraordinarily unaccustomed to the idea of being arrested. More, we are unaccustomed to the idea of knowing that we will be arrested, and sitting there waiting for someone to do it. It takes, I realized, a phenomenal amount of will and courage to sit and wait for arrest, even arrest on a very minor charge.

I realized: what this will do to that group of people is extraordinary. If they do get arrested, then they will be the men and women who spent a night in jail together for their convictions. If they do not, they will remember that they stood together to do so. Those who were not prepared to be arrested will remember being there, and remember supporting their fellow protesters. I realized that, regardless of whether or not arrests did happen, that evening would be a fundamental moment of bonding for everyone involve in the protest. I overheard the press – I believe a young woman reporting for CBS? – calling it a split into two groups ideologically, between those willing to be arrested and those not – and I am fairly sure nothing could be further from the truth.

The Police – on foot, on horseback, on wheels of all kinds

What you may notice, though, is that I didn’t note any police presence – no police presence at all. As far as I could tell, there were no police at the park – suspicious, given that we were verging on eleven o’clock, and they had promised to break up the protest at that time. I stopped to talk to my friend Gus, a tall older man who was there in a long black wool coat decked out in buttons from decades of protesting and activism. He’d heard a rumor from the press that the police were massing on horseback a few streets away.

I started to walk, then remember that I didn’t know the city at all – and so grabbed a young woman who was wandering by, asking her to come with me and look for police. Her name is Kirsten, and she stopped to tell Cop Watch – a group that films and notes police presence at protests – what we would be doing.

We couldn’t find any police at first, and I thought my information had been inaccurate – until we saw nine officers on horseback at Central and Decatur (about two blocks from the park), circling the area. Horses, the Legal Observers would later tell me, tend to be used in actions like this because their primary value is intimidation.

At Central and Underground, we counted seven more police officers, standing around, and nine police motorcycles parked in the entrance of Underground. Within Underground, we saw a mass of police officers milling about.

Later I would hear a rumor that a processing center had been set up in Underground; I don’t have a strong source for this, so I can neither confirm nor deny.

At MLK and Briarcliff, though, we hit the real trove of police officers. We counted more than twenty-five cruisers, two paddy wagons, and a few SWAT vehicles before we simply gave up on counting. We also noticed a fire truck and an ambulance – from what I heard, there was yet another fire truck to the north.

We returned, quickly, and passed the information on to the first Cop Watch team we found. We debated whether we ought to alert the protesters that there would be horses coming through. One Cop-Watcher suggested that the horses won’t move on uneven ground, and so we ought to tell the Occupiers to sit down close together if horses appear. Eventually, it was decided that any statement would just cause more trouble than it would solve.

I knew that there were a few people among the Occupiers who had come down to visit from Short Mountain Sanctuary in Tennessee; I sought them out to warn them that arrests seemed eminent, in case they’d like to leave – it’s somewhat more inconvenient to be arrested if you’re coming from out-of-state.

I ran into a team of young people in neon green hats that said Legal Observer, and asked whether they’d like my notes on the police presence. I gave them my notes, and exchanged contact information. They told me that the horses are extraordinarily well-trained, and will not harm people. Their primary use, as stated before, is intimidation. Protesters ought to treat them the same way they would an officer on foot, and not panic.

Tactics

The Legal Observers asked me to watch for police in riot gear, and whether I’d seen buses, or any kind of large transportation vehicle. Riot gear means they foresee themselves breaking through a crowd; buses, usually schoolbuses, mean that they are preparing to remove a large number of people.

The police in this country have had the past five decades to figure out the most effective ways to neutralize protest. And I do mean “neutralize”, not round up: to neuter a protest’s political power. I am by no means anti-police, but it is a reality that the police have learned that bashing in skulls and bringing out fire hoses does not for good PR make.

Instead: protests must be by permit, and they are usually kept in designated free speech zones. They begin and end at a certain time. This ensures that they do not inconvenience anyone, and that they do not demand any eyes on them.

Police have been trained to treat protesters with kid gloves whenever possible. A video of fire hoses knocking back marchers is much more powerful than of pepper spray.

Police have learned to use intimidation tactics first and foremost. The appearance of horses would scatter protesters; suddenly, it’s no longer a peaceful circle of men and women sitting on the ground and holding signs – it’s an unruly mob being corralled, certainly much better for PR. On Friday, the night of the first General Assembly, we observed the police breaking out zip-ties – suggesting that they were aiming to start arrests soon, arrests that never happened.

Rumors can be used to disperse protesters as effectively as actual force.

“Who do you serve?”

- one lone voice from the crowd at the corner yelled out as a contingent of about eight police on foot walked into the park. Around them, a cluster of people held up cell phones and video cameras; I heard one young woman asking each of them individually for badge numbers.

On the east edge of the park, I am told the head of Parks and Recreation was handing out copies of the ordinance based on which they’d be expelled (can anyone confirm or deny this one? Can anyone provide the ordinance?).

I spoke to a young woman named Anastasia standing along the sidewalk at the east edge. She said that she was not with the protest, but had been coming by to help out and watch. She didn’t want to be with the main group of protesters – she was certain that they would be arrested. I hurried over to join the main body of protesters, who were marching around the periphery of the park.

“They’re not trying to arrest our friends in the circle; they’re trying to arrest us – because they’re scared!”

A man stopped the chants and used the People’s Mic to say that. They say that over and over again. They’re scared of us. They’re scared of us. I don’t know if it’s true, or something that they say to make them feel more in control of the situation. To be sure, it was well past eleven o’clock, and the police haven’t take any action. I’ve heard tell that some of the mayor’s staff were making appearances and speaking, but I didn’t see them.

Notice the cleverness in that statement? After the man said it, everyone cheered. This started with people absolutely unwilling to be arrested during planning meetings; during the General Assembly on Friday, a few said they’d be willing and able; last night, we saw a concrete circle who were prepared for arrest. And then, suddenly, the don’t-arrest-us-contingent was cheering the idea that the police would be trying to arrest them.

More Occupiers and sympathizers are being drawn in and radicalized.

They started chanting again: “Whose park? Our park!” And then: “Whose park? Troy’s park!”

To the side, I overheard an old homeless man saying, “This is the only white congregation we’re allowed in this city.” Another old man, with him, shushed him, says, “Don’t say that,” and looked at me – taking notes.

A comedy plays out in the corners of a political drama.

“We will invite them to leave peacefully.”

I wondered how it would be played out in the media, if the police busted up the protest. Would it be sympathetic? Would it be about dissatisfied college students disturbing the peace? Would they, perhaps, talk about how much handling this protest was going to cost the city financially?

I found my way back to the sitting circle, where they were being told that the mayor’s office had issued a statement, saying, “We will invite them to leave peacefully” – and that’s it. When pressed, they suggested that police had been enlisted to “help keep the parks safe”.

Ominous, again.

Then another fellow ran up a minute too late to tell us that in a moment that mayor’s office would be making a statement.

“Journalism in this country died with Russert.”

I noticed three people sitting in one of the tents; in fact, they’d been sitting there a while. I wondered if they knew that there’d be arrests soon; surely, if they were prepared to be arrested, they’d be in the circle.

There was an older man named John, and a couple that looked to be in their mid-thirties: Elizabeth and (again) John. They told me they had been living in the park for about a week and a half; Occupation started four days ago. I asked if they knew that the police might be arresting people soon, and whether they were prepared to be arrested.

Yes, they told me. We’ve been arrested before, and we’re ready to be arrested again.

“Journalism in this country died with Russert,” Elizabeth told me. She was there to see the protest out to the end.

“We are re-occupying the park!”

As of 12:28, no arrests had happened, and the don’t-arrest-me contingent decided to retake the park. They formed around the circle of people who were waiting to be arrested – a circle that did not break up or change in form to accommodate them. I suppose that that turned out to be a very, very solid group.

A rumor floated through that the mayor would soon come to address the Assembly themselves, and the Assembly voted to allow the mayor to submit a proposal for what they ought to do – a proposal which, of course, would have to move through the consensus process.

One speaker said they ought to remind the mayor that his career started in leading students in an occupation of buildings at Howard University; another said, “We should ask him to help us – he got elected because of people like us.”

As of about one in the morning, the AJC was reporting that the mayor would let the protesters stay the night. I dropped by a few of the news vans to ask if they thought it likely the mayor would come by that night; they said no, that if anything their money was on a late morning visit. I asked a Legal Observer and a friend that had some past ACLU involvement whether they expected any further police action that night. They also told me no, with the caveat that if the police did show up, it would be far later – around five A.M., when the media presence had lessened considerably.

Satisfied, I left to get some much-needed sleep.

Reflections

So – in the nicest way possible – what the hell were the police doing? Why did they line up such a substantial force if they did not intend to break up the protest?

Were they intimidated by the media? The decision to break it up last night came at a time when it was cold and rainy and sparsely populated, and all except the ABC van were absent. Did their presence as the night cleared up discourage police action?

I suspect the police were there to intimidate. They hoped to break up the body of the protest just by appearing. If I had warned people that horses were coming, I wonder, how would that have affected things?

Events

Another general assembly tonight at 7. Marching on Bank of America at 4:30 – that’s in less than an hour, kids. Friday they will be picketing for Troy Davis.

As always: corrections, critiques, and additions are welcome and encouraged.

Occupy Atlanta – Monday, October 11

We came back to Woodruff Park on Monday night around seven, for the first time since the General Assembly last Friday, to see what had become of the protest. It was drizzling rain on and off all day, which put a damper on the atmosphere – much less energy than last Friday – and people were huddled in close to hear and see each other.

I was startled to see the new look of the park. I estimated between thirty-five and forty tents had been set up, ranging around a central greenspace. I expected to see a tent city; this actually felt more like a tent village. At two of the corners of the park, a massive shelter of bright fabric has been propped up to cover tables and chairs and food resources; on Sunday, when it began to rain, a warehouse on the south side donated a hot air balloon (no longer sky-worthy). The park’s new residents worked together to cut it into large pieces to make into shelters.

The Process

My first conclusion: they’ve gotten much, much better at what they are doing. The Occupy Atlanta protesters have cowboyed up and started taking things far more seriously than they seemed to be last Friday night.

For one thing, they’ve improved on the People’s Mic – a system by which all those who can hear the speaker echo what the speaker has said, and then those further out echo them, and so on. It’s a sort of DIY low-tech sound system, which you’ve probably seen in YouTube videos or on the news as zombie-like repetition. The People’s Mic is much snappier and on the ball now; speakers manage longer and more complex sentences, and the crowd quickly amplifies it out and moves onward.

The moderator and facilitator roles appear to be atrophying. When I arrived, a fellow said that he was going to try to act as moderator – and treated that like it was something unusual. Then again, the crowd was smaller – maybe 75 people – but to achieve an orderly discussion of 75 people without a distinct moderator is impressive.

I’ve also noticed that the crowd has found its own way to defuse anger and opinions that it disagrees with. While we were there, one fellow loudly ridiculed people who were unwilling to stay and be arrested; the next speaker quickly jumped in and rephrased his points in a way that was kinder, yes, but also ridiculed the ridicule, breaking that tension. I spoke to a young woman named Eva who was coming by to deliver signs; she said that she had noticed that when people were droning on too long or voicing wildly unpopular opinions, the People’s Mic simply faded out – effectively silencing them.

Arrests?

When I came in, the protesters were discussing the police – particularly, whether they wanted to stick around when the police showed up at eleven. This had been a topic of discussion at the General Assembly on Friday night, when Occupation was decided upon; I wondered whether this had been a discussion topic every night. No, I was told; rumors had filtered down that the Atlanta PD intended to clear out the protesters entirely at eleven, and they now had to decide what to do.

At the first planning meeting I attended, back in September, most people said that of course they didn’t want to do anything that could get them arrested. That’s changed; last night, the Occupiers addressed the question of arrest directly, and rather than spending long on whether they were okay with it, immediately moved on to formulating tactics to use in the event of their arrests.

The Assembly decided to split into Affinity Groups – which is a fancy term for a group of the friends that you’ve made at the protest, the people that you’re close to and you can trust – and to brainstorm tactics for arrest together. An affinity group allows individual planning; it allows “creative action and increased security in the interrogation room”. No one strategy will be used by the entire group arrested; each will handle their arrest in their own way.

I spent the time that people met with their Affinity Groups wandering around, looking at the site, and talking to people. When we all came back together, they seemed much firmer on the subject of arrests.

I was surprised to see Rynelle there – he’s a high-energy kind of guy who I discussed the rejection of John Lewis with on Friday. Rynelle was pretty disgusted with what had happened, and I didn’t expect to see him in the park again. Well, there you go: he’s there, and he’s more enthusiastic and involved than before. Rynelle said that being arrested is a worthy tactic.

Sharpies were passed out and people wrote phone numbers for legal aid on their bodies, so that they’d have easy access to them if they were arrested.

“Getting arrested is not a moral question – it is a strategic one.”

Consensus was achieved. Those who felt that they could afford to be arrested would form a stable circle in the center of the park. Those who did not would do what they could to provide aid and support. They would mop standing water from the walkways so that there would be dry, non-slippery pathways. Those who stayed to be arrested would hold the park as long as they could.

One man asked how much they could expect to pay if they were arrested, and how long they’d be in jail – and, especially, what would happen if they couldn’t afford it. Legal answers were hard to find – people settled on the idea that it would cost about two hundred bucks, and that they’d be out by morning.

“We have the possibility to reconvene ourselves regardless of what happens tonight – and come back with more people, and retake the park.”

Everyone cheered.

Logistics

Logistics is overworked. When I spoke to the young woman who seemed to be acting as the backbone of the Logistics Working Group – whom I had spoken to before – she told me that she did not have enough hands and minds to help her, and that she had found herself handling press and outreach in ways that she had not expected to.

(if you happen to join the protest, or even come by the park – remember, the Logistics Working Group could really use a hand)

They have, however, set up a pretty functional system. They have electricity under one of the hot air balloon tents, where people can charge their phones and laptops; at that tent, they’ve also set up minifridges and microwaves to handle food production and storage – courtesy of an artistic collective that has been providing food, and has asked to remain unmentioned/unnamed. At their HQ at 60 Walton Street (donated by the owner of that space), they have a food pantry and more minifridges and microwaves. The aforementioned anonymous artists are providing and cooking food for communal meals.

As to bathrooms, they’ve been using the facilities at HQ as well. The park service has also graciously opened up the public restroom at the corner of the park. Normally it closes at 11; now it is open 24/7. I’m still trying to figure out if this is just a practical consideration on their part (“We don’t want people pissing in our park, so let’s just let them use this”) or a quiet show of sympathy.

The young woman from Logistics estimated two or more people per tent, for a constant population of at least a hundred, with more arriving occasionally during the day. Those who have to leave for jobs or school, but return in the evening.

When I arrived, there was a middle-aged couple who had not been part of the protests but were coming by to provide soup, and a young woman delivering food and signs – my favorite being “Krugman’s Army”. While this movement is, on the surface, rather small, the donations they’re getting – food for a hundred, shelter, office space – suggest that they’re not at all alone in spirit.

Jargon

Besides the Affinity Groups, I noticed that the protesters have picked up a fair amount of jargon, and built some new terms. They use the word “comrade” a lot – which, yes, feels like a cliche.

I also got acquainted with the term PLUR – Peace, Love, Unity, and Respect – which has what I can only call a secret handshake associated with it: first, the two people make the peace sign and touch the tips of their fingers together (Peace); then, they curl their hands and put them together to form a heart (Love); next, they clasp hands together (Unity); and finally, they hug (Respect!). I saw a few buttons with PLUR on them – it’s the symbol, along with blue armbands, of the Tactical Unity group, which works to handle interpersonal conflict.

Most significantly, though: the Occupiers have decided to rename the park. They now call it Troy Davis Park. In honor of Troy Davis, last night they held a candlelight vigil for his 43rd birthday.

Interviews

While I don’t fancy myself much of an interviewer, I tried to talk to a few of the constant residents of the park. Malcolm and Cullen have been staying at the park since the General Assembly on Friday, though they’ve both had to leave at points to go to work or school. The first night, they all slept on the ground; as things got colder, though, they brought in tents. Malcolm told me that the Parks Department people come daily to walk through and look around. Cullen said that the number of constant residents has at least quadrupled. They agreed that burnout among the organizers was high.

Malcolm was packing up some of his gear. He told me that he was scared to get arrested, and didn’t intend to be part of the group that would be. When I asked him why he was protesting at the park, he told me that it was because he “hates capitalism and what it does to people.”

For the most part, active opposition seemed low. A guy named Daniel, who hasn’t been a resident but visits every day, told me that Sunday night, a few people came by with bullhorns and started harassing the crowd, but that’s been about it.

“Call everyone you know and tell them there’s gonna be a wicked sick party at eleven!”

Consensus ended on the idea that they needed to find more people to bring to the Park. The protesters broke to start calling and texting people to join them at the Park. A friend of mine got on the line with a few nearby homeless shelters to see if any of their residents would like to join us. We left to get food, intending to return at eleven to watch what happened.

Next post will be my notes from when we returned at eleven.