HOLY CUCARACHAS BATMAN, FREE WEED IN THE PARK?

OLA, CA – You haven’t seen anything until you’ve seen the Occupation on free weed day. But before I go into details on the local scene, let me fill you in on Oakland. Skip to the jump if you’ve heard the latest from there. On November 2, thousands of people descended at various places in flash mob visibility, completely shutting down a port. “We even built a barricade and I thought that was enough, but some of these people just want to confront the police. They set the barricade on fire and there was that little riot, but things are better,” reported my mole. “We now have two camps.” Meanwhile at OLA,

Around on the quiet side of City Hall, the side with all the cockroaches that LA Weekly (Vol 33/No. 49) talked about, is where I headed on this Saturday [last Saturday now], but I’m not there for la cucarachas. I’m there for the next part of this evolution of a revolution. I’m there to see the start of the end of the system. At last count, I heard there are 2000 cities in various degrees of ‘occupation’. When I first got to Occupy LA there were not over two or three cities. I think there is a site online that has the link. If you’re reading this story, you can find it if you need to.

About a week ago I got a phone call from a polite young woman who introduced herself and asked if she could use my generator? At first I was slightly taken aback. If you’ve followed my storyline, you pretty much know that our generator, Temcal.com (press), has become part of the motor pool. When I saw it a week ago it was being used by the medical tent on the north side, which was fine with me. I brought it to camp to be used, so I don’t usually get a call to borrow the thing. I respected her courtesy. When you’re in a controlled mob, not everyone eats with a knife and  fork, so when you see someone use the napkin rather than the tablecloth, you tip your hat, so to speak. Of course I agreed to its use but I asked what was going on?

It was to be a rally and her group was the next step in something concrete coming out of Occupy LA.

As I said in previous stories, you have the usual [attention getting] suspects, the most notable being the medical marijuana people, but now you are starting to see real PAC groups surface with concrete solutions to the ills of societal rule, and we’re not just talking America. What is happening is happening worldwide.

One such PAC group action comes from a pairing of the Women’s International League For Peace and Freedom in coalition with MoveToAmend.org. The Move to Amend folks are getting signatures to amend the Fourteenth Amendment. Corporate Personhood is meant to be abolished. The catch is that the very same loophole was used to grant ‘coloreds, Negroes, non-whites, freedom from being owned as objects. The question in some circles, particularly redneck ones, is ‘would black people go back to being property’ if the amendment is abolished, theoretically, of course, which is always added in as to not be ‘racist’ in a stoner conversation.

The people in the park know that question is moot, for we are all property. It’s just a question of who owns you. The universe/God/nothingness/star dust owns you. Beyond that, is it Mammon, the God of money, or Mammon’s system, or a religious/anti-religious belief, or ‘the desire to change things’ that owns you? For the people in the park and the people who hold the nightly GA rallies (though the process may have changed since the month started, more on that another time) the correct answer would be ‘D’. However, today not everyone in the park was down for there for a ‘D’. This Saturday some people in the park and those in the long line were there for a ‘P’, while expressing jubilation in being able to ‘blaze’ as free citizens in public; a right afforded everyone before 1937; a right guaranteed under the California Constitution and the Tenth Amendment. 

Last Saturday being November 5^th, Guy Fawkes Day, the called-for ‘Move Your Money’ (from a major bank to a local federal credit union) Day, and the fifteenth Anniversary of California’s legendary Prop 215 passage, the city and the bus company were taking no chances, hence the comment about the usual attention-getting suspects. Spring Street between First and Temple Streets was closed off with a light police line across on the far side of the intersections; the parked official vehicles all with their emergency light strobing quietly adding to the end of the fairgrounds ambience while the circus was in full swing. Even getting around to the front side of city hall brought me in contact with Ron Dultz and his two essays, a flyer for the 11/9, 4PM march and demonstration rally at Chase Bank (400 S. Hope Street, see archive photo), the two-sided, full color, bilingual ‘Occupy The Bridge’ National Day of Action on 11/17/11 flyer, and a personal invite from the ‘Christianity = Freedom: to rape, pillage, murder. & torture’ complete with scripture quotes folks. That’s when I knew, whether or not the sky said so, it was a ‘full moon’ night. I figured I’d look up my friend and street corner philosopher, Tony B., a father who could hold his own with Plato, provided they knew modern history.

The first thing to do was to go under the new banner being hoisted over a diagonal entrance into the park from the First and Spring corner. which read ‘HORIZONTALIDAD’. If that translated meant ‘welcome to the party’ it wouldn’t surprise me. Managing to pick up a print rag I neglected to mention in earlier stories is changelinks, an independent progressive newspaper and community calendar put forth by university alumni/faculty (presumed from Cal State). Changelinks would be the ‘daddy’ to Cal State’s UT, aka University Times, mentioned in a previous story.

I had no sooner grabbed the intellectual little paper than a woman stopped me and we started to talk about the movement being taken over by the ‘pot party’ when a young man who was obviously intoxicated joined our conversation, or so it seemed. After a minute or two the young man uttered some flimsy come-on line then reached and tried to palm the woman’s breast for a feel. Immediately the woman slapped the crude bugger’s face, bringing a sense of reality and justice back into play. Sighting the rules of common decency toward all women backed up by the rules used at Burning Man (“always ask first”), the young man apologized with a promise to never use such behavior on any other woman before the woman offered any forgiveness to him. The mood had changed drastically and so our conversation ended so the woman could go and compose herself, being visibly shaken by the attempted groping. Hearing yesterday about the 4^th woman to come forward and claim sexual harassment from Herman Cain, the Republican front runner, shows this type of mindset exists in all types of men. Even more disturbing is the poll which showed that a majority of Republicans didn’t give much weight to the allegation or would have their vote influenced by it.

Making my way through the fairly thick festive crowd I was able to cut line and receive my ‘free weed’, two small gram size plastic pouches. Since the person handing them out was a MMJ legend, one of the pouches went onto my souvenir shelf during my last quick visit back home. The other pouch I gifted to my host.

Finally ambling over to Tony, I saw he had a usual crowd of onlookers admiring his artistry in display of onsite made tee shirts and painted canvases. Once again the ‘ask first’ rule was being taught to the onlooker crowd. “We’re not animals on display at a zoo. If you want to take a picture of my art, please respect me and ask first. I have no problem if you simply ask before snapping a picture of my art,” cajoled Tony to the curious tourists.

The line for the free weed stretched all the way down to Tony’s spot and halfway down to the corner of First. Maybe one in ten knew that the man handing out the packets was Dennis Peron, a legend in the medical marijuana fight for decades. Anyone who looked young in the line was asked to produce an ID showing proof of legal age. Meanwhile a block away LAPD and purple shirted District Safety police riding on bikes bearing the name Smith & Wesson instead of Schwinn pedaled around in groups showing no doughnut bulge and calves you could strike a match on. An ad in a magazine, probably Frontiers, shows that the LAPD has a inclusion program for gays which could help explain the general mode of fitness seen around LA’s PD that is opposite to what you think of when you think ‘Southern sheriff’ types. But then this is southern California. Everyone here or in California for that matter, is very health conscious.

As the line moved along a ‘Mexican’ hommie walking ahead of his peeps walked over, I mean strutted over, paid some compliment about Tony’s shirts before he snatched one up like he was trying some slight of hand trick. Tony was having none of that and quickly snatched his shirt back. Outted as a common sneak thief, homeboy pulled out six wadded-up dollars to prove that he could pay, then claimed ‘this country is mine so go back to Africa’. Tony, being no slouch rebutted, “Are you Olmec?”

The verbal tag-back continued with Tony standing up and not being intimidated by the Mexican bully through chest bumping and exquisite rebuttal verbiage. Tony moved up my respect list a few more notches. Finding out that he has a son 5 also endeared me to him since I am also a father (who was wishing any of his sons could have been standing alongside to witness this act of street courage).

This confrontation wasn’t taking place in some alleyway or outside a bar late at night with few witnesses. There were dozens of people watching and hearing the verbal swordplay go back and forth. Homeboy’s peeps had his back but they slyly smiled at each other and from time to time would try to reign in the shortest,   leanest member of their lot. Everyone else kept out of the middle and let the two wage their battle of spoken wills. Finally homeboy gave up the ghost at not being able to just walk over a black man using the ‘Mexican’ card and stormed off down the street kicking over two full wire trash baskets that Tony with help from a couple of bystanders up-righted, cleaning the mess made. We all breathed a sigh of relief. Real violence, even just a verbal one, gives a completely different reaction from what you feel watching Star Wars.

“See,” Tony announced to the crowd and me after the skirmish, “this is what happens when you give away pot in the park. The cockroaches come out. Everyone in this (protest) has to stand up for (self-validation and respect of others) as part of being here (in the park camp).”

Folks, there is a reason why I have seemingly gone batshit and run off to LA. The story is enchanting, there is no denying that, but really what has charmed me are the people that I have been fortunate enough to meet and with some, make friends with. Were this computer more up to date or some equipment angles straightened out, you would have a lot more visual aids. I pray my humble words do a little justice to this story past what you read anywhere else. This is a revolution, an awakening, but it isn’t a thing, it is an idea taking hold of people. And it is ‘the people’ who are making this story a story. Perhaps this is the resurrection of Resurrection City, a poor people’s campaign started by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Speaking to the National Advisory Commission in 1967 King insisted that the news of the recent riots which scared the shit out of white folks, failed to acknowledge the “greater crimes of white society” and the everyday violence of poverty (and lack of respect toward others of different color). At a press conference afterwards Dr. King declared, “The time has come if we can’t get anything done otherwise, to camp right here in Washington… and stay here by the thousands and thousands until the Congress of our nation and the federal government will do something to deal with the problem [of poverty].”

After Dr. King was assassinated (April) a coalition of welfare rights, Chicano (the dropped word for Mexican), Native American, Puerto Rican, Hispano land grant, labor unions, along with poor blacks and poor whites, descended on Washington in May ’68. They built a camp-in site near the Lincoln Memorial called Resurrection City of more than 3000 people with programs/committees which lasted until 55,000 people showed up in their support on June 19, Solidarity Day. The pictures of thousands and thousands of dissatisfied Americans, young and old, many who were white, for the world to see, as there were as many international cameras for that as for the Jackson/Murray trial, were simply too much bad press for Washington. On June 24, an immense show of paramilitary police-state forces routed the residents of Resurrection City and the country collectively breathed a sigh of relief as the Emperor regained his imagined clothes.

This time may be completely different in outcome because as we all know from the famous Orson Wells California ads, California will sell no whine before its time. I feel that time is now. With the spread of the Occupy movement to over 2000 cities worldwide, I’m not alone in feeling that way it seems.

Next: Holy Star Wars, Batman, It’s The Flash – The Comikaze Invasion of LA