Occupy, Political Autonomy & Marching on the Banksters
As you read this there are people who are working, not at 9-5 jobs for wages for stability in a race for social mobility against one another, but together and for their communities. There are people gathering food and supplies to Feed the People (FTP), spending countless hours brainstorming ways to connect with you- the average reader, the public, the observer, the wage-slave, or maybe just the too-tired-to-march. What’s the point anyway, right? From what you’ve heard it always results in some sort of police interaction, and we shouldn’t be focusing on the police.
Yeah, we know. It’s not just about disagreeing, or sharing speech, or standing on a corner with a sign anymore. It’s about who we are and what we do, how we push the accepted narrative of dissent. You think we’ve gotten distracted by the police, but you’ll have to forgive us when they continue to show up without an invitation. We can’t help that they’re so interested in surveying, documenting, intimidating and harassing people who dissent in the *hopes* you will blame us for their misuse of your tax money. We don’t rinse, repeat, or call our congress person. We’re the gnats on the wall that the democratic party tried to swat away, and we don’t play politics the way we we’re told.
From May 29th till some time mid-August occupiers from Los Angeles and local community activist organization LACAN (626Wilshire Project) held an autonomous political space every night in front of the CCA- a downtown lobbying firm that holds very firm influence over city council and politics throughout California. They also are directly responsible for shaping and managing the Skid Row population by pushing through legislation that criminalizes the homeless to make room in the downtown area for the CCA’s elite members- the real estate developers, CEO’s, banks and high rise condos. To make room for profit.
To protect the interests of members like Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Mellon Bank, HSBC, who engage in predatory lending practices designed to fail. To ensure that their exploitation of the people, which results in people losing their homes, continues to be accommodated on the local level and subsidized or ‘guaranteed’ on the federal level. Is it a wonder to anyone what the priorities are of the privileged classes?
Things are so bad in downtown Los Angeles, that if you don’t have money (points) to use in an establishment you cannot use their restroom facilities. You do not qualify for dignity and you get to pee on the streets at your own risk of violating ‘the law’. All under the watchless eyes of a City Council that doesn’t have money to donate towards public facilities because the CCA lobbies against public funding for the people, and instead advocates the use of private security to harass the homeless or bring in the badges. Quite literally, peeing is criminalized on the streets of downtown LA. And i don’t know about you, but sometimes you gotta pop a squat.
Occupy has always been a rather open amorphous grouping of individuals who choose, autonomously, to participate. And many of those people were either house-less or gave up their homes to join the movement. When the camps got raided, the celebrities stopped coming around, and people lost interest and moved on to the next fad, some of us stayed. We stayed for cold general assemblies with constant police harassment, we stayed and grew together. We stayed on the streetz, frequenting the downtown area, experiencing the brutalizing alienating effects of the wrong side of capitalism. So it makes sense that we would stand in solidarity with those most affected by this profit-hoarding disease that manipulates our lives. It makes sense that we would begin to ask others to question the narrative they are being fed while others are starving- why is it that we as humyns have to qualify for dignity, for housing, for a place to pee, for food, for life? Why are we forced to ignore racism, heterosexism, classism and privilege because we are so concerned with survival?
It makes sense that we would begin to defend our families, blood related or not, and our communities from a system that makes them depend upon a certain number of points to qualify for the next round in a rigged game. It makes sense- because the people who roam the streets, the ‘house-less’ who you can’t look in the eye, are different sentient versions of you and me. It makes sense because the homeless are not ‘crazy’ because of some mental illness that needs to be hidden or swept away, they are ostracized because we live in a civilization with no compassion that would rather purge those who cannot qualify and allow them to be swept away by criminalized drugs and hopelessness- so abandoned it would drive anyone mad. It makes sense- because we are made to feel so uncomfortable by ‘failure’ in this system of false success that we cannot stop our compulsion to participate for fear of what we will lose.
It’s time we start thinking about what it will take to break that cycle. It’s time that people start to truly dissect the meaning of their actions, evaluate how invested you are in the system, and whether you will fight to keep it, hold your tongue, or join the fight for people instead of profit. This system- and especially this political system for ‘reform’, is not working. There are people right now mobilizing, outreaching and creating propaganda to share with you their stories of oppression and resistance. Hear them.
When Ulises Hernandez found out he was losing his home to eviction after five years of trying to work with Bank of America, he knew he could not confine his defiance to the streets. Instead a coalition of forces- Occupy the Hood, Occupy Los Angeles, Occupy San Fernando Valley, the people occupying the CCA came together to build community resistance at his home and call out the foreclosure crisis for what it was- fraud, tyranny and the largest land grab in immediate history. 45 days into #FuerzaHernandez occupiers and housing activists came together to help another family who requested assistance defending their home against fraudulent foreclosure and #PuebloLucero became the second home defense barricade in Southern California. This is what activism looks like to us- taking direct action against practices by corrupt institutions mostly targeting communities of working class people of color, especially the undocumented immigrant community. Usually with fraudulent paperwork, in an effort to evict people so that the banks can cash in on the insurance.
These are the people who have spent the last 75 days defending a home from fraudulent foreclosure. And more than that, empowering homeowners and the house-less to join forces to fight back against the privileged and monied interests of banksters, useless politicians and their henchmen- the police. Empowering one another to not just educate themselves about the necessary paperwork to stall evictions, or request renegotiations, but to take direct action and willful resistance against unlawful practices that target oppressed communities and people of color who are not aware of their rights. And to declare unapologetically that housing is a humyn right. Or did you think you had to qualify for it?
In a nation that talks and talks about freedom, we call their bluff. We exercise it. We assemble, sometimes we march, and we take streets to spread our message and take our actions straight to the doorsteps of banks and CEO’s. Today we march on the banksters in DTLA, because not only were they bailed out by our government at the people’s expense, but they continuously and unapologetically manipulate poverty to make profit with no accountability to their supposed ‘customers’. The banking institution, or some suit in some office, is putting pressure on the sheriffs to move in and evict the Hernandez and Lucero family from their homes. We must respond with our own pressure. These moves, these predetermined and protected power dynamics of sheriff/LAPD/bank investor cannot continue unchallenged. Banks that not only tie into the housing crisis, but tie into the prison industrial complex, military industrial complex, the hunger crisis, and student debt crisis. Which is why when we reach out to the people to make calls of support or outrage, we really need you to come through. This is no longer about only identifying with struggles that directly affect your life, it’s about power, who has it, and why. When we take streetz and bank lobbies, we are stomping loud and clear that the people will not stay idly on the sidewalks for long.
#FuerzaHernandez and #PuebloLucero are home defense actions that have created and barricaded autonomous political space in neighborhoods [striving to be safer spaces in which patriarchy and other oppressive behavior is checked], also serving as bases for organizing and outreach, carrying a message far beyond defense of one singular home. We do not want our homes guaranteed to us by state forces, or banks, or government programs. We want our autonomy, and we are taking it.
The people products of our time are afraid- of sticking out, of causing trouble, of getting hurt, of pushing too hard or too fast against a status quo. Instead, we’ve settled for ‘progress’, slow and measured, dictated by those who have enough power to be trusted to make these decisions (that was sarcasm by the way). We’ve settled for ‘tolerance’, tolerance of terrible decisions made by people we continuously elect to power in the hopes that maybe someone will look enough like us to make a decision that doesn’t perpetuate the war of poverty. Can’t you see? When we occupied we came together because our individual voices screaming about single-issue politics were not being heard. We assembled because both us and the politicks know what the issues are, but we are sick of the same tired solutions being tossed back and forth between polarized party factions so institutionalized they can’t hear us from their color coded towers. Meanwhile, more houses lost, more youth imprisoned, more cuts to education, more charades in politics. We occupied to take direct action against the symbols of power and call their bluff- and it was called.
Now we’re different, and we’ve grown. And in case you were looking for the disclaimer- these writings represent the ideas and analysis of one person and do not intend to speak for the occupy movement. People aren’t just asking or negotiating anymore, but instead are bound together in exploration of defiance, fighting back against the corporate assault on our neighborhoodz and a banking industry that preys on the poor. That’s what the ‘american dream’ has come too- the wealthy threatening government insisting on bail outs and safety nets while the people in power tell us to continue waiting patiently.
This is what the future looks like- austerity and compliance unless you intervene, or listen, or share some fucking links, or build a garden or get out of your box house. There are groups and networks of people building resistance who are putting less and less faith in paperwork, bureaucracy and traditional mainstream tie-your-shoes politics. Instead, we’re building barricades and the oppressors don’t know what we’re going to do next because neither do we. And by that I mean, we don’t take any orders and we don’t have any leaders, we work diligently together for collective liberation. We feed each other, and we explore radical honesty to take power away from oppression.
When you take issue with our work, or what is presented in the mainstream, don’t be surprised our dissent contradicts your constructed reality. After all, who taught you what activism looks like, or how change and success are measured anyway? Challenge your traditional perceptions of what is necessary to get us ‘back on the right track’ and consider for five minutes, that the track was constructed for you and we’re just on the wrong train heading the wrong direction. If we’re ever on television on the mainstream news, turn it off and watch us on livestream. Or better yet, join us because this is about participation not spectacle. But whatever you do, as the rebellion grows, remember who the real criminals are. Don’t default to the narrative given to you by the mainstream. (JR)