SALT CITY SINNER

Dreams Of Gunshot Wounds

2012-01-24T15:01:00.000-08:00

I don't often (ever) write about it, but at times I have a pretty spectacular dream life. I like to think it's my subconscious' way of making up for drab, everyday life - except that about one in three dreams I have are so incredibly disturbing and vivid that they linger like diesel fumes or the stench of pesticide.

Carl Jung wrote that "In all chaos there is a cosmos, in all disorder a secret order." Some people dream of loved ones, some dream of monsters - I usually dream of places. I call them "limbic spaces," because they are defined by my memories of various atmospheres in which I have lived, worked, loved, etc. and because they are transitory - not quite Salt Lake City, a few pieces of Arkansas, a recurring dream-space that appears to be a vast, dank and endless public men's room that I call the lavatoryinth.

Carl Jung

Last night, for reasons I have long learned not to look into too closely, I had a particularly vivid and intense dream, the type I have maybe once a year. In my dream, a group of friends and I were drunkenly carousing at an out-of-the-way cabin located in what I can only take to be my mind's version of Hawaii by way of Idaho. What was extraordinary about this dream was how quickly it shifted tones on me.

One moment, carousing, the next, gunfire. I know that William S. Burroughs shared both my fascination with and love of guns and a crackpot, hallucinatory inner life - he often wrote vignettes about pistols. Of course, Burroughs accidentally blew off his wife's head and had to spend many years on the run afterwards and this probably contributed to his fixation, while I suspect my interest is much more pedestrian.

William S. Burroughs

Pretty quickly, last night's splendid tropical/rural dreamscape burst into bloody chaos. Usually, when a gun is featured in a dream, it is featured in a highly symbolic fashion. Phallic symbol, symbol of power, etc. - well, in my dream the guns were very real and the results of firing them horrifyingly so as well.

I shot someone on the stairs. A random dream pedestrian was shredded partially in half by shotgun blasts. People were gunned down in quivering heaps throughout the large cabin my subconscious cooked up for my little nocturnal Tarantino-fest. The ground was slippery with gore, and even though I was dreaming I could smell the hot, explosive burned-meat smells of the carnage.

As the dream closed, I was riding high in the back of a Jeep away from the aftermath, driven by some unseen entity. We slowly tooled past a shadowy figure who was hobbling along the path, and as we pased him I tossed him the revolver I had been firing.

"Thank you," the man said quite distinctly, "But I already know how the West was won." Without a pause, the man then shot me in the head.

In my dream, I fell heavily to the road. I could feel my jaw working spasmodically and my vision went dark; sound dwindled to a low-end buzz and then ceased. I had dreamed of dying.

I woke up already feeling a little ill.

I Love L.A.

2012-01-24T07:12:00.000-08:00

I flew from Salt Lake City into LAX for a conference yesterday. I am currently ensconced in a hotel near enough to the airport that I can hear jets taking off and landing pretty much constantly. Like the monkey house at the zoo I found this offensive to my senses at first but have now adapted.

The interesting thing about my flight yesterday was its timing. Due to Sundance , and the fact that it was a Monday morning flight from SLI to LAX, the plane was stuffed to the gills with (apparently) Hollywood types.

Despite this, the closest I came to a brush with fame on the plane was to bumble past a person who I am 99% sure was Octavia Spencer, from the Help. Many seemed to be media industry cogs of one kind or another. It's worth noting that I have never been in a better-dressed coach section of a flight in my life.

I cracked open Grant Morrison's Supergods to while away the brief flight (about 90 minutes). My aisle-mates were quiet and mellow - pretty much the perfect travel companion strangers - but across the aisle from me sat two men and one woman who together constituted the highest concentration of @ssholedom that I have ever experienced.

As soon as they were seated, the Three Douches (as I began to think of them) starting yakking it up. The guy on the left was some sort of producer - the guy on the right an agent. The woman seated between them was an @sshole by pure coincidence because she is actually in sports medicine and works in Toronto. Why do I know all this? Because the Three Douches bleated their bona fides to the rafters and bragged as loudly as possible the entire way to LA.

The agent chatted up the woman by demonstrating his thorough knowledge of professional tennis and what so-and-so and such-and-such could do to improve their game. The producer mainly stuck to shop talk, "talk" being code for "name-dropping."

Finally we arrived at LAX, deplaned, and once we were past the boarding gates, I witnessed literally a dozen chauffeurs, all dressed in black and standing so stock-still that they might have been wax figures or cardboard cutouts (each held a sign with their client's name on it). When the baggage arrived, I witnessed a kid - probably younger than 23 or 24 - literally throw a huge, heavy bag off of the carousel directly at his hapless driver, who received it with a grunt and quietly began to haul it to the car.

LA, baby! Or, to be charitable to the vast majority of Angelinos, Hollywood, baby!

Israel, Iran, And Ron Paul Supporters

2012-01-18T05:59:00.001-08:00

Since I was a child, Iran has been a regular (and rich) subject of discussion in my household. There's a simple reason for this - on my father's side of the family (the Bernards), the last two generations of Bernards have lived and worked in Iran pretty extensively.

My grandfather was actually "knighted" by the last Shah before the Iranian Revolution for his contribution to oil and gas projects in the region. My father went to high school at the American School in Tehran, then later returned to work there as my grandfather had. My dad and my aunt still speak a little Farsi.

This is kind of cool: I'm named after my paternal grandfather Charles G. Bernard, AKA Chuck Bernard, AKA whatever the hell this sign (which used to be his) says in Farsi:

Due partially to the subject of Iran, I got into a lengthy dust-up in the Facebook discussion group for #OccupySLC, where the ideological demographics can be roughly divided up into one part anarchists/radicals (hello, friends!), progressives and libertarians. The libertarian contributions to the discussion usually revolve around why the Fed is literally at fault for every bad thing in the world, and why Ron Paul is awesome.

The gentleman with whom I had a disagreement is a big-time Ron Paul supporter, and also a committed supporter of the #Occupy movement. This, to me, seemed like major cognitive dissonance - after all, Ron Paul's economic policies to a one are regressive and favor the interests of capital and wealthy capitalists over any and everyone else.

However, over a little bit of discussion, some common ground emerged (unfortunately not between myself and my original debate partner, "Orwellian Bob") regarding Ron Paul, #Occupy, and foreign policy.

For those of us just joining in, a quick and dirty summary. Ron Paul, unlike President Obama, is a hard-core isolationist who would like not only to withdraw our troops from Iraq and Afghanistan completely, but also pull our troops out of America's little hidey-holes across the world (including Europe!).

The current President, on the other hand, has adopted a pretty astonishingly aggressive foreign policy for a man who ran as a progressive Democrat. One of the primary reasons I voted for Obama in 2008 was his promise to end the Bush Doctrine years of American adventures abroad* - he would close GITMO, eliminate extraordinary rendition, etc. Unfortunately, Obama has done none of these things.

So here we are. This is the year we pull the lever, and our choice seems to be between a relatively pro-war, pro-Israel, aggressive incumbent president and a veritable buffet of lunatics on the Republican side of the ledger. Under such circumstances, I suppose - and bear with me here - that I can understand some of Ron Paul's appeal.

Civil libertarian Glenn Greenwald recently caught two barrels of hot, juicy internet hate when he wrote a column that didn't exactly endorse Ron Paul, but explained some of his appeal. At the time I found it infuriating - but the more evidence that piles up (and there is a grundle) that we are currently on a "war footing" with Iran, the more foreign policy matters, and there is currently no good choice other than Paul on foreign policy. Does that mean I support Ron Paul? My goodness, no. His economic policies (and positions on issues like the Civil Rights Act of 1964) are more than horrible enough to outweigh his foreign policy.

That said, the choices available to voters this year are awful** - maybe the worst I've ever seen. If that's the situation it took for Ron Paul to "shine," well, good for him, I suppose: the situation is not so good for the rest of us, unfortunately.

*: I bring up Israel regarding the Bush Doctrine because of this extraordinary story from Foreign Policy:

Buried deep in the archives of America's intelligence services are a series of memos, written during the last years of President George W. Bush's administration, that describe how Israeli Mossad officers recruited operatives belonging to the terrorist group Jundallah by passing themselves off as American agents...the Israelis, flush with American dollars and toting US passports, posed as CIA officers and in recruiting Jundallah operatives...Jundallah, according to the US government and published reports, is responsible for assassinating Iranian government officials and killing Iranian women and children.

This is astonishing. Any country in the world that acted so arrogantly in defiance of international diplomacy and rule of law would probably catch hell from the U.S. for such a move - with Israel, we sweep it under the rug, whistle casually and pretend nothing happened. Meanwhile, any discussion in American politics about Israel seems to boil down to a competition to see who loves Israel the most.

**: I am aware that there are choices other than Paul, Romney, or Obama. The first one that comes to mind is former Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson's candidacy, which I am researching and will write about either this week or next.

It's A Beautiful Day To Fight The Prison-Industrial Complex (And Get Your Dance On!)

2012-01-14T09:01:00.000-08:00

Here in the United States of America, we like to "privatize" things.

The short definition of this phenomenon is that services usually provided by the State - public roads, public schools, and, unfortunately, prisons - are increasingly being farmed out to for-profit corporations, who "can do the job more efficiently."

Whether this is actually true is up for debate, but in at least some cases - perhaps most notably schools and prisons, those great institutional workhouses of ideology - "efficient" generally means "worse for human beings."

Two companies in particular, the amusingly sinister-sounding (and genuinely terrifying) Corrections Corporation of America ...

...and the more placidly named GEO Group, are the heavy hitters in the incarceration game.

The investors in these cutting edge experiments in human degradation and the commodification of suffering include Wells Fargo, Fidelity, General Electric, the usual gang.

A sizable coalition has emerged to encourage these investors to divest from - that is, remove their financial backing from - these companies, who in no uncertain terms profit directly from the poor treatment and dehumanization of incarcerated persons, including many immigrants and other political prisoners.

Here in Salt Lake City, we hate injustice, but gosh darn it, we love a party.

Tonight, Rock the Jailhouse is going down! What is Rock the Jailhouse, you ask?

Rock the Jailhouse is a benefit concert for the Salt Lake City Prison Divestment Campaign. Featuring live bands including Know Ur Roots, playing a reggae tribute to Bob Marley, Los Cafres (from Argentina), Gondwana (from Chile), Wasnatch, and Enemy Octopus! Bring a donation between $5 and $15 - the event will feature a vegan bake sale, drinks, a raffle, and more!

Rock the Jailhouse starts at 7:30 PM tonight at Centro Civico Mexicano, located at 155 South 600 West in Salt Lake City. Come and bring a friend!

I'll Bet You A Dollar That A Few Old Tires And A Bit Of Smarts Will Net You 20 Pounds Of Potatoes

2012-01-11T17:07:00.000-08:00

Note: much (but not all) of the source material for this was taken from Path to Freedom Urban Homestead and Kelly Coyne and Erik Knutzen's invaluable The Urban Homestead.

Are you bored? Of course you are! Boredom is the bedbug infestation of our collective psyche, a will-sapping, seemingly insurmountable foe that gnaws and gnaws.

Good news: if you're bored, I have a fun project for you!

You might live with your parents. You might rent a house. Like me, you may live in a small box with no porch, window planters to speak of, or any other luxuries that would make growing an edible foodstuff easier. It doesn't matter.

If you can find a corner of a lot (vacant or otherwise), a patch of Mom's backyard, whatever, you can grow some organic, kick-ass food. Let's start simple.

Observe:

Not pretty, is it? North America is awash in used tires. No, this doesn't mean that you can get some fresh radials for a steal down at Crazy Vinnie's - it means that we should be thinking post haste about how to repurpose this monstrous glut.

An easy step? Tater tires!

Beautiful tater tires courtesy of Bonzai Aphrodite

It's as easy as can be.

Get some used tires - hopefully the same size for stacking purposes. Used car tires are *everywhere.* If you can't find some on the street, ask a friend or consult a local waste professional.

The tricky thing about tater tires is the construction, but don't worry - it's easy once you get your hands dirty. You want to do a little basic reading on soil - what makes it tick, what it likes, the proper ratios for mixing, etc. Once you've used those book smarts, cut the sidewalls out of your tires using a jigsaw and stack those suckers up.

"Listen to this man. The eyes of the spuds are watching."

Pick a sunny spot. If you have hard-packed ground under your foundational tire, give it a few zesty pokes with a pitchfork, or a knife, whatever you have handy (loosen it up a bit is the point).

Use loose soil and a healthy dose of compost ( give this a quick perusal or ask your local mom-and-pop nursery) for the soil inside your tire tower. The tricky thing about getting a big yield of potatoes is picking the right seed potatoes. Potatoes are not grown from "seed" seeds, they are grown from seed potatoes that are best ordered online (try here or here ).

You can cut your seed potatoes (as long as each chunk has an eye or two) but let them dry before you plant. You want to plant your seed potatoes in warm soil - say, 60 to 70 degrees. Hotter than that and they will stop flourishing.

Here's where things get tricky.

Lay down one tire, and fill it loosely with soil. Plant three seed potato chunks, dry (remember!) with their eyes facing upwards. Lightly cover them with soil. Soon, you will see potato sprouts. They are green, high-falutin' fellas:

As soon as those rise above your little tire garden, add another tire to the stack and fill it with soil, covering most of the shoots, but leaving at least the top leaves free. As you continue to water and nurture, the plant will re-grow longer shoots, at which point you repeat the process: add a tire to the stack, add more loose soil, leaving only the top leaves free.

By "shocking" the plant this way, you produce a heapin' helpin' of potatoes. From The Urban Homesteader:

After the [end of season] flowering is over and the vines turn yellow or die back, the potatoes are ready for harvest. Stop watering and let them sit for a week or so, then you can harvest. You can do this by removing the topmost tire and harvest the taters at that level, leaving the rest for later. They store best in the dark, dry soil, so they will be very happy waiting for you in their tires. Or, punk rock style, you can just kick the whole stack over, revealing the entire tater treasure within. That method has its merits too. Harvest amounts will vary but 20 lbs. per stack are common.

IMPORTANT HEALTH NOTE: Do not wash your potatoes when you harvest them; they will rot. Do not expose them to sunlight: they will turn green and, yes, green potatoes can kill you. Taters do best "curing" (i.e. resting) in a cool dark place for two weeks before you snack on them.

More culinary tidbits to follow (along with six to nine times your daily recommended dosage of political surreality). Stay tuned!

Sarah

2012-01-09T23:30:00.000-08:00

Sarah. She is a friend of my sister's, and a woman who wanted to learn how to shoot a Glock 27. That was enough for me.

It's not an uncommon thing in this day and age (especially a sun-drenched, smog-soaked day and age in Salt Lake City Utah, Anno Domine 2012).

My sister, subconscious yenta that she is, had told me before hand that this particular recent friend of hers was tall, blonde, crop-haired and masculine, the type of person that I find both intimidating and beautiful. Sure enough, she was "striking," which is straight male shorthand for "beautiful warrior woman."

Sarah.

By a strange coincidence we ran into each other later.

She didn't spare me a second look (and I don't blame her). Warrior woman, I would cook for you. I know how to keep the hearth warm and some good-god-damned meat slow roasting.

Lost connections. Ships in the night.

Sarah!

A Few Words On Why I Will Be Watching "Ancient Aliens" Tonight Instead Of The Iowa Caucus Results

2012-01-03T19:36:00.000-08:00

It's too early to call it, but I'd wager the 2012 election will be a "near-to-total loss" at this point. Then again, I'm not one of the optimistic experts at Standard and Poor's or Moody's rating agencies who gets a nice fat envelope in the mail a few times a year to keep blowing bubbles for amused toddlers (and also CNBC).

I hate election years, and I hate news coverage of elections even more. Occasionally life tosses you a tender scrap of hickory-smoked hilarity, but if there's one thing I've learned lately it's this: if you're just whistling past the graveyard, change your route home.

So. Ron Paul's has a depressing level of support*, even in groups of people from whom I never would have expected such a bizarre suspension of disbelief. Ron Paul supporters and their eccentricity have been documented extensively, but I still remember one spat very fondly. That spat is probably the reason I have such a soft spot for Paul and his fans, despite the fact that they pretend to be "libertarians" while supporting all kinds of whack-a-doodle social conservative positions.

So, back to Ancient Aliens and their role in our evolution (and/or the creation of life itself!).

No, not sure I buy that, despite "Thrive" (I'm still working at that debunking - it's very hard to watch for longer than five to ten minutes at a time). Still and all, I'm keeping a more open mind than usual lately, and while that doesn't mean believing in prehistoric visitors to our planet, it does mean that I find that more interesting than endless pollster/marketing @$$hole dissections of "voting patterns" so far.

* - For the record, the fact that Mittens and He Who Shall Not Be Named - this is a FAMILY blog, gosh darn it! >:( - are apparently tied is even more depressing than if Oddball Paul had pulled it off.

Your (Probably) Last Salt City Sinner Update For 2011

2011-12-29T15:40:00.000-08:00

New Years' Eve is coming, and if the folks whose empire apparently extended northward to modern-day Georgia (actually crackpot bull$h!t) have anything to say on the subject, it's that we're boned!

Holiday-hating curmudgeons would say that attempts to cash in on a potential apocalypse theorized by an ancient political economy we still do not understand to this day, aside from a few unsettling notions about their grasp of mathematics and astronomy, is a little unsettling:

If there is one place sure to be visited by an ironical apocalyptic thunderbolt, I would wager it would a dubstep "bar rave" in Salt Lake City, UT. Preceded, of course, by the grave of Richard Nixon, the '12 DNC, or possibly any place that I find a moment's solace.

At EVE, Salt Lake City's bold and ongoing experiment in sober public celebration, #OccupySLC will be hosting an Art Wall in Gallivan Plaza. Can't make it? Kick them a few ducats you filthy plutocrat. Or, come check it out.

MAZEL TOV YOU SONS OF THE SOIL, YOU IMPERIUM OF THE COMMENTARIAT

Let's celebrate the year that was. Moving on, let's cast a jaundiced eye but give some slack to 2012.

#Occupy's One World Christmas, Five-Alarm Chili, Plus, Avoid Krampus!

2011-12-23T17:11:00.000-08:00

To celebrate Christmas, #OccupySLC hosted a potluck dinner today at the One World Cafe, located at 40 S. 300 E. in downtown Salt Lake City..

For those of you unfamiliar with the One World Cafe and/or Everybody Eats Foundation, here's a bit-sized morsel from their mission statement:

[One World Cafe] began when owner Denise Cerreta in mid-2003 had an epiphany to serve food, let people choose their own portions and let them price those portions themselves...Because our customers choose their own prices, their portions tend to be more mindful and reflect what they actually want to eat, with the result being little or no food waste. We've realized that this makes more food available and we expect this will make the concept exportable and adaptable worldwide.

Much like the Circle-A Cafe / kitchen operation at #OccupySLC's original base camp in Pioneer Park, OWC seems, at first blush, like a silly idealistic notion that could never survive the harsh and brutal reality of human nature for long, but it has survived - nay, flourished - for almost a decade now, a hell of a run for any restaurant, let alone one in a relatively volatile bar and restaurant market like Salt Lake.

One World Cafe has been generous to #OccupySLC, providing food, meeting space and time, etc. for quite some time now. If you feel like dropping by (again, they are located at 40 S 300 E, right near the heart of downtown but on a quiet street) and paying what you feel is a fair price for a square meal, or no price at all, or if you want to exchange labor or in-kind goods for food because you want to opt out of the money system, well, I can't think of a better way to get a taste of the good life (if you'll excuse the pun).

Speaking of which, I made my five-alarm vegan chili for the potluck today, and now I am going to teach you how to make it, which you may consider a Christmas gift, because knowledge is like shiny treasure.

Start with a butternut squash. Pre-heat your oven to 400, and while it's heating, slice your squash in half. Do this by cutting off the tippy-top and bottom so it will stand at attention on a cutting board, and slowly use a big carving knife to halve it lengthwise. Lightly brush it in oil, place face down on a cookie sheet, and bake for 40-50 minutes.

You'll want to let the squash cool before you cube it within the skin and extract the cubes, as it will be hot and fragile. The squahs goes in last, so you can perform the rest of these steps while it's roasting.

In a soup pot, saute an onion, a green pepper, and three good-sized stalks of celery in a few tablespoons of olive oil.

Once the onion is soft and translucent, add four cans of red kidney beans, two cans of stewed tomatoes sliced into small chunks, one small can of tomato paste, and two cups of vegetable broth. If you are cooking for vegans (which I was, even though I eat and enjoy meat) make sure to use ingredients that do not contain animal products.

Also, whenever using canned ingredients (which I generally try to avoid), watch for ungodly sodium levels in them, and adjust your salt levels accordingly. If you're using more than two cans of anything in a recipe, it's usually a safe bet that you don't need any more salt unless you're a salt fiend, in which case go nuts. Add a hell of a lot of chili powder - you know those four-inch-tall McCormick's containers of chili powder? Use all of one. Add a generous helping of cayenne pepper and Tabasco sauce to taste (as hot as you like it). If you don't like Tabasco, go #&%# yourself, and when you're done, use the hot sauce of your choice. Tabasco is too vinegary for some. Bring to a boil, then reduce the heat and simmer on low heat for about an hour. Take it off the heat and let it cool just a bit before carefully adding the squash last so it doesn't quite dissolve completely. It adds a lot of rich, creamy flavor to the chili.

I schlepped this magnificent and spicy concoction over to OWC:

Remember when I said that you can bring in-kind donations in lieu of payment for a meal (or nothing at all if you are hungry and don't happen to have anything on hand you can or would like to contribute)? OWC has a wish list up:

I can tell you one thing with certainty: if you DO contribute generously to the One World Cafe, not only will it fill your heart with holiday joy, you will avoid the most dreaded Yuletide fate of all: a kidnapping at the hands of Krampus!

According to the best Christmas legend of all time:

Krampus is a mythical creature recognized in Alpine countries. According to legend, Krampus accompanies Saint Nicholas during the Christmas season, warning and punishing bad children, in contrast to Saint Nicholas, who gives gifts to good children. When the Krampus finds a particularly naughty child, it stuffs the child into its sack and carries the frightened child away to its lair, presumably to devour for its Christmas dinner.

See? That kid should have thrown the One World Cafe a dollar or an organic tomato - it would have bought him dinner and saved him from being dinner.

In the Alpine regions, Krampus is represented as a beast-like creature, generally demonic in appearance. The creature has roots in Germanic folklore. Traditionally, young men dress up as the Krampus in Austria, southern Bavaria, South Tyrol, and Hungary during the first week of December, particularly on the evening of 5 December, and roam the streets frightening children with rusty chains and bells.

5 December may be well behind us, but in the interests of introducing more terror into the lives of bored American children, you can add "and the Avenues neighborhood of Salt Lake City, Utah" to the above list as soon as I can find a suitable costume.

With Great Responsibility Comes Tasty Foliage

2011-12-21T18:21:00.000-08:00

I was on my way down the stairs in my building with Charley in tow for his habitual stroll when I was hailed by my downstairs neighbor. Being a gentlemanly sort, I sauntered over to see what was amiss.

She held a travel bag in one arm and, awkwardly cradled under the other, a piney, bushy looking houseplant, about three feet tall. "Is that rosemary?" I asked.

It was indeed! It seems that her first attempt at growing rosemary met with failure, as she dried out/killed the poor thing. I say "poor thing," but in all honesty dried/dead rosemary is a delight to at least three out of the five senses, so it's hard to get too teary-eyed about it. Her story was short and to the point: her sister had fallen through, and could I care for her rosemary plant for a week? Water it daily, watch for problems, etc.? Of course I can.

Meet Roland:

Roland marks my inauguration into plant-sitting; a heady responsibility, to be sure. On the plus side, I have been assured that I can take a snip or a pinch here or there for cooking purposes in return for my efforts. Fair deal, I say.

The Air Is Getting Slippery

2011-12-19T16:58:00.000-08:00

The air quality in Salt Lake City has been truly awful lately - much worse than the usual winter inversion that moseys through. At the same time, our legislators (who claim to be actual humans with actual lungs) relax regulations so that companies like Kennecott-Rio-Tinto can defile the air even more.

Actual, undoctored photo of SLC air

It was only January of 2010, almost two years ago exactly, that Salt Lake City experienced the legendary inversion that led to record-setting bad air - the very worst, in fact, in the United States of America ( I wrote about it at the time ).

It has gone beyond a little "kaff-kaff" at the nasty diesel fumes as the delivery truck rumbles past. This is chemical warfare, and the corporate god-kings whose greed is more lethal than hatred are waging it against us, quite literally at the cost of our very lives.

I received an e-mail from Cori Redstone, a fellow activist and friend of mine. She writes:

How bad is this air? As I type this the young child of a friend is in the ICU at Primary Children's fighting for her little life. She got a cold and it developed into full-blown respiratory arrest on Friday. I woke up in the middle of the night on Saturday unable to breathe and about went to the hospital myself. My son woke up this morning hacking, pale and has lost his voice. This air is killing us and the people we love. It is making us sick and costing lost work days and millions in health care costs.

It's not just anecdotal evidence we're dealing with here, either. From a report from ABC4:

Dr. Michelle Hofmann, a medical director at Primary Childrens in Riverton says the kind of particles we are breathing "are so small that they pass by normal systems and get down deeper into the lungs and even blood stream - and exert swelling in the lungs as well as in the blood stream."...I asked her if some people should lay off outdoor activities right now. Her response, "Absolutely."

It's surreal how the media - and Salt Lake City residents in general - treat our air pollution problem. The way the "red air days" and "haze" are reported, it's shrugged off like a nasty spell of rain, or a snowstorm.

But when rain or snow cause damage, it's an act of god, a cataclysm. This $h!t we breathe is insidious. It seeps into our streets, makes graveyards of our playgrounds and soccer fields, and hangs, motionless, silent, glowering unnaturally over the city.

The Salt Lake City skyline (no, really)

"Unnatural," yes, that's the other thing. This haze, smog, call it what you want - is NOT natural. Rain is natural, snow is natural (and god knows we could use more of both) - "haze," or smog if you want to be old-school about it, is emphatically not.

Today a coalition of environmentalists, concerned mothers (fear their wrath!) and the like filed suit against Kennecott for their psychotic disregard for air quality in Salt Lake County and elsewhere. Among other colorful tidbits revealed by the suit and accompanying press conference is the fact that Kennecott has flagrantly ignored federal limits on ore and waste rock production - limits intended to reduce particulate matter pollution - for at least the last five years.

So thanks again, Rio Tinto. Mazel tov, Kennecott. On "red air" days walking around outside - simply opening your door and entering the outside world for a while - is as hazardous as smoking cigarettes.

One would think that last would get the attention of the State Legislature - after all, they have shown great concern for public health when it comes to the hazards of cigarettes, haven't they?

Holiday Solidarity And Guerrilla Cheer

2011-12-17T21:12:00.000-08:00

Tonight 'round about 5 PM MST, #OccupySLC hosted a "flash meditation" in Temple Square.

The first time I ever heard the term "flash meditation" I believe my exact, sardonic, aren't-I-clever words were "sounds tricky."

Well har-de-har-har, Charles, you prick. It turns out that meditation is scientifically proven to be beneficial to your well-being, and to boot, it builds a more thoughtful, inclusive way to relate to the world around you. As pro-meditation flash mob hub MedMob states:

Our intention is to create an environment for people from all religions, all world views, and all experience levels to join together in meditation. Our vision is to continue inspiring world-wide meditations until the entire world is invited to join - literally!

Tonight was cold. Colder than I anticipated. But the lights were up, and beautiful. As I've said before, if I had my druthers, we'd have Christmas lights up year round.

Thankfully I found my way to the beginning of the flash meditation. It went well (at least, the early stages that I was there for).

While we sat and meditated, the beautiful light displays that the LDS Church spends so much time and effort on were splendidly arrayed around us. There was no rowdy "protesting," no hostility - as a matter of fact, the people I saw made a point of smiling at and engaging with curious onlookers.

One woman, hustling by with her children, growled something about "protesters," and I did something I rarely do - I engaged her.

"We're not protesting," I said as politely as I could. She looked confused, and then collected her youngsters and was on her way without another word.

Why were we there? Why a flash meditation?

As has become the common refrain for #Occupiers, I can only speak for myself.

I was there to demonstrate that despite the fact that I am an atheist, despite the fact that I am a skeptic and a free thinker, and despite the fact that I am a political radical, there are things that bring us all together.

As we meditated, the soft glow of Christmas lights played over the faces of families, children, hippie anarchists and curious observers alike. Christian hymns played on a loudspeaker, and brilliant white illuminated statues of various Mormon figures abounded.

I had to leave a little early, but a few things gave me hope.

First of all, there was no attempt to make an arrogant claim that we were #Occupying "Temple Square" &c. That would have been disrespectful at best and silly at worst.

Second, our entire purpose in being there was to celebrate solidarity with our community - to enjoy the lights, the season, to nourish our roots in the community. I myself, for example, live only a few blocks from Temple Square, and rarely go there. That should change, lack of religious convictions or no.

So cheer up. Spread some holiday cheer. #OSLC will be hosting more "Really Really Free Markets" in the near future (stay tuned), so come get some free apples and/or yarn things and learn about a world in which you aren't a suicidal drone trapped in the razor-sharp entrails of a godless machine.

Mazel tov!

Christopher Hitchens, 4/13/49 - 12/15/11

2011-12-16T20:37:00.000-08:00

Christopher Hitchens, contrarian's contrarian, atheist, truth-teller, arrogant bastard and fierce mind, is dead.

He was one of my idols.

People say "too soon" but to paraphrase some fruity British comic book guy, Hitch got what we all get: a lifetime. No more, no less.

I'm heartbroken, and mourn his passing, but I'm confident that Christopher's intellect, and his contributions to any number of debates, will ensure that his name is still being lofted around (and often cursed) for longer than most of us will ever live.

Another Thrill-Packed Friday Night

2011-12-16T19:17:00.000-08:00

I'm sorry for my recent absence. As far as excuses go, I have a few good ones I could deploy - I've been doing less "slacktivism" and more "activism," I'm actually dating professional jewel thief Selena Kyle, &c. - but one reason (and it's not a sexy one) is this:

You see, as part of the Urban Homesteader / DIY / whatever you want to call it ethos, knitting is both really cool and pretty handy. It consumes time, reduces consumption of $h!tty goods produced by slave labor, occupies my idle hands, and, if you have a modicum of skill (something I lack so far), you wind up producing a scarf, or a hat, or a handgun cozy -

- whatever strikes your fancy.

Jenn Stauffer, one of my best and oldest friends, responded to my "HALP HOW DO I KNIT THRAEDS" S-O-S, and an impromptu knitting circle and anti-social deviancy discussion group formed. Funny how community can flourish under the oddest circumstances and during the worst times (economically speaking).

Any old way, I promise to return refreshed and with my newly shed skin curing in the smoke shed by Monday. There's plenty going on in Salt City to talk about.

Monday is a big day! For example, Peaceful Uprising is hosting an open house for the community on Monday at 6:30 PM MST at their warehouse, the legendary Goathead Preserve. For information, email info@peacefuluprising.org .

If you're more interested in learning about Utopian meeting structure, there's a consensus training facilitated by the Society of Friends (Quakers) Monday night at the downtown SLC Public Library at 7 PM MST. Among other resources they'll use is Peter Gelderloos' Consensus, which I can't recommend strongly enough.

Salt City's Library

I realized recently I neglected two important things regarding that most fiendish of devices ever to bedevil the days of man: money. Scratch. Filthy lucre.

To donate to #OccupySLC, go here . Peaceful Uprising is unable to accept contributions at this time .

If you want to donate money to me to keep this whole bloggue thing going, go-HA! Put aside whatever you want to devote to THAT, and set it on fire. Don't give it to the needy, don't donate to a political cause - if it was specifically intended for me, set it on fire.

Have a pleasant evening - there's a strange groundswell of hope happening in most of the movements and groups of friends and people in general that I have encountered lately. Maybe they know something I don't know. Maybe I know something I don't know.

Happy #D12 Everyone (Part 2)

2011-12-12T14:59:00.000-08:00

So far #OccupyOakland's attempted port blockade on the west coast seems to be a mixed bag. As I mentioned this morning, protesters shut down at least two terminals temporarily (Hanjin and Trapac), but as the San Francisco Appeal - a publication that is apparently no fan of #Occupy - reports;

The protest appeared to thin out mid-morning, and Port of Oakland spokesman Robert Bernardo said that as of 11:30 AM "our terminals are open and operational."

The port had reported "sporadic disruptions" earlier this morning caused by the protest. Several other marches are planned throughout the day, including a march at 4 PM from Frank Ogawa Plaza, and another from the West Oakland BART station at 5 PM.

As of this writing, the protests in Oakland have resulted in a "handful of arrests" but no violence.

Here in Utah, #Occupants gathered in Tooele (due to an unexpected circumstance, I could not make it out to Tooele, much to my anguish). The Tribune has a wrap-up from earlier today:

Acting in solidarity [with Oakland], about a dozen members of Occupy Salt Lake City gathered at the Gallivan Plaza early Monday and made their way to the Walmart Super Center in Tooele, where several entered and conducted a "mic check." Reading from a prepared script...

Script, you say?

...they urged Walmart employees to unionize and promised that the protest movement would help them organize.

"Low low prices mean high high exploitation. The Walton family has 93 billion dollars, they should pay you more," the group chanted in unison.

After a few minutes, store officials escorted the Occupiers to the door.

...Salt Lake and Provo occupiers then proceeded to Grantsville cemetery, parked their cars and mounted bicycles to ride down State Road 138 to the nearby Walmart Distribution Center.

They managed to slow traffic and were greeted by a strong law enforcement presence,

Presents??? :D

...including officers from the Utah Highway Patrol and the Toeele Police Department.

Worst law enforcement presents EVER >:(

Jesse Fruhwirth tweeted:

I was detained, warned, let go with a warning - now i'm back riding. #D12SLC 3 others detained now

All reports seem to indicate it was a very successful action. The lovely Tara tweeted:

Walmart trucks being sloowwed down by our bicycle riding. Hooray! A brigade of cops protecting the Walmart fortress? Boo! #D12 #OSLC #Occupy

THIS is alarming. From @OccupySaltLake:

@slcpd detained #OSLC on assault complaint against #WalMart patron. Good thing we carry cameras t(-_-t) Look to @fruhwirth for video! #D12

"Good thing we carry cameras" indeed, my friend (there's actually more to be said about that - maybe tomorrow).

But what of Denver? What news of the Mile High City, friend, Queen City of the West?

According to the Coloradoan.com;

Loveland police have made several arrests of Occupy protesters outside the Walmart distribution center near the Budweiser Events Center.

Protesters were arrested by police after blocking the intersection where trucks were trying to enter and leave the distribution center. "At about 12:45 PM, demonstrators blocked the Walmart truck traffic entrance with people and tents. The roadway was cleared immediately by police and several arrests were made," Loveland police said in a statement.

Loveland police had a heavy presence in the area all day, with more than 10 marked and unmarked law enforcement vehicles in the area of Crossroads Boulevard and Greenfield Drive.

So: trade was "disrupted," but the depressing moral of today's story (so far) seems to me to be: Cops up, folks down, while my plutocrats bounce to this.

Happy #D12 Everyone (Part 1)

2011-12-12T10:09:00.000-08:00

Bright and early this morning, #OccupyOakland commenced their blockade of Oakland's ports. A livestream was available, which made for interesting very-early-morning watching. Before 6 AM had even rolled over and kicked California out of bed, there were already about 1,000 people headed for the ports, according to estimates:

Riot cops were on scene, as you can see. Meanwhile, here in Salt Lake City, the Occupation's base camp at Gallivan made a nice, chilly place to meet at 8 AM MST:

It's nice to see that the kitchen tent from the Circle-A Cafe in Pioneer Park has made a reappearance, along with the R. Buckminster Fuller Memorial Gathering Chamber:

We huddled up. As soon as people were assembled, we heard the details of the day's loose collective suggestion - I wouldn't really call it a plan - for a cheerful bicycle outing. We also committed - out loud - to the Principles of the Occupation, including and especially nonviolence.

I'm sure that reassured the gentlemen in the two cop cars that pulled up to eyeball everyone. Meanwhile, as of 9:45 AM MST, the Guardian reported:

[#Occupy Spokeshuman Francois] Hughef said around a thousand protesters marched to the port at 6 AM, and are blocking two terminals at the port - Hanjin and Trapac. SSA Marine had been the target, Hughef said...but SSA did not have a ship this morning.

Further updates as the situation unfolds. Stay tuned!

#Occupy's West Coast Port Blockade And National Actions Set For Tomorrow

2011-12-11T06:53:00.001-08:00

I mentioned that #OccupySLC will be participating in a day of protest and solidarity with #OccupyOakland tomorrow, 12/12/11 (meet at Gallivan Plaza at 8 AM MST, citizens!).

I realized shortly afterwards that I had neglected to mention what Salt Lake City is acting in solidarity with. To rectify that mistake: Oakland's Occupy movement, which has been one of the hardest hit and most brutalized by police, plans to respond via a general strike / port blockade. #OccupySLC will be responding with protests of Walmart (more information on that here and here ).

This has led to an interesting dispute between #Occupy and Big Labor, in this case represented by the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU). Salon has a decent write-up of the dispute's outlines:

On Dec. 12, general assemblies (the decentralized governing bodies of [Occupy Wall Street]) in Los Angeles, Oakland, Calif., Tacoma, Wash., Santa Barbara, Calif., Portland, Ore., Seattle, Longview, Wash., San Diego, Anchorage, California's Port Hueneme region, and dozens of smaller camps plan to blockade ports and halt commerce for a day. There is a combined Dallas-Houston effort to demonstrate at the port in Houston. Japanese rail workers, who are sympathetic to longshoremen who work a partner company of Bunge - the company Occupy is protesting - will be demonstrating in Japan...

The demonstration is in solidarity with Longview longshoreman, who say their jurisdiction is being threatened by multinational grain exporter EGT, as well as port truckers who have been prevented from unionizing in Los Angeles. (Their little-known plight was exposed by Salon in October).

The campaign to shut down what some call "the Wall Street of the Waterfront" is consistent with the general Occupy Wall Street message on the distribution of power and wealth. Yet the effort faces opposition from the union bureaucracy's upper echelons, precisely because of the conflict with EGT...paradoxically, where labor conflict is starkest, the union leaders reject outside support, and when Occupy Oakland acts to support the union's members, the union itself resists.

I will have coverage of tomorrow's festivities here in Salt Lake City.

As it is Proud News of the Mountain West, I will attempt to collect and collate reports and updates regarding Denver's attempt to shut down a Walmart distribution center. Like Brother Eye and the noble O.M.A.C., I will also keep a watchful eye on the West Coat Port Blockade and the showdown between #Occupy and the ILWU. Stay tuned!

Kennecott-Rio-Tinto Buys Itself A Nice, Greasy Regulatory Exemption

2011-12-09T06:06:00.001-08:00

Judy Fahys and Thomas Burr at the Salt Lake Tribune have a story up as of yesterday regarding a new bill that has wended its way through the US House of Representatives:

Utah's three representatives supported the "Farm Dust Regulation Prevention Act," which passed by a convincing 268 to 150 in the GOP-dominated House, but likely faces tougher going in the Senate, controlled by Democrats.

...Some say the bill would stymie the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's ability to protect public health from dust pollution.

Let's pause for a moment here.

God alone knows it hasn't been an easy run for the staff of the Salt Lake Tribune. "Utah's independent news source since 1871" (independent compared to the Mormon Church-owned Deseret News) was bought by MediaNews Group in the 90s - due to my mom's past life in journalism, we've heard a lot of hard times stories from a lot of family friends as the newspaper business in general has tanked.

With that in mind, I'm going to cut Judy and Thomas some slack and pretend that the loathsome "some say" meme is iron-clad editorial policy at the Trib and not their mistake.

"Some say?" Well, that's nice, but what's actually true?

It's not as though it's a matter of speculation how the bill affects the EPA. I mean, for Christ's sake, the Hill reports that "The Farm Dust Prevention Act, H.R. 1633, ...would prevent the EPA from issuing any new rule over the next year that regulates coarse particulate matter, or 'nuisance dust.'"

So it's a little more than "some say," it's a little more like "actually is." Anyway.

On the House floor, Rep. Henry Waxman singled out Kennecott Utah Copper as he criticized Republicans for refusing to limit the bill to agriculture and undercutting the EPA's ability to protect health.

"The company's mining activities are the single largest source of particulate pollution in Utah and a big reason why the 1 million residents of Salt Lake County breathe unhealthy air," the California Democrat said.

"This bill would exempt all particulate matter pollution from the Kennecott mine and all other mines from the entire Clean Air Act," Waxman added. "Let's be honest, the reason industrial mining operations are pushing this bill has nothing to do with protecting family farms."

"Farm Dust," right

Question: why would the House of Representatives, a body ostensibly staffed by humans with soft, pink lungs, pass such a profoundly anti-lung piece of legislation? Answer: are you an idiot?

So Kennecott-Rio-Tinto bought themselves a nice, greasy exemption from the House regarding particulate pollution - excuse me, "farm dust." Let's see how well-oiled the Senate is.

Filthy Details Of #OccupySLC Crime Wave Revealed!

2011-12-08T15:55:00.001-08:00

The intrepid (and handsome) Jesse Fruhwirth has struck again!

As you may recall, following the eviction of #OccupySLC from it's base camp at Pioneer Park, a Government Record Access and Management Act (GRAMA) request was submitted to the SLCPD. The first of the details have emerged, although by no means all of them.

You remember Jesse, right? He's the guy who metaphorically kicked a chainsaw through the face of a certain owner of a certain vacant lot in downtown Salt Lake City with the Power of Journalism.

Jesse addresses one of the primary justifications given by Salt Lake Police Chief Burbank regarding the eviction of #OccupySLC - namely, that "163 arrests" had been made during the Occupation. Quoth Jesse:

46% of the criminal cases in Pioneer Park were for simple alcohol or tobacco possession (47 liquor cases, 33 for tobacco). 10% were for crimes believed to be charged only on the night of the eviction (curfew, disturbing the peace, obstructing police and trespassing). 9% were assaults of various types. 7% were for warrants (thus not necessarily linked to any criminal activity that occurred in Pioneer Park). 5% were drug cases (3 cocaine, 2 marijuana, 3 paraphernalia). 5% were related to sickness or mental health. 3% were for public intoxication. 1% were for sexual assault (2 cases).

As Jesse points out, citing the above statistics for Pioneer Park as though they constitute some kind of crime wave is ridiculous on its face, and more ridiculous when you realize that about half of the "crimes" that constituted the surge of lumenproletariat misbehavior spurred by #Occupy are nanny-state, petty drug and alcohol violations.

If this is the SLCPD's justification for their display of force and dominance - which was the police equivalent of a treeful of rabid baboons shrieking and clubbing themselves senseless with branches - well, the word "overkill" springs to mind.

#D12

2011-12-08T06:44:00.001-08:00

The General Assembly of Salt Lake City, official Tabernacle pipe organ of the #Occupy movement in Salt Lake City, has released the following statement:

In response to coordinated attacks on Occupiers throughout the world:

As West Coast Occupations shut down their ports and the East Coast Occupiers shut down their waterfront on December 12th, 2011, Occupy Denver has given a call for occupations to organize mass mobilizations across the nation to support these actions. Occupy Salt Lake will stand in solidarity with Occupy Denver and others by disrupting the distribution system of Walmart, an excessively oppressive corporation that is actively destroying communities throughout our nation.

The world's workers at ports and in our transportation systems are under threat by the 1 percent. In Oakland, Goldman Sachs obstructs and opposes the interests of port terminal labor unions. Occupy Oakland stands in solidarity with the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) in their struggle against corporate oppression.

We stand in solidarity with the activists of Egypt's Tahrir Square, where port workers refused to offload chemical weapons being used excessively against peaceful protesters. Actions taken in Egypt against the one percent have inspired communities throughout the world.

They have inspired us to raise resistance against Walmart and other corporate entities who have stripped workers of their right to organize and raise their voices in the workplace -- thus enabling these corporations to pay substandard wages in the United States and abroad. Walmart is one of the most successful players in the global trade system, where money has more rights than people. This system traps workers in poor countries as trasnational corporations like Walmart "race to the bottom" to exploit workers who are most vulnerable. Our economic system should provide incentives for treating workers with dignity and punish those who oppress. If our system here in the United States doesn't reform, we will become a third world nation as our middle class disappears in a very real sense.

Across the nation on December 12th, we will challenge the legitimacy of corporate entities that destroy communities and oppress their workers. We call on the 99 percent -- all workers and activists -- to unite in common struggle. The revolution has begun.

#OccupySLC hub site here . National site here . There's an Art Day scheduled for 12/10 at 10 AM MST at the Occupy epicenter at Gallivan Plaza, followed by a walk to the Leonardo and a discussion/history of activism.

I'll have further updates as they are available and/or security appropriate - stay tuned.

Palate Cleanser: Meet Charley

2011-12-07T10:17:00.001-08:00

As deeply as I drink from the well of bitter disappointment, it's occasionally nice to switch to a sweeter cocktail, preferably one that induces forgetfulness, like the waters of the river Lethe, or Jose Cuervo.

About six months ago my life was notably improved by the addition of a small, furry companion, Charley.

Charley is a three-year-old Brussels Griffon, and is freaking adorable (and surprisingly well-behaved!).

Charley's best canine friend in the world belongs to a neighbor of my parents' named Jan - he is a little white mutt named Toby.

If you, like me, need a little break from news regarding the economy or the environment or the state of income inequality or basically anything that ISN'T a backyard full of sunshine and cute dogs, please enjoy.

BRAEKING NEWS: LADY GAGA VISITS PRESIEDNT!!1!

2011-12-07T08:00:00.001-08:00

Last night's big Economy Speech sure sounded nice, didn't it? It must have hit the right notes, because the punditocracy is gushing about it today and it just about drove Glenn Beck to go full R. Budd Dwyer on us this morning.

It was a selection of just the right series of bromides to launch an Obama reelection attempt. Given the nighmarish, radioactive cannibal clown orgy that is the Republican field, he might even pull it off. Meanwhile, a woman in Texas shot her two children and then herself after being repeatedly denied food stamps, but worry not, peasant: President Obama met with Lady Gaga (I guess the title is official now?) to discuss the urgent issue of school bullying.

A funny little detail about last night's speech jumped out at me, incidentally. In what pundits on networks ranging from CNN to MSNBC to ABC to FOX are portraying as either Marxist Class Warfare (guess who) or a big nod to #OccupyWallSt, Obama calmly intoned:

Ever since [the financial crisis began], there has been a raging debate over the best way to restore growth and prosperity; balance and fairness. Throughout the country, it has sparked protests and political movements - from the Tea Party to the people who have been occupying the streets of New York and other cities.

I was trying to think of a cute way to point it out, but after some consideration I think it's best just to state that I find it remarkable that Obama not only staffs his administration with Goldman Sachs alumni and raises ungodly sums of money from Wall Street firms - he can't even bring himself to mention #OccupyWallSt by name!

As a matter of fact, Obama's tone throughout the speech was critical in vague generalities of the excesses of late-stage capitalism, but mighty thin on specific indictments of banks, Wall Street firms, the whole gang of economic vampires. One of the most consistently infuriating things about media coverage and political treatment of the entire financial debacle from the get-go has been this faux-bewilderment, a disingenuous, head-scratching "gee whiz" bafflement, as though such a complex latticework of fraud and malfeasance just happened, without any blame to be laid specifically at anyone's doorway.

Anyhow. In local news, it's cold as the Dickens, and the air is foul and on its way to fouler. What better weather for an evening of climate-related public affairs?

There is a public hearing tonight regarding plans to strip mine for coal an area near Bryce Canyon Park. The meeting will convene at 6:00 PM MST tonight (come early) at the Salt Lake City Public Library, 210 E 400 S, Salt Lake City. I'll see you there!

Officer Friendly (continued)

2011-12-06T03:03:00.001-08:00

The intersection of political theory and reality manifests itself in very physical, very real ways. Lewis Mumford, in The city in history: its origins, transformations and prospects, writes of Washington, D.C.:

Despite [D.C. architect Pierre] L'Enfant's firm republican convictions, the design he set forth for the new capital was in every respect what the architects and servants of despotism had originally conceived. He could only carry over into the new age the static image that had been dictated by centralized coercion and control. The sole feature that was lacking was the original sixteenth century fortifications, since there was no apparent need for military defense.

While Mumford's comments relate to the layout of D.C. as originally designed (and not specifically to the architecture of the Capitol or White House), and might be read as an indictment of classical architecture generally, I think it's an insight that is worth thinking about.

Our public monuments, and buildings in general, are very real manifestations of ideas. Whether those ideas are a grand republic in the case of D.C. or 21st-century hypercapitalism in the case of the Wells Fargo building in downtown Salt Lake City, those buildings can almost be seen as the calcified protective shells that form when Ideas intersect with Reality.

I note buildings in particular in this regard because they are the largest, and most obvious, examples of what could be called manifested ideology. There are ubiquitous examples of this, everything from stop signs to the AK-47, but one in particular that I would like to discuss: the police officer.

Now, I do not intend to discuss police in general, per se - to make an argument for or against the existence of peace officers as a class of humans authorized to use force up to and including lethal force against other humans. There is a long, hairy, extremely impractical theoretical debate that can be had on that subject, and I'm more than happy to have it, but the point I'd like to make about the police is much simpler.

I'm grateful to the New York Times for the following informative diagram:

Within my lifetime - specifically, in the years after 9/11 - we've seen a phenomenon that is usually referred to as the militarization of police departments in the United States. The NY Times reports:

...the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, and the federal Homeland Security dollars that flowed to police forces in response to them, have further encouraged police forces to embrace paramilitary tactics like those that first emerged in the decades long "war on drugs."

Both wars - first on drugs, then terror - have lent police forces across the country justification to acquire the latest technology, equipment and tactical training for newly created specialized units...Radley Balko, a journalist who has studied the issue, told a House subcommittee on crime in 2007 that one criminologist found a 1,500 percent increase in the use of SWAT (special weapons and tactics) teams in the United States in roughly the last two decades.

That same article in the Times quotes a political scientist from UC Berkeley who notes that competition for status and dollars between police departments leads to additional incentives to amp up the Storm Trooper routine: "The problem is, if you have these kind of specialized units, that you hunt for appropriate settings to use them and, in some of the smaller police departments, notions of the appropriate settings to use them are questionable," says Franklin Zimring.

Now we also have the so-called "1033 program," which scores the rare double distinction of lining military contractor pockets while ensuring that local PDs bristle with equipment like futuristic shock troops in a bad Kurt Wimmer movie:

Through its little-known "1033 program," the Department of Defense gave away nearly $500 million worth of leftover military gear to law enforcement in fiscal year 2011 - a new record for the program and a dramatic rise over past years' totals, including the $212 million in equipment distributed in 2010.

The surplus equipment includes grenade launchers, helicopters, military robots, M-16 assault rifles and armored vehicles.

The police officer is the clenched fist at the end of the long arm of the State. His authority - not in a chain-of-command sense, but in a philosophical one - begins in those enormous, austere buildings in Washington, D.C., whose shadows swallow up the puny individual. When police dogpile a 150-pound, unarmed protester, kneeling on his throat and twisting his spine:

...that is your political economy making a very special guest appearance in the very real, very painful life experience of a fellow citizen.

Notions of "community policing" and police officers as members of (nay, servants of) the public are nice, and certainly a worthwhile direction to push policing in the short term.

But for all that warm, fuzzy, New Left we-love-the-police kumbaya-ing, the point at which the police are your friends ends exactly where your individual circumstance fail to comply with any one of thousands of laws or regulations, entirely at the discretion of the officer shaking you down. Speaking of those laws:

Since the start of 2000, Congress has created at least 452 new crimes...the total number of Federal crimes [alone] as of the end of 2002 exceeds 4,450. Ninety-one of the 452 were contained in new laws that created 279 new crimes, and the remainder were contained in amendments to existing laws. The total of 452 new crimes breaks down by year as follows: 65 for 2000; 28 for 2001; 82 for 2002; 51 for 2003; 48 for 2004; 13 for 2005; 145 for 2006; 20 for 2007.

So to paraphrase the Firesign Theater, should you be worried about Officer Friendly? Hell, no! Just ask the cop on the corner. Ask the cop in front of the bank. Ask the cop in the public park. Ask the cop monitoring your phone, internet, or (if you're lucky!) written communication. Ask him! He'll tell you - nothing to see here, move along.

Mitt Romney, 90-Percenter

2011-12-05T05:21:00.001-08:00

It is a very jaundiced eye indeed that I cast toward pseudo-informational garbage like local broadcast morning news or - god forbid - publications like PARADE.

Despite this fact, and despite the glittering jumble-sale of falsehoods, lies, distortions, and hilariously transparent 'message control' that is national electoral politics in this country, good old Mitt Romney still manages to shock the hell out of me with how craven he is.

Reading a Salt Lake Tribune recap of a PARADE interview with a slick, wealthy politician is sort of like reading badly translated instructions on how to assemble an end table through a pair of filthy glasses in a mirror, backwards.

Here goes:

PARADE's interview -- included in Sunday's paper -- touches on premarital sex and his enormous wealth. Romney...notes that past leaders like FDR and Jack Kennedy were well off too and he gives an answer that might catch the attention of some of the Occupy protesters. [Do tell! -Ed.]

"In the U.S., the very poor are provided a safety net, which must be maintained. The very rich are doing fine. The middle class is suffering," he said. "It is for the great majority of Americans, the 90 percent in the middle, that I'm running for president."

He didn't make it up to 99 percent, but he got close.

After quietly excusing myself to shriek my throat bloody out the window (politeness counts), I returned to this article with two thoughts.

First of all, math is not my strong point and never has been, but I'm willing to bet that a statistician might be intrigued by the idea of a "90 percent middle." Second, it's hilarious that the two wealthy chief executives that Romney picked as his go-to historical examples were both arch liberals -- that's bound to win him as many friends in the GOP base as among progressives.

Again, the one comfort that kicks my cranky hindquarters out of bed in the morning and tucks me softly in at night is how transparently inept the attempts to co-opt #Occupy have been so far. When even Mitt Romney is trying to pander to a movement, you know it's past the steam-gathering stage and getting ready to deploy a wrecking ball or two.

Familiar, Unfamiliar, Uncanny

2011-12-04T08:26:00.001-08:00

Fear and curiosity are so intricately interwoven in my poor rattletrap psyche that sometimes it's hard for me to separate them at all.

When faced with uncertainty, the unusual, or the unexpected, who hasn't experienced that odd combination of repulsion and fascination? All of us live our lives in a flow of sorts.When something happens that jars us, that forces us out of our routine, it resets our perception in a way.

Hereby hangs a tale.

I'm a juvenile-onset diabetic (meaning I have diabetes mellitus type 1). That's the diabetes you get from having a treacherous autoimmune system and an unlucky gene, not the type you get from being old, obese, or sick (that would be diabetes mellitus type 2).

I was diagnosed when I was a toddler, which is very early for someone with type 1 diabetes - it usually manifests itself like the lamest X-man power imaginable around age 11 or so. I have spent a goodly portion of my decades as a diabetic here in Utah.

Many of the high points of my younger days took place at special camps offered for diabetic kids. My stomping grounds were "Camp UTADA," as it was and still is known (for more information on camps for kids with diabetes, UTADA's website is here ). Camp UTADA's summer camp was offered in an appropriately woodsy and distant area, and we did the usual camp things - hiking being one such activity.

UTADA now - image from the Froggy Bottom Quilting blog

I was probably eight or nine - the prime age for nature hikes and an abiding fascination with bugs &c. - when I had an experience that shaped my views on both fear and curiosity quite deeply.

UTADA's hikes were a great chance to get out and burn some calories in the fresh air. We also got the chance to learn a lot about the natural environment that kids and counselors alike sauntered through.

In the spirit of encouraging any budding naturalists in the group, the appointed leader of this particular hike was a biologist from some university or another. He certainly looked the part, with that weird disdain for normal fashion that becomes a sort of narcissistic fashion in and of itself among some academics.

I had a great time. The trail wound through the woods, and the air smelled clear and alive. The sun was out, but the temperature was mild. As we rounded a switchback, a few kids noticed a fairly big-ass grasshopper lying prone in the dust on the trail. Ordinarily, a dried-out grasshopper husk would be quite a trophy, but unfortunately our appraisal of its condition was somewhat off the mark.

The damn thing was obviously dead. It's limbs were frozen in that stately Pharaoh pose that deceased insects favor and its wings were partially extended and dry. But it jumped.

Our little band of naturalists stepped back and formed a circle around this weird phenomenon. The grasshopper carcass was, indeed, hopping jerkily, almost like a popcorn kernel trying in vain to pop on a griddle, or like a Mexican jumping bean.

Then, with no further ado, one side of the grasshopper's abdomen burst outward, and a Horror from Beyond came writhing and wriggling out - a black thread, legless, unlike a centipede or larva or anything I'd ever seen.

As the insect carcass twitched like a small malfunctioning toy, a seemingly endless rope of black, writhing life came pouring out. It was sickening and mesmerizing. Here's an additional photo to give you a sense of the scale of the infestation and resulting hatch:

As the size of the thing became apparent, our brave Naturalist-In-Chief quickly shooed us back, obviously quite shaken by the spectacle. "Get back, kids," he said a little too loudly. A few moments later he herded us well clear of the revolting spectacle and we were on our way.

Like a lingerie insert in the Sunday paper or a particularly grisly bit of news on TV, though, the otherworldly black thread had a strange hold on my mind. It repulsed me and attracted me in equal measure - the feeling was that of wanting to see, because that which I would see was so far from ordinary.

Regarding our friend the black, writhing thread, don't worry about him. Only recently did I bother to track him down and figure out his habits. He is the humble horsehair worm (phylum Nematomorpha), and is perfectly harmless to humans. The horsehair worm is also known as the Gordian worm for his habit of curling his very long, very thin body into a dense knot in water or damp soil.

I think that my inability to look away from Agent Horsehair as he finished his infiltration mission was born of a part of me that thrives on the uncanny.

The Great Gazoogle defines uncanny thusly: "Strange or mysterious, esp. in an unsettling way; 'an uncanny feeling that she was being watched.'" Synonyms are listed as "weird," "eerie," or "mysterious."

painting by Carl Jung

The uncanny, and a plethora of attempts to explain our reaction to it, constitute a rich and deeply-drawn-from well. Freud summarized E. Jentsch's definition of the uncanny as Das Unheimliche;

...The "uncanny" is that class of the terrifying which leads back to something long known to us, once very familiar...The German word unheimliche is obviously the opposite of heimlich, heimish, meaning "familiar," "native," "belonging to the home"...

Freud goes on to say that a better definition of uncanny is that which simultaneously has the properties of being familiar (a big, fat grasshopper) and utterly unfamiliar (a featureless whipsawing nightmare hatching out of the dead). From my (admittedly limited) understanding, this same familiar/unfamiliar tension underlies Otto Rank's Doppelgänger .

painting by Holbein

What all this means to me is that in pondering my experience with the horsehair worm, I think I've figured out my longstanding love of novels, movies, and other art that dwells on the bizarre, the unsettling, and the unusual. That moment when the parasite first broke free of its victim - the moment of suspended reality when your reflection in the mirror slowly moves its hand even though you are standing stock still - the moment that freezes your limbs and your lips and renders you a pair of clear, cold eyeballs that must see what is so un-homelike, so familiar but so lethally strange - that's the moment that drives my love of the uncanny.

It's a moment of pure clarity, uncluttered and fresh, when the old becomes new and the new pushes you further than you ever thought you could go.

Congress' "Ministry Of Peace"

2011-12-02T06:18:00.001-08:00

In an astonishing act of -- let's call a rose a rose -- creeping totalitariaism, Congress has passed a law that erases the distinction between citizens of the United States and so-called "enemy combatants," a charming turn of phrase cooked up by the Bush Administration to sidetrack pesky things like the overwhelming preponderance of international law and various treaties that many US Presidents (including Reagan!) signed in good faith.

While one could view this as an extended hangover from 9/11, or perceived "business as usual" on the part of a new administration trying to keep things flowing smoothly in the consensus department, this is a significant and ominous development in the liberties afforded to not only extralegal detainees, but UNITED STATES CITIZENS AS WELL.

Jose Padilla is an American Citizen

In accordance with what I've come to look at as standard operating procedure, this odious provision was quietly secreted away deep in the bowels of the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act, far from the sub-headings "MEAT" and "POTATOES."

What kind of traitor would raise objections to the 2012 Defense bill? Isn't "Defense" right there in the name, nancyboy?! You want us helpless?! It sounds like somebody forgot about a certain bright September day in 2001...

Then you take a step back, a deep breath, and whatever handful of colorful pills your doctor is experimenting on you with this week.

Barack Obama has an unsettling yen for video games. The practice of a glowing screen and joystick blowing Pashtuns, Pakistanis, and US Citizens living abroad (and possibly talking to a guy whose brother is a driver for a terrorist) into charred, reeking, ropy offal is very well documented. Given this track record, forgive me if the way in which this "compromise" has proceeded gives me the willies.

A "suspected terrorist," held without trial

The original, 200-proof 2012 NDAA was a full-court press by Republicans to lock up anybody, anytime (more or less). Obama, bless his heart, threatened to veto the monstrosity at the time. Via the Taiwan News:

The $662 billion annual Defense Authorization legislation also included a murky compromise on the issue of whether the US government may hold suspected terrorists, including American citizens, indefinitely without trial...

Lawmakers feuded for much of the week on the legislation's affirmation of past judicial opinions that US citizens who sign on with Al-Qaeda or affiliated groups may be held indefinitely without trial.

Senators repeatedly rejected efforts to exempt Americans from that fate, but ultimately voted 99-1 to embrace a face-saving compromise that left the volatile issue to the Supreme Court...Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin insisted that the high court had already ruled "there is no bar to this nation holding one of its own citizens as an enemy combatant."

As of this writing, CBS has some even more alarming tidbits:

The legislation would deny suspected terrorist, even US citizens seized within the nation's borders, the right to trial and subject them to indefinite detention.

Let's break that down: if you are suspected of being a 'terrorist,' you (a US citizen) can be seized, detained, held for as long as they want without even being charged with a crime. Trial? Nope. Release? Up to them.

Not to wax Tea-Partian, but let me make this as in-your-face-as-possible:

THIS IS WHY WE HAVE A CONSTITUTION.

THIS IS WHAT ONCE SEPARATED US FROM AUTHORITARIAN GOVERNMENTS.

CBS continues:

The House-passed bill would limit [President] Obama's authority to transfer terrorist suspects from the U.S. naval facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to installations in the United States, even for trial. It also would make it difficult for the administration to move detainees to foreign countries. [Ed. - that last isn't such a bad thing, really, but still doesn't bar the CIA from engaging in "extraordinary rendition" to move suspects to friendly despotic governments for torture at so-called "black sites." If I sound like Alex Jones, I understand your reaction, but honest to god, Google any of the terms I put in square quotes.]

So what is a red-blooded American to do? Don a tight jumpsuit and leap from the rooftops to fight injustice?

Yes. But before you do that, head this direction (quick! you have an hour or two!):

******

#Occupiers will meet at Gallivan Center's Main St. entrance at 11 AM MST, clad in black hoods to represent the silenced citizens who have, and may in the future, become victims of "extralegal detention" as a result of this unconstitutional legislation.

At 12 PM MST, they will march to the Federal Courthouse at 350 S. Main St. to protest radical and uncalled-for constraints on our constitutional rights.

Tara Bueche, Press Contact for #OccupySLC, can be contacted at tarabueche@gmail.com

Be there or be square! I am, in fact, square, because I have an important job-related meeting at 11 AM :-(

"Co-opt-upy Wall Street," The SEIU, And Leaderless Organization

2011-11-30T05:40:00.001-08:00

Quick update: as of this writing, the police are dismantling the #OccupyLA camp site at City Hall in Los Angeles.

Image from CBS

NPR's write-up here . The Raw Story has a live feed for who knows how long (probably not long) here . CNN's LA write-up (with additional information about the police taking down #OccupyPhiladelphia) here .

The Socialist Worker has a very insightful, very sharp article today entitled "Co-opt-upy Wall Street?" which recounts an #OccupyWallSt event from November 17:

New York City activists from OWS spent weeks planning the November 17 day of action alongside organizers from unions and community organizations, including the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). But when the Occupiers showed up for the day's culminating rally and march over the Brooklyn Bridge, they found a completely different event from the one they had planned.

Instead of a series of platforms for coordinated "people's mics" that had been agreed to at planning meetings, there was a blaring sound system, an emcee and a series of people pre-selected to tell their stories.

Yikes! But exponentially more depressing:

It's true, as the OWS website declared after the raid on Zuccotti Park a few days before, that "you can't evict an idea." But you can steal it. You can empty it of its content until all that's left is a slogan that used to mean something.

For example: "We need a leader willing to fight for the needs of the 99 percent." That's SEIU President Mary Kay Henry announcing the union's early endorsement of a presidential candidate in 2012: Barack Obama, the largest recipient of Wall Street campaign contributions in the history of the world.

A few days later, the SEIU announced plans for a rally in Washington, D.C., because "congressional supporters of the 1 percent blocked President Obama's latest job proposals."...And the name of this early campaign rally in D.C.? "Occupy Congress."

I've had many bones to pick with the SEIU for quite a while, but this "Occupy Congress" nonsense is probably the most disgusting thing I've seen from them recently.

To portray Barack Obama as a friend of #Occupy is loathsome. Most #Occupiers I have listened to in person or online feel about Obama roughly how he feels about Matt Taibbi's "Griftopia":

What this reminds me of more than anything is the way in which Dick Armey's FreedomWorks rapidly paralyzed the Tea Party with its venom and laid eggs in its soft and helpless flesh (if you're curious, my thoughts at the time on the unsettling phenomenon can be found here ).

Ain't no party like a Tea Party

While the Tea Party was co-opted successfully by the Republican Party almost from it's inception, however, #Occupy has so far proved surprisingly resilient to nonsense of that kind.

An interesting thing about #Occupy, at least as I've experienced it, is that the essential structure and processes of the movement lends itself pretty easily to separating astroturf from grass roots, so to speak: anyone who speaks as though they are a "leader" of the #Occupy movement, or tries to hitch #Occupy to a political party or candidate, is probably a liar.

I'm currently reading Peter Gelderloos' "Consensus," which is fantastic. It's an introductory manual to the theory and practice of consensus decision making, which is one type of horizontal (leaderless) meeting structure. Just a few minutes before I read "Co-opt-upy" this morning, I happened upon this passage, which is one of the best summaries of #Occupy I think you could ask for:

People can struggle without being told how to do so. History shows that when governments face an enemy without a leader, whether mutinous workers or an indigenous society, they appoint one, and then negotiate, co-opt, assimilate, and control. A leaderless opposition is the hardest to defeat.

#Occupy Crackdowns Coordinated By Feds? (Part 3)

2011-11-29T06:30:00.001-08:00

(Initial post here , follow-up from yesterday here . Information about #OccupySLC can be found here , here , and here .)

Last night a friend of mine tweeted me the following:

She is referring to a meticulous blog post by Joshua Holland, syndicated at Alternet, that takes a hatchet to Naomi Wolf's piece in the Guardian ("The shocking truth about the crackdown on Occupy"). Quoth Holland:

There has been a flurry of speculation surrounding various reports suggesting that a "coordinated," nationwide crack-down on the Occupy Movement is underway. The problem with these stories lies in the fact that the word "coordinated" is too vague to offer any analytic value.

The difference between local officials talking to each other -- or federal law enforcement agencies advising them on what they see as "best practices" for evicting local occupations -- and some unseen hand directing, incentivizing or coercing municipalities to do so when they would not otherwise be so inclined is not a minor one. It's not a matter of semantics or a distinction without difference.

Holland goes on to point out, as Wolf did in her original piece, that federal intervention / coercion / whatever term would avoid "semantics or distinction without difference" in Holland's world would constitute a violation of US constitutional law.

One of the original would-be debunkers of the coordination story, Angry Black Lady, also takes issue with Wolf's claims. Well, more than takes issue with - she basically calls Wolf a fraud and an idiot:

Frankly, it has been appalling to see the left so deftly manipulated by those who likely have agendas that don't square with Occupy Wall Street's. [Here ABL is referring to Philip Anschutz, owner of Examiner.com, where the "coordination" accusation first appeared.]

...

Are various mayors and cities talking to one another? I'm sure they are. Are they receiving advice from the feds? I'm sure they are. ..[But] if homeland security, the FBI and federal law enforcement officials were working in concert to violently crack down on the Occupy movement, that would be a huge deal. If -- as Naomi Wolf baselessly charged -- the feds were being ordered to do so by Congress and the White House in order to protect their personal wealth, it would (and should) be a significant scandal. But, again, there is no evidence to support her claims.

Fair enough.

A major quibble that both ABL and Holland have is the involvement of the Department of Homeland Security -- to clarify, I don't think DHS was in any way involved in the crackdown in Pioneer Park. I would be curious to know when and how the SLCPD made their plans for the action.

With the Freedom of Information Act and the Government Records Access and Management Act on the side of sunshine and liberty, that shouldn't be too hard -- right?

#Occupy Crackdowns Coordinated By Feds? (Continued)

2011-11-28T10:20:00.001-08:00

Please forgive my periodic absence of late - my home internet has been acting up, and between that and Thanksgiving, a mini-breather seemed in order.

As I mentioned more than a week ago, there is a fairly convincing case emerging that the Federal Government in the guise of one agency or another definitely helped -- and may have played a lead role -- in coordinating the brutal series of high-profile, "show of force" evictions of #Occupy protesters in many cities across the US, including good old Salt City Central.

Since the initial story broke that los federales almost certainly had a hand in the tactical coordination of many cities' ridiculously jackbooted, overfunded and militarized police forces, one article in particular has been rocketing around #Occupy on social media. Naomi Wolf wrote it and it was published in the Guardian under the tag "The shocking truth about the crackdown on Occupy":

...just when Americans thought we had the picture -- was this crazy police and mayoral overkill, on a municipal level, in many different cities? -- the picture darkened. The National Union of Journalists and the Committee to Protect Journalism issued a Freedom of Information Act request to investigate possible federal involvement with law enforcement practices that appeared to target journalists.

...To Europeans the enormity of this breach may not be obvious at first. Our system of government prohibits the creation of a federalised police force, and forbids federal or militarised involvement in municipal peacekeeping.

I noticed that rightwing pundits and politicians on the TV shows on which I was appearing were all on-message against OWS. Journalist Chris Hayes reported on a leaked memo that revealed lobbyists vying for an $850,000 contract to smear Occupy. Message coordination of this kind is impossible without a full-court press at the top. This was clearly not just a case of freaked-out mayors' city-by-city municipal overreaction against mess in the parks and cranky campers.

Good for the NUJ and CPJ for submitting an FOIA request regarding this coordination.

Which reminds me, we have a home-grown Peewee version of the FOIA here in Utah, the Government Records Access and Management Act (GRAMA), don't we? We do!

And look what I happen to have photographic evidence of right here:

To whom it may concern,

Under Utah's Government Records Access and Management Act (UCA 63G-2-201) Occupy SLC and Jesse Fruhwirth request to inspect all records obtainable under the act held by Salt Lake City Police Department that pertain to Occupy SLC beginning with June 9, 2011, to the present. To be clear, "all records obtainable under the act" includes electronic records, communications, voicemails, e-mails and police reports.

...

This request is parallel to an electronic GRAMA request made of the Salt Lake City Mayor's office for records pertaining to Occupy SLC from June 9 to the present, submitted Nov. 15.

Sincerely,

Jesse Fruhwirth

Occupy SLC

I'll have further information and/or updates as they develop on this front. Attempting to determine whether what went on qualifies as a "conspiracy" seems a little premature at this point to me -- all available information should be gathered about what was and was not discussed at any "coordination" before people get too excited.

It does seem at first glance that there is a top-down, widespread effort on many levels to crush #Occupy, though - god knows a guy like Glenn Beck would have had a freaking field day with about 1/10th of what has been revealed here.

A Festive Cornucopia Of #Occupy Misinformation

2011-11-23T10:32:00.001-08:00

Today, NPR featured an interesting (and useful!) piece called "For Thanksgiving, Debunk Your Family's Chain Emails." Fortunately for me, I do not come from a family that would necessitate such an exercise, but it's still handy to note an intriguing detail from the introduction:

...as part of our Message Machine partnership with NPR, [the St. Petersburg Times'] PolitiFact has put together this handy guide to chain emails and other viral messages. Hide it under the green bean casserole and you can pull it out if your uncle brings up the chain emails.

You should start by telling him that the emails are nearly always wrong. PolitiFact has checked 104 claims from emails and rated 80 percent of them "False" or "Pants on Fire." Only 4 percent of the claims have earned a "True."

The emails, heavy on exclamation points and ALL CAPITAL LETTERS, are typically sent by conservatives who dislike Obama. Lately, though, we have seen a new phenomenon on Facebook, where liberal supporters of the Occupy Wall Street movement have been spreading messages, some of which aren't accurate.

Dealing with this statement from a purely microcosmic level, I can vouch for its accuracy. #OccupySLC has a robust Facebook community - there is a general "discussion forum" open to all posters, and subforums with limited posting rights for non-admins for the Free School, the former Kitchen (and now food) operation, etc.

I have been encouraged slightly by the general atmosphere of #OSLC's online presence. There has been the usual froth of detritus that any online community picks up - the trolls, the weirdos, the semi-literate - but for the most part it has been rowdy, inclusive, and interesting. It surprised me recently to run into two definite and one possible example of the aforementioned FW: FW: FW: OBOWNOW'S AMERIKKKA garbage. Names have been changed to protect the ignorant.

First up: FEMA camps! If you haven't run into this conspiracy theory before, the gist of it is that the US government is building "FEMA evacuation camps" near large civilian centers to use as concentration camps. From the #OccupySLC discussion forum:

The "coffins" bit was a new angle - the special ingredient in that variation seems to be that in addition to camps, the squeaky-clean neatniks in the New World Order have ordered body bags for the would-be victims of their treachery.

One guy pointed out that even if the government were going to kill a bunch of people, it would just dig a mass grave (as is usually the case) instead of dropping $200+ per victim for a fancy polyurethane bag. Another response I liked:

Zing! Actually, the "pay to play" nature of the conspiracy theory itself is a theme we will return to in a moment. Moving on, I happened upon this retrofitted beauty, originally meant to crank the blood pressure of the anti-Obama / Tea Party crowd:

A more thoroughgoing fraud than whoever wrote this would have removed the wingnut watermarks, such as "Obeyme" and the inexplicable dig at "community organizing." Dealing with the work of a master craftsman or no, the #OSLC crowd jumped on this one pretty quickly:

Bingo: "passing over legitimate outrages for stuff like this just seems petty."

With my last example, we return to the question of paying to even hear the crazy-assed conspiracy in question. In this case, "conspiracy" isn't quite the right word. A while ago, a quasi-cultish organization produced a vile little film called "What The Bleep Do We Know Anyway" -- the latest update, which is being guerrilla marketed and word-of-mouthed to hell in #Occupy circles, is called "Thrive."

Where "What The Bleep" sought to turn physics into new-age pseudo-religion, however, "Thrive" seems* to seek to combine left-liberal economics with life sciences and possibly space aliens in some kind of E. O. Wilson nightmare hybrid.

A quick-witted respondent to a Facebook thread about a screening of "Thrive" noticed the following, however:

"IM OUT" indeed, my friend.

So far, the online community/ies of #OccupySLC seem to be self-regulating fairly well if somewhat chaotically, much like the real-life General Assemblies (one of which is taking place tonight at 5 PM at the One World Cafe, located at 41 S 300 E, SLC).

* - I say "seems" because, full disclosure, I have not seen the entire film yet.

Surprise: When State Senator Margaret Dayton Says "Utah Values" It Means "Destroy The Earth"

2011-11-21T06:31:00.001-08:00

Photo by Laimis Urbonas

If you were to ask a group of ten long-time Utahns why they love this state, I'm willing to bet that at least eight of them would say "the natural beauty" or some variant thereof.

It's a gorgeous place to live - the mountains, the canyons, the red rock, all of it. We have a diverse and amazing assortment of natural goodies, valuable both for their own sake and for the tourism and recreation revenues they haul in.

Photo by Robert Riberia

Unfortunately, Utah is also a state dominated by extremely right-wing politics. One of the longest-standing divides in the state is between outdoorsy types (environmentalists, recreation enthusiasts and hunters/fishers) and developers.

The belittling shorthand used to dismiss people who kick up a fuss when corporations lay waste to natural landscapes used to be NIMBY - an acronym for "Not In My Back Yard" - as though opposing the destruction of your own back yard were somehow unusual or unreasonable.

The newer, snappier belittling shorthand is now BANANAs - an acronym for "Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything." I think that's a bit unfair. I'm in favor of building upwards and consolidating living spaces, which actually would provide plentiful work and revenue for developers if they weren't greedy bastards whose only thought regarding wild landscapes is how cheap and easy they are to ruin and how much cash they squeeze out of them in the process.

This is not a good time for NIMBY BANANAs. Last week, Judy Fahys wrote the following for the Salt Lake Tribune:

Lawmakers this week fast-tracked plans to revamp the state's environmental oversight boards, shrinking the five panels along with their powers. ...

Contents of the 186-page bill were a secret to [environmental nonprofits] and other members of the public until Wednesday's first hearing on it, when it won overwhelming support of the Natural Resources, Agriculture and Environment Interim Committee.

What the bill does, in essence, is make the citizen panels that have until now had a say in appealed permits and the like much smaller. It also shifts their original powers over to the executive director of the Division of Environmental Quality, which is an awful regulatory apparatus long captured by the industries it supposedly oversees.

Shepherding the desires of amoral corporations and their loyal servants into law was State Senator Margaret Dayton, R-Orem. On the off chance that anyone thought she was doing the Earth a favor, she made sure to attach a caveat:

Dayton began her presentation on the bill with a kind of disclaimer by saying that, although she believes the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is unconstitutional, it is important to ensure Utah equips its own agency to carry out environmental mandates with Utah values in mind.

Senator Margaret Dayton, R-Orem (photo by Trent Nelson)

Which "Utah values" would those be? Good question.

Usually when a Utah politician uses that phrase, it's code for "I'm LDS, and will vote the way the Church tells me to." In rare and special instances, however, "Utah values" apparently means "complete and total submission to big-money interests at the expense of Utahns." Let's see who Margaret "values" Dayton was representing and working with:

The stakeholder group, which met on Oct. 13 and 14, had four industry attorneys, two current environmental board members, one past member, a representative from the radioactive waste company EnergySolutions and HEAL director Christopher Thomas, who was only able to attend a half-day of the meetings. Other environmental community members were invited but did not attend.

Other than the obvious (a complete domination of the group by industry-friendly flacks), two things stand out about this to me. First: you have to have a truly impressive poker face to call that group a collection of "stakeholders" without busting a gut. Second: what the hell is an "environmental community member?" I would think every member of a community would qualify, but that's probably just my NIMBY-ism showing.

It's no surprise that Dayton is so eager to strip the last few rotting fangs from environmental protections in Utah. In her last campaign, she raised $4,500 from the real estate industry, the largest contribution from a coded industry source. She also raised $1,750 from the nuclear industry, $1,100 from "lawyers and lobbyists," and $1,050 from oil and gas ( source ).

Predictable? Sure. Acceptable? Absolutely not.

According to Dayton, she plans to hold at least one public hearing on the bill before it goes out for a vote (but she isn't required to do so, as the bill is a committee bill). So far, such a hearing hasn't been scheduled yet. Once it is, I plan on attending and encouraging activists from any and all organizations interested in environmental issues to attend as well.

Grandstanding Jackass Tries To Cash In On #Occupy

2011-11-19T15:24:00.001-08:00

Representative Ted Deutch, D-FL, member of the House Judiciary Committee, might have a good heart deep down, but I sincerely doubt it.

One of the websites I keep in my RSS feed is ThinkProgress. It's a blog with a reliably "new Left" / progressive slant. I try to read news from a variety of ideological perspectives, and it's good to keep a pair of left-Democrat lenses handy.

I consider this a valuable exercise for many reasons, but the primary purpose is to make sure that my bull$h!t detector has fresh batteries and still works on "my side" as well as on those with whom I disagree.

Today I was pinged with the headline "Rep. Deutch Introduces OCCUPIED Constitutional Amendment To Ban Corporate Money In Politics."

Well there's something you don't see every day, I thought. Let's crack that sucker open.

In one of the greatest signs yet that the 99 Percenters are having an impact...

Okay, I have to say that right off the bat this sentence made me want to scream. Be very wary of anybody - blog, pundit, anybody - who says or imply that they speak for the #Occupy movement. There's only one organ capable of producing genuine, #Occupy-approved communique, and that's the horizontally-oriented love feast of a General Assembly (or a likewise-empowered subcommittee). Keeping that in mind, and that sentences like the above instantly put me on the guard for pandering and lies, let's resume:

In one of the greatest signs yet that the 99 Percenters are having an impact, Rep. Ted Deutch (D-Florida), a member of the House Judiciary Committee, today introduced a [constitutional] amendment that would ban corporate money in politics and end corporate personhood once and for all. Deutch's amendment, called the Outlawing Corporate Cash Undermining the Public Interest in our Elections and Democracy (OCCUPIED) Amendment...

That's just precious.

Who is Ted Deutch, Hero of the Common Man?

He was elected to Florida's 19th district and has served since 2010. In his first year of Congress, Representative Deutch has sponsored nine bills and co-sponsored 152. Of those combined 161, a grand total of zero have passed. Zero, none, a big old goose egg.

Meantime, in his run for Congress, then-Citizen Deutch raised a total of $215,330 in campaign contributions from "Real Estate, Securities & Investment." I intentionally only picked industries that are so rotten with fraud and malfeasance that they totaled one of the largest economies in the history of Planet Earth.

While he was scooping up wads of finance industry and speculator money, Deutch did manage to raise a paltry $62,000 from public sector union PACs.

When a man who is largely financed by ...well, finance... introduces something as transparently Quixotic and bound to fail as a constitutional amendment banning corporate personhood and money in politics it's pretty obviously pandering. When that same man has not successfully sponsored or co-sponsored a bill yet, it's either entertainingly dumb or depressingly crafty - take your pick.

I know that #Occupy isn't a short-term operation. If anything, it might take five to ten years, or even a generation, for this country to shake itself loose of the shackles of the kleptocracy that has been built for us, and I don't imagine the process will be free of nasty compromises or difficult choices.

That said, #Occupy has proven itself to be wise in one important way - unlike the Tea Party, it seems perfectly content so far not to engage at all with a national politics so corroded that it needs to have significant portions of its deep structures cut out and replaced to be at all viable. From where I look at it, #Occupy's victories so far have been small but its sights are set far enough ahead and on big enough goals that none of the infotainment detritus of our advanced media culture has affected it too much.

When jackasses like Ted Deutch, Ron Paul, or Barack Obama try to pander to #Occupy, they seem to be unaware that many people just aren't speaking that language anymore.

#Occupy The Homestead

2011-11-19T08:11:00.001-08:00

It seems that while I was otherwise preoccupied this last week, an interesting and (so far) experimental new phase in the strategy of national #Occupy protests was launched.

Adbusters, the situationist anti-capitalist magazine that originally incubated the idea of the national #Occupy protests, published a blog post on 11/9/11 that reads:

Throughout the day [of strikes and protests that shut down a major US port in Oakland, CA], there had been talk of escalating #OCCUPY from being a movement to take the squares into a movement to reclaim foreclosed space. The tantalizing idea of turning bank-owned, dormant buildings into radical housing, squats and community spaces floated amongst the encampment.

This is a direction that has enormous potential.

Unlike the use of force to remove #Occupy protesters from public encampments like the one in Pioneer Park - which ultimately is a simple matter of enforcing curfew or anti-camping ordinances - evicting committed activists from bank-foreclosed properties will provide an interesting wrinkle for the political/financial status quo.

Many foreclosures, you see, are actually proceeding quite illegally.

Illustration by Victor Juhasz from Rolling Stone

Matt Taibbi wrote a jaw-dropping piece about foreclosures in the US a year ago for Rolling Stone. The whole thing is worth reading - you can find it here. An excerpt, regarding the so-called "rocket docket"s that have been established to speedily process foreclosure cases:

The rocket docket wasn't created to investigate [wrongdoing by banks]. It exists to launder the crime and bury the evidence by speeding thousands of fraudulent and predatory loans to the ends of their life cycles, so that the houses attached to them can be sold again with clean paperwork. The judges, in fact, openly admit that their primary mission is not justice but speed. One Jacksonville [FL] judge, the Honorable A.C. Soud, even told a local newspaper that his goal is to resolve 25 cases per hour. Given the way the system is rigged, that means His Honor could well be throwing one ass out on the street every 2.4 minutes.

If you have time, give the whole article a careful perusal when you have a minute. The evidence that is right there in plain sight, out in the open, regarding fraud and criminal malfeasance on the part of banks throughout the foreclosure process is pretty astonishing.

This is why #OccupyHomes has such potential. The banks emphatically do not want these foreclosures examined in court. Anything that slows down that rocket docket, or, worse, that brings foreclosures and the legal processes attached thereto into the spotlight, has the potential to do enormous damage to the power imbalance that large financial institutions have so carefully accumulated.

Google "vampire squid housing bubble"

Minneapolis, MN is leading the way so far. #OccupyMinneapolis (that has to suck as far as Twitter hashtags go) is taking what I sincerely hope is the first of many stands.

A loose-knit coalition of activists known as "Occupy Homes" is working to stave off pending evictions by occupying homes at risk of foreclosure when tenants enlist its support. The movement has recently enjoyed a number of successes. [We conducted a radio interview with] Monique White, a Minneapolis resident who is facing foreclosure and recently requested the help of Occupy Minneapolis. Now two dozen of its members are occupying her home in order to stave off eviction.

The Huffington Post has another write-up of Ms. White and her supporters here. #OccupyHomes has a twitter feed here .

I'll be keeping an eye on this emerging #Occupy effort. Exotic banking and finance frauds and their bureaucratic necromancers fear the sunlight, and rightly so.

For Every #OccupySLC Protester You Bust In The Park, There's One In Your Financial District

2011-11-17T14:05:00.001-08:00

#Occupy national hub here . #OccupySLC hub here . Twitter here .

Earlier today - at 11:09 AM MST, to be exact - I received a glorious piece of news.

Moon Base Alpha, the second #OccupySLC base camp, formerly located at the vacant lot across the street from the Fed and now located in Gallivan Plaza, is still standing.

That's right - like a Persistent Sinus Infection of Justice, it has outlived the mighty antibiotic that was the SLPD's recent raid on the original #Occupy base camp in Pioneer Park.

And yea, though they pitch their tents in the valley of the shadow of massive financial institutions, they shall fear no evil, apparently. While the cops were kicking down #Occupy's sand castles in Pioneer Park, it seems that the clever denizens of Moon Base Alpha worked out some sort of quasi-formal compromise to keep their camp as long as it stayed tiny, remained completely drug-and-alcohol-free, and kept a "low profile" before during and for a brief period after the police action against the base camp.

There was a sparsely populated literature table (I'll see what I can do about that):

I got there before anybody had really gathered.

From where Moon Base Alpha (AKA the new base camp, I guess?) is located, you could spit and hit the City Weekly (although I wouldn't recommend it, they have put a few ducats in Stephen Dark's pockets, and that's worth something).

#Occupy's two most devoted fan bases, police officers and Fox News, were both on the scene:

Pretty soon, the crowd started to collect in Gallivan's entrance.

A note about #OccupySLC's collection of bums, anarchists, and weirdos: somehow, despite our lack of investment in gold bars or our unwillingness to listen to Sean Hannity's radio show, we manage to get quite a bit done. When we noticed it was a little chilly, for example, a few #Occupants set up a plaza-approved, #Occupy-funded propane heating lamp, fueled by the tank below:

You might be able to make out the little -y4 on the tank. The rest of it reads "Occupy4." I was there for the acquisition, numbering and loose distribution planning of propane tanks, and the whole operation worked on principles of horizontal organization (read: "anarcho-collectivist principles") and went off without a hitch. Despite being ousted from Pioneer, trust me when I say that #OccupySLC is doing a great job of keeping track of resources and responsibilities, and, in closing on that subject, thank the Lord for social media.

Soon, Deb and Alexis engaged in everybody's favorite outdoor fall activity: street theater!

We stuffed as many people onto the front doorstep of Goldman Sachs at 222 S. Main Street as we could, right in the heart of Salt Lake City's financial district downtown. Organizers made sure that the sidewalk was clear enough to walk past on, and that none of us jaywalked (no, I'm not kidding, and if you wonder why we cared about jaywalking, try "getting the attention" of the police some time and you'll find out what the full possible penalty for each and every petty offense in the world is).

A few people were interviewed by various media outlets before and after.

It was fun and a little goofy. Tomorrow is the culmination of the thing, and I will probably go to it (same place, same time - about noon at 222 S. Main, but it starts at the entrance to Gallivan Plaza right across the street).

Officer Friendly

2011-11-16T09:12:00.001-08:00

There's a photograph I would like you to look at.

Courtesy of the Associated Press. The caption reads: "Seattle activist Doris Rainey, 84, reacts after being hit with pepper spray during an Occupy Seattle protest, Nov 15, 2011 at Westlake Park in Seattle."

Many of us grew up in the suburbs, and heard over and over that the police are our friends, that they are here to protect and serve, &c. &c. I honestly think that most friends of mine who have positive impressions of the police are not being contrarian - I think that many of them have had few interactions with cops at all, and that those few have been from an unrecognized position of privilege.

Even so, would the people who taught us to respect and obey the police have believed this picture? Would they have even let children see it, or would they have considered it "too graphic?"

Whose side are the police on?

#Occupy Crackdowns Coordinated By Feds?

2011-11-16T06:07:00.001-08:00

[Edit: Please see below for an important caveat]

I have never thought of myself as overly trusting of authority, especially police authority. It had never occurred to me that the similarities between the #OccupySLC crackdown and other police incursions in other cities were anything other than coincidence or shared "best practices."

Stop what you are doing right now and read this piece from Examiner.com (emphasis mine):

Over the past ten days, more than a dozen cities have moved to evict "Occupy" protesters from city parks and other public spaces. As was the case in New York City, each of the police actions shares a number of characteristics. And, according to one Justice official, each of those actions was coordinated with help from Homeland Security, the FBI and other federal police agencies.

The official, who spoke on background to me late Monday evening, said that while local police agencies have received tactical and planning advice from national agencies, the ultimate decision on how each jurisdiction handles the Occupy protests rests with local law enforcement.

According to this official, in several recent conference calls and briefings, local police agencies were advised to seek a legal reason to evict residents of tent cities, focusing on zoning laws and existing curfew rules. Agencies were also advised to demonstrate a massive show of police force, including large numbers in riot gear. In particular, the FBI reportedly advised on press relations, with one presentation suggesting that any moves to evict protesters be coordinated for a time when the press was the least likely to be present.

This raises a few questions, all of them of critical importance.

Did Chief Burbank or other top figures at the Salt Lake Police Department receive "advice" or "training" from federal officials on how to handle the #OccupySLC protesters?

More importantly: did the SLPD's plans for invading Pioneer Park predate the death of an itinerant man that supposedly led to the eviction of protesters? If so, by how long? How much of the substance of those plans came from federal agencies?

I'm not going to jump to conclusions here, but the SLPD has some serious questions to answer.

[Update/Edit: Angry Black Lady is calling bull$h!t on this, and based on her indictment of Examiner.com as a source, I have to say that until further confirmation is given, take this with a grain of salt. These are still questions that the SLPD needs to answer, however - if they were negotiating "in good faith" with #OccupySLC while planning a massive crackdown, I'm not sure they understand what "good faith" means.]

[Update/Edit2: Well, the AP is confirming most of the details. I'm going to go ahead and say that while Examiner.com is not the greatest source, they did get the scoop this time.]

On The Art And Practice Of Utopian Meeting Structure (A Cautionary Tale)

2011-11-14T20:39:00.001-08:00

Once upon a time, I took a course at the University of Utah called "Neighborhood Democracy" - for all I know, now Professor-City-Councilman Luke Garrott, who used to be plain old Professor Luke Garrott, is still teaching it. As far as political science courses are concerned, it still stands as one of the best I've ever taken - Dr. Garrott was and is a fantastic professor, and it wasn't until relatively recently that I fully realized why I got so much out of his classes.

I should have caught on sooner. When, for example, we were assigned Jane Mansbridge's Beyond Adversary Democracy, a book that is about the art and practice of that most Utopian of meeting structures - the non-adversarial small-d democratic model (also known, for those who are into the whole brevity thing, as "unitary democracy"). Mansbridge is excerpted in an informative and succinct fashion here.

The trick to which I should have wised up sooner was Dr. Garrott's expert use of techniques of unitary democracy - none particularly original, but all of which I would recognize in one form or another later - within the classroom itself.

My first experience with radical participatory meeting structures was infuriating.

I was bound and determined that I would never go back to that class again. I'd dipped my toe into Luke's inviting communitarian lagoon, but this was ridiculous. I did the reading, I raised my hand, I had contributions to make to the class. This was how it was in a lot of my classes - I was (and remain) an arrogant, impatient little $h!t. Waiting for Luke to call on every... freaking... class... mate... no matter how ill-prepared or poorly worded their contributions were... did he think I was insane? Was he insane?

It was only over time that I grew to appreciate the method to his madness - and the key word there is "grew."

Radical participatory democracy in the classroom forced me to grow as a person. I learned to keep my trap shut, to practice active listening. If I found myself tuning out of someone's remarks, I forced myself to listen harder. In slow stages, I became much more tolerant of meeting fatigue; "Neighborhood Democracy" is a service learning course, so I not only had to practice these new and exhausting models in class but in meetings outside of classroom hours as well. I attended roughly one thousand community council meetings, over three or four different council districts. I got so involved in the neighborhood politics and real-life issues of Salt Lake City's West Side that I made it my more-than-full-time job, completing a year's term of service with Americorps.

These early meetings were my gateway drug - it wasn't until I started participating in and (more importantly) observing General Assemblies at #OccupySLC that I found the rush I was looking for, however.

And unfortunately this is where my tale takes a turn for the sad and cautionary.

None of the meeting structures I participated in before #OSLC were truly radical in their approach to democracy, despite what I thought at the time. Simple inclusiveness was a huge step and a learning experience for me, but classes, council meetings and nonprofit organizations were still hierarchical. In each case the 'leader' was the professor, chairperson, or director(s). There was a clearly defined role for each person, some of which were "above" other roles. All participants were encouraged to speak their minds rarely and mostly listen but at the end of the day the leader controlled the agenda and "moved things along" toward a strictly action-oriented goal.

#OSLC was and is another kettle of fish entirely. Authentically leaderless, it can take three hours to accomplish a seemingly simple task like pick five subcommittees or requisition a budget. At the same time, the group is capable of writing an extremely excellent press release from an aesthetic or tactical point of view in less than an hour - reaching complete consensus.

I have not found the magic cipher to crack the #Occupy movement's meeting code yet. The structure is deceptively simple and off-puttingly inclusive. Everyone speaks, everyone gets a chance to wreck the entire voyage - yet somehow, things get done, and more importantly, minds get changed in the process.

Be honest with yourself - when was the last time you attended a meeting where someone changed his or her mind, let alone one where you did?

If I seem zealous about #Occupy's meeting structures, as easily mockable as I've acknowledged that they are, it's because they seem (so far) very difficult to replicate outside of the #Occupy Movement's specific time and place.

As a counter-example - a cautionary caveat to my praise of radical unitary democracy - I offer a meeting I attended tonight.

It was with an ostensibly "liberal" organization (I am swiftly learning that "liberal" and "radical" are rarely, if ever, the same thing). This organization uses the same cosmetic techniques that #OSLC does - ridiculous little "sparkle" hand gestures to indicate approval or disapproval, "stacking" speakers with a sort of affirmative action in place to promote women speakers and speakers of color, &c.

Despite this, to call this group "leaderless" would be a grave insult to the #OccupySLC that I have experienced. It would, in fact, be a disgraceful, awful comparison.

The organization whose meeting I sat in on tonight is completely personality driven, and has been since its inception. The entire discourse over the course of two and a half hours was dominated by three, maybe four speakers, all female, all longstanding "Core" members.

The few dissenting opinions that wriggled free of their domination of the conversation were swiftly and thoroughly strangled to death "because of time constraints" while the members of the aforementioned Politburo were allowed to drone on interminably whenever one of them wanted to make her opinion known. Tension ran high, but I didn't feel like it was the creative, productive tension of an #Occupy General Assembly - it felt stifling and dread-inducing. Near the end of the meeting, the facilitator announced that if anyone had questions about #OccupySLC they should ask so-and-so, or such-and-them...or Charles! I reacted poorly, but in my defense it was because for a second I had a vision of the same "Core" hijacking my beautiful, weird, rare and special #Occupy. It was a dumb and selfish reaction.

For constructive criticism's sake, here are a few of the most key organizational lessons that I feel the bad meeting's group could - and should - learn from #Occupy.

First: 'Stand up and stand back.' If you find yourself - even as facilitator - talking too much, you're talking too damned much. Wait to make a point until you have a good one to make. Then wait some more. Then make your point. You have now contributed, and you should wait a little while before you pitch back in.

Second: identify quieter voices and amplify them. If you notice someone - and you will - who isn't participating, it may be by choice, but more likely something about the meeting is putting them off their proverbial feed. Ask politely - or pass a note to the facilitator to ask - if that person would like to throw something into the mix.

Lastly: rotate, rotate, rotate. Some people are born facilitators or speakers, while others are natural wallflowers. The only way to keep a "natural" hierarchy from developing is to make sure that the same faces don't keep showing up in positions of authority. Keeping a free-flowing mix of people in different jobs will force you to grow and learn, which is Wheaties for the soul (screw chicken soup).

Radically democratic meetings are hard work, I won't lie. Letting the conditioning we've all received since childhood take over is easy - people will naturally fall into "followers" and "leaders." I've learned, though, that something vital is lost in that process: and process, by my reckoning, can influence results more than you might think.

#Occupy Updates : Cops Crush Portland, Denver

2011-11-14T09:07:00.001-08:00

Over the weekend, #OccupySLC wasn't the only protest having difficulties with Officer Friendly and his ilk.

#OccupyPortland was disassembled by police, according to the AP:

Several hundred protesters, some wearing goggles and gas masks, marched past authorities in a downtown street Sunday, hours after riot police drove Occupy Portland demonstrators out of a pair of week-old encampments in nearby parks.

#OccupyDenver met a similar fate, according to the Denver Post:

Tensions between police and Occupy Denver reignited Sunday, a day after 17 protesters were arrested when officers cleared the sidewalks of a makeshift encampment.

Three more protesters were arrested Sunday, while a Denver police officer and a Colorado State Trooper sustained minor injuries in a shoving match over a table used to serve food.

#OccupySLC's Eviction : Taking Stock The Morning After

2011-11-13T07:31:00.001-08:00

In my last post I detailed how the Salt Lake Police Department, in a massive display of force, swooped in on the #OccupySLC Base Camp on the evening of 11/12/11 and demolished the entire thing, evicting all the longstanding #Occupants of the settlement.

#OccupySLC has released a statement to the media regarding last night's police action. An excerpt:

As the sun was setting on Salt Lake City last night, scores of police from several different agencies occupied 400 South and 400 West outside of Pioneer Park to shut down the camping operations for #OccupySLC. Those wishing to remain steadfast in their belief in the meaning of occupying public space were arrested. Eighteen demonstrators were handcuffed and sent off to the county jail while another demonstrator was released with a citation. All those arrested were picked up by 2:00 AM and were promptly picked up by supporters.

There were no incidents of physical violence from those occupying or the police. Police shoved one protester to the ground, but little else outside of the exorbitant amount of vehicles and equipment was excessive...

...While #OccupySLC does not agree with our camp being torn down and questions whether our constitutional rights to free speech have been violated, it is clear that the police's restraint from physical violence facilitated a situation where basic human decency was not attacked. This is in stark contrast to the much more violent evictions that took place last night in other cities.

(Emphasis mine)

I agree with this statement on two important counts: first, that the amount of police, vehicles, etc. was ridiculous. Second, that despite this fact, the SLPD did show restraint and there was a heartening lack of violence throughout the proceedings.

Wondering what newly reelected Mayor Ralph Becker thinks about the eviction of #OccupySLC? Wonder no more! He has released an official statement from the Mayor's Office - here's an excerpt:

Following the tragic death at the Occupy SLC encampment in Pioneer Park Thursday night, Salt Lake City will no longer be issuing overnight free-speech camping permits anywhere in the City.

Multiple City agencies have participated in creating ordinance exceptions to allow for Occupy SLC to carry out their protest since early October by way of camping on public property. It is now clear that public health and safety are at risk, and the most appropriate course of action is to accommodate the Occupy SLC movement in ways that do not include overnight camping. Protest participants have been advised that they may not sleep overnight at either encampment after tonight [11/11/11].

Media postmortems of last night's police action are as follows: Fox 13 here , KSL here , KUTV here with an angle about the Gallivan Plaza protesters, ABC 4 here , and the Salt Lake Tribune here .

A note about those postmortems: reports of #OccupySLC's death have been greatly exaggerated.

Today at 12:00 PM MST, high noon, there is a rally at the City County building. At 4 PM MST at Pioneer Park there is a General Assembly. There are street theater events planned for Gallivan Plaza for just about every day this coming week (more details on that as they are nailed down).

The first (and hopefully not only) issue of "Notes From Occupation: An Occupy SLC Newsletter" made it off the presses just in time to be distributed prior to and during the eviction:

Good stuff. It has an excellent variety of perspectives, and includes some fascinating interviews with different participants in the movement.

Perhaps most encouragingly, there is already a meeting scheduled regarding the Free School and People's Library - which at this moment exist only in theory and memory - in a week or so.

As the pre-raid #OccupySLC press release stated eloquently (I paraphrase): you can tear down #OccupySLC's tents, but you can't extinguish their light.

#OccupySLC: Now There Is Nothing But Ruins

2011-11-12T20:51:00.001-08:00

In my post yesterday, I said of the SLPD that I did not think they were bluffing about shutting down #OccupySLC's longstanding Base Camp in Pioneer Park. I was correct.

Since I've written a bit about #OccupyTheFedSLC's camp on State Street (and later at Gallivan Plaza), and because I received a personal invitation to be there for the showdown, that's where I started. The weather was nasty - spitting rain, and later, snow. Thankfully I was warm and cozy voting an IWW SLC GMB into existence during an earlier snow flurry.

I quickly heard from some of the #Occupants at Gallivan that the real action was going to be at Pioneer Park.

I arrived at Pioneer Park as groups were separating into the "arrestables" and "nonarrestables." The anarchists pulled their masks or kerchiefs over their faces, the legal observers and ACLU folks put on their orange vests and IDs, and I produced from beneath the folds of my coat the world's most ghetto-assed press pass:

I have to say right now that I caught more $h!t for this press pass than I have for anything I've worn in public since middle school. The CBS camera-guy ranked on me. The ABC camera-guy ranked on me. An independent journalist who wore a complicated rig with three or four cameras on it snapped my picture and laughed uproariously when I produced this "pass" and fumblingly pinned it on. It was hilariously lame of me to wear that thing - and it didn't help!

The cops laughed at me when I asked to stay and shoot photos and video, then asked me a few times to leave and stop filming and so I did. The guys from ABC / CBS / etc. continued to film away. That sucked - next time I'm going to drop a few ducats on something that looks more official. The way I figure it, using a press pass is like using a cross against a vampire: you have to believe in it and/or imbue it with authenticity to make it "work." I don't know.

Soon after we separated into those willing to go to jail and those unwilling or unable to do so, the cops arrived, and moved immediately into the crowd.

I got an urgent call at that point from an unindicted co-conspirator of mine who told me that a mass movement of police was on its way. I was skeptical. I shouldn't have been.

They even brought a bulldozer and a dump truck, courtesy of the City, to "take down structures more easily" (read: bulldoze the tents of #Occupants).

Soon enough, the arrests began.

To avoid the stigma of "evicting" homeless "tenants" from the park, the SLPD (considerately) offered to transport anyone who needed a ride to the Road Home overflow shelter in Midvale.

Two stretch vehicles (a Hummer and something else I didn't recognize) showed up. Apparently #OSLC rented some storage units, and a wealthy gentleman whose name I did not catch [Update: Mr. John Netto] provided the vehicles to transport peoples' belongings there if they needed them secured.

As I was wrapping up and leaving, I tried to get an official arrest count. As far as I can tell 19 people were arrested. One of them was Jesse Fruhwirth.

I remember when the crazy, idealism-driven scramble of tents and structures first emerged at Pioneer Park. I remember seeing how the kitchen tent became the Circle-A Cafe. I remember watching the flow of bizarre ideas, zines, pamphlets, crankery, and poetry that would circulate around the Free School and the People's Library.

Now there is nothing but ruins.

There is a General Assembly in Pioneer Park tomorrow at 4 PM - no curfew violation, perfectly legal.

I'll see you there.

#OccupySLC Update: 11/11/11

2011-11-11T18:36:00.001-08:00

A quick roundup of news summaries for today so far: KSL here , Fox 13 here , KUTV here .

An itinerant man named Mike died last night at the #OccupySLC main camp in Pioneer Park. While an official cause of death hasn't been established yet (as far as I know), that hasn't stopped the Chief of the Salt Lake City Police Department from publicly speculating, or some local media sources from conjecturing about, drugs or an indoor propane heater.

This happened the day after a large nocturnal fight brought the SLPD to Pioneer Park, where one man was charged with aggravated assault and a few more received minor alcohol charges. "In response to these events," Chief Burbank has ordered all #OccupySLC camps vacated by tomorrow night. This includes the second #Occupy camp, which was not involved in the Pioneer Park incident(s) in any way.

Today at 2 PM, an emergency GA was held in Pioneer Park.

This was followed by a series of working groups, and a concise but informative presentation by representatives affiliated with the ACLU on what your rights are and are not with regards to la policia.

This was followed by another GA to adjust and unanimously approve a statement to the media from #OccupySLC, and a brief commemorative candlelight vigil at 5 PM MST.

The speakers included the Reverend Tom Goldsmith from the First Unitarian Church, a homeless man whose name I did not catch who knew Mike, and Dr. Rebecca Hall.

#OccupySLC's hub site is here . You can go there and read the press release for yourself. Here's an excerpt:

We at Occupy Salt Lake City are deeply saddened by the tragedy that has happened. Our neighbor who died was a volunteer in our kitchen and supported the Occupy Movement's concerns about the system. It is a tragedy that society allows so many incidents like this to happen every year.

In 2010, 54 of our fellow Salt Lake City citizens died due to issues related to homelessness. In 2009, it was 58.

We understand the city's concerns about this situation. Let's be clear: we have been providing food, shelter, and health care services. To react by shutting this down will lead to more people dying alone, cold, hungry and without shelter. A productive approach from the city would be to provide more resources to solve these problems: eliminating our assembly is combative and counterproductive.

I'll have more tomorrow from one or both camps as sundown approaches and the SLPD's deadline gets closer.

I don't think the SLPD is bluffing: a few hours after Burbank gave his ultimatum, the City came by and re-posted the "NO TRESPASSING" and "NO CAMPING" signs that have been absent since #OSLC was granted a permit to #Occupy the park:

#OccupySLC : Chief Burbank Sets Showdown For Sunset On Saturday

2011-11-11T11:28:00.001-08:00

Today, a dead body was found at #OccupySLC's Base Camp in Pioneer Park. Reports are still unconfirmed, but the most detailed news report so far (thanks, SL Tribune!) says:

...it appears the victim died from a combination of carbon monoxide poisoning and a drug overdose...officers pulling contents from the tent about 11:20 AM found a propane heater. A tarp was draped over the tent itself, possibly restricting ventilation.

First off: a propane heater in your tent is extremely dangerous. DO NOT DO IT. Furthermore, draping your tent with a tarp is also dangerous. DO NOT DO IT.

It has now been confirmed that Chief Burbank and the SLPD will begin arresting protesters who refuse to leave Pioneer Park or Gallivan at "sundown" tomorrow. I will be attending any and all meetings between now and then, and also will be present at the park at the commencement of the showdown.

This also follows an unfortunate instance in which a "pre-dawn riot" (read: fistfight between drunken idiots) broke out last night at Pioneer Park. According to the Trib:

A 43-year-old man who said he was in charge of crowd control for the protest claimed that Jesse Jaramillo, 31, hit him on the head with a board during the fight.

Jaramillo was arrested for aggravated assault along with several others arrested for public intoxication and alcohol violations, the police said. He was among four people booked into jail, the statement said.

Aside from the obvious bad press, the consequences of a security meltdown at something as tenuous as #OccupySLC should now be obvious. Advocates for itinerant people in both aforementioned articles from the Tribune have been banging the drum to close #OccupySLC's camps because they believe that they are encouraging folks to sleep outdoors instead of in a nice, warm shelter like the Road Home.

I can see that argument for its merits, but I still think that shutting down #OSLC completely is brutal and unnecessary overkill. Medical outreach - which #OccupySLC was in the process of securing - and additional agency resource from social workers etc. would make a lot more sense.

Structural Engineering For Hippies And Anarchists

2011-11-10T05:44:00.001-08:00

Over the weekend, a remarkable transformation occurred at the #OccupySLC Base Camp in Pioneer Park that I did not want to let pass unremarked upon, despite the hubbub of recent events at #OSLC's second camp.

Due partially to the ad hoc nature of its construction and largely to an unfortunate snowstorm, the Kitchen Tent of the Circle-A Cafe - the anarchist collective that has been feeding everyone at Pioneer Park, itinerant and #Occupant alike, for free since the protests began - collapsed. What has replaced it is fairly extraordinary.

First of all, a quick word about structures at #OccupySLC. A recent feature piece at the Huffington Post about #OccupyWallStreet's plans for the coming New York City winter (and preparations elsewhere) features a piece of wisdom we here on the Wasatch Front have already known for at least two or three weeks; wooden pallets!

Yes, the humble wooden pallet is de rigueur for #Occupations this season. With winter breathing down our gooseflesh-rippled necks here in SLC, winterization is becoming a top priority at both the original Pioneer Park Base Camp and the brand new Gallivan Plaza Camp. I've seen a variety of structural approaches to cold nights and frozen ground, ranging from the sad and small and probably very uncomfortable...

...to the large and organized...

...some carefully reinforced...

...to the just plain crazy.

The new camp at Gallivan Plaza, formerly of 147 S. State Street, is much smaller and more organized than the one at Pioneer Park (so far), but this is to be expected, as it is a second step, and some of the lessons learned from step one proved very valuable (i.e., plan ahead - one larger tent at the second camp actually integrated a hot tub cover into its foundation and was nice and toasty inside last time I checked).

Despite this, the new Kitchen Tent at Pioneer Park is probably the most impressive structural achievement so far - heavy emphasis on "so far," as one enterprising gentleman has plans to deploy a hexayurt he just has lying around apparently.

The design and construction were spearheaded by Jesse Fruhwirth and Joe the Greenhouse Builder. Jesse has a Twitpic of the original sketch and plans:

Joe is currently without a permanent address, and has joined the #Occupy camp. He lent his skills to the construction of the initial design:

Perhaps coincidentally (or perhaps the Universe is trying to tell me something about good citizenship and kale?), I received the following email shortly afterwards:

Saturday: Hoop House ConstructionDate: Saturday, November 12
Address: [Redacted]*
We'll be gathering this Saturday for our first Skills Workshop! Using a pipe bender to precisely bend 10-foot metal conduit tubes, we'll be making metal arches for the frames of winter hoop houses. These can grow lettuce, kale, and other cold-loving plants all winter!

Some form of Jungian universal transmission of knowledge is surely at work here.

* - If you are interested in this workshop, please contact me and I will send you the information.

#OccupySLC Update: The SLPD Comes Through For Moon Base Alpha

2011-11-08T18:20:00.000-08:00

A quick update: after extensive negotiations by Chief Burbank, the SLPD, Salt Lake City Council and #OccupySLC, the former #Occupants at 147 S. State have been granted permission to move to Gallivan Plaza, right in the heart of downtown, with ample access to Main Street, TRAX, and the financial skyscrapers that were integral to the selection of #OccupyTheFedSLC's original State Street site.

My personal appreciation goes out to everyone here in SLC who helped this situation reach not just a peaceful conclusion, but one that is really an improvement for everyone - the ownership of the vacant lot, #OccupySLC, the SLPD, everyone.

#OccupySLC State Street Update: Hurry Up And Wait

2011-11-08T14:44:00.000-08:00

As of yesterday, the situation seemed to be that #OccupySLC was set to lose its second camp, currently still standing in the vacant lot at 147 S. State Street that used to be the Radio City Lounge and for the last two years has rotted away in weed-and-trash-choked desolation. A representative of the property management company that "maintains" the lot...

That's some quality maintenance

...told #OccupySLC campers to vacate the area or be arrested for trespassing. The #Occupants, who had removed trash and weeds from the area before setting up about eight tents when inclement weather forced them away from their original post in front of the Salt Lake City branch of the Federal Reserve, decided yesterday that they would stay and face arrest "at daybreak" today (as the SLPD put it).

Taking them at their word, I showed up this morning around 7:00 AM MST. So did four carloads of media on stakeout (and numerous other journalists who drifted through during the morning):

The assembled #Occupants were ready:

#OccupySLC Base Camp at Pioneer Park sent over the world's largest thermos of coffee, and numerous people (including Deb Henry ) also brought assorted goodies. People made signs, shook off the night, and everyone waited for what we thought would be the imminent arrival of the police.

And we waited.

Jesse Fruhwirth has an epic blog post about Leo F. Wells, the president of the trust company that owns the lot and threatened to have #Occupants arrested. A choice bit (read the whole thing):

...the entire investment vehicle appears to be a scam for Mr. Wells to skim off the top to the detriment of his investors. The real estate trust - that is to say, the investors, many 99 percenters - are charged 4.5 percent for maintenance of the properties owned by the trust while independent sources say 1.5 percent is customary in that industry.

Yikes! Jesse also tracked down Mr. Wells' phone number (not replicated here as the SLPD is apparently already negotiating with Wells' company and there has already been a deluge of calls this AM):

A gentleman actually showed up and wanted to put in an offer to buy the lot and let #Occupants stay, apparently out of a truly epic sense of mischief and Quixotic do-goodery, but it didn't pan out. Still, it was nice of him to try (that's him on the phone):

So we waited to either hear from Mr. Wells' duly appointed representative or the SLPD.

...and we waited...

...and what was the outcome?

According to the Salt Lake Tribune (and reports we heard second hand from Lt. Ross) the police are currently in a "holding pattern." Has Wells blinked? Is the SLPD going to come through like a jolly jack-booted Santa Claus and deliver #Occupants a compromise?

We'll see!

#OccupySLC Camp At 147 South State And The Police

2011-11-07T17:51:00.000-08:00

Today I did not think I would be writing extensively about Moon Base Alpha, as I've affectionately dubbed the #OccupySLC camp on the vacant lot across from the Fed branch office where the Radio City Lounge used to sit. I stopped by both Base Camp at Pioneer Park and the newer offshoot, which began as an action in front of the Fed and established a camp at the lot when snow fell and the protesters were not allowed to erect shelters where they had been legally protesting.

At almost the exact moment I stopped by Moon Base Alpha, I was informed that a man identifying himself as a property manager had approached multiple campers and asked them to leave. When asked who he represented, he gave the campers a business card, and informed them he represents the vacant lot's owner, and had called the police.

Pretty quickly, two police officers showed up. One of them asked me to leave the property, so I moved to the sidewalk:

To his credit, he told me momentarily that until we figured out the situation, I was free to move closer and film, which I did.

Seth, one of the #Occupants, proceeded to have a conversation with him:

At this juncture, a series of Tweets I had sent out (yes, I have one of those awful things here ) elicited a response from Jesse Fruhwirth, who told me he had contacted Salt Lake Police Lt. Ross, who was on his way. This was the case:

As soon as things calmed down a bit, we were informed that both Chief Burbank and Mayor Becker had been contacted about the situation, the parent company (in Georgia?) was being contacted, and the police had to confer. They did so:

We then got word that the order to leave had been verified by the company and those camping on the vacant lot at 147 South State had "until morning" to leave. Supporters had shown up (thanks, Social Media!), and there was a discussion, the contents of which I will divulge at much greater length after they have been properly hashed out.

By which I mean: tonight there will be a Town Hall at the Downtown Public Library, starting at 7:30 PM MST (but it would be a good idea to come early). I'll post more as I know more.

Lastly, the media showed up, which was good of them, but there wasn't a lot to film (just background footage for a later report, I'd imagine):

Tomorrow morning might prove more eventful.

Disgraced Symbol of American Corruption Pens Self-Pitying Mea Culpa

2011-11-07T09:05:00.000-08:00

Jack Abramoff is sorry.

He's sorry for what he did. Gosh, he didn't know it was wrong when he did it, but now that he's had some time to think about it (federally subsidized time in a white-collar "minimum security prison camp" in Cumberland, MD), why, it was a crime, the way he behaved - taking all that money, rigging the system, bilking the rubes and living high on the hog during the Bad Old Years of Republican one-party rule during the high tide of the Bush Administration.

I rock the Boris Badenov look much fresher than Abramoff

Of course, everyone else was doing it. Don't get Abramoff wrong - he may be sorry for what he did, but he wants to make damn sure that everyone knows that his accusers are as guilty as he is. What Jack Abramoff did was wrong, sure, but what he was really guilty of was being good at the game, baby, going with the flow even though that flow washed him over the line of the law.

Abramoff's new autobiography, idiotically titled "Capitol Punishment: The Hard Truth About Washington Corruption from America's Most Notorious Lobbyist," is his attempt to reinvent himself, as the title suggests, as a teller of "hard truths." I don't know how long it took Abramoff to crap this opus out, but if it were a callow attempt to cash in on the current wave of populist rage against the Wall Street / Washington / K Street nexus, it would surprise me not one bit.

Eliot Spitzer and Bill Clinton were both great at this look. One day a politician will be so sorry that his lower lip will fold over the top of his head entirely. I will enjoy that.

God bless whatever hard-bitten, cynical copy editor managed to slip a sly question into the AP's headline at the Washington Post: "Abramoff the reformer? Notorious lobbyist writes a call to action to stop special interests" it reads. When the WaPo cocks a cynical eyebrow at such a made-for-TV, all-American attempt at self-reinvention and redemption, you know that you are dealing with a complex and unique species of scumbag.

Perhaps the one redeeming feature of this morning's tepid review of Abramoff's book is this welcome news:

Abramoff is now out of the lobbying business, but the father of five has returned to the home he shares with his wife in the Washington suburb of Silver Spring, Md., and is promoting the book, including an interview airing Sunday on "60 Minutes." Authorities have said in court they are looking into using the book proceeds to help repay a $23 million restitution order to his victims.

While Abramoff's standard of living is hardly going to dip significantly (note the above reference to his posh suburban homestead) it will be a great victory for justice if not a damn penny of Abramoff's book or promotional proceeds ever find their way into his pockets.

It's worth taking a moment, before discarding this lying reptile's opinions as the predictable garbage that they are, to remember who he is and how he got so famous.

Matt Taibbi has an excellent write-up of Abramoff's exploits up to 2006. A summary:

En route to his day of reckoning, Abramoff really did travel each and every right-wing highway, from Jo-Burg in the old days to the Bush White House. But he's being sentenced for only the last few miles of that trip. It's almost an insult to a criminal of Abramoff's caliber that the charge he'll go to jail for is a low-rent wire-fraud scheme committed in a pickpocket capital like Miami Beach. In that one, Jack and his cronies claimed to have $23 million in assets when he didn't have a dime, and he persuaded financial backers to purchase a $147.5 million cruise-ship casino empire. A nice score for a Gotti child, maybe, but a bit gauche for the wizard of the Republican fast lane.

The other charges are a little more respectable. He took tens of millions from Indian tribes that sought relief from Washington on gaming-industry questions, illegally pocketing millions in lobbying fees and evaded taxes on his ill-gotten gains.

James Harding provides a repulsive footnote to Abramoff's dealings with those Indian tribes (among others):

Where to begin examining the extraordinary career of Jack Abramoff? His work trying to secure a visa for the great Zairian kleptocrat Mobutu Sese Seko, perhaps, or the bilking of an estimated $66 million out of Native American tribes, clients he described as "monkeys," "troglodytes," and "idiots?" Or his leadership of a 1980s think tank financed, unbeknownst to him apparently, by the intelligence arm of South Africa's apartheid regime?

Yes, that's Jack Abramoff. And now he's back, with a book, to tell us how awfully corrupt the whole show is, including those who helped put him behind bars. From the aforementioned AP article:

Abramoff dismisses the reforms [passed after his prosecution] as toothless. He says there are more effective ways to get powerbrokers to do a client's bidding, particularly political contributions that he says should be banned from lobbyists or anyone receiving federal contracts or otherwise benefiting from public funds...He writes in the book that most of the senators who were vilifying him [at his trial] were hypocrites who had taken thousands from his clients and firms.

I'll grant him that. Sending Abramoff to Cumberland minimum security camp for a few years changed exactly nothing. Hell, Brett Loper, a former lobbyist connected to Abramoff co-conspirator Michael Scanlon, was appointed Speaker John Boehner's policy director as recently as April.

In a country with a memory as short as that of the United States, is it impossible that even an irredeemably terrible man like Abramoff can pull off a second act as a finger-wagging moralist? It's possible. Before you scurry off to Wal-Mart to pick up his book, though, a final word about how sorry Abramoff is:

[Abramoff] often charged $150,000 a month instead of an industry standard closer to $10,000 a month. It's a practice he defends in his book because of the results he says he delivered.

The Media's Strange Relationship With Ron Paul

2011-11-06T09:04:00.000-08:00

Ah, Ron Paul. I can think of very few political figures who inspire such bat-$h!t, unwavering (and some would say myopic) devotion in his followers. It's a curious phenomenon, one I'm not sure I understand completely. Paul doesn't have the gift for oratory or good looks of Barack Obama, or the fiery, off-the-cuff populism of Chris Christie.

Yet there they are, the "Paulites," at Republican events, at town halls, at protests, wearing their Guy Fawkes masks (lately and clumsily co-opted by #OccupyWallStreet), holding up signs clamoring for a "Ron Paul rEVOLution" (see, they put the backwards 'love' in revolution - which sounds kind of ominous to me, frankly).

Even Ron Paul looks kind of confused and distressed by this sentiment

The media also doesn't seem to know quite what to make of Paul (I'm actually watching Congressman Paul on Fox News Sunday right now - it's been a very strange program). Take today's Reuter's story: "Ron Paul declared winner of Illinois Republican straw poll:"

Ron Paul was declared the winner on Saturday of a weeklong Republican presidential straw poll in Democratic President Barack Obama's home state of Illinois.

That's quite the lede, Reuter's. Ron Paul, libertarian-except-when-it-comes-to-abortion, riding high in the Socialist home state of our Usurper in Chief!

Before you move your retirement into gold and run Old Glory up the flagpole in preemptive celebration of a new Red (state) Dawn in America, however, read a little closer (emphasis mine):

Texas Congressman Paul won 52 percent of the combined 3,649 online and in-person votes cast between October 29 and Saturday evening. He won 66.5 percent of the votes cast over the internet and 8 percent of those cast in person.

Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney earned 7 percent of the online votes cast and 35 percent of the in-person votes cast at 22 locations, the party said.

So, to parse: Paul won a landslide of online votes and virtually no polling-place votes, while Romney won the polling-place voting by a fair margin while collecting a microscopic quantity of internet votes.

On a planet populated by organisms with large brains and the ability to transmit information by reading and writing, a media outlet like Reuters might choose an "angle" for this story such as; there is an interesting disparity between online support and polling-place support for candidates in the Republican primary. Why is this?

It's a good question. Ron Paul is widely considered President of the Internet: his online support is so deep and well-organized that his followers invented the moneybomb, a new, weaponized form of online fund-raising that was first deployed back in 2007.

Maddeningly, the media still repeats each Ron Paul "victory" that involves online polling as though it represents a phenomenon that would or could translate into actual, physical-world electoral victory. Perhaps this is at least partially because of the media's other fixation with Paul - a fixation in which Paul plays the role of eyeball-grabbing circus freak.

That would explain the "Ron Paul's Fake Eyebrow" $h!tstorm that briefly rendered the Republican primary debates marginally entertaining (normally Hermain Cain would fulfill this function but something about him gives me a sour stomach). This is a role I've seen libertarians play frequently in national politics, which is unfortunate, since I admire at least some libertarians' philosophical gravity and consistency. However, the role of jester is probably theirs to enjoy as long as they keep turning themselves blue with colloidal silver like Montana libertarian Stan Jones:

I don't know. Most of us enjoyed the Smurfs as kids - maybe an internet-fueled libertarian insurgency DOES stand a snowball's chance. Stranger, more awful things have surely happened.

#Occupying The Winter Of Our Discontent

2011-11-05T10:25:00.000-07:00

Last night was a particularly brutal one; Mother Nature is either A.) signalling her abiding love of the savage, predator-eat-prey horrors of the free market, or B.) enfolding #OccupySLC in a blanket of temporarily chilly but quite beautiful and eventually insulating snow. I'll leave it up to you, but whichever motivation is at work, the assault/embrace continues as we speak.

Last night around 10:00 PM MST the line between snow and rain had yet to be distinctly crossed, and so that horrible, sludgy half-sleet, bane of tent-dwellers everywhere, was falling hard. I stopped in at the #Occupation at Radio City / the Fed to drop off a comforter and some blankets, and to take part in a group discussion on where things are headed on that front.

The Tribune has a decent article up in their Money section on the 'new tent city' (I still don't like that term, as real tent cities - inhabited by vast swaths of newly homeless, foreclosed Americans - dot the US landscape with virtually no media coverage). The Trib article is literally the only media coverage on the new occupation of the vacant lot where Radio City used to be, but it hits all the pertinent points:

Occupy SLC protesters who have been demonstrating around the clock in front of Salt Lake City's Federal Reserve Bank at 120 S. State St. have erected a new tent city in a nearby vacant lot. No tents or tarps are allowed directly in front of the Fed building.

"We've got 10 tents there now," said protester Seth Walker, noting that his Occupy the Fed group picked up trash and mowed weeds to prepare the encampment.

This last is important. The #OccupyTheFed SLC camp is, in part, based on the principle of improving the vacant lot where they've erected their tents, and they're off to a good start. As the article notes:

Radio City Lounge stood on the [vacant] parcel for 63 years until real estate investors demolished the former jazz/dance venue in 2009, said protester Jesse Fruhwirth.

Sure - a jazz, dance, and sodomy venue!

Before it was demolished in 2009, the Radio City Lounge (or 'RC Lounge') was "the oldest gay bar west of the Mississippi," operating as such for at least 61 of its 63 years.

Image ca. 2009 by plasticfootball

At the end of its storied history (which was admittedly somewhat sordid - but what old building doesn't have a few skeletons rattling around the maintenance tunnels?), the RC Lounge was torn down, and since then the vacant lot has been neglected by a series of corporate owners, slowly devolving into a weed-and-hornet-choked nuisance.

One of #OccupyTheFed SLC's goals is to improve this property. They will do this to bring attention to the neglect the property has suffered at the hands of real estate speculators. I don't want - and I'm sure #Occupy also doesn't want - to derail this into a discussion of squatter's rights , but not-plans (because such plans could in a hypothetical situation constitute a possible hypothetical violation of the law) to construct a mural and/or greenhouse - this last not-plan possibly thwarted by weather, but we'll see - have been bandied about.

Another question involved #OTF SLC's General Assembly and its relationship to the larger #OccupySLC General Assembly at Pioneer Park (and also the Working Gatherings at the Downtown Library). The general feeling I got is that it's a totally reasonable idea for each individual encampment - Pioneer Park in one case, Moon Base Alpha as I've affectionately dubbed the #OTF encampment in another - to have its own General Assembly. For the purpose of unity (and especially regarding plans for large actions) it was also generally agreed that there should be a "Super GA" that meets less often, probably at the Downtown Library. From what I understand this plan will be put forward at a coming Working Gathering.

Some sour news as a coda to this. While the meeting at #OTF was wrapping up (someone even brought a delicious chocolate cake!), I got a text from a friend of mine.

All of her gear at Pioneer Park's Base Camp - a camping rig worth a not insubstantial sum of money - had been ripped off. She was hurt and pretty pissed - she's not rich (few of us 99%ers / #Occupants are), and this was a foul thing to do to someone on such a nasty night. She wound up crashing at a friend's nearby for the night.

She is a genuinely good person, a gem even among the generally cool folks at #Occupy. Even though she was a little steamed, she made an excellent point:

"It's snowing and wet," she texted me. "Someone needed that tent more than I did."

Four Weeks In, #OccupySLC Is Strong And Growing

2011-11-04T13:16:00.000-07:00

Yesterday marked the fourth week that #OccupySLC has been, variously; operating a Base Camp with an astonishingly well-developed infrastructure, successfully participating in an ongoing experiment in radical democracy and collective decision-making, and, now, expanding their operations to include a few well-planned and very savvy actions.

Technical Difficulties Update

Currently, the electronic infrastructure for #OSLC is back up and running thanks to the hard work of the GA's "series of tubes" subcommittee. Due to personal events, William Rutledge is no longer acting as spokeshuman for #OSLC, so please do not email him (he's a nice guy, but has other things to deal with right now).

The #OccupySLC hub is here . An excellent list of Facebook groups, ranging from individual subcommittees to discussion groups, can be found right there on the front page - I would use the #OSLC Facebook page(s) as your primary electronic means of updates.

There is a very decent twitter feed you can track here , but the "official" #OccupySLC Twitter account is in flux right now. The City Weekly (OCCUPIED!) has a retweeting system up that's a pretty good clearinghouse. Jesse Fruhwirth , dapper citizen journalist and unapologetic member of the hated liberal media, also has a Twitter feed worth following for updates. Of course I myself tweet updates, informational links, and clown jokes, so check that action out too.

Base Camp

The biggest news I heard at Base Camp had to do with the ongoing efforts of the Winterizing Committee, who are working at least as hard as the kitchen staff. The humble Free School (which has plans to expand with additional speakers, a bigger library, etc.) looked to be in sad shape:

...but that's because yonder structure:

...which made me shed a silent tear for Buckminster Fuller, will soon be a more semi-permanent, weather-proof location for the Free School and People's Library, in addition to any other small-scale inside gatherings. I think this is genius - this framework will be reinforced with tarps (obviously) and weights around the edge, forming a sort of MacGuyver-y yurt that will last all winter long.

People are collecting donated materials that are smart additions to the camp infrastructure - lots of PVC and pallets to reinforce tarps and shore up warmer tent-clusters.

The Outreach folks are on point:

The Circle-A Cafe is still humming along, and always looking for volunteers to wash up, serve food (a Food Handlers' Permit is always a plus there), etc.

I dropped by some donations, including a funnel - funnels are always needed, so if you have one that you're not using for anything (for example, I have not used my "put booze into a flask" funnel for more than a year, so the hell with that thing) feel free to drop it by.

I met my Fellow Workers from the IWW the previous day at the park, incidentally, where we staged a sparsely populated but nonetheless lively march in solidarity with #OccupyOakland, ending with a rally (of about ten people - fear our might, bosses!) at the Public Safety Building:

Eat Your Heart Out, Athens

That title is not a dig at the recent outbreaks of violence following the General Strike in Greece - I don't necessarily support open conflict with police, especially not unless extraordinary circumstances demand it, but I also think that the "austerity measures" being implemented there are awful and that some degree of open revolt was a predictable result.

Rather, I am referring to Athens, birthplace of democracy. Last night's meeting - 'Forum?' 'Working Gathering?' I sort of like the latter - was a sterling example of self-organizing democracy, with quick announcements from subcommittees followed by a break up into working groups that got a surprising amount done in less time than was actually allotted for the endeavor.

There was some trepidation at first because of a mix-up booking the meeting room in the library, but a helpful librarian got us squared away quickly and things proceeded smoothly.

A lot was accomplished by the various break-outs. Some quick highlights (in no way a complete list): volunteers are needed for a street theater event (contact Jesse Fruhwirth ). The plan for a General Strike on November 25th is proceeding, and a working group is adjusting the nuts and bolts on that one (I've heard a call for a General Strike / "buy nothing day" followed by a "buy local day," which is a plan that I think has merit).

After break-outs there were some brief announcements (as I mentioned, the meeting ran very smoothly and actually a little ahead of time). Some students from a college (I didn't catch which one) distributed health questionnaires to all of us "Occupants," which gave me the opportunity to answer HAVE YOU BEEN SEXUALLY ACTIVE DURING #OCCUPY? with a big, fat "NO." I get the impression that their class is attempting to provide health outreach to the long-term campers at Base Camp, and that probably would have been a better place to start than a public meeting/working group at the Downtown Library. A different group of college kids circulated a petition to lower state tuition, and that one got a lot of traction.

After a quick announcement about winterization and the coming group efforts to get things ship-shape we cleared out in an orderly fashion; chairs stacked, tables neatly put away, and not a Molotov cocktail to be seen.

#OccupyTheFed SLC : An Apology And An Update

In my original posts about #OccupyTheFed SLC, I fear I didn't take the offshoot of #OccupySLC's Base Camp as seriously as they deserve. It's true that Ron Paul literature and and plans for a November 5th action were off-putting for valid reasons (#OccupySLC rejected and continues to reject political candidates, including Ron Paul, Lyndon LaRouche, and beloved liberal goofball Rocky Anderson). Despite this rough beginning, #OTF has opened a brave new front in #OccupySLC that is quite noteworthy.

It seems that a piece of property near the Salt Lake branch of the Federal Reserve (it's also within spitting distance of several banks, including Chase) has been left to rot, much like the fabled Sugar Hole (for you non-Utahns: a developmental nightmare that has resulted in a large, semi-permanent fenced off crater in what used to be a charming, older mini-downtown).

First up was a quick word from S. Doe about why this location:

This was followed by a brief 'Know Your Rights' presentation by unembedded academic Rebecca Hall, who did not participate in, know about, or endorse in any way any action that in any way violates the law:

It was a chilly night, and eventually the Johns and Janes Q. Public engaged in a little guerilla civic improvement:

Remember, Nation-Wide Bank Transfer Day is coming. The goal is to have your money out of the big, bailed-out monstrosities and into local credit unions by November 5th. Resources can be found here - note, this is not an endorsement by myself or #Occupy of these organizations as anything but tools to take action against corrupt banks given the current situation and options that are available.

Move Your Money Project

Rebuild the Dream's "Move Your Money"

Credit Union resources:

'A Smarter Choice'

'Find A Credit Union'

Credit Union National Association

Four weeks! New fronts, old stand-bys - I'd say at this point #OccupySLC is definitely the place to be.

Fracking and Earthquakes : Science Weighs In On Blackpool Tremors

2011-11-02T16:05:00.000-07:00

From The Terrifying Science Desk

I am opposed to "fracking" (hydraulic fracturing) for a variety of reasons, ranging from the aesthetic to the common-sense environmental to the economic.

That said, I've heard some people on the periphery of the green movement mutter darkly about a possible connection between hydraulic fracturing and earthquakes, and that made me a bit skeptical. The "frack-quake" scare tactic always struck me as more Dr. Weird than Dr. Science.

I may very well have been wrong.

Still hopping mad that even one yokel bought that "Climategate" nonsense

God help us all, it turns out there may be some hard science to back it up (it's still developing).

Here's the BBC (emphasis added):

...Six protesters from the campaign group Frack Off climbed a drilling rig at one of [energy firm] Cuadrilla's test drilling sites in Hesketh Bank, near Southport [in the U.K.], ahead of the [newly released] report. They oppose the controversial extraction method which pumps water and chemicals underground at high pressure to shatter rock formations and release gas, claiming it can be unsafe....Cuadrilla suspended its shale gas test drilling in June, over fears of links to nearby earthquakes. One tremor of magnitude 2.3 hit the Fylde coast on 1 April, followed by a second magnitude 1.4 on 27 May. A study by The British Geological Survey placed the epicenter for each quake about 500m away from the Preese Hall-1 well, at Weeton, near Blackpool.

Is this definitive proof that fracking causes seismic instability? No.

Is it strong evidence that we need to study the hell out of this technology before implementing it as the "solution" to our energy needs? You bet your buttons.

Get Fracked

What is fracking? YourGreenGuardian (an *excellent* blog) has a handy graphic:

Image courtesy of YourGreenGuardian

Fracking involves the injection of high-pressure chemicals and water into rock formations to break them up and free trapped gas. Most of the non-hellquake controversy around fracking involves the massive water use and contamination involved in the process - especially in regions like Utah, where water resources are already scarce and the subject of much dispute.

More introductory info, videos, etc. can be found at KUTNews (link courtesy of YourGreenGuardian).

Fracking is growing in popularity. There are some halfway-decent regulations being crafted here in the U.S., but the threat of regulatory capture is very real in more or less every federal regulatory agency at this point. Keep your eyes peeled.

#Occupy SLC Urges Day Of Action To Close Bank Accounts

2011-11-02T10:10:00.000-07:00

Images courtesy of Justin Raimondo

The following release is hot off the presses:

SALT LAKE CITY, UT, NOVEMBER 1, 2011: Occupy SLC is joining forces with occupations across the globe in a day of action to move our money out of large banks and into local credit unions. Occupy SLC calls on all bank customers to join in Bank Transfer Day on November 5th (SATURDAY, 11/5/11) and send a message to the 1%: We deny our support to the operations of large banking institutions, and we will not tolerate the unethical business practices they have subjected their customers to.

Occupy SLC will be reaching out to the local population by taking to the streets on November 4th and November 5th. We will be giving out educational materials on the benefits of credit unions and why bank customers should not support their banking institutions. This material will be provided online as well, and we encourage everyone to share this information with others and take direct action this weekend.

This is the first of many actions that the 99% can participate in to show our ability to create change in a system that requires our involvement in order to function.

Be there or be square.

"Our Blacks Are Better Than Their Blacks"

2011-11-01T15:03:00.000-07:00

I'm not so sure how Colin Powell or Condoleezza Rice would feel about that.

Late Breaking #OccupySLC News

2011-10-31T16:20:00.000-07:00

According to the irradiated, electronic grapevine:

There will be an Emergency action meeting at the Fed occupation site tonight at 8 PM MST. Please forward to all applicable people. No outside media.

Fed location:

Pamphleteering At #OccupySLC

2011-10-30T18:40:00.001-07:00

I've written a bit about the People's Library at #OccupySLC's Base Camp. In addition to having an excellent selection of take-one-leave-one books on a variety of topics, the Library also has a big box of zines, also with a take-one-leave-one policy.

I've even been sort of "following" the Portland Gospel, a small #OccupyPortland zine that has, by some bizarre underground railroad of #Occupants, shown up weekly at #OSLC's Library.

I mentioned in my last post that a lot of the anti-fed stuff I had seen packing the literature table had been gloriously replaced by a fresh bloom of anarchist leaflets. I thought I would show a few of them here, along with one interesting publishing identifier - but we'll get to that.

First off, none of the following should be taken as representative of #Occupy, #OccupySLC, #OccupyWallStreet - hell, of anything, really, beyond an open forum where people can drop of leaflets that provides us with a brief snapshot of opinions that are being thrown this way or that.

A short intro to Anarchism by Alex Bradshaw

Anarchist Feminism

'What About Human Nature?' by the Anarchist FAQ Editorial Collective

Are *You* An Anarchist?? The Answer May Surprise You! by David Graeber

Who, you may ask, are the merry pranksters who leafleted #OSLC's Base Camp with interesting reading material (and it IS interesting)?

It's a joint effort between the Louisville Anarchist Federation Federation and No Borders (Louisville's Radical Lending Library)!

This brings me back to the mysterious underground #Occupy railroad.

We now know that #OccupySLC must be a midway point and/or transfer station for the Portland - Louisville line.

#OccupySLC : Day 23 "Preparing For The Inevitable Snowpocalypse"

2011-10-30T15:42:00.000-07:00

I stopped by #OccupySLC for a few hours yesterday, as has been my habit of late. Unfortunately due to prior commitments, I couldn't make it to Pioneer Park until after the march had left and had to skip the G-20 "Teach In" (which I couldn't track down at Pioneer - I'm not sure if it happened or not, but I'd like to know). Anyone who is interested - and I include my Peaceful Uprising cohorts in this - should sign up to teach a class at the free school. They need instructors, and, more importantly, they need good instructors. Any somewhat salient topic you like - come and spread the knowledge!

I did manage to touch base briefly with the Circle-A Cafe and the donation center to see what #Occupy's needs are going to be as the weather turns.

The donations that would be most welcomed by the kitchen team are as follows:

Hardware
Small Nails
Dry Erase Boards
Propane
Food (All Types)
Coffee*

Thrift
Cups
Bowls
Towels
Blankets
Funnel
Tent

*: Not every day, but many days, Beans and Brews (268 S. State Street, 801 328 4148) has dropped by enormous, piping-hot drums of fresh coffee. Bless them - or, more importantly, throw them some business and let them know you appreciate #Occupy and their support of same.

On a previous occasion, drifting by the literature table at the Free School / People's Library, I noted that there was a goodly contingent of anti-Fed, quasi-libertarian and (in some cases, unfortunately) pro-Ron Paul stuff. Imagine my surprise and childish delight to see that anarchism has made a big-ass inroad into the literature available, holy cow:

I'll be posting a quick Literature Review later tonight to summarize and post photos of various pamphlets &c.

As the sign indicates, non-cash, non-food donations go through the clothing bank / lost and found. Cash and food donations go to the kitchen tent, where the cash is collected, noted, and gets ready for disbursement (if necessary) at the General Assembly.

The General Assembly sets aside time for each subcommittee to report on their expenditures and probable needs for cash in the future. I tried to explain this over and over and over again to a very belligerent itinerant man who seemed convinced to his very soul that A.) he deserved a handout from the GA funds and B.) we were running some sort of SCAM, collecting MONEY and NOT GIVING RECEIPTS etc. etc. - none of his accusations, of course, were even partially based in fact, and when I and two or three others tried to explain this to him, he became extremely belligerent and it became apparent that the conversation was going nowhere.

Some people - I have met many of them - almost seem to derive a perverse sort of pleasure or a feeling of vindication from the idea that they are being cheated. Despite my best efforts, I have come to understand that in some cases it's just best to smile and nod until the person in questions leaves to go get their persecution fix somewhere else.

Behavior like this is not widespread at #OccupySLC, but it has become part of the trickiness of making #OSLC work when it is both a protest movement against Wall Street interests and an ongoing experiment in feeding the hungry and drawing truly disenfranchised Americans into a process where they can teach, learn, and become more engaged with the political forces that act upon them.

At another point during the day, I found myself on University of Utah campus. Sure enough, the Political Science Department (and most of Orson Spencer Hall) was littered with #Occupy materials, including this unique fellow who was apparently developed just for campus distribution:

Look for the literature review later - and tomorrow I will be stopping by #OccupySLC, #OccupyTheFed SLC, and any other satellite gatherings I hear about.

For now, things are trucking along at #OccupySLC base camp. The food operation is running smoothly, there is propane a-plenty (although they can always use more) and delicious food for anyone who is hungry. So far, #OccupySLC seems to have their collective act together regarding winter more than most #Occupations I've read up on. Good for you, SLC - if anyone can show folks that winter is nothing to get nervous about, it's you.

The Tea Party Vs. #Occupy: Mike Lee's Moneybin

2011-10-30T05:29:00.000-07:00

A little while ago, reflecting on the vapid comparisons that were then being floated in Punditopia between the Tea Party protests of the last few years and the #Occupy protests currently going on, I said that:

I'm beginning to hope - based on the small but admirably philosophically consistent group of libertarians I've met circling the fringes of #OSLC - that [the Tea Party] will join #OWS. We'll see, I suppose.

That was on 10/22./11. In my last update, I mentioned that Ron Paul supporters have apparently made an inroad at #OccupyTheFed SLC. As a follow-up to that last, I wanted to draw a clear distinction between the goals and motivations of #Occupy - which are not oriented toward any political party or distinct philosophy but are of the Left in their particular type of populism and desire to correct inequality - and the Tea Party / libertarian / Ron Paul Right.

This line is most clear, perhaps, in the disparate attitudes of the Tea Party and #Occupy toward money in American politics. And that attitude on the part of Tea Partiers is nicely exemplified by Senator Mike Lee, R-Utah.

Everything Mike Lee needs to know was discovered in or before 1776

Mike Lee, golden boy of the Tea Party, is perhaps the most right-wing elected representative from perhaps the most right-wing state in the Union. I also use him as my Tea Party example because I do believe him to be a principled man: his opposition to the PATRIOT Act's continuation was both brave and ideologically consistent.

Lee's problem, and by extension, one of the Tea Party's problems, is that even though he claims to speak for the little guy, crushed by government and longing for freedom, he is 100% in the pocket of monied powers-that-be, and has absolutely no shame when it comes to selling himself.

Observe: the headline of a recent Salt Lake Tribune article is "Mike Lee wants to be first politician with his own super PAC":

Plenty of politicians endorse candidates or send them a contribution, but Sen. Mike Lee wants to take it to a whole new level.
He's asked the Federal Election Commission to allow him to accept unlimited funds from corporations and the wealthy in a political action committee that he would use to support like-minded conservatives running for Congress.

That's really all you need to hear about Lee. Who are his constituents? "Corporations and the wealthy."

#Occupy, unlike the Tea Party, sees this corrupt system as part of the problem. A "liberal Mike Lee" would not - could not - emerge from #Occupy, a movement that eschews political parties and candidates, and decries not only income inequality but the stranglehold that wealth has placed upon our democratic processes.

Where the Tea Party seems to have a strange and worshipful attitude toward wealth, #Occupants would like to see the playing field leveled. A fair contest without cheating or bullying - I don't think that's an unreasonable request.

#OccupySLC : Three Weeks!

2011-10-27T17:20:00.000-07:00

Three weeks ago #OccupySLC kicked off its encampment in Pioneer Park. I had no idea at the time that the camp would still be carrying on - let alone thriving - two weeks in, and here we are at week three. The base camp, while slightly more tightly grouped and orderly than the ramshackle construction that rose up out of the park, has maintained roughly its same layout and location for the entirety of peoples' stay there so far.

By now, the main nodes of Base Camp should be pretty apparent: there's the Circle-A Cafe, feeding the masses, with the First Aid tents nearby and the dish cleaning and sanitizing operation going out of the back. Most of the General Assemblies take place in a large adjacent clearing that seats a hundred people easily. The whole camp consists of about 60 - 70 "residential" tents (not counting the supply or Kitchen tents, &c.).

Today at noon, Jesse Fruhwirth hosted a media training for a small but attentive group of people (I counted about ten). He covered the survival basics of PR and speaking to media people, fielded some good questions, and in general it went very smoothly.

Speaking of smooth, here's Jesse talking to some media types about why #OWS can't/won't/shouldn't boil it's message down to a bumper sticker so the pundits can comprehend the phenomenon well enough to babble about it:

Jesse is good. And while we're on the subject, might I recommend Dahlia Lithwick's excellent essay on #OccupyWallStreet? Here's what she has to say about #OWS' media coverage:

The mainstream media thrives on simple solutions. It has no idea whatsoever of how to report on a story that isn't about easy fixes so much as it is about anguished human frustration and fear. The media prides itself on its ability to tell you how to clear your clutter, regrout your shower, or purge your closet of anything that makes you look fat - in 24 minutes or less. It is bound to be flummoxed by a protest that offers up no happy endings. Luckily for us, #OWS doesn't seem to care.

You tell 'em. The shameful media coverage that these issues receive in the United States is perhaps exemplified by a spectacle I took in tonight: Rod Decker's performance on Channel 2 News.

Decker, whose partially-inflated head and weird, mincing steps in Pioneer Park were certainly attention-getting, honked on about studies indicating growing income inequality in the United States and sub-studies showing that Utah has among the most evenly distributed incomes in the United States. Footage of people (real, not media, people) who have been living outdoors and participating in the life of their polis pretty-much full time for three weeks now was intercut with footage of Governor Herbert, well-scrubbed and mellifluous in a posh office talking about the glories of the free market to a small assemblage of media types. You know, based on stark visuals of income inequality alone, I think #OSLC won that one despite the best efforts of Channel 2 News, although I would have enjoyed the performance more on mute.

This weekend will bring a loud, enjoyable performance of sorts; #OccupySLC's next big date to put on your calendar is Saturday, 10/29/11. #OSLC will be holding a march at 12:30 PM MST, starting at Pioneer Park. Following that, there will be a teach-in on the G-20 at 2:00 PM MST.

Today marked my first visit to a brave new front in #OccupySLC:

The Beast!

#OccupyTheFed SLC, as I saw it this afternoon, is a smaller group than the main #OSLC body.

#OTFSLC has people strolling back and forth through the intersection with signs each direction during crossing signals, and even in the post-lunch lull when I visited, they were getting a surprising amount of raised fists and honks from supporters and fellow travelers in the downtown traffic.

While it's status as a mystical quasi-private, quasi-government vortex of secrecy and huge capital transfers puts it on my $h!t list, I don't bear the Federal Reserve the special animosity that some libertarians, money critics, and full-blown cranks do. I include that last category because the literature at the #OccupyTheFed SLC outpost...

Included a pamphlet from Campaign For Liberty.

I don't know if the #OTF SLC guys know this, but Campaign For Liberty is a Ron Paul front (just like "Organizing For America" is a front for Barack Obama). Between a few people suggesting an action on November 5th, the Guy Fawkes masks, and this, I think it's official: Ron Paul People have probably made a sizable incursion into #OccupySLC. I say "incursion," and think this is a bad thing, because among the first principles adopted by #OSLC is a rejection of political candidates, as well as political parties.

Ron Paul, of course, isn't the only candidate whose jackass followers are trying to hitch his wagon to #OSLC's star, though, and to be fair, my other encounter was back with the main group. About halfway through the media training at Base Camp, I was approached by a furtive, extremely anxious-looking young woman in thick spectacles who handed me two sheets of paper and hissed "this is serious, okay?" before she took off. Behold:

LaRouche has a thing about the British

If you've never had the good fortune to encounter the interesting opinions of Mr. Lyndon LaRouche, I'll give you the nickel tour. Mr. LaRouche has been, over the years, a many-time Presidential candidate of virtually no public support, a convicted mail fraud and tax evader, and head of a LaRouche "intelligence network." His followers have the cult-like and inwardly directed intensity of Ayn Rand acolytes (like Objectivists, they are usually found exclusively, in my experience, on college campuses).

The new schedule for Base Camp is as follows: General Assemblies on Tuesday, Friday and Sunday at 7:30 PM MST (the next few to focus on camp issues), with Town Halls at the Downtown Public Library on Mondays and Thursdays at 7:00 PM MST. Events on Saturday at 12:30 PM MST and 2:00 PM MST. There will be additional events and schedule changes to come.

The text tree is experiencing technical difficulties right now - hubs and such should be back up and fully updated soon. Three weeks in, #OccupySLC is experiencing pretty low turnover, all things considered. #Occupy is going strong here, and looks to have more staying power than anyone could have expected.

Your #OccupySLC Update For 10/26 : Three Weeks Or Bust

2011-10-26T16:26:00.000-07:00

Today was the first bitter day of the season. It was cold out this morning: the clouds didn't roll in until the temperature had already dropped in the clear air - tonight, the weather man tells me, will be "the first hard freeze."

It's not exactly going to be the first hard night for #OccupySLC - nationally, #Occupy has been having some hard nights lately. Tonight, in fact, #OccupySLC will be holding a vigil starting at 6 PM in solidarity with #OccupyOakland.

At #OSLC Base Camp, the clothing tent (which is now an organized, autonomous operation like the Circle-A Cafe or the Free School) is looking for donations of the following:

"Big Women's and Men's Clothing"
Sweat pants/shirts
New men's and women's underwear (warm)
Winter socks
Gloves, hats, coats
Blankets / sleeping bags
Shoes / boots
Winter items for dogs
Tents and tarps

Speaking of the Circle-A Cafe...

The kitchen is now a fully staffed, fully functioning operation, with level, cement surfaces to support the propane tanks and a sanitary kitchen to process the reusable, non-disposable cups, plates, silverware, etc. The kitchen at #OccupySLC's Base Camp has so far outgrown and exceeded even my wildest predictions as to its output and professionalism that I don't really know what to say, except that anyone who talks smack about "anarchy not working in practice" from now on has been proven splendidly (if counter-intuitively) wrong.

The tents are set up in a more orderly fashion this week than last - they have a subcommittee helping with the planning of rows and spaces now. Again, for a supposedly leaderless mob of bongo-playing scumbags, the #Occupants in SLC have been very neat and orderly in their infrastructure - and completely leaderless, weird, and, I'll admit it, after three weeks, exciting to watch in how they get things done.

People are even neatly collecting pallets and large spools to integrate into their little tent blocks when weather hits:

The Free School and People's Library are still standing, with the addition of some colorful flags and drapes:

One thing I've loved watching is the evolution of the reading selection at #Occupy protests. Here in Utah, we are proud of the history of this great nation:

The Fifth Estate's new anarchist fiction and poetry issue was in, and a smattering of pamphlets running the gamut from Jack Chick to an informative little fellow that told me that the APA and other credible psychiatric institutions and publications did not think "pray the gay away" therapy is such a good idea. I already know this, but I was glad that such handy information was available.

Here was some awesome news:

Jesse Fruhwirth is hosting a media training tomorrow at high noon. The schedule says "Learn To Rep #Occupy," and I can not possibly imagine a better use of my time on a Thursday, so I will be attending.

National #Occupy hub is here . #OccupySLC hub here . Twitter feeds are down to one temporarily, here .

Tomorrow marks three weeks that the #Occupation has been going on in Pioneer Park. While some high-water marks like the first Friday Forum have passed, the sticking power of #OccupySLC is undeniable at this point - 60-70 tents are now semi-permanently erected right near the heart of downtown. The itinerant community and the original #Occupant community now coexist and hep each other with an astonishing degree of ease, considering how hard it actually is to live outside for an extended period of time when you try it (or watch other people try it).

Happy three-week anniversary one day early, #OccupySLC Base Camp. Keep up the hard work.

Keep up the hard work, #OSLC, and keep your oddball charm, too. As your anniversary present to everyone else in Salt City, I'll share your eloquent sign with its caption illustration of Edvard Munch's 'The Scream' being menaced by a robo-clawed can of Campbell's Soup:

#OccupyOakland Update : "To See Your Enemies Driven Before You And To Hear The Lamentations Of Their Women"

2011-10-26T05:39:00.000-07:00

Terry Collins with the AP reports:

Police in riot gear stood watch only a few yards away from a group of stalwart demonstrators in the aftermath of skirmishes in front of City Hall that resulted in five volleys of tear gas from police, in blasts that seemed to intensify with each round, over a roughly three-hour stretch of evening scuffles.

Image - NY Times

NPR's conversation with SF Chronicle writer Matthai Kuruvila here . Follow-up NPR blog about violence between protesters and police here . USA Today has a write-up of Oakland and similar events in Atlanta here .

Oakland apparently plans to regroup tonight, so we'll see how this develops. Two things are worth noting.

First, I was wondering why the Mayor of an ostensibly fairly liberal enclave in California was calling in the goon squad to break skulls. It turns out that Jean Quan is already facing a recall petition due to her failure to "provide leadership on crime issues," filed by Oakland residents and the Oakland Black Caucus. I'm not sure if this alone could provide sufficient motivation for the police brutality in Oakland, but perhaps Mayor Quan, like so many of us in this year of our lord 2011, is experiencing what you might call "job anxiety."

Oakland Mayor Jean Quan

Second, and speaking of poor job performance, President Barack Obama was busy laughing it up and raising money on Leno and in San Francisco while cops crushed #OccupyOakland under their boots.

Image from Agence France Presse

Our President was busy chatting with a group of venture capitalists while, according to a colleague of mine;

...[The] Oakland Police Dept just deployed tear gas, rubber bullets, sound cannons and have used force against protesters - who were coming back to reclaim their camp after last night's massive eviction. Apparently, there have been over 500 riot cops unleashing on these protesters. Some of my friends have been caught in that fire - from what I've gathered, they're safe now (cross your fingers) but this type of police brutality is clearly unacceptable. Please share, pass this around, sign the petition from Change.org to Mayor Quan, demanding she stop the police repression NOW.

Since Mayor Quan appears easily inclined to listen to a gentle nudge from voters, why don't we nudge her in the right direction? Petition is here . More photos of the carnage &c. here .

For information about #Occupy protests near you, check the national hub here .

UPDATE: Good lord. This Marine veteran took a "non-lethal projectile" (read: rubber bullet or beanbag) point blank. This is not just gruesome, it is not the way that NLPs are supposed to be used:

#OccupyOakland Update: There's No Hand Like Firsthand

2011-10-25T13:47:00.000-07:00

In the interests of balance, CBS News is reporting "what if.."s and "we support them but..."s on the part of Oakland Mayor Jean Quan. Right-wing fishwrapper The Washington Times is, of course, repeating this on their blog along with a tabloid's idiot assertion that "Occupy Wall Street is taking cops off of other crimes," so give old Mayor Quan about as much credibility as you decide she deserves.

All caught up? Good. Now watch this (sorry about the yelling):

According to the eyewitness who put up these (and other) videos from #OccupyOakland:

Hundreds of police cordoned off 9 blocks in downtown Oakland surrounding Oscar Grant Plaza, pursued people on the streets after the raid, then raided the second Occupy Oakland camp at Snow Park.

#Occupy Oakland: You Are Cordially Invited To Pummel Protesters, Dress Code Riot Gear

2011-10-25T10:45:00.000-07:00

Either stay tuned through the unbearable politico-reggae interlude or skip to about 3:10 or so:

I guess Oakland's City Hall can apparently be added to the list of "non free speech zones."

According to reports out of Oakland, the police there used tear gas, "nonlethal projectiles" (either rubber bullets or beanbags) and according to at least one observer, flash-bang grenades to clear the peaceful #Occupy base camp.

I have heard from some conservatives that the #Occupy protests remind them in a scary way of the rise of fascism, or the failure of the Weimar Republic. I'll leave it up to you.

Oakland before:

Oakland after:

Land of the free, baby, home of the brave!