Salt City Sinner

posted 10/16/2012 by the Salt City Sinner Think of me as a Tarot Card. I represent "Opportunities About To Arise." They did some very interesting and downright inhumane experiments with rat colonies, Neville.  They found when certain population limits are reached, all it takes is the addition of one extra rat...  and the whole community slides into unstoppable chaos. One little rat and Utopia turns into Rwanda. So here we are, America. Two presidential debates down, and what more could possibly be at stake? Two men in expensive and identical suits have engaged in a hideously pre-ordained set of talking points ( link ), focus groups engaged and "dial-polling" (thanks, Frank Luntz, you inhuman sack of excrement) purified. Truly, this is the end of days, if popular culture is to be believed. The rise of pop-culture's embrace of the zombie apocalypse, the rise of survivalism since the 90s: everybody from your friendly local securalist to...

posted 8/23/2012 by the Salt City Sinner Alan Moore has pulled off quite the feat. One part magic, one part art, one part what I guess you could call psychic bomb-craft - I don't think I've seen the like before. Imagine if Mickey Mouse, instead of becoming as recognizable and relatively benevolent as Jesus Christ in most of the developed and developing world, was hopping and "Ha-ha!"-ing across screens large and small toting a Kalashnikov and spouting aphorisms.from the Little Red Book (Chairman Maus, perhaps?). Think of it as The Guy Fawkes Mask Phenomenon. I have taken an extended tour of opinions regarding it - I took pot-shots at it   here  and   here  , started to warm to it   here  and finally fully embraced it   here : who WAS that masked man? What does The Guy Fawkes Mask Phenomenon represent, exactly? The mask itself commemorates Guy Fawkes (obviously) - who was a Catholic partisan and terrorist who was involved in th...

Posted 4/9/2012, by ViewFinder Easter at Occupy was lovely, complete with a knitting lesson, chicken dinner,  fresh strawberries                       and bare feet on the grass. Thank you OccupySLC for sharing a beautiful Easter afternoon with us!

4/6/2012 Occupy Salt Lake City moved from Gallivan Center to Library Square.  Despite what some "news" reports state- I am here to tell you- Occupy is ALIVE AND WELL!  In fact, not just alive and well, but the vibe there is nothing less than amazing.  There is a completely different energy at Library Square.  You can see the sky, and trees, birds, flowers, and PEOPLE that smile and engage you- not just concrete and sky scrapers. The core members of OccupySLC were mostly present and accounted for- coloring eggs, singing and laughing.  It is a beautiful environment. As people walk, ride, drive by the Occupants wave, smile and greet them.  It was so nice to see the response from those walking by and riding by on bicycles, some stopped just to return the greeting.  I sincerely believe the change of scenery is a huge benefit to the movement in the Salt Lake valley,   giving a much needed opportunity to engage passers by. As Easter and Spr...

LUKE 6:37: J udge not, and ye shall not be judged: condemn not, and ye shall not be condemned: forgive, and ye shall be forgiven. I happened upon Occupy by chance.  While writing and posting pictures for CNN iReports I found Occupy an opportunity I could not pass up.   I became very intrigued with what OWS was standing up for and found that I too was part of the 99%.  I continued photographing and interviewing Occupants and supporters for weeks, frequently taking my two daughters with me (ages 6 and 8 at the time).  Not long into my venture I found myself getting to really know some of these people, and loving the time I spent with them.  They were warm, inviting, generous, and happy people.  They were focused and ready to fight for change.  (Although fight may not be the appropriate word as they showed nothing but peace even when faced with aggressors.  On more than one occasion I saw people scream at them "Get a job!" "Lazy Bums!" and each ...

Yesterday morning, I was a little iffy about hauling my proverbial oats (and the proverbial oats of some guests) down I-15 to Provo to attend the anti-NDAA and anti-EEA protest there. A few people had canceled on carpooling, and the early morning was clear and bitter cold, with a sharp breeze floating through the Avenues. I shouldn't have worried. I wound up driving Greg Lambert of Crazypoliticos , my friend Jessica Lee (Twitter feed   here  , Flickr   here  ), and Jessica's friend, a polite gentleman named Tim. The trip down to Provo went very quickly, and we parked right in front of the Provo Courthouse. The day had warmed up beautifully, and there was already a small but very high-energy crowd gathered (this crowd grew in size as the afternoon progressed). A few quick words about the anti-NDAA/EEA protest. First off, "What," you may ask, "the hell are NDAA and/or EEA?" Glad you asked! A decent summary of NDAA  can be found right here . In brief...

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 h...

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 ...

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., Sea...

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 Unio...

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 mic...

(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 coer...

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 -- w...