October 27, 2011
If the Goddess had wanted me to lead the revolution, she would have given me a loud voice. Since she didn’t, I have to assume she just wants me to wheeze along, doing what I can. Yesterday that was sort of an Occupy marathon. I went down to #Occupy Santa Cruz in the open convertible of a curly-headed forty-something anarchist named Wes, talking at the top of our lungs about all the issues at Occupy Santa Cruz, which are similar to all the issues at the other Occupy sites.
Occupy Santa Cruz has a sweet site at the courthouse, with a camp in the park, information booths at the steps, a porta-pottie, and a grassy area on the side that was relatively quiet, where I did trainings all afternoon, a mix of nonviolent direct action, facilitation, and then a short talk at 5 pm, to which many people came out from the community, including some dear friends like writer Vicki Noble and others from Diablo Canyon blockade days. Then I helped them facilitate their General Assembly, which may go down on record as the shortest, most efficient GA ever—no thanks to me as I really did very little. Occupy Santa Cruz has a warm, family feel, and seems very well grounded. Tehya, the young woman who called the meeting that sparked the encampment, like many of these young activists had never done anything like it before. But she got inspired by pictures of Occupy Wall Street, and she thought, “I can put up a Facebook page.” And then, “Oh, I’ve just called for a General Assembly and I’ve never seen one, I better go up to San Francisco and see what it’s like.” Less than a month later, the Occupation is in full swing.
By the end of the meeting, we’re getting live feed from #Occupy Oakland where 3000 people are having a General Assembly. They’ve retaken Oscar Grant plaza and have taken down the barricades. We head up to the city. I’m tempted to go to Oakland, but need to stop home first to drop my stuff and I suspect by the time I do I’ll be more tempted to stay home for some well-deserved rest. But on the way up we start getting texts telling us to come to SF, that they are expecting a police raid between 10 and midnight.
So instead I change my shoes, strap on my action waist pack (complete with rescue remedy and a spare pair of glasses) and head down to #Occupy San Francisco. As I get in the car, I hear that they are being raided, but when we get there, the police have not yet come.
Hundreds of people are massed in the corner of the square, and a young African-American woman with a bullhorn is leading them in a nonviolence training. I’ve never seen her before but I love her instantly, she’s so calm and strong and confident as she organizes people into rows, sitting down in front, standing behind. David Solnit is crouched in one of the lines—he’s been down at the occupation a lot in the last weeks, training and organizing, and I give him much credit, along with others who have devoted time to helping this occupation, for the feeling of strength and determination in the plaza. Just a week or so ago, Occupy SF was beleaguered and dispirited from constant police raids, more like a huddle of tarps and blankets on the edge of Market Street in front of the Federal Reserve. Then they moved onto Justin Hermann Plaza, took more space, defied the ban on tents and raised their banners.
And tonight, it’s beautiful! I’m seeing friends in the crowd that I’ve been on blockades with since Diablo Canyon in 1981, amidst a sea of new people, young, old, a wide diversity of backgrounds and colors and attire, from punk anarchists to business suits. The plaza is filled with a palpable aura of strong, calm, joyful resistance, nonviolence at its best. People are preparing to stand their ground—not to fight the cops or bait them, but to hold firm and stand together and defend our space and our right to be there. There’s a power in that plaza that is deep and strong, and because the moral ground is so clear, we’ve pulled in people from all walks of life to a movement that has room to grow.
Marion beckons to me from the midst of the seated group. We’ve been friends for thirty years or more and would be good street buddies, but I shake my head. I might get arrested, but damn if I’m going to sit down on the cold concrete until I see the whites of their eyes.
Instead, Paradox and I entertain the troops, which he does supremely well. We go with the group to the far end of the plaza, where we run some drills, getting mock cops to rush the lines. The people stand strong! I teach my quick version of activist grounding. Riyana and Jason have their drums. and the Brass Liberation Orchestra comes around to play. Nothing like a brass band on the street to raise the energy!
Hours go by. Rumors fly. The cops are massing a mile away. They’re piling into paddy wagons and busses, dressed in riot gear. BART officials have shut down 12th St. Oakland and Embarcadero stations to prevent Occupy Oakland from joining us. Instead, protestors have taken the Bay Bridge.
But the cops don’t come. Instead, five of our city supervisors come down to join us. They hold a press conference to express their solidarity.
Determination is still strong, but energy is beginning to flag. Paradox leads a group in some stretching. I suggest asking people to say why they are here, using the people’s mike, where the crowd repeats what you say. There’s a moment of hesitation, then an older man speaks.
“I was forced to retire early…”
“I WAS FORCED TO RETIRE EARLY…”
“My health care costs…”
“MY HEALT CARE COSTS…”
“Eleven hundred dollars a month…”
“ELEVEN HUNDRED DOLLARS A MONTH…”
“On my pension….”
“ON MY PENSION…”
“I can afford…”
“I CAN AFFORD…”
“Only health care, rent…”
“ONLY HEALTH CARE, RENT…”
“And half the food I need.”
“AND HALF THE FOOD I NEED.”
“Mike check,” calls a young woman.
“MIKE CHECK.”
“I have two BA’s….”
“I HAVE TWO BA’S…”
“And tens of thousands of dollars of debt…”
“AND TENS OF THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS OF DEBT…”
“I have a part-time job…”
“I HAVE A PART-TIME JOB…”
“As a nanny…”
“AS A NANNY…”
“That doesn’t use…”
“THAT DOESN’T USE…”
“My education…”
“MY EDUCATION…”
“I am the 99%!”
“I AM THE 99%”
“Mike check,” cries a young man.
“MIKE CHECK.”
“I’m here because…”
“I’M HERE BECAUSE…”
“When I went to my comfortable job…”
“WHEN I WENT TO MY COMFORTABLE JOB…”
“This morning, and saw…”
“THIS MORNING, AND SAW…”
“Pictures of the Oakland cops…”
“PICTURES OF THE OAKLAND COPS…”
“Lobbing flash grenades…”
“LOBBING FLASH GRENADES…”
“Into a group trying to help…”
“INTO A GROUP TRYING TO HELP…”
“The injured vet…”
“THE INJURED VET…”
“Who was shot in the head…”
“WHO WAS SHOT IN THE HEAD…”
“I got so mad…”
“I GOT SO MAD…”
“I walked out of work…”
“I WALKED OUT OF WORK….”
“And brought my whole office with me.”
“AND BROUGHT MY WHOLE OFFICE WITH ME!”
The stories go on and on for hours, the circle moving and shifting to face each speaker, to put them at center. Echoed by the crowd, each story becomes our own story, a poem, a choral theater of the streets.
I’ve been on my feet all day, but I don’t feel tired. I’m exhilarated. What’s happening here is so beautiful, so powerful. It answers our most primal human needs: to have a voice, to have that voice heard and affirmed, to tell your story, to be seen, to be part of something, to stand for something, to stand together, to stand strong.
I could stay in that moment forever. But sometime after 2 AM, someone evidently brings some kryptonite onto the plaza and my super-powers desert me. I return to being a sixty-year-old woman who has been talking all day in a wheezy voice. My intuition tells me that the crisis has passed, and I go home.
Later in the night, the police send the demonstrators a letter, saying that the raid has been called off. Essentially, it admits that there are more of us than there are of them. They can see the strength, the determination and the discipline of this crowd. Arresting us all would be a long and grueling process for the police. Dispersing us with clubs and tear gas would be a PR disaster for the Mayor who is fighting an election in just a few days. We have succeeded in creating a dilemma for the powers that be, and they back off.
Now a day or two has passed. Across the bay, Mayor Jean Quan has recognized how disastrous a mistake it was to let the cops turn Oakland into a war zone. They have indeed shot an Iraq veteran in the head with some sort of projectile, and the internet bleeds with photos of his wounds. When he collapsed in a cloud of tear gas, other protestors came to his aid, and the police did indeed shoot flash grenades into their midst—also caught on video. It’s a crime that has disgusted the nation. Quan backpeddles furiously, and Occupy Oakland retakes Oscar Grant plaza. The power of nonviolent resistance has won! For the moment….
Requiem for Isis
Isis was my friend since we were both in high school, when she was Becky and I was Mimi. For some reason, when I think of her in those days I always see her in a tree, hanging out in the branches on the grounds of our high school. We were fifteen. I had a pack of Tarot cards and a book I’d gotten at henna-haired Mrs. Larsen’s Bookstore down on Hollywood Boulevard. Isis had a pack of cards, too. No one ever taught us to read them—we just did, and then we got ourselves a booth at the Renaissance Faire. It was a camping tent, really, hung with some filmy cloth, and I made myself a princess dress with a high waist out of iridescent gauze, and we told fortunes for days, and hung out with Witches and beadmakers and potters. Isis was smart and funny and cynical and fearless, a round, bossy girl with milk chocolate skin and a huge smile—a smile that always made you think she knew some
Isis went off to college at Antioch and I somehow ended up stuck in LA, going to UCLA and living in a frat house turned commune, in one big room with nine people. My boyfriend and I shared the closet together. Isis came to visit once; I could tell she didn’t approve of my lifestyle, which really had little about it to approve of. We didn’t talk for a long time, but finally reconnected, I think, at our High School 10th class reunion. By then I had cleaned up my act, ditched the drugs and the boyfriend and actually had a book scheduled to be published. I had also become Starhawk, and she had become Isis. We’d each found our way to the Goddess, on separate paths, but we became friends again. I remember walks in the park when her daughter Morgan was a baby, with our big dog Arnold washing Morgan’s face with his tongue as she sat in her stroller. The baby didn’t seem to mind, and neither did Isis. Isis came to Witch camp–the first we ever did. Morgan was around four, then, and we went climbing on the rocks to look at the tide pools. “Hold my hand, and you won’t fall,” Morgan told me.
Isis own mother died that summer, and she got the news at camp. I remember her heartfelt grief, I see her crying with a wail that was like the essence of mourning. And then she found solace with a hot naturopath, making the tent shake as she reconnected to the life force. Isis didn’t hold back—neither her grief nor her love of life.
One thing I loved about Isis is that she never hesitated to tell me the truth. She was one of the few people I let read my novels in draft, and I knew I could count on her to let me know if I went off track. Johanna, in Walking to Mercury, is not Isis—that is, the facts of her relationship to Maya are not the facts of our lives. But something of the emotional truth is there. Once Isis had a draft of the book in her car, and her lover read it and got furious at her.
“You never told me that you and Starhawk were lovers!”
“We weren’t!”
“Don’t lie! This is you! You can’t tell me it isn’t you!”
I took that as a compliment. We weren’t lovers, in the physical sense, but Isis is one of the people I dearly love. I learned so much from her. I learned to walk down the street and look people in the eye and smile and say, “How ‘ya doin?” I learned how someone could face years of illness and pain with optimism and grace, and still take so much pleasure in life, even as her life grew more restricted. She’s one of the people in my life who made me who I am.
I’m looking at one of her last Facebook Posts:
“I found out today that I’m happy. No matter what happens, under it all, I’m just happy. How great is that?!!!!”
Be happy, Isis, even as we are sad, so sad that you are no longer here to laugh with and scold us and give us that look. Go shed that body of pain, and get ready for the next adventure.
Weaver, weaver, weave her thread
Whole and strong into your web.
Healer, healer heal her pain,
In love may she return again.