Citizen

[Update 4:25 p.m.: Joe Huberman posted a schedule for the City Council meetings tomorrow on the Occupy Raleigh legal forum. Note that meetings are at 1 p.m. and 7 p.m.:

Here is the latest as I understand it on tomorrow's City Council Meeting 11/1/11

1:00 P.M. Session

Mayor Meeker will request a report on the Police action and our 1st amendment rights at the 1:00 session of the meeting. It is very unlikely that we will be able to speak, but we are welcome to be in the audience and we can wear our identifying thing.

7:00 P.M. Session

Mayor Meeker will request that we be added to the agenda at the meeting so we can petition the City Council for our request to occupy Upchurch Park at the 7:00pm meeting.
At this time we will be able to speak to the City Council. We should keep our remarks short, to the point, and not repeat what others have said.

The tentative plan is that:

Joseph Huberman will present our request to the council and then introduce
Margaret Schucker who will speak next (The evening GA reached consensus for this on 10/30/11)

Others will then be asked if they have anything to add, and usually you move to the front row to show that you want to speak. You will be asked to state your name and address when you begin speaking.

At some point people in the audience who support our request will be asked to stand. It will be very useful to have as many people in the audience as possible at that time.

After we have spoken the City Council may approve our request, deny it, or refer it to a committee for further study.

***

The original post follows:

Gov. Bev Perdue's spokesman said, following the arrests on Thursday at the Capitol, that Perdue wasn't trying to squash Occupy Raleigh, only clear the sidewalk for the children and passers-by who were, well, not obstructed at all by the Occupiers prior to the arrests. If that was the Governor's objective, she'll doubtless be pleased to learn that Occupy Raleigh continues undaunted.

On Friday, the weather turned cold and rainy. It was one crappy day, but apparently 30-40 still showed up for Occupy Raleigh's daily General Assembly at 6:30 p.m., and a small group remained overnight. Saturday and Sunday, the Occupation enjoyed better weather and the absence of Capitol cops. When I went by on Sunday evening at 6, a pair of Raleigh police officers were standing a benign guard across the street, but no Capitol cops were in evidence. About 30 men, women and a couple of children were on hand, with more expected by 6:30. I needed to leave before then, however.

I can report that the Perdue Doctrine — peaceably assembling is allowed, but chairs aren't, even if you have a disability and need a chair — was being followed. Margaret Schucker, who caused the Capitol police such agitation Thursday, was back and sitting this time, not on her chair but on one of the permanent benches set by the monuments on the Capitol grounds adjacent to the sidewalk.

Why didn't she sit there before? Because of the barricades keeping the Occupiers on the sidewalk and off the grounds. The barricades were key to the previous Perdue Doctrine, i.e., peaceably assembling is allowed, but not on the Capitol grounds, only on the sidewalk, chairs optional. On Thursday, the barricades went away.

On the subject of whether the Morgan Street sidewalk was obstructed prior to the arrests, Joe Huberman says it wasn't (me, too), and he supplies this picture to prove it. He snapped it moments before the arrests.

Capitol Police Chief Scott Hunter had ordered everybody to get their stuff (water, food, Rx, chairs, bedding) off the sidewalk, and within a few minutes, they did — as he acknowledged. In fact, he seemed quite proud of the response. Only Margaret Schucker's chair remained, with her in it. It was one of those $10 collapsible chairs that takes up no space, and if Hunter'd just left her alone, Schucker would've removed it and herself too when she went home for the night. Why he didn't, I don't know, except of course for that "rules are rules" thing that prohibits the use of common sense when one's authority is challenged. The fact is, for days it had been the practice of Occupy Raleigh for people to announce, "Sidewalk!" whenever anyone who was not part of the OR group approached — and immediately anyone clustered on the sidewalk would clear the way. There simply was no sidewalk problem.

Further, Schucker said she had a disability and needed her little chair, and therefore she should be an exception to Hunter's rule. I'd have let her keep it. Guess that's why I'm not a cop. By the time Huberman took this picture, Katina Gad had put a second chair down next to Margaret's — in solidarity. Before long, a half-dozen others seated themselves in front of those two as Hunter's guys moved in.

So now I hear that Occupy Raleigh may relocate off the Capitol grounds for awhile if, that is, they can work out an arrangement with the Raleigh City Council for "occupational" use of the space in front of City Hall and on the Dawson Street side (what's called The Pit, in front, plus green space on the west which apparently is named Avery Upchurch Park — after the late former mayor).

Occupy Raleigh folks are planning to be at the City Council meeting Tuesday at 1 p.m., and Mayor Charles Meeker has announced that he'll bring up the subject of their treatment by the police, including the Raleigh police. Meeker is questioning why the Raleigh cops got involved in Thursday's arrests after he'd been assured that they wouldn't. The answer may be that the Capitol cops have no ability to transport "prisoners" to the jail unless the Raleigh P.D. shows up with a transport vehicle — which it did.

Raleigh cops ringed the scene Thursday, in what seemed an unnecessary precaution against others from the Occupation force interfering with the arrests. The Raleigh cops took no direct role in making the arrests, however.

Meeker sent a memo to his fellow Council members Friday — read it here:

Meekermemo.pdf

On the subject of whether the Morgan Street sidewalk was obstructed prior to the arrests, Joe Huberman says it wasn't (me, too), and he supplies this picture to prove it.

If the Raleigh Council allows, even welcomes an occupation of city property, get ready for howls of disgust from right-wing Republicans ... and of delight from those of us who count ourselves part of the 99%.

At the General Assembly tonight — the people's assembly, not the Republicans' — we heard that plans are afoot to visit a very high-level state official's mansion for Halloween. In costume, naturally. The Direct Action working group is, uh, working on this. By the way, OccupyRaleigh now has a wiki in addition to its website and Facebook page.

The wiki lists all the committees and working groups and can be accessed here.

OccupyRaleigh does not have a permit to be on the State Capitol grounds, but the Capitol police force, decimated by state budget cuts, is nowhere to be seen. Meanwhile, Raleigh police are taking the position that the sidewalk on Morgan Street is state property and their jurisdiction is limited to protecting the occupiers, not arresting (or hassling) them. Further, the RPD conveyed word from the Capitol police that it's OK if, during the daily General Assemblies, people go beyond the barricades and onto the Capitol grass. Only caveats: No signs on the grass, and nobody up there who was arrested for refusing to leave on October 15.

Many nice words were spoken, tonight and for the last week, about the behavior and helpfulness of the RPD. They were called on again tonight to assist a homeless woman who sat down with the occupiers and then keeled over, due apparently to her diabetes and the fact that she's pregnant. An ambulance was called and the police helped her into it.

About 40 people attended the evening General Assembly, which begins at 6:30. There was much discussion tonight about applying again — and how to apply — for another permit to use the Capitol grounds, whether for a few hours here and there, or a few hours every day, or all day every day (with serial daily applications), or perhaps just for weekend rallies. No decision was reached, but the legal committee, in the person of Boylan Heights' own Joe Huberman, went away with some guidance to mull the problem.

Meanwhile, the state ACLU chapter wrote to the N.C. Department of Administration today encouraging them to look with favor of groups like OccupyRaleigh that seek to use the historic Capitol as a place to exercise their First Amendment rights of assembly and free speech. The department controls the grounds. The ACLU's letter is posted below.

The Indy on Wednesday will have lots more coverage of #OccupyRaleigh, #OccupyWallStreet and the whole Occupy movement.

The ACLU-NC's letter of support is below:

ACLU_sLettertoMosesCarey.pdf

[UPDATE, Friday, 10/21: Protest on the Capitol grounds? A day later, the N.C. Department of Administration says no — because regardless what the #OccupyRaleigh people may think the First Amendment means when it says "the right of the people peaceably to assemble (and) petition the Government for a redress of grievances" cannot be abridged, it doesn't mean peaceably assemble on your Capitol grounds. Why? Well, uh, because we say so. For more, there's a good writeup on the DOA's unresponsive response at N.C. Policy Watch's Progressive Pulse blog.

[Below yesterday's post, I've added more about some of the folks I met at the Capitol and what they said that #OccupyRaleigh is about. Wait, lest they be arrested for peaceably assembling in the wrong place, I should be clear I chatted with them on the sidewalk next to the Capitol.]

This is the original post from Thursday, 10/20:

. Occupy Raleigh forces fired on the Capitol today — fired off a letter, that is. Using the strongest weapons at their disposal, including a knowledge of history and some lawyers, they delivered their volley in the form of a request that they be allowed to stand on the Capitol grounds for nine days beginning at 8 a.m. Saturday, October 22 and ending at 8 p.m. Sunday, October 30.

Since Saturday night, they've been pushed back to the sidewalk below the Capitol. Still, they keep coming. Reinforcements are showing up daily. (Hint: This is how it works — you show up for an hour, a few hours, whatever you've got. Meanwhile, the main rebel force at #OccupyWallStreet keeps the bankers pinned down.)

In their letter, lawyers for Occupy Raleigh cite the Bonus March of 1932, a veterans movement, and the Poor People's Campaign of 1968 as precedents for social protest occupations in Washington, DC. In Raleigh, hunger strikers from the NC Dream Team were permitted to occupy state property last summer.

The Occupy Raleigh request is not to occupy all of the Capitol grounds, merely a sliver at the southwest corner (Salisbury and Morgan streets). Nor is it for an encampment. The OR troops, who were about 20 strong at mid-day today, aren't threatening to put up tents. They do want to put up a canopy cover to keep their stuff out of the weather. Their letter is here and worth a read:

OccupyRalpermitapplic2.pdf

The letter was signed by some veteran freedom fighters, which seemed to send of shiver of fear up the spine of Republican gubernatorial aspirant Pat McCrory. McCrory raised the spectre of a government overthrow in Raleigh perhaps leading to the fall of — OMG — Charlotte.

There was no sign of panic from inside the Capitol, though word on the street — well, actually, it was in the mainstream media — was that Gov. Bev Perdue has fled to China for what is officially termed "a trade mission."

Oh, sure. That's why she retreated in face of the #OccupyRaleigh brigades.

I tried to get an official response to the permit application from the state Department of Administration, which handles such things. No answer yet. War counsels are underway there, apparently.

Meanwhile, an extremely dangerous figure arrived to reinforce the OccupyRaleigh troops today. World War II veteran Harris Skinner, a grizzled fighter who battled in North Africa and lived to tell the tale, arrived from Pinehurst armed with a sign ("WWII Vets for Integrity"), his cane, and wearing a "Reagan" cap and a sweater bearing the official US Open golf tournament insignia. He came with a grandson, whom Skinner described darkly as "an activist." (Also, "a geneticist.")

Skinner's potentially lethal combination of combat experience, Republican sympathies and harsh demand that the richest 1% shape up and start acting with integrity toward the other 99% of us may well explain why McCrory was so rattled.

More on who the invaders are tomorrow.

So, picking up from there, who else did I meet on the sidewalk yesterday?

Austin Moss, a Raleigh barrista with a calm, collected presence, joined the protest for the first time late Wednesday, when it was pouring rain. No problem, he said. There were lots of tarps on hand and everybody coped.

"This is something I want to be part of," Moss said. "We're the 99% who don't have 42% of the wealth in this country."

So what are his demands? Only that government "be a joint thing." The people need to inform the government, and the government needs to act in the best interests of the people. Simple. "And that's the prevailing opinion I'm hearing here," Moss said.

So the point isn't to lay out an agenda. Rather, it's to reclaim the peoples' voice in their own futures and get to talking with each other again — without the 1% dominating or preventing the discourse. "We're trying to start and establish a culture of awareness and openness to being willing to discuss things again," Moss said.

I also met Sean Garvey, Harris Skinner's grandson. He is indeed a Ph.D geneticist with some post-doctoral university work under his belt and a four-month stint recently working as a hired hand at an "excellent" organic farm in the Northern Kingdom of Vermont. Garvey is a completely upbeat personality. He's into health, food issues and the movement toward locally grown, sustainable crops. But he also "appreciates" that industrial food production is necessary to feed the planet, and for that reason industrial food corporations must change and reform.

"I absolutely support local food," Garvey said. "But we can't become isolationist and pull away from our neighboring states or neighboring countries. So, it's a very complicated subject (how to feed the world), and it's going to demand solutions and inputs from so many parts of society."

Which is where the OccupyWallStreet movement comes in, Garvey says. Corporations have been getting away with a "beautiful head fake," he says. They do things that are wrong, but they fake people into being angry, not at them, but at government. So it's great that OccupyRaleigh is at the state Capitol, Garvey thinks, but even better that OccupyWallStreet didn't go for the fake and is protesting in the place most representative of corporate malfeasance.

All of this was said with the greatest optimism written all over his face. It dimmed only slightly as his grandfather pointed to the sign they'd brought: "May You Have Enough," it said.

"It's a prayer that's often been prayed for me," Garvey said. "And I'd love to send it to that top 1%, 'May you have enough — and not much more.' And if you do, find a way to give it back or pay it forward."

And if they don't?

"Eventually, I hope people get that we have so much power in the way we spend money, as individuals, as citizens," he answered. "Every time we spend a dollar, that's a vote for a way of doing business and a vote for the people behind a business."

It isn't just buying local, although decent local businesses are certainly part of it, he went on. Corporations can be better, too. Or worse. "I would challenge all of us," Garvey said, "to keep a journal of how you spend your money, and where every dollar went for just one day — and how many of those dollars do you even know where they're going?"

***

Then I met Pearl Clutcher, who rephrased my opening question for me. "What would it take to drag a 43-year old mother of two out to the sidewalk holding this ridiculous sign?" Clutcher said. Her sign: "This land was made for you & me." She was making his first visit to OccupyRaleigh.

Clutcher, like the others, was more about the discourse we're missing in America than any specific policy demands. She's read an Occupy manifesto or two, she said, and reinstating the Glass-Steagall Act sounds like a good idea. "But if you're looking for answers from me, you are barking up the wrong tree," Clutcher said.

But if she's short on policy prescriptions, Clutcher was emphatic about the kind of social change that's needed. She likened it to the way attitudes in this country have changed about drunk driving over the last 30 years. "What did it take? A little bit of activism and a small amount of legislation," she said. "But mostly people just changed their way of thinking. And I would really like to see a society where it is obscene to take more than your share."

Clutcher saw a news clip recently in which Raleigh's Art Pope denied "buying influence" in state politics with his multi-million dollar contributions to right-wing groups, candidates and campaigns. "He puts a local face on a national problem," she said. "I would love to ask him, Mr. Pope, you don't look like somebody who just throws his money away, so if you are not buying influence, what are you doing with your cash?"

There's a word in Swedish for what she wants, Clutcher said. The Swedes are very proud of the fact that no other language has a word with quite the same meaning. "Lagom," she said, emphasis on the first syllable. "The idea is that everybody takes their share and no one takes too much. And I would very much like to see some lagom around here."

I've met about a dozen OccupyRaleigh participants in three visits to the Capitol recently. Most are there not due to some personal distress but rather because they perceive the country veering wildly off-course — or rather, they perceive that it's been dragged off its constitutional foundation by multinational corporations and super-rich Americans, the 1% whose interests lie elsewhere than in the well-being of the other 99% of the nation. They want to talk about that with the wealthy and their lobbyists out of the room.

Garner's Kelly Maes, though, is angry because of what's happened to her family. Born in Belgium, "my papers say I'm Belgian, but I'm an American at heart," Maes says. Her stepfather is American. He raised her, with her mother. Maes, now 27, has worked since was 17, she said, in Belgium and then in the U.S. She made similar amounts of money in both countries, paid about the same in taxes, but here's the big difference: In Belgium, as in most of Europe, college education is free or cheap, and health care coverage is free or cheap. Whereas, in this country, both are expensive to the point of being out of reach for the working class. So she couldn't afford college and, since she was laid off from her last job five months ago, she has no health insurance.

She's looking for another job. Does she have any savings? "No," she answered lightly, treating the question as a little silly.

But it's not her personal circumstances that cause Maes to be angry. Rather, it's the fact that her father, who worked in construction, lost his job too, and she suspects it's because her little sister had a brain aneurysm and nearly died. (She's fine now.)

Maes doesn't know it for a fact, but she thinks that because her father's company's health insurer was hit with the charges, it was his job or higher insurance rates. "My stepfather worked his whole life. My mother worked her who life. Now they have nothing," Maes said.

And as she looks around, she notices that friends from high school who did go to college are out of work, losing their houses if they'd managed to buy one, and are moving back in with parents who, in a lot of cases, are also facing hard times. This in a country that is rife with "corporate greed, and some people who are so ridiculously wealthy."

Listening to Clutcher and I talk, Maes didn't know who Art Pope was. She doesn't follow politics in the sense of personalities or parties, she said. But that's because, she said, in the U.S. politics is little more than a popularity contest between two parties "on a teeter-totter," each of them going up and down but neither one forward in a way that would help people who aren't rich.

In Belgium, by contrast, a half-dozen or more parties compete for votes and take seats in the parliament, Maes said, based on their ability to stand for something and adapt national policies to the needs of people. "I do follow ethics, and morality and what's right."

Maes first heard about the OccupyWallStreet movement about two hours before the first OccupyRaleigh meeting was to begin three weeks ago in Moore Square. She jumped out of bed and raced downtown, she said, and she's been in the thick of it ever since. When we talked, it was after she'd put in an all-nighter at the Capitol, and she was exhausted.

She's not a socialist, Maes said, but you can call her that if you want, or a communist, or — she looked for a word —"call it panda-ism, it does't matter." What matters, she's convinced, is that a properly functioning government makes sure the "staples of society" — she listed food, clothing, shelter, and civil services, including education — are provided in adequate portions to everyone.

"When the staples start to crumble, and meanwhile the top gets top-heavy, call it whatever you want to call it, that's just plain wrong."

The occupation of Raleigh continues.

Occupy Raleigh moved into its third day today, following a Saturday kickoff that brought at least 1,000 people to the State Capitol, according to organizers, and saw 19 of them arrested and quickly released without bail. I was away over the weekend and can't provide a first-hand crowd estimate. Other media estimates were in the hundreds. I can say definitively that at 2 o'clock this afternoon there were 17 people on the occupation line, not counting a few I saw on Fayetteville Street who were taking a break. Raleigh police have set up barricades and are allowing the occupiers to remain on the sidewalk on the Capitol's south side — looking down Fayetteville Street — as long as they don't block other pedestrians. Until 7 this morning, the cops weren't letting anybody sit down, however. Since then, they've relented — but they're still enforcing a rule against attaching signs to the barricades. If you've got a sign, you have to hold it or lay it down.

Twice-daily meetings, or General Assembly sessions, continue to be held at 12 noon and 6:30 p.m., the participants say. If you plan to stop by — and why would you not? — these meeting times would be a good way to get oriented.

When will Occupy Raleigh end? "Maybe never," was Kurt Zehnder's answer. The Raleigh waiter had been awake for 52 hours when I talked to him. He was there Saturday, got arrested (his first such arrest), was released, came back, stayed the night, left to work yesterday from 3 to midnight, then went home to change clothes, stop at Wal-Mart to buy some posterboard for a sign (his first sign was trashed by the police Saturday night), and here he was at mid-day Monday still going strong.

"I think the plan is, [stay] as long as we need to," Zehnder said. "New York is in Day 29. We're in Day 3."

What will constitute winning, I asked Zehnder and Margaret Schucker of Raleigh, another long-termer on the line?

His answer: When corporate influence is removed from politics. It won't be just one thing that happens, obviously, but many — which is why he wonders if the Occupy movement will ever end. Schucker, nodding, said victory will be achieved when "we throw the bums out," the bums being all the politicians who've been bought by corporate money.

Is that all politicians? I asked.

Schucker paused. "Possibly some local politicians are exceptions," she said, but yes, at the national level, as far as she's concerned, all politicians have been taken over by the big-money political process.

Occupy Raleigh, and the entire Occupy movement, "is about transparency, fairness and respect" for human beings, Schucker said. She made the mistake of watching Republican presidential debates and was disgusted to hear the audiences boo a gay soldier, laugh at the thought that people who couldn't buy health insurance should just die, and applaud Rick Perry's record of 234 executions in Texas.

And, of course, the Republican candidates just took it all in stride. "How did compassion become un-American?" Schucker's sign said.

But it's not just the Republicans, she added, nor will electing Democrats cure the problems. What will cure it, she said, is when enough people join the movement and elected officials can't ignore them any longer. In that sense, Schucker said, the movement is succeeding brilliantly. "Yes," she said firmly. "It's beginning to open some eyes."

Angela Schulte agrees. A Cary woman with 12 years experience in corporate sales and customer service, she said, but who is currently unemployed, Schulte was one of the first to join the Occupy Raleigh ranks and has been among its chief organizers. She was not arrested Saturday — "I had to make a personal decision not to be," she said — and needed to rest on Sunday. But she was back Monday morning and feeling good.

"Given the pro-corporate environment in Raleigh, I had the feeling that it would be harder here to break through and be heard, and to some extent I think that's proven to be the case," she said. "Overall, the movement is going very well [and] growing by the day. Look at all the honking, happy cars going by," Schulte said, gesturing as one more honked while we talked. "People are noticing, and a lot of people are in solidarity with this. They may not be out here occupying, but the heart of this —

"I remember talking to a man in a convenience store and telling him about the Occupy movement, and he literally wanted to jump for joy. It's clear that a lot of people feel a part of this."

On the other hand, Schulte said, one driver had just yelled, "You need to be at work," as he went by. This "unwillingness to consider an alternative point of view when people are suffering and hurting," Schulte said, "it's simply unfathomable to me."

While I was there, Stacie Borrello arrived. She'a another of the core organizers, someone I spoke to when I posted about Occupy Raleigh a week ago. Borrello, with her two-year old son Jackson in tow, was feeling great about events. She said friendly lawyers are negotiating for Occupy Raleigh with the N.C. Department of Administration. The department controls the Capitol grounds. No predictions, but Borrello thought a deal to allow the occupation to continue in some ongoing way without the threat of police removal hanging over it was in store.

***

By the way, props to U.S. Rep. Brad Miller, D-Raleigh, who's been a visitor to Occupy Raleigh and did an interview with the N&O's Rob Christensen the other day, and to Secretary of State Elaine Marshall, who stopped by Saturday and spoke to the crowd. Also, state Rep. Bill Faison, D-Orange, has been by at least twice. Are there other elected officials I don't know about?