I just watched the raid of OccupySF. What a sad night for the occupiers. The cops broke everything up, ripped tents apart, tossed everything in a garbage truck. I don't know what gives them the right to steal people's possessions. It's not right. The things that the MSM will report as x number of pounds of "trash" is actually real people's personal property. For some it was everything they had left. I saw a perfectly good bicycle get thrown in the "trash." They took all the stuff from the kitchen that was giving away over one thousand meals each day. They threw away the medical tent and everything in the medical tent. They took the books in the library and the protesters "university." Some people undoubtedly had medications that they need in those tents or in backpacks, which were also thrown away. All of that stuff will be called garbage by the MSM later today. But it wasn't just "garbage" like the MSM will undoubtedly say it was.
I am so angry now that I am ready to start asking to borrow a wheelchair, pack up my medications and go to the shutdown of the Port of Oakland on December 12th. I am a disabled person who can't get disability to save my life-- literally. I don't take morphine as a recreational drug. I take it because I am in that much pain, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. I have asthma and if the OPD beats me, tear gasses me or pepper sprays me, I will likely die. This is a cause for which I am willing to be a martyr. That's how much this movement means to me.
If we occupiers are successful it means that taxes will be collected more fairly, it means that politics will be demonetized, it means that politicians will once again work for the people they represent as opposed to the highest bidder. Success means single-payer health care and the elimination of life-long FREE health care for politicians. Success means that corporations are not people. Success means that the pay-scale in corporate America will treat workers more fairly and that CEOs will not be earning 3,000 times what the average worker in their company gets paid. Success means the end of outsourcing jobs outside of America. Success means that people will not have to go into life-long debt to go to college. Success means new laws for Wall Street and fairness for banking customers. Success means that our food supply will not be controlled by Monsanto and that genetically modified foods will not be allowed in the food chain. Success means that animals intended for food will be treated humanely. Success means that people will be treated humanely and fairly. Success means that my son and his children, if he chooses to have any, WILL have a chance to have a better life than I have had.
When I married my son's father he was a Laborer's Union member who worked as a hard rock driller and blaster. Yes, he blew things up for a living. Specifically, a mountain. The rock he helped to produce was used for both rip-rapping (a method of averting erosion in rivers) which the environmentalists hated AND as "fish rock" meant to be used by fish, salmon specifically, for spawning, which was much LOVED by the environmentalists. The SAME rock. No, it doesn't make any sense.
When we got married in 1984 he was making $15.41 per hour. Pretty good wages for the time. Roughly five times minimum wage. Within six months he got a dollar an hour raise. This job required LOTS of overtime and 70 hour work weeks were not unusual. Luckily, we lived in a travel trailer at his job site during the week and on the weekends we went home to a peaceful mountain village.
We had no electricity at the quarry, nor did we have running water. I had to haul drinking water and ice for the huge ice chest we had. I could usually haul enough water to last a couple of days. I had to drive 20 minutes into town every day for ice. In winter it was freezing. In summer it was unbearably hot, some days it was 115 degrees Fahrenheit. No A/C. But it wasn't a wholly bad place to live. The wildlife was amazing.
Bald eagles and peregrine falcons hunted by day and bats by the millions swarmed the skies in the evenings. The bats would fly so close that I could feel the wind generated by their wings. The quarry was virtually on the bank of Deer Creek and the cool water was particularly nice on those hot days. The water was filled with fish and there were beavers, turtles and all sorts of snakes-- particularly rattlesnakes. I kept my broom just outside the door so that I could sweep the step and under the step before walking outside. I had to if I didn't want to be bitten. It was a hard way to live, but for that kind of money, you put up with it. It seemed fair.
My now ex-husband usually does gold mine work now because the types of projects that used the rock he produced at the quarry are no longer being done. The pay rate for mine work is much higher because it's hazard pay. Were he working the same quarry job he would only be getting paid about five dollars an hour more than he made way back then. He has 28 more years of experience now and working in a mine is MUCH more dangerous, but he only makes about twice as much as he did back then. Unfortunately, this is non-union job that he took because it pays more. Even so, it hasn't really kept pace with the cost of living.
The point of my trip down memory lane is that it still felt like a middle class person could get ahead back then. It doesn't feel that way anymore and that's a shameful situation for America. That is why I support the Occupy Movement.
(Updated on 12/11 to add tags.)
Showing posts with label citizen journalism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label citizen journalism. Show all posts
Wednesday, December 7, 2011
Monday, December 5, 2011
More Men Like This Man, Please!
The purpose of this blog is to allow me to write stream of consciousness essays on my own personal thoughts. My thoughts the last few years have become more and more political. It seems the more I learn, the less I agree with the governance of the United States.
At this particular moment I'm especially interested in the Occupy Movement. I have been expecting something like this movement for a couple of decades. What I want to know is what took so long?
If this blog actually gets any traffic, which is highly unlikely, but IF it does, I will put a little ad on here and have it directly contributed to Spencer Mills, AKA @OakFoSho on Twitter and UStream.tv. Spencer is a brilliant young independent citizen journalist/editorialist who is covering the Occupy Movement, particularly in Oakland, his home town. If you would like to know more about him, view his videos of either Occupy Oakland or his trip to Occupy LA just click here.
He has recently taken a leave of absence from his job (that he loves) working at a gym in order to be able to document the movement. There is a link on his page that allows him to take donations so that he can continue his important work. In the spirit of transparency he also is documenting every donated penny spent, whether it's for travel expenses, living expenses or equipment.
Granted, he was amazingly overqualified for a gym job. He has a BA and an MBA from Loyola-Marymount University. He graduated in 2008, just in time for the bottom to fall out of the jobs market, the real estate market, the stock market and every other damn thing.
When law enforcement threatens violence against peaceful demonstrators he gets right in their faces with his camera, tells the viewers the names and/or badge numbers of the rule breakers, and tells them how many thousands of people all around the world are watching them, live. He has been tear gassed, shot with pepper spray filled paint balls and has had police point their weapons directly at his head at point blank range, with a finger on the trigger-- something that is expressly against policy.
I was lucky enough to have been there from his first broadcast the night the protesters shut down the Port of Oakland, and I've been hooked ever since. When he made his famous "run for the battery" I was right there with him, sitting on pins and needles and cheering him on all night long. I can't tell you the last time a man has kept me up all night just listening to him talk, but this young man can do that.
When UStream saw what a fantastic job he was doing they loaned him a multi-provider six modem unit so that if AT&T stops working it switches over to Verizon or Sprint. It also has three or four batteries that keep everything running and a high resolution Sony Handycam video camera with night vision capabilities. The pack weighs something like 40 pounds, so he still uses the Android phone he started with if he's just interviewing occupiers, touring camps or answering viewer questions in real time via the chat and social media streams at UStream.
What an impressive, smart and dedicated young man he is. If there were more people like Spencer Mills this would be a much better world.
(Edited on 12/11 to update cell phone service information.)
At this particular moment I'm especially interested in the Occupy Movement. I have been expecting something like this movement for a couple of decades. What I want to know is what took so long?
If this blog actually gets any traffic, which is highly unlikely, but IF it does, I will put a little ad on here and have it directly contributed to Spencer Mills, AKA @OakFoSho on Twitter and UStream.tv. Spencer is a brilliant young independent citizen journalist/editorialist who is covering the Occupy Movement, particularly in Oakland, his home town. If you would like to know more about him, view his videos of either Occupy Oakland or his trip to Occupy LA just click here.
He has recently taken a leave of absence from his job (that he loves) working at a gym in order to be able to document the movement. There is a link on his page that allows him to take donations so that he can continue his important work. In the spirit of transparency he also is documenting every donated penny spent, whether it's for travel expenses, living expenses or equipment.
Granted, he was amazingly overqualified for a gym job. He has a BA and an MBA from Loyola-Marymount University. He graduated in 2008, just in time for the bottom to fall out of the jobs market, the real estate market, the stock market and every other damn thing.
When law enforcement threatens violence against peaceful demonstrators he gets right in their faces with his camera, tells the viewers the names and/or badge numbers of the rule breakers, and tells them how many thousands of people all around the world are watching them, live. He has been tear gassed, shot with pepper spray filled paint balls and has had police point their weapons directly at his head at point blank range, with a finger on the trigger-- something that is expressly against policy.
I was lucky enough to have been there from his first broadcast the night the protesters shut down the Port of Oakland, and I've been hooked ever since. When he made his famous "run for the battery" I was right there with him, sitting on pins and needles and cheering him on all night long. I can't tell you the last time a man has kept me up all night just listening to him talk, but this young man can do that.
When UStream saw what a fantastic job he was doing they loaned him a multi-provider six modem unit so that if AT&T stops working it switches over to Verizon or Sprint. It also has three or four batteries that keep everything running and a high resolution Sony Handycam video camera with night vision capabilities. The pack weighs something like 40 pounds, so he still uses the Android phone he started with if he's just interviewing occupiers, touring camps or answering viewer questions in real time via the chat and social media streams at UStream.
What an impressive, smart and dedicated young man he is. If there were more people like Spencer Mills this would be a much better world.
(Edited on 12/11 to update cell phone service information.)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)