In Occupied America!
Sunday November 13, 2011 11:57:10 PM,
Arun Kumar, IANS
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Washington: America is
occupied today! The occupiers, a unique group of protesters, who
have pitched tents and tarps in parks across America, from the
Wall Street in the Big Apple to the nation's capital steeped in
politics to the most Ivy of the Ivy Leaguers, Harvard.
The unique movement is leaderless given the protesters' disdain
for all authority, yet the occupiers have run the makeshift
colonies with a system of their own for 58 days in New York, where
the Occupy Wall Street movement started, 44 in Washington and for
the fifth day today in Harvard.
In Washington, the occupiers have taken over the Freedom Plaza and
McPherson Square, one South of the White House and the other to
North, with some 17 committees of volunteers looking after
numerous tasks from action to food to sanitation to winterisation.
The groups even bring out their separate newspapers - "The
Occupied Washington Times" and "The Occupied Washington Post" to
articulate their demands like higher taxes on the wealthy, cuts in
defence budget and reform of campaign finance laws.
There are no formal rules, yet the occupiers have pitched their
tents of various shapes, sizes and hues in separate zones with a
kitchen, an information booth, a library and a medical post
separated from the living quarters.
"Avenues" between the rows of tents have been named after Gandhi,
Martin Luther King, Che Guevara, Harvey Milk and Malcolm X. The
"General Assembly" meets in a large open field in another part at
six every evening to take decisions with a variety of hand
signals.
Basant Khalsa, a 29-year old Sikh trucker from Northern
California, came to the capital to attend the dedication of the
Martin Luther King memorial, but has stayed on to run the kitchen.
He works 16 to 17 hours a day to dish out three meals a day to 100
to 200 protesters because he "likes to help people."
Manhattan's Zuccotti Park, the nerve centre of OWS has become a
tourist attraction. Here too working withy the same "horizontal
hierarchy" style of leadership decisions are taken and plans made
using an Occupy only technique called "mike check" for
communicating.
From Atlanta to Orlando in 70 major cities and over 600
communities across the US protesters are spreading their message
with a 'mike' being passed on with just a shout of "mike check"
and the crowd repeating the words of a speaker like a chant.
Along the way, the movement claiming to represent the 99 percent
underdogs has picked up other causes from peace to saving the
environment.
Finally last Wednesday it arrived at Harvard University, which as
one activist put it ironically produces the very one percent they
are protesting against, with students pitching two dozen tents in
Harvard yard with signs proclaiming "HARVARD IS THE 99%".
Whether this amazing Occupy movement would keep growing or fizzle
out, only time will tell. But for now it has occupied the minds of
America.
(Arun Kumar can be contacted at arun.kumar@ians.in)
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