I am Emily Maya Mills. This is my stuff.

18th November 2011

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What It Is…

The encampment has a futuristic feel—the wild dustiness of Beyond Thunderdome and the density of Blade Runner’s Ramble City. A scribble of graffiti on a makeshift wall welcomes all: “I am the stinky 99%.” It’s all been said. The Occupy movement is aimless, leaderless, voiceless, visionless, and needs to brush it’s teeth. On the other hand, the leaderless, equality-minded, relentless, transcontinental glob of human pain and passion boils down to epic statement in and of itself.

This is only the second time I’ve visited the LA occupation. I feel nauseous. People are making good points. People are making no sense. One guy has a sign taped to his chest that says, “Join me for justice for all! Animal Control from North Central… killed my pet pigeons without my permission!” He signed off with his name, phone number and url: YouTube.com.  But people are here. Bodies. Numbers. That’s something, right? I don’t know.

I don’t know if I can get behind this movement. I can’t find anything rigid enough to push. I just came to lend my body to the human glob of care. To add volume to the collective bellow: “somebody somewhere, give a fuck.” But who? “Government” and “corporations?” Feels like they’re just words. Organization and hierarchy leads to imperialism, greed, abuse and corruption but it also leads to plumbing, roadways, food and fucking music, MAN. You can’t just play in a band with out scheduling rehearsals. Unless you want it to suck. Still, this thing feels like it just needs a little tuning. Or Bruce Springsteen and a rockin’ anthem that everyone can sing.

We are sitting in a circle. A girl who shares my name shrieks about the arrests, about how we cannot retreat. She’s been here too long. Her face looks like it hit the breaking point first—her mind and body are soon to follow.  The hairy, easy-mannered moderator does a nice job jotting down names and keeping order. When a speaker rambles on too long or plunges into personal agenda, he closes his eyes deeply and waives his hands like a conductor trying to bring it to a close. Outside the circle, two liberal, 40-something white guys wander by in plaid shirts and salt and pepper hair. “What do you think?” says one to the other. “Well, that guy keeps threatening to take his pants off and there’s a girl with a flower in her hair.” They shrug and head home.

Back inside the circle, a seasoned baby boomer with a rainbow peace sign on his bucket hat makes an intelligent plea to the occupiers to go home peacefully if evicted. Gather strength, he tells them. The crowd wiggles its fingers in the air to indicate silent applause. Another seasoned baby boomer with a collar, tie and mangy beard apologizes first but counters that plea with an intelligent argument about how endurance is key. The crowd wiggles its fingers in the air. Something gets accomplished. A bag will be passed around to collect bail money for the arrestees who got arrested on purpose. I don’t put any money in because I only have a $20. And because it doesn’t make any sense. Bailing out people who were intent on being arrested kind of makes a racket but it doesn’t make a sound.

This thing, this Occupy thing… it has me queasy. I tend to take on the energy of big crowds—picket lines and farmers markets make me weepy. Something about the unity, bro.  The territorialistic rage of neighborhood council meetings I’ve attended only as an observer has left me shaking. I guess the actor in me can still be involuntarily mushy despite the fact that the comic in me is involuntarily trying to choke that romantic whore into a quiet sleep.  Here at the OccupyLA encampment, my large-crowd energy detector has mixed it’s liquor and it has the spins.

I don’t want to sit around watching CNN, hoping that I won’t end up apologizing to the children one day but I don’t want to chant everything at no one in particular. I keep thinking, “what can be done? What, specifically, can be done?” And I know what it is. I know what the solution is. It lives inside the minds of the 1%. It’s a shift in perspective, a sense of morality in business, the giving in to the creeping suspicion that even in capitalism, nurturing behavior leads to good health and destructive behavior leads to the cancerous death of a nation.  Raping and pillaging among citizens is unconscionable and lawless. Don’t do it in business. Kay, guys? It’s easy.

It’s the furthest thing from easy. It’s abstract. Intangible. Untranslatable. What I’m suggesting as solution is the molecular shift in a person that occurs when a poem or a symphonic movement changes their life forever. Which is what we’re all suggesting. And we’re all ridiculous. What’s even more ridiculous is that this shift needs to occur in a population of people who are busily drinking 100-year-old Bordeaux out of hand cut crystal while barely admitting oxygen into their blood stream through a mouth-hole full of faux gras spring rolls. Still, I have hope.

There’s a trend happening in our nation’s top business schools right now. Graduates emerging form both the Columbia and Harvard School of Business, are reportedly far more concerned about community, employee and environmental welfare than their predecessors. There are three times as many ethics classes being taught at top business schools that there were a decade ago. Consistently, these students are turning down the courtship of corporations like Citibank who show up at the faculty club every year to recruit bright, motivated young… blood. Why? Because at this point being motivated to make money out of nothing is blatantly unintelligent. In the face of today’s economic climate it is impossible to be both bright and driven in that way.

If the Occupy Movement can strike a cord that awakens basic moral consciousness and responsibility in the 100%—from the bottom up—then we can turn the key. Then we have access to the “America” that was “once so great.” It’s possible to be proud and kind in business. It’s possible to cause a ripple effect of daily joy while seizing opportunity. It’s possible to love and trust organization so we can continue to enjoy plumbing, roadways, food and fucking music, MAN.

The band is strumming and stumbling upon some brilliant improvised riffs. There’s a song emerging. I personally think education will be our salvation—from the top down through the 100%—but there’s no sense in being another sign taped to another chest. I keep waiting for James Taylor to come out and lead a sing-along. If there’s anything that will make a Bordeaux-engorged old dude weep all over his elk heads it’s a little James Taylor. Or The Boss. Or maybe he’d love Morrissey and find he has something in common with a bunch of Latino kids in East LA. Maybe he would join in if a billion voices were singing one song. Or maybe he’ll just choke to death on his faux gras and let the gates swing open for what comes next.