The Occupy Movement: Making Peaceful Revolution Possible

Last week an Occupy San Francisco encampment was shut down by police. Occupy Denver will be shut down tonight, and in New York it appears that Mayor Bloomberg, after saying protesters could stay as long as they wanted, wants the peaceful occupiers out. The excuse he is using is that the park needs to be "cleaned", but cleaned of what?

Corporations make their wishes known through 'lobbying'. Big Money sends out lobbyists with suitcases full of cash to shower on our politicians when votes go the right way. The lobbyists are welcomed by our 'leaders', who then go on to influence policy that affects the corporate world's greedy plans for market domination.

In stark contrast is when the people make their wishes known. Then it is called "protesting". Citizens become "protesters", or "hippies", or "anarchists". A group of such citizens are a "mob", and they are dangerous regardless of how peaceful they may appear. The police, agents of the state, move in.

"Bad protester - Go Home!"

Lobbyists are given a seat at the table, while citizens exercising their free speech rights are harassed, arrested, jailed, then told to go home and wait for the next election.

In a democracy we have a responsibility to be engaged in our political system at all times. When we see injustice it is our responsibility to speak out and demand change from the individuals we vote to represent us.

If we are not allowed to do this peacefully, then do we really live in a democracy any more?

Corporate media will tell you that the Occupy Movement does not have a coherent message. For those that are actually listening, and are not threatened by the truths within, the message can be heard loud and clear:

"Over the last 30 years, the 1% have created a global economic system - neoliberalism - that attacks our human rights and destroys our environment. Neoliberalism is worldwide - it is the reason you no longer have a job, it is the reason you cannot afford healthcare, education, food, your mortgage. Neoliberalism is your future stolen. 

Neoliberalism is everywhere, gutting labor standards, living wages, social contracts, and environmental protections. It is "a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money." It is a system that ravages the global south and creates global financial crisis - crisis in Spain, in Greece, in the United States. It is a system built on greed and thrives on destablizing shocks. It allows the 1% to enrich themselves by impoverishing humanity. 

This has to stop!
We must usher in an era of democratic and economic justice.
We must change, we must evolve. 

On October 15th the world will rise up as one and say, "We have had enough! We are a new beginning, a global fight on on all fronts that will usher in an era of shared prosperity, respect, mutual aid, and dignity."

- From occupywallst.org

Let's make peaceful revolution possible. On October 15th let your elected officials know how you feel about the present state of the world. Do something to express your freedom of speech and celebrate our democratic rights.

• write a letter
• send an email
• make up a sign with a catchy slogan, and picket City Hall, or a bank, or a country club.
• vow to spend as little money as possible on corporate crap
• support local small businesses in your community
• Work hard, have fun, and change the world - it is your right, and your responsibility

What Happened To The Boomers?

These are the ex-Flower Children?

The 1960s was the last time there was a popular mass movement that espoused simple living. The counter-culture movement, made up of early baby boomers, had an ethos of working with nature, communal living, creative expression, and questioning authority. But the movement quickly devolved into a pathos of shattered dreams and missed opportunities.

After a good start in the 60s, by the 70s the peace-loving, anti-authority generation had tuned out, turned off, and dropped in to the "narcotic tobacco haze of Capitalism". Clear eyed idealists of this huge group were overcome by the more populous section of their contemporaries that eventually turned into bleary-eyed consumer zombies.

What of the ideals of the movement?

"A 1967 article in Time Magazine asserted that the hippie movement has a historical precedent in the counterculture of the Ancient Greeks, espoused by philosophers like Diogenes of Sinope and the Cynics. The article also claimed that the Hippies were influenced by the ideas of Jesus Christ, Hillel the Elder, Buddha, St. Francis of Assisi, Henry David Thoreau, Gandhi, and others." - wikipedia

This is a major Who's Who of the great teachers of simplicity. Diogenes lived in a barrel in a public square, and preferred enjoying a warm, sunny day to meeting with influential politicians. He was all about living freer and better, unencumbered by things and the inequality of social classes.

The 1960s emphasis on living more satisfying, sustainable lives was an important movement in the right direction. People were seeing the dehumanizing, ecologically damaging effects of putting money as the bottom line for decision making. But then the mighty cultural pendulum began to swing, often aided by riot squad tear gas, billy clubs, and bullets.

Communes and cooperation (almost a million people lived in more than 10,000 cooperatives across the US in the early 70s) gave way to McMansions in gated communities. By the 1980s geodesic domes looked like quaint playthings when compared to 2500 square foot starter homes in 'architecturally controlled' neighbourhoods. It was the beginning of the era of 'Greed is Good'.


Bicycles and VW Beetles were replaced with bulldozing Hummers and BMWs. Mind-expanding drugs were set aside for the mind-numbing high of buying enough stuff to fill billions of homes and garages and storage lockers and garden sheds and drawers and closets, and...

It was a race with the Joneses, even though no one knew who they were (or that they were financing the whole lifestyle with loans). Purchasing power formed the new ethos - it was survival of the most privileged, connected, and wealthy. The counter-culture was gutted, and reduced to a fashion trend.

Flower power and universal love were seen as subversive and weak. The most competitively minded and ethically challenged among us began to take over, often using hate and divisiveness to separate and control us. 

By the 2000s we had forgotten all the lessons of the counter-culture, and had succeeded in soiling our nest to the point of looking for extra-solar planets to move to when this one is done.

Wow. What happened to the boomers? Does a glimmer of the freedom of the counter-culture still burn in their cold, consumeristic hearts, and can they rediscover the peace and love that will be required to kick the high-consumption habit?

It would be groovy if they could.

No Mischief Monday

Blowin' In The Wind - Bob Dylan (1962)

How many roads must a man walk down
Before you call him a man?
Yes, ’n’ how many seas must a white dove sail
Before she sleeps in the sand?
Yes, ’n’ how many times must the cannonballs fly
Before they’re forever banned?
The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind
The answer is blowin’ in the wind

How many years can a mountain exist
Before it’s washed to the sea?
Yes, ’n’ how many years can some people exist
Before they’re allowed to be free?
Yes, ’n’ how many times can a man turn his head
Pretending he just doesn’t see?
The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind
The answer is blowin’ in the wind

How many times must a man look up
Before he can see the sky?
Yes, ’n’ how many ears must one man have
Before he can hear people cry?
Yes, ’n’ how many deaths will it take till he knows
That too many people have died?
The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind
The answer is blowin’ in the wind

No Mischief Monday

"When we heard about the hippies, the barely more than boys and girls who decided to try something different ... we laughed at them. We condemned them, our children, for seeking a different future. We hated them for their flowers, for their love, and for their unmistakeable rejection of every hideous, mistaken compromise that we had made throughout our hollow, money-bitten, frightened, adult lives." - June Jordan

Free-Spirited Builders of the Pacific Coast

“If I have a right to life I have a right to living space… I wasn’t born with dollars in my pocket. I shouldn’t have to chase the big buck all my life just for a place to live.” Barbara Oke.

Lloyd Kahn, hand-built home and simple living guru, has published several books to inspire the frugal free spirit that lies within us all. All of his books not only explain and illustrate how to build your own shelter, but introduce you to people from around the world that have done it themselves. The inspiring message is that regular people with basic skills and tools can house themselves. Without a monster mortgage.

This is what grannystore.com said about Lloyd's book on free-thinking alternative builders and their structures on the Pacific Coast:

There's been a vortex of creative carpentry energy along the Pacific Coast over the last thirty years. Lloyd Kahn made four trips up the coast over a two-year period, shooting the photos that appear in this book.

Many of the builders shown here got started in the countercultural era of the '60s and '70s, and their work has never been shown in other books or magazine articles. As in the author's previous books Shelter and Home Work, there are three featured builders: Lloyd House, master craftsman and designer who has created a series of unique homes on a small island; Bruno Atkey, builder of a number of houses and lodges built of hand-split cedar on "The Wild Coast" (the Pacific Ocean side of Vancouver Island), and SunRay Kelley, barefoot builder tuned into Nature, who has designed and built wildly imaginative structures in Washington, California, and other parts of the country. In addition, there are working homesteads, sculptural buildings of driftwood, homes that are beautiful as well as practical, live-aboard boats, gypsy-type caravans, and examples of stunning architectural design.

The two predominant features of the landscape along the Pacific Coast are water and wood. Most of these buildings are on or close to the sea. Trees grow fast and tall in rainy Northwest forests; many of these buildings were constructed entirely from logs off the beach or trees from adjacent land. You are invited to join Kahn's journey up and down the coast: driving the roads, riding the ferries, camping on the beaches, meeting these builders, and seeing their unique creations.

In Kahn's second book, Home Work: Handbuilt Shelter, he ruminates on simpler times when peace, permissiveness, trust and freedom still dominated in North American life. He says, "Looking back, it's hard to believe you could ever do something like this, just an hour away from San Francisco. A home that costs practically nothing. No taxes, building inspectors, electricity, cars, roads. Are there things like this going on in American today? Could this be the same planet?"


It reminds me of the local example of Sombrio beach that for over 30 years provided a sanctuary for a group of simple living folks braving a radically alternative lifestyle.

"For decades, it and a chain of other beaches on the Canadian side of the Strait of Juan de Fuca have been home to free spirits who refuse to march to middle age and conformity with the rest of the baby boomers. Here amid abundant plant and animal life across from Washington State's Olympic Peninsula, the old ways -- early homesteader meets flower power -- prevail."
From: factsandopinions.com

The Sombrio "squatters" living in their "hippie shacks" eventually saw the dream die in 1997 when the BC government evicted them to make way for the newly formed Juan de Fuca Trail.


Paul Manly produced and directed a 2006 documentary on the Sombrio Beach community. Paul says, "Sombrio is an important story because it was an example of self-sufficient living in the modern age. Most of the people living there had ideological reasons for doing so. They wanted to create a smaller footprint and disengage from the world of excessive consumption. Although it looked like easy street in the summer, living at Sombrio was not always easy and required perseverance and a lot of daily work."


Is anything like this still going on anywhere in North America? Is this even the same planet?

My Mom Would Think You're Lazy

Anyone seriously considering downsizing, or living with less, is going to be up against formidable opposition. Courage, perseverance, and a tough leathery hide are required to venture into the Simple Zone. When troubled times call for us to go shopping in order to do our part, not doing so is risking being unpatriotic. Being seen as a penny-pinching tight-wad pales in comparison.

When I first decided that I wanted to delve deeper into simple living, some thought I was making a colossal mistake, or worse. I could have stayed in my teaching position until I was 65, rather than retire at age 40.

Thing is, over the course of my career I heard of many colleagues that passed away shortly before, or just after retiring. All that financial planning is rendered ineffective if you die before the first pension check hits your mailbox. I had to change my life before it happened to me.

I took a two year sabbatical first, wanting to ease into a life with less. After the freedom of these two years I couldn't go back. I quit.

"If you don't teach what will you do?" I was asked. My mind was reeling thinking of the infinite possibilities. Don't get me wrong, teaching was one of the most incredible and satisfying things I have ever done. But it has a way of consuming your time; it takes over your life, becomes your life. It is 'right livelihood' but at what cost?

Someone else asked, "What about retirement?" Since I try to live in the moment, considering this was not at the top of my list. Sixty-five felt like a long way away, and I wanted to retire to a simpler life immediately.

My favorite reaction, though, came from two individuals I didn't even know. I explained to these friends of friends, that I had quit teaching to live a slower-paced, environmentally responsible, low-income life.

The young couple were silent as they shook their heads in response to my words. Finally the woman looked at me, and proclaimed, "My mom would think you are lazy."

Ouch. Move over Big Brother, Big Mother is here.

Call me a slacker, call me a hippie, a radical even, but don't tell me your Mom thinks I'm lazy. That's just mean. I guess what she was saying was she thought that my work ethic sucked.

This is what 20th-century French philosopher André Gorz wrote about the work ethic:

The work ethic has become obsolete. It is no longer true that producing more means working more, or that producing more will lead to a better way of life. 

The connection between more and better has been broken; our needs for many products and services are already more than adequately met, and many of our as-yet-unsatisfied needs will be met not by producing more, but by producing differently, producing other things, or even producing less. 

This is especially true as regards our needs for air, water, space, silence, beauty, time and human contact. Neither is it true any longer that the more each individual works, the better off everyone will be.

- Critique of Economic Reason, 1989

Go tell your momma that.

We have to become smarter about work and consumption and quality of life. We have to lift our foot off the gas pedal as we speed toward the precipice. If that means affecting the 72% of the economy that consumer spending accounts for, then so be it.

It has to happen or we are going over the cliff. I do not intend to do a Thelma and Louise thing. I am getting out of the car before it takes the plunge, even if your mom thinks I'm lazy, and wants to see me disappear over the horizon.

Oh, and by the way? Your mom is wrong.