In the "Control" Room

Didn't get a Blip yesterday because I was given just one day to prepare for a Public Radio talk show to discuss Occupy. That's Dave Miller in the picture, the moderator. On the show with me were the Mayor of Portland, waffling and being unclear and indecisive, and Robert Reich, who is one of my heroes (and phoned in). Reich made the point that Occupy is "changing the conversation" all over the world. I like his use of "conversation." That is so much what it's about for me: conversations with people I would never have met without the movement. I had ten times more to say than there was time for me to say, but I made the points, speaking as an individual volunteer and not speaking for the movement, that Occupy is a way for people who want a better world to find each other and to work together, that it's a movement of compassion and human caring, that it is HERE TO STAY, no matter what happens to the tents, and that it is NONVIOLENT.

Last night someone threw a molotov cocktail at a building where some corporate offices are, and then allegedly walked from there directly to the Occupy encampment. So detractors of the movement want to say the Occupy movement has turned violent. Ridiculous. I said, "That could be anybody at all who wants to discredit us." All they did was walk from there to the encampment. How stupid would a person have to be to do that, if they were part of the encampment? I said, several times, "We are a nonviolent movement. Whoever threw that bomb is not part of this movement because we are nonviolent." The whole bomb thing is a non-issue as far as I'm concerned. We have very clear nonviolent guidelines, adopted by the people in the Portland movement on October 16. I had a copy of those in my hand. If it's violent, it's not us! Hunger is violent. Homelessness is violent. Joblessness and lack of health care is violent. Unequal education is violent. The concentration of 80% of the wealth in 1% of the population is violent.

We are not violent.

Poverty, in a country where there is great, unimaginable wealth, is violent. Making poverty visible is not violent.

I'm going back to the encampment in a couple of hours, where there will no doubt be hundreds of more interesting photo ops than picture I took at the radio station, but I probably won't be at a computer again today. I'm really sorry I'm missing my Blipfriends' pictures and stories. I wish I had enough time to see them all. Thank you for your comments. I am receiving them with joy and gratitude. But I can't go through the pictures and make comments now. I know you all understand that. But believe me, I miss the calm, quiet, peaceful days of sitting at the computer and connecting with you. I do miss it.