Innocence and Art

Gage finds the bronzed shoes (see yesterday) a joy and a fascination. He doesn't know what they represent. His mother courageously brings him to the encampment, where he plays in the kids' tent and where he enjoys being fussed over by a variety of friendly strangers. Although the threat of a "raid' seems unlikely now, Gage's mother has carefully written the number of the National Lawyers Guild on his arm so that if they should be arrested, she has it, or whoever speaks for him has it. His mother's number is written on his belly, so that if they are separated, someone can find her. That the shoes should be there...and that an eighteeen-month-old child has these numbers written on his body...tells you exactly where we are, in the USA.

As any of us who have been around the block are aware, differences of opinion will arise when people live together in community. Invective arises. "The liberals have murdered the camp." "Anarchists are endangering us all." "Neo-liberals wreck everything." "Spare me the fake revolutionists." 

One of the local activists I admire and respect is Jacob Bureros. He says this: "The way I see it, there are two different types of people [in the camp], and they don’t have to fight each other; they can each do their own thing. There are radicals who want to do actions, even autonomously, and there are folks who want the camp to be a community and to function as a symbol. We can have both....  The ones who want to do actions need to understand that not everyone is going to do them, and those who don’t want to do actions should stop policing the actions of others.... There is so much shit that needs to be done. We need pressure from the inside and the outside. Folks who believe in the system need to focus on the system and the politicians and pushing a vote in City Hall. Folks who don’t believe in it should be free to fight back in the ways they do." 

I would add to Jacob's analysis that there is a third kind of person in the camp: the artist. Artists hear and appreciate each person's story, they see the ways we touch each other, they hear the timbre of each voice. Artists might be unsure about which ideology will vanquish hate, but they know how light strikes a cheekbone, how wilting flowers grieve for the dead, how a patch of blue sky sets off the signs that say Abolish ICE.  Artists might or might not know the path to freedom, but they know color and composition, harmony and dissonance. They celebrate radical energy and liberal persistence. They know, as Jacob says, that everyone behind these barricades is valuable.