Occupy Wall Street

They're back, and rumor has it the standard IQ test, if there is such a thing, will soon include a choose the video that represents the safest place to live, and then they show the one with peaceful protestors with cameras and phones costing at least hundreds of dollars per year or the one with the angry people, angry men, I should say. And then the five-year-old soon to be given an intelligence label, packaged, and sent to school will choose.

Please pardon the cynicism, but that contrast was noted as well as the fact that women seem fully integrated, even in the majority of the OWS protests whereas they are completely absent from the scenes of seas of angry men oceans away.

Maybe the question is how did we arrive at this place where people can afford amazingly sophisticated electronic equipment without necessarily having a place to live?

(One woman in the OWS video reports living at Bank of America for seven months after getting evicted from an OWS encampment.)

As usual, then, a muddle.

Time to get to work, folks.

Linh Dinh

Over at counterpunch, I stumbled upon a familiar name, that of Philadelphia's own Linh Dinh.

I remember that in the early nineties, my early twenties, he was already recognized as a new and important voice in town. I believe he was understood to be a poet, then. One night at McGlinchey's, I'm pretty sure we met, and we talked a bit over famously inexpensive drafts. I didn't have any literary accomplishments, so I imagine that I would have been impressed with whatever he had to say.

McGlinchey's is the kind of place where the hipper Temple and University of the Arts professors mingle with everyone else although I began to indulge in sobriety and never had time to go there once I started teaching all around town. (I've never been a party type, but you could say the adjunct overloads kept me off the streets.) My understanding is that the bar might not be the extreme bargain it once was, or that even the bargains don't seem so these days. In fact, I'm having trouble picturing it at all with the smoking ban now firmly in place although the comments at yelp suggest smoking inside is alive and well at the "dive-y" bar and grill.

Anyway, Linh Dinh's current project includes photographs from Occupy Wall Street and, if I'm not mistaken, dozens of other occupations. And he is accepting donations, perhaps because he needs them: "Speaking of solidarity, I wouldn’t have been able to observe the protest if a dozen readers of my blog hadn’t sent me hundreds of dollars this past month alone. Part of this cash was used to fix my broken camera. With a poisoned media, untrained citizens must anoint themselves journalists."

Well, I suspect that most of the "poisoned media" are just trying to survive like the rest of us, and even many writers considered mainstream are freelance and hustling to make ends meet. But Linh Dinh's photographs are certainly not indicative of an "untrained" eye.

occupying a nice first print run

Within hours of learning that The Philadelphia Inquirer no longer prints a Saturday edition (I do remember that one shrinking over the years), I read that Occupy Wall Street printed its first newspaper--raising $12,000 and printing 50,000 copies.

I guess it's safe to say that we can now count Occupy Wall Street as among and in support of the 99% of writers who contribute to the global economy of words on paper and screen and yet fail to reap a swell wage with full benefits. But would that be at the expense of the 1% of writers who still hold the good union jobs with corporate newspapers?

Fight for Your Long Page!

NYTimes "Gunning" for Protestors?

Like a well trained dog, I exceed my reading limit early each month, but I'm still able to pass on that the New York Times has Occupy Wall Street front and center on the Sunday morning website, and that they include links to three stories.

The main headline reads, "Protesters Are Gunning for Wall Street with Faulty Aim."

To me, it's unfortunate that peaceful protestors would be described in a "legitimate" news source as "gunning." And, alas, the first sentence is a dig at the ignorance of these peaceful young people:

"Demonstrators on Wall Street this week seemed to lack hard knowledge of the system they were fighting."

In fact, if they do lack this "hard knowledge" it could be due to how the system's statistics continually mask reality, whether we're talking about rates for unemployment, inflation, or pay for college grads. It's only in the last few years that we've seen more establishment journalism include information on discouraged workers or workforce participation rates.

Harper's Magazine in the Index ran the statistic that 85 percent of 2011 college grads returned to live at home after commencement, and any teacher in America who has ever reported this statistic or something similar  to his or her students is greeted by expressions of shock and disbelief. That statistic certainly doesn't mean that these young people remain at home for the rest of their adult lives, but it also doesn't account for the millions of other adult Americans living with their parents due to economic necessity.

So, perhaps, if it is true that these young people lack hard facts, perhaps it is also their sources--educators, journalists, parents, and others--who might take some responsibility for that? And perhaps the journalist who "broke" the story for The New York Times could also, by at least some criteria, be counted as among those who lacks "hard knowledge"? Or, perhaps, she is at least expert enough to know where her salary comes from?

There was also a nice Mom from Queens on the Occupy Wall Street livefeed just now who sent her love to the viewer who asked if she could be his Mom. And then, she sent her love to all of us. And blew kisses.

PS--we can't afford to only sell Will Bunch's books

PSC CUNY showed up to express solidarity with the protestors at Occupy Wall Street, and at least for a moment I felt a solidarity with the cause-in-itself and almost a euphoria. (I should note that the "one demand" remains undemanded, so it's difficult to know what I am feeling almost in solidarity with.) But Thursday around 9:30 p.m., the presence of teachers on the ground at Liberty Park seemed to offer the whole business a legitimacy, even a way of seeing beyond the usual register, and hoping for better times, even fairer times.

And although young people entering their adult years at a time of high unemployment and terrible worker-participation rates (according to The Fiscal Times, only 55 percent of Americans 16 to 29 are in the workforce at all) were still being dragged off to jail for touching trees, violating boundaries and such, the CUNY teachers helped me move past the cynical notions that this overtly commodified reality TV version of anticapitalist protest could be merely a non-profit's attempt to gain mediashare, a vehicle for Keith Olbermann Studies, or a way for Will Bunch to sell his book. Which of course brought me back to the Less United States of Kudera's original raison d'etre, which was to publish and sell my own. (Note to any young or old, anti or procapitalists reading this blog: although it certainly seems played out, blogging will be part of your expected path to publication, so it could be wise to begin now.)

And so I thought then it would be a shameless omission if I did not once more burden you with new and old views of my own materials: Fight for Your Long Day and The Betrayal of Times of Peace and Prosperity. They are of course both packaged and priced for the aforementioned 16 to 29 demographic, and with contents particularly suitable to the 45 percent without work. And with that in mind, here are the 28 libraries where a copy can be lent to you.

And I should also note that when I went back to adbusters.org to copy the link, I believe I saw an ad for vodka ("Genocide and Juice," but when I google, I learn that it is a rap album released by The Coup in 1994), but then also, the livefeed was down but a Democracy Now video segment seemed to offer a clip of an interview with the protestor who was last seen being dragged on the cement and shouting that he needed his inhaler while other scared protestors asked him to say his last name. Well, pardon me if in fact this is not the same protestor, but he looked clean and safe and outside the police precinct and safely expressing his views about "freedom to assembly," America, and such. And now the livefeed reads, "Let's Chill - Live Feeds Back ~ 7AM," and they are playing older video of a kind, young, harmonica-and-guitar-Bob-Dylan-cover protestor. Not the worst I've heard.

And now, it sounds like the loud young people who woke me up at 2:30 a.m. are retreating to their own livefeeds and other indoor activities, and so it could be the optimal time to return to bed.

Or do I shout out the window and quiz them on their workforce-participation rate?

Goodnight.