Andre Writes II

Suppose… suppose we no longer knock timidly on the doors of the halls of capitalism and ask, ‘..please sirs let us in.” Suppose we no longer ask the media, like a modern day twist asking for a dollop of gruel, to cover the stories of our plight and suffering. Suppose we no longer have to ask the democrats and republicans, and all the other political gangs to feed our poor and homeless. Suppose we no longer have homeless. Suppose we- we with our cuts and bruises, our ailments and our physical cares- are no longer denied care, but are taken care of, regardless of health insurance and HMOs and PPOs and them with all their filthy acronyms that are all euphemisms for ignoble death. Suppose we stand fast when they come to steal our homes and call it foreclosure. 

Suppose…suppose those we place on the margins of society, those heroes willing to sleep in the cold, hard, unyielding, reluctant embrace of parks and sidewalks are no longer relegated to the outer edges. Suppose they are embraced and welcomed.  The gays, and the blacks, and the homeless and the skaters and the drummers, and the smokers of weed and tobacco, and the transgendered and the most excoriated of them all, those who want something more… suppose we medicate them with free hugs.

Suppose we do this already. Suppose we call this Occupy Wall Street.

Suppose we form our own halls of community – our own microbanks (see India)

Suppose we make our own media – occupy wall street journal

Suppose we feed the poor and homeless – any occupy site in any city in the world

Suppose we have no homeless - occupy is our hall

Suppose we have health care – the medic tents at any occupy

Suppose we refuse foreclosure – an occupy in California already saved someone’s home

Suppose we no longer place people on the margins – those people are the movement, they are the heroes, they are the links that connect Martin Luther King jr. to Martin Luther the reformist. And no, I am not a catholic, nor am I even religious, but those with the courage of conviction have throughout the ages walked among us lesser beings. And from them we draw our hope.., sometime we leech it from them until they are empty husks, but…but they  provide us with the lamps of aspiration, and we follow the breadcrumbs they leave. And we gird our loins and follow those crumbs which lead us to confront the witches in their gingerbread cottages. The witches who would bake us in their ovens fueled by greed , derivatives and general goldman sachery (copyright). The witches who would say “let them eat cake”. For they fatten us and then they eat us. Also, those witches have never died. 

The fight to occupy Wall Street, I imagine, cannot be compared with the fight to acknowledge your difference in a world of uniformity –to tell your father  that you are gay, or your mom that you are a man in woman’s body, or that you can’t be a dentist but that if you don’t play music you life will be more of a finality than your eventual death is so much more of a fight than facing down the paper vultures on wall street. 

On behalf of those of us who have never fought a major fight, thank you for leading and teaching us. 

You are heroes!