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To the People of Austin, of Texas, and the world:

February 7, 2012 by growfoodraisehell

While I cannot speak for anyone but myself, I would like to address you all as an individual active in Occupy Austin.  This Friday night past, the Occupy Austin protest encampment was forcibly evicted from city hall by brigades of police who violently snatched at the crowd, arresting an ACLU observer who was reading them the law, a fifty eight year old epileptic woman who they knocked to the ground where she hit her head, and anyone else they could get their hands on.

I could launch into a tirade against the absurd and unnecessarily heavy handed police tactics used to clear the plaza, but I won’t.  There is a more important issue at hand, and that is to explain to the city of Austin just who we are, and what we have been doing for the last four months.

What I want is not sympathy.  State repression is the status-quo, so it never takes me by surprise when it rears itself so overtly.  What I would like is a fair shake from the people of Austin, the benefit of the doubt, that we as a collective of activists are not lazy whiners who want a hand out, nor are we envious of the wealth hoarded by genius-bootstrap-yankers as Mitt Romney and his friends in the propaganda industry would have you believe.

My personal analysis is that Occupy Austin — indeed — the Occupy movement globally, is a declaration that the architecture of the neo-liberal human systems of organization are failing to manifest our values.  Political, economic, and social systems that tirelessly reward grift, and con, and theft, and greed, and violence, and codified exploitation do not represent who we are as individuals or communities.  In plain language, we do not accept the world as it is being handed to us.  We do not accept that money and commerce are of higher value than life, and we reject ideologies and practices that reward the destruction of life for profit.

My critique of our culture is not hyperbolic, and a cursory glance at statistics demonstrates this.  The US imprisons more people per capita than any other country in the world.  For every homeless person in the US, 24.5 houses sit empty.  Every day, 200 species go extinct.  Rivers, lakes, and groundwater have become tainted by glyphosate, every mother on Earth has dioxin in her breast milk, and the amount of industrial fire retardants in the blood of north Americans doubles every two to five years.  I could recite these ad nauseam, fact after fact pointing out that this culture values profit over life, whether human or non-human.  But I digress.

So what has Occupy Austin been up to these four months?  How have we been attempting to create alternatives?  Since October 6th, we have been constantly campaigning to have Austinites move their money out of major banking institutions, and into local credit unions and banks.  We have teamed up with Tree Folks to plant hundreds of native trees in Zilker Park.  We have created public garden spaces across the city (some of which the city has destroyed.)  We have joined with east side communities in their campaign against the privatization of their schools.  We have had volunteers walk neighborhoods in the late hours of the evening to escort women home in times of escalated violence.  We have started student discussion groups at UT, general reading groups open to all, a women’s group, and a queer group so people could have a safe environment in which to discuss their concerns.  We have fed, clothed, and given a safer space for hundreds of homeless people, who despite the disgusting language of many in the media, are actually living, feeling human beings with concerns, voices, and a desire to affect change.  What they don’t have, is the right to vote (due to lacking an address.)

This isn’t a full accounting of our activities.  In fact, this list neglects our greatest accomplishment, which was to get people out of their houses, out from behind their TV and computer screens, and into the real world where we came together —first as strangers, now as a family— to devote ourselves to the nag of our consciences, to no longer ignore the injustice, the corruption, and the decay of our city and country.  My life has changed dramatically for the better since joining Occupy Austin, and when I hear society’s downtrodden people say that they haven’t felt more self worth in a decade, I know clearly the power of community, of kindness, and of an open and willing ear.

Let’s leave it with this:  We aren’t going away.  A fire lit in the hearts of men and women is not so easily extinguished, especially not by the incendiary tactics of the brutish hand of the state.  Understand, the Occupy movement is not political, it is cultural.  For those tired of the toxicity of consumer culture, of war culture, of propaganda culture, of a culture that promotes and congratulates the worst in people — find us.  We take all comers.  We hear all concerns.  We respect all viewpoints, so long as that respect is reciprocated. 

And heck, we have a potluck this Sunday from 11:00 until 2:00 in Zilker park, so the timing couldn’t be better.


  1. fralcon reblogged this from growfoodraisehell
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  3. freckledgnome reblogged this from growfoodraisehell and added:
    your life. (Emphasis mine.)
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