The tenth day of Christmas: Off the steps and into Occupy

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A day away from the steps. Meet John H at the City Diner to talk money and business and meet up with Andre and Tsion to hande some of his issues as well.  

The #ows folks call and ask me to come downtown to their headquarters to be there for their Housing Work Group meeting. I’m not anxious to head downtown,but....

60 Wall Street is the post 9-11 headquarters of Deutschebank. It has a large open atrium with potted palms lending it a wintergarten feel. And post Zucotti eviction, this public space has become the unofficial headquarters for #ows. In the late afternoon, the tables aroud the atrium are filled with #ows working groups, Direct Action, Housing, Comfort, Media...it’s fascinating to see them all in action. 

Looking around I see mainly the young but also graying heads, union people, a white bearded New York classic Orthodox Jew. There’s a consious effort to share facilitation between men and women, black, white, latino,queer. 

The process of concensus is arduous. Starts wtih report backs, from other groups in Park Slope and Newark,  agenda building. After the circle has been gone around, a stack of speakers is lined up. The minute time rule of general assemblies does not apply to work groups. 

People take me aside to talk with me.  It’s apparent that the same power struggles, finger pointing, suspicion that plagues most organizations, movements, is everpresent here as well. And the people who annoy you the most(now I see who he really is..) are always suspected to be plants, agents provacateurs. I nod, say I hear, and then say they’ve go to work that out in community, not with or through me. 

The Work group reports it was up until 5:30 AM trying to come up with rules, no not rules, community agrements. I explain again how I, too, am responsible for, and to, a community. A three person delegatio is appointed to work with me tomorrow. 

I leave exhausted. I wish that they could not have to live through this part.  Avoid where we failed. But it’s original sin, the human condition. Unavoidable.  I admire the effort. I’ll help where I can. 

The ninth day of Christmas: Flamenco, Occupiers and the Virgin Mary

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It’s a day off for most people but I’m at the church to meet Martin. I talk about how much I appreciated his flamenco performance at Joe’s Pub on New Year’s Eve. How the sound of the music from Andalusia so captures the confluence of muslim muzzein and Jewish cantor and gypsy singing that took place in that golden era. And how so much of it comes from a place of passion, pain, peasants  in flight, as I recall Eva Encinias describing it years ago at Ghost Ranch in New Mexico. The sound that sounds like a grito, a cry from the deepest part of the soul. Feet pounding as if they could stamp out the devil, dig into the earth or set the very ground on fire. And what a exploration it could make if we could really get the Cordoba Initiative to come and explore these issues together.  

We tour all the spaces again, trying to find what  would best meet his needs. And ours. And I tell him I need to see something in writing. 

OK, so where’s the heat? I call Chris, our boiler guy, he’ll send a crew to discover exactly what’s going on.  

Having to tell the #ows no one can move in until we’ve fully reached an agreement, getting Pastor K at SPSA to get his  board to approve one more night there. Talking with Jeff and Billy and Stan explaining what we need on our part. They will have something in writing by tomorrow at 3 PM.

Deacon James comes in looking for his broom. Turns out he brought the Virgin Mary. Wanted to make sure that she didn’t get lost. I showed him that she was safe in the corner. 

Bobby comes in looking for assistance. Carrying books and strange stories. Another of my Capital Hall congregation. Marsha, Hope and I go to find some place warm to work on the budget. We stick to bare bones and still come up around $90000 short.  One thing is clear...we’ve got to have a revitalized West-Park congregation if the Center  is going to have a chance to succeed.  

Chris has arrived with his crew. Shows me a pipe completely filled with crud and the brown muddy water in the boiler. There’s your problem, he says. We’ve got to run this thing all day, see if we can clear  this out. 

All too soon the #ows group starts arriving to keep discussing how they might live together as a community in our space. SPSA has given them one more night. I’m trying to figure out some interim solution until we can reach a full agreement through my session. Like #ows, we have a process, too. I am not an autonomus decision maker. My role with session is as moderator. Somehow Presbyterians tried to wrestle with what they’re wrestling with centuries ago. We came close, but...And any well intentioned process dependent upon people of good will can be subverted by those without....

  

The eighth day of Christmas: New Year's Day

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Hope and Deacon James are there when I arrive. It’s pretty rare to be in church on New Year’s Day. A friendly neighborhood older man, another I’ve always wanted to see this church and its always been closed people is checkiing out the church, telling us how beautful it is. 

There’s another older man checking things out. He’s wearing a Union cavalry hat from the Civil War. He’s seen us in streaming video on the Occupy Wall Street website.(http://occupystreams.org/ ) And wants to see us for real. He decides to join us. 

We open with Hark the Herald Angels Sing, to remember it’s still Christmas. Do Psalm 148 peoples’ mike style.   With all its praise and emphasis on all creation, it’s perfect for New Years’ Day. (I especially like the sea monsters 148: 7).

John reads for us Isaiah 61:10 - 62:3.  And I read Luke 2: 22-40. Talk about it as Jesus’ bris, circumcision, 8 days after his birth.  Of the old faithful and righteous Simeon who had waited his life for this day and the prophet Anna whose words I wish were recorded.  Isaiah’s universalism brought forward into Luke.  And the pain that would come to Mary. And we noticed that the words child's father and mother were amazed, as if the earlier story about shepehrds and angels didn’t exist. 

When it cam time for communion, I asked how people felt about Auld Lang Syne. Deacon James never liked it because he never could understand it even though it was part of his watch night tradition at the African-Americn church in which he grew up. It always depressed John because he loved not being in school and when he heard it, it was almost time for school to begin again. 

Why do I bring it up? I lift cloth from the table, show the words carved in wood, In remembrance of me. Robert Burns was asking a question, Should old acquaintance be forgot? And his answer clearly, NO. Jesus calls us to this symbolic meal to remember. Hope recalls how those who participated in the Enlace de gracia service duirng Regi's years remember each other no matter where they are, that their circle still remains.  And as New Year’s, and January, look both backwards and to the future, on this day, we remember...

We finish with the Taize version of the Nunc Dimittis, Nunc dimittis servum tuum Domine, secundum verbum tuum in pace. (Let your servant go, go in peace, O Lord. In peace according to your word.)

And my benediction is Galatians 4:4-7, about the fullness of time and that So you are no longer a slave but a child, and if a child then also an heir, through God. And the service is over. 

I help Tia get the side lights in the balcony on for the coming Sanctuary service. And we both puzzle as to why the pipes are cold again and the boiler seems to be off. 

And then, after wishing her a Happy New Year, I head home. And stop at Saigon Grill where I will join Tracy and Victor and Hope and the New Years’ Day picket. It’s a good way to start the year.

Saigon Grill New Year's Day Picket

happy new year! feliz nuevo ano! 새해 복 많이 받으세요!
新年快乐！身体健康！万事如意！

For predictions for West-Park an dthe religious community for 2012, go to http://westsidespirit.com/2011/12/28/2012-predictions/

The seventh day of Christmas: Two bottles of champagne and a large painted plaster statue of the Virgin Mary

12/31

I’m concerned when I go to the church and find the door already open, lights on and Occupiers gathering. I had carefully deadbolt locked the door with Jason when we left last night.  Wonder if the boiler guys are there, but no. An old homeless guy in the bathroom....I have my ideas, but can’t know for sure. I share my concerns with Jason and Jeff. The Housing Work Group is meeting yet again. 

I run some errands, go home to check in with my family and go back to lock up. But the meeting is still rolling on. I share my concerns that propping the door open just doesn’t work for me. Back in my office, I find two bottles of champagne and a large painted plaster statue of the Virgin Mary. The champagne? Well, RL’s been here. I try to imagine RL and the intensely serious Occupiers. As for the Virgin Mary? Well, I just don’t know. 

Gather my champagne and head for a late afternoon coffee with Jane. Then head back to lock up. Short time before heading to Joe’s Pub to see Martin’s Noche Flamenca at Joe’s Pub. It’s New Year’s Eve.

Out of the garden now: a night with #ows

12/30

I get a call from Jason asking me to come down. There are two meetings going on simultaneously. One has to do with making plans/rules for living together at West-Park. The other is the Spokescouncil meeting. Jason and Diego have come under fire for excluding four disruptive persons. Work had become impossible.This has led to hours of debate. 

Some believe that if you listen  hard enough to where someone’s pain is coming from, you can help heal them. That just giving voice to people can be healing. Others have gotten to the point where enough is enough. That allowing four individuals to dominate is abusive, even violent. 

One older white haired woman had taken someone into her home. It had ended badly. She’s one who feels violated by individuals taking up so much time. 

I go outside for a break. A young man is yelling loudly, making threatening noises. Something about a friend who went inside while he was excluded. I don’t have a good feeling about this. His friend comes out. More threats. Dan is getting into it verbally from the sidelines. Fists start to fly.

Rafael the security guy quickly gets Dan and anyone else extaneous out of the way. Then pushes the guy’s friend away. Then in a blink of an eye, wraps him up, takes him gently to the ground, immobilizing the guy. I’m watching, wondering. All the time, he’s talking to him.  Within a few minutes, he lets him up, they’re sitting on the sidewalk together, Rafael’s arm around him.  By the time the police come and ask, What’s going on here? The answer is nothing, absolutely nothing. 

I talk with Rafael. Tell him I’m impressed. Ask him how he does it,he says, look I have five boys, and laughs. First, people look at me and never expect me, a big Lation guy,  to move fast, I’ve got that going. And then you have to engage, to deescalate, then get the person out, away from the situation. I knew if they left him alone,he’d burn out..just had to give him the space to do that...for his own good.

The fighter is sitting alone, soon falling asleep...

Back inside, I have to explain that no, I didn’t say to exclude anyone. What I did say was that I am trying to build a community of communities, that I have obligations to all those communities. That each and everyone who walks in here has to feel safe and secure. And that if in order for that to happen, some people need not to be here, then that must be. And that who and how is not my decsision. But I will support those who make that happen. For the good of the whole.

Later, I will have to make that same speech downstairs as well. Some want to only create rules as they live into the experience. But that won’t work for me. 

I talk with Jason outside. You guys are discovering what my business calls original sin, the human condition. You’re really out of the garden now. You have to figure out how to live as responsible adults,responsible to each other. 

He nods. You know, it was really beautiful, back in Zucotti, for awhile. Everything just worked. And then...

It’s like that Leonard Cohen song, I say, tonight will be fine......for awhile. 

People leaving the meeting talk about how hard it is, but how beautiful it is. Trying to practice radical acceptance. Making sure that every voice is heard. Some voices that have never been heard.  Sensitive to charges of racism, there's a conscious effort to rotate the facilitator role through black, white, brown, male, female....

I feel like they feel like they’ve aready won the revolution and are now trying to figure out how to build a society. Wondering what Hugo would have to say to them, having actually done that once. Those who feel that some disrupters may be undercover NYPD or Homeland Security are more than likely right.

It’s not a bad vision, radical acceptance, every voice counting. All equal. The church had a vision like that once. 

My conversation with Jason about rules

12/30

Jason is geting frustrated by the project of trying to come up with a set of rules that might facilitate a workable #ows living group at West-Park. The committed anarchists in the group are resisting. We’ll move in first and then make the rules, they say. No, you won’t. No rules, no move in. (That’s me.)

I say to Jason, So you guys have left Eden for good. You’re out of the garden now. And then, but let me use a metaphor from my line. I grew up as a Christian with the narrative line that Judaism was a religion of law and Christianity a religion of love. That was a lie. Christianity has made as many rules and oppressive laws that bind the human spirit. And do violence to others.  But more than that, it’s a misrepresentation.

Jews don’t feel burdened by the law. Every year, after the High Holy Days, there’s this celebration, Simchat Torah, Joy in the Torah. Why? Because jews believe that the Torah, the teaching, the law, was a gift from God. A gift that set us free to be human. It’s like how far can you drive with your eyes closed? It’s the law that put concern for the widow, the orphan, the stranger at your gates at the very center of community life.  And declared that every seven times seven plus one year there should be a Jubilee, all debts forgiven, property revert to the original owners. Why? Because they believed that society cannot sustain itself if any of its members are permanently on the margins, premanently dependent on the charity of others.  It’s the 99%, man, at the heart of the law.  

And I have few words about concensus as well. Not always so democratic. My polity mentor Marianne Wolfe taught me  that concensus models can put heavy emotional pressure on the minority to give in. There haas to be a way a way for people to hold onto their dissent without blocking the group. And as, well, concesus allows small, organized or not, groups to perpetually hamstring the movement, prevent any progress at all.  

Jason says, You have to come say that tonight, and say this,  it’s really important. And i say, if my family’s ok, I’ll be there.

The sixth day of Christmas: Heat at last, heat at last, thank God almighty, heat at last...

12/30

Another day of racing against the clock. Has Chris deliverd his letter to the DOB? Yes, at 10:30. All right then, has DOB contacted Con Ed? OK, Gale’s on that one. By 2:30, still no word. The hour is getting late. I reach out to Ted who reaches out to his friend at Con Ed. Gale calls, Con Ed will be there by 3:30. 

At 3:30, Chris the plumber and his crew are there. Jane and Tia have arrived. Gale is there. But no Con Ed. It’s beginning to feel  like a local theatre production of Waiting for Godot. We decide to have a pool. Jane says 4:45, I say 4:32. And at 4:30, they arrive.

But it’s not easy. I go back to my office to find Ji Young and Miranda. Miranda is playing the wooden toy piano a young couple from the neighbrhood donated. Complications to be dealt with.  And Jason has issues to discuss. And Dan is popping in and out. And a full crew is intently engaged in the basement.  


And Joseph from England and Fabiana from Mexico have come to talk about getting married.  They bth live in Mexico City now. They're coming ti New York ot get married, midway between England and Mexico. 

Gale has to leave. We go down to check things out, watching closely. At one point, the technician looks up. You guys are literally freaking me out, he says. And I remember the sign at out garage back in Pittsburgh, Labor is $25 an hour, $50 if you help.

 So Jane and Tia and I leave and retreat to the warmth of her office. There’s a boom from below and we rush downstaors ecxpecting  the worst, but all is well. Like a car engine coming on and old pipes breathing again. The Polish plumbers are taking off. We had a good chat about New Year’s kielbasa and pierogies. And soon enough, Jane has to leave. I walk her down the street  to where she’s meeting Katherine for dinner. 

When I get back, Jason greets me at the door. It’s on, he says.At approximately 7:30 PM, December 30th, the heat was back on for the first time in nearly three years.  And I walk in, Tia is smiing, the pipes in office are getting warm. We exchange a high five. Chris the plumber needs to check every radiator. He smiles at the antique one in my office. I collect those he says, but that one  is really rare. 

In the front of the sanctuary he stops and says, The acoustics in here are great. You could do like concerts here, like small operas, like... I tell him, that’s the idea. And we do...

We walk around. There’s a lot of work still to be done. Will have to happen next week. But the pipes are warming up. I’m trying to take in the heat. Trying to take in that it is finally, finally on.