Autumn is in full swing in the East Bay, and it does swing. Roses are giving their all; flowers that do not bloom in the high sun of summer are now blooming madly. Purple sage, cosmos, chrysanthemums, marigolds, and blood red amaranth.

Early mornings stay dark and mid-morning is a time of block long shadows that swell the size of my world. The palm tree that has spent all summer stuffed behind  chain a link fence, reaching expectantly and decorously for blue sky, has now escaped to the street beyond, its trunk gone shadow grey, snaking down the sidewalk, steely fronds fanning into the intersection.

I walk, forgetting that I have slept only fitfully recently because of surveillance helicopters, hovering over the downtown Occupy encampment, making a racket. Our tax dollars wasted. Thursday night, I peered from my window, saw the three north stars of helicopter heaven, blinking and trembling, rattling the sea of the sky, and had to wonder what was birthing beneath.

A new tent city, that's what.

Today when I visited OCCUPY : OAKLAND, the lawn was once again covered by tents, not quite as closely packed as previously but as neatly organized. The paths between the various neighborhoods of tents had been marked out with silver tape and wooden sidewalks were beginning to be laid down. An efficient kitchen was up and running, and the food being served looked as tasty and more plentiful than before. The First-Aid booth had reappeared and seemed to be well stocked. A hand-washing station, complete with bottles of hand sanitizer, had been set up under the bust of Frank Ogawa, steps from lines of portable toilets, more numerous and some fancier than before.

People were crowded on the amphitheatre steps, enjoying the sun, eating lunch, and listening to a young man speaking about  Bank of America's recent shifting of trillions of dollars worth of spongy derivatives from Merrill Lynch into its retail bank coffers.

On the periphery of the still forming tent city, candles were burning around pictures of Scott Olsen, the young marine,  still recovering from a serious head injury inflicted by a 'non-lethal' police projectile.

A silk screen artist was printing up dynamic posters -- Hella Occupy Oakland, Power to the People -- and other folks were roaming about passing out bumper stickers (99%) and flyers announcing the General Strike, called for Wednesday, November 2.

After leaving the encampment, I walked on to the community garden near the lake. A friend and I had planned to speak with Saturday visitors about growing herbs and making medicinal herbal teas. I found the lake park as crowded as the Plaza at City Hall, but it was crowded with bicyclists, race walkers, joggers, and children dressed as fairies and clowns, pirates and princesses, superheroes and one bug with very very long antennae. Ordinary folk out to enjoy the weekend of Halloween . . . the very people, the life, that the determined folks of Occupy : Oakland are struggling so hard to protect.

Thank you. You have my admiration.

Mid-afternoon, October 27, I visited  OCCUPY: OAKLAND, not too long after  Mayor Jean Quan announced that tents would be once again allowed on the lawn in front of City Hall. Of course, most of the tents have been trashed, and, of course, most of the unemployed and underemployed who had settled those tents on the lawn may not be able to afford to rush right out and buy new tents.

Nevertheless, by late afternoon,  tents have begun to nestle into the spreading limbs of the great Oak tree in front of City Hall. As far as I could see, those tents were empty, but a few dedicated protesters lingered nearby, answering reporters' questions. One young man sat playing his guitar; another slept.


The lawn was once again fully exposed to sun, and other than a few barely yellow squares where tents had been, none the worse for wear. Indeed, in some areas, the grass looked somewhat lusher than usual. Children were running across the green, arms stretched out like wings, chasing after pigeons that when not leaping startled into the air, happily pecked the grass, enjoying the hayseeds left after the removal of the hay previously  laid down to protect the lawn.

All was peaceful, but something was missing. I could feel it.

A single cardboard box sat some yards away from the tents, a hand-lettered sign affixed to its side: Lost and Found. The box was empty but a pair of shoes had been laid down on the grass near by, and a blue and white quilt folded to the other side. A lot had been lost to the night marauders, but apparently not much had been found. . . As I looked about, I began to get a feel for just what had been lost.

A screen tent nearby held a single bookshelf stacked with loaves of bread. None of the loves had been sliced. A young woman with vacant eyes twirled about inside, her arms twisting great wide circles, above, below, and behind.

Bees, she said. This tent is filled with bees.

I could see no bees. I must have smiled or even laughed because soon she was outside the tent, her arms windmilling at even greater speed, inches from my face.

Beware, she hissed, beware of bees. They're everywhere. Go away, go away, go away.

Not wanting to be hit by her flailing arms, now twisting closer above, below, behind my face, I hold her quietly  I like bees, I'm not afraid of bees, but either she didn't hear me or didn't care what I said. Her arms moved faster and ever closer to my face. When I stepped back, she stepped forward. Suddenly, a young man came and put his arms around her, stopped her circling arms,  held her tight, and put his mouth against her ear. She's our friend, he whispered, looking straight at me. She's just taking pictures. She cares about what happens here. There are no bees, no bees, and if there were, they'd be honey bees.

He rocked her back and forth, smoothed her hair, and smiled.

I'm sorry, he said to me. She means no harm. She still hears the explosions, still sees lights flying by, thinks the invisible sparks she sees are bees. She still smells the smoke. He paused. She's lost her balance.

Balance gone . . . and trust. These are things that disappear when the night explodes to violence and the ones who should be helping -- the public servants, the men in blue -- are the ones with the weapons, the ones exploding the peace. Then, there's no where to turn except around and around and around.

Keeping his arms wrapped around his friend, the young man gently turned until they were both facing the tree and away from the great lawn, away from me. I must have said something, but I don't remember what. Whatever it was, it was inadequate. As I left the plaza, I found this sign lying on the pavement.

It, too, had been lost.

Thank you, Jon Stewart, for your wonderful Wednesday night commentary about the police raid of Occupy: Oakland.

(Video temporarily available at: http://www.insidebayarea.com/news/ci_19206202)

Your humor has made the brutality of this action evident to all Americans.  For those who still have questions about the intensity of this action, where police out-numbered protesters maybe 3:1, watch this raw video of the raid prior to the explosive scene featured on the Jon Stewart show. That happened later in the evening after the hordes of police had trampled through the plaza, leveling everything in their path, leaving  in their wake a mass of sleeping bags, destroyed tents, and emptied food bins.

Warning. On this video you will hear much swearing, see reporters being shoved aside and public servants trampling over those whom they are sworn to protect:

This evening, I am overwhelmed  by the sound of helicopters buzzing incessantly overhead as Occupy Oakland continues to defy those authorities determined to grind it down to dust. The noise keeps me on edge, keeps me from sleep, keeps me in a state of heightened awareness that is not always comfortable, but over in San Francisco another message, equally powerful, is being broadcast loud and clear in a manner far more playful but  as challenging to passers-by intellectually, emotionally, artistically, and , yes, politically. On Hemlock Street, right off of Polk Street, is a brand-new mural painted by Ezra Li Eismont, occupying the entire face of a building and announcing to the greater world that the time has come to OCCUPY YOUR MIND . . . .

. . . . and  THINK RESPONSIBLY.

After all, that inner meditative world creates the greater active world. We think the future into being.

A bold portrait of Michael Jackson as a zombie occupies the wall between doors, both locked and open, overwhelming the barred windows above and transforming an unprepossessing industrial building into serious and provocative art that suggests that we might all consider that agreeing to Celebrity is agreeing to an existence as a Zombie.

We might -- instead -- Think Responsibly. . . . and then, perhaps??? Act accordingly.

Choose to walk the earth as humans.

Act compassionately.

Live in our skin, feel our bones. Laugh. Dream.

Give to others what we know, nestle into the unknown. Cherish new possibility.

Live. And Breathe, always breathe. Inhale deeply and when we exhale, know that  NOW is the time to OCCUPY our  MINDS.

Check out Ezra Li Eismont's show, Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep, opening on November 12, right around the corner form this remarkable street mural at the Space Gallery, 1141 Polk Street, San Francisco, and while you're there, spend some time with Little Old One,  at Lopo Gallery, opening the same day and featuring the collaborative works of Bunnie Reiss and Monica Canilao.

Today, October 25, before dawn, just before 4 a.m., Oakland Police, helmeted and dressed in riot gear, surrounded the peaceful Occupy Oakland encampment. After alerting the protesters of their presence and their intent to dismantle the tent city, the police did indeed begin the destruction of the camp while also arresting those protesters who chose to remain as non-violent resisters.

During the ferocious and swift police action, the city center was cordoned off. BART fumed past its 12th St stop without stopping. Buses detoured and all traffic was redirected to streets north or south of the Plaza. Then under the cover of darkness, in less than 1/2 hour, tents were down, the community kitchen kicked down, the first-aid tent leveled. Unlike those who had carefully organized this tent city, the raiding police had little concern for the environmental concerns of Frank Ogawa Plaza or in preserving food, medical, or housing supplies that might have been donated to various community organizations working in support of the unemployed and homeless. In their ferocious invasion of the encampment, garbage cans were over-turned, food booths crashed, and tear gas released on the peaceable campers who were attempting to gather their belongings.

 By 5:15 a.m., this raging herd of police (200+ police were involved in the raid) were stomping about ripping up signs and tossing useful equipment into the street. By 5:30 a.m., the tent city was gone and what remained on the Plaza was a tangle of personal belongings, tents and supplies. By 6, they were blaming the protesters for the release of the tear gas and defending their own rampaging attitudes by insisting that someone had thrown a plate at them as if it were a Frisbee and they were dogs. Is such a thing possible? Do plates fly like Frisbees? Don't know.

Police are public servants. No where in their job description is a sentence reading: Prepare to be mean. Cruelty is not a desired character trait for policemen or soldiers.

Ideally, a policeman should be a compassionate individual who cares both about the community and the laws enacted by that community. Why tear up signs? Why break personal belongings? Such actions are not required or even desirable.

By late morning, the media was reporting that the city intends to hold all personal property for those protesters who wish to come and collect it, but if that is the case why, then, are four city garbage trucks parked behind this morning's barricades and why are there four other large trucks outside the barrier, ready to move in when called upon?

Years ago when I was living in Honolulu, I woke one morning and went as I did every morning to sit by the window and drink my morning tea. My window looked out at the harbor and down at steps coming up the hill from city streets below, threading past an empty lot where often flocks of the tiniest finches imaginable perched on the tall meadow grasses that had overtaken the raw land of the lot.

On that day, so long ago, the finches were rising like butterflies because a middle-aged woman with matted hair was sprawling on the steps, legs splayed out, moaning loudly. Within minutes, a patrol car arrived; apparently someone had called 911. The young policeman who approached the woman did not grab her fiercely by her arm. He did not yank her from the sidewalk and hustle her off to the squad car. Instead, he crouched down beside her and spoke in low tones. Soon, her keening slowed to gentle sobbing, and the policeman offered her water. As she drank, he quietly radioed for back-up.

When a second squad car arrived, two female officers approached the woman, not with handcuffs, but with a bucket of clean water, a washcloth, and a hairbrush. One gently sponged the woman's face, removing both dirt and the tracks of her tears, and the other brushed her hair. Then, they helped the woman from the street, settled her into the back seat of their squad car, and were off.

Although I describe this process as if it took hours, I do so only to emphasize the gentleness and the grace of these public servants. In reality, this drama in front of my window was swifter than the erasure of Occupy Oakland, just as real but far more graceful and humane.

UPDATE: In the evening, violence erupted in downtown Oakland with police firing 'non-lethal' beanbags into the crowd while releasing great clouds of teargas. The New York Times has posted videos of peaceful protesters being met by gun-toting police dressed in riot gear. Claims that protesters threw bottles at the the police do not seem to have much merit. Claims that the police fired something (beanbag?) at a protester who was down on the ground can be validated.

As the local news has been issuing dire warnings about the imminent demise of OCCUPY: OAKLAND, giving reasons of increased violence and a mounting garbage problem, Saturday morning, Day 13 of the 'occupation', I decided I would walk around the neatly organized and growing tent city and see how folks were getting along.

 As I walked about, I found myself within a peaceful and productive community that had become better organized and visibly increased in size and scope since my last visit.  A well-marked tent for first-aid sits at the north end of the camp; two cook tents at the south. Around the perimeter of the camp are tents stocked with all kinds of supplies for campers in need-- including a first-aid tent and one that offers free clothes -- 'fresh shirts socks pants shoes, different colors of fabric.' Neat wooden pathways,  wide enough to accommodate walkers strolling side by side, are swept clean and arranged as friendly paths that wend their way through the tents, which are far more numerous now than earlier in the week. Some pathways even have names. Solution Avenue. Walk here and find the way.

While I was walking about, a young man -- not a city employee -- was sweeping the surrounding terraces and another was picking up the few bits of paper that had escaped the numerous garbage cans. I must say, the encampment was cleaner than many of the surrounding city streets.

Someone (the campers?) had erected a flexible fence around the beautiful spreading tree in the plaza and someone else had placed hand-written signs against the fence, asking all to respect the life of the tree: Protect this tree, Fragile Roots, read two signs placed side-by-side. Another  propped near the first tworead:

Roots are Strong, Fragile Branches.

That second sign might be appropriated as a motto of the movement. These 'Occupy' campers do have strong roots, fixed to American soil, and the peace branches that they extend -- let's fix this -- are indeed fragile (and graceful). It's fabulous that these peace campers do believe in the truth and possibility of a hopeful joyful productive future, embracing the many not just the few. Take a walk down Solution Avenue, and see what you find sprouting there.

Since my last visit,  even more cheerful gardens have sprouted -- in planters and in containers. All the baby plants seem to be thriving, and the growth is a welcome sight on the city street, reminding passers-by that vast acreage is not necessary to grow vegetables for the table. The mini-garden pictured below is positioned conveniently close to the cook-tent. Yes, there is a cook-tent where campers can get simple or not so simple smiles and meals from volunteer cooks. This experiment in open community enriches us all.

Fog was rolling in from the sea this morning, flowing over Berkeley down to the lake, but West Oakland was bathed in warm morning sun. Nonetheless, when Earnest and I took off for our morning walk, we headed east anyway . . . towards the lake and the fog. I wanted to stop again at the zone of OCCUPY: Oakland, now in its ninth day. See what's shaking.

Not much was shaking.  Pretty peaceful and quiet.

Many colorful tents, complete with rain flies, but all zipped and closed. Very few people up and about; a bit of trash here and there, but not much.

This tent city appeared to be unoccupied or at least temporarily deserted. Perhaps everybody had gone to work (We all have to survive  . . . somehow.) 

The most notable presence, smiling gently and holding court in the plaza, was a  bust of Frank H. Ogawa, the man for whom the plaza was named. Ogawa was a lover of cities and gardens, a long-time city council member, active in the community and instrumental in the planning of Oakland's city center. He was also a man who had spent time in the West Coast detention camps during World War II.  As a man of peace, a man who cherished the growing earth, it is entirely fitting that he welcome the protesters and listen, I suppose, as the mutterings of the surrounding community back into the quieter murmurs of the protesters.

This morning, community  muttering has risen above the level of grumble. The word on the street is that soon this tent city will be dismantled. Too many rats, too many drugs, too much drink.

It was only 9:30 a.m. when I stopped by. No sign of rats, but I did see several men emptying the last of a whiskey bottle down their throats and another sleeping  sitting up, head down, arms folded, on a park bench. (No room in the tents for him, I guess.)

The rats, they say, are not really the fault of the encampment; they're always around, but ordinarily it's just a tad easier to keep them under control. I suppose the same might be said for those sitting around the periphery, busily drinking anything alcoholic that comes their way. They, too, are always there and perhaps also more easily controlled on other days, in other ways. So why remove the tents?

Okay, they say, so it's not the rats, not the drinking, but the fist fights. But who's fighting? Don't know. It's always peaceful when I stop by. Someone fell from a tree, they say, and there was a problem with a dog and spilled paint.  Someone was carousing late at night. Don't these things happen  . . . anyway?

Maybe the best that can be said is that this tent city is a microcosm of that great big wonderful city out there that we know and love.  Maybe this tiny little City of Hope, temporarily set up in Frank H. Ogawa Plaza, has just as much love and perhaps just as many problems. Maybe there are as many folks wandering helplessly and alone inside this plaza as wander outside. Maybe there are as many hungry, as many who have no home as there are those know they will eat and safely sleep. As many who sit in the shadow, struggle on the borders, as those who don't. And as many who care to dream and hope.

What if we give up the idea of 'reclamation,' or of claiming anything for that matter, and instead push seeds into the soil beneath our feet, plant new gardens where gardens have never grown, in our hearts and in our dreams, harvest what grows and celebrate that harvest? What then?

We don't need the Garden of Eden. We have Earth.

Friday afternoon, as I turned my car down 14th St in front of Frank Ogawa Plaza, two motorcycles cops pulled across the intersection closing down the street. In front of me were masses of peaceful protesters walking towards Clay Street, and as my car was alone, the only non-official car on the block, I did what any sensible person lassoed by police barricades would do. I pulled over to the curb, parked and walked over to the plaza where a few folk not marching were milling about the pitched tents and the neat piles of posters and placards of Occupy Oakland.

 
One of the first things I noticed were large chalk drawings on the sidewalks, each one illustrating either some disturbing aspect of contemporary American life or more hopeful suggestions for positive change.

A large and somewhat unsettling drawing caught my eye. Below the scrawled letters “Dying for Education,” was the image of  corpse, dead eyes staring blankly skyward, a bullet wound in his chest. Above the “Dying for Education" sign were multiple portraits of young soldiers, all bloodied and blinded.

Everyone knows that too many young Americans who cannot afford to pay the expensive tuition now demanded by public Universities join the military, believing they will avoid the suffocating burden of loans assumed by fellow students and that their tuition will be paid when and if they leave the battlefields alive. Sadly, too many die before they attend their first class, and those who survive are, as the drawing suggests,  so badly wounded emotionally and physically that  education can no longer serve as the lifeboat they once imagined it might be.

Education should not be so expensive that students must either go to war or into deep debt to pay for it. If the federal government were to subsidize education, not war, then without becoming enslaved to war or debt, American students might gain the knowledge needed to contribute positively to a peaceful and productive future.

The OCCUPY movement asks legislators to think responsibly and discover ways of revising national expenditures so that we might recover our economy and our democracy. We might, for example, again consider Roosevelt's very 'educational' 3Rs:

Relief. Recovery. Reform.

Forgiving student loans would both provide Relief and Recovery. Two locks freed with one key. Millions of recent and long past graduates are currently saddled with student loans greater than most mortgages, and that overwhelming debt prevents them from starting business, buying houses or cars. To forgive those loans would provide immediate relief, and as these citizens would then have more disposable income, such forgiveness would immediately contribute to needed economic recovery. Money previously paid only to banks to cover exorbitant interest on crushing debt would become available to be spent in the community.

Banks were bailed out; bail out students. No one should have to risk death to gain an education, and there is no question that a strong nation needs its people educated.

It doesn't take a genius to notice that Reform of institutional and corporate worlds is necessary if we are to relieve the suffering of the unemployed and the underemployed and recover our democracy. The time has come for US citizens to stand together and demand accountability  for the military industrial complex. This drawing, pictured at the right, reminds us of just how much we have let slide. Blackwater, a shadow army created by the Bush Administration, operating both abroad and here on US soil, is representative of the dangerous continued privatization of institutions that in a democracy should remain accountable, regulated  and public. We know of Blackwater's activities in Iraq, but many do not know that heavily armed Blackwater mercenaries zoomed about New Orleans after Katrina, looking for  'criminals,'  answering to no elected or appointed agency of the law. We do not need private mercenary armies occupying our country. We, the citizens, we the people, must occupy our communities, our land, our democracy.

After the swelling crowd of peaceful walkers turned up Clay St, I was allowed to move my car and did. Later that evening, long after dark, I was checking the local news and discovered that earlier around noon the 91st homicide of the year had happened only blocks from my house. Again, a 20-year-old man was shot dead, this time on 11th St at Willow.

Vigilantes with guns are always egregious and dangerous.

Rest in Peace, Occupy your Dreams.

Every movement, including the OCCUPY movement, needs powerful graphic representation, a symbol that can visually communicate swiftly and articulately just what that movement has to say.

Sugar Bunni, a Bay Area performance artist, has I think created a symbol that sums up just what that 1% who hold most of the wealth in the US think about the rest of us.

Some visitors have shown up on 7th St to stand with the Dalai Lama. New evocative and powerful wheat pastes on the support pillar under the BART tracks. FDR, Obama, and one other, an unknown man in a business suit. The  portrait of Franklin Delano Roosevelt is black and white. He belongs to past but remains as a force for the future. In this portrait, he stares straight  from the southern face of the pillar while the Dalai Lama looks east. Obama, belonging as he does to the present, has been painted in full-color. His image occupies the northern face of the same support pillar, his eyes cast to the ground but his shoulders wrap the edges of the post, reaching to FDR.

FDR -- the man who brought us through  the Great Depression by getting down to basics and then through WWII, which ended yes after the bad guy died. In his first 100 days, FDR declared a need for Relief, Recovery, and Reform -- the 3Rs -- and then went to work creating programs that would do just that. Relief for the poor. Recovery of the economy. Reform of systems. Much of what he suggested was bold and much of what was done  worked.

We need to do it again. Offer relief by rebuilding inner cities, thus creating a liveable and more hopeful environment for those who struggle to live simply with little income. Forgive student loans, thus providing a real future to several generations of cash-strapped ex-students who cannot afford to buy homes or participate in  'greater' economic systems. Award more money to public schools and thus provide a fuller richer future for those who cannot afford private school. Fund public health rather than private insurance companies.  All deserve to have health care, not just those who can pay for over-priced health insurance and co-pays. Take care of the people, not the corporations. Believe in the worth of  public institutions, and make sure they adequately and usefully serve the people. Recover the economy by creating a more equitable tax structure. Expect the richest American citizens to pay their share of costs. They can afford it. Regulate corporations and financial institutions. Reform the insurance industry; the high cost of insurance -- all kinds of insurance -- is smothering American creativity and destroying the health of our nation.

And , yes, end all wars. Rein in the wild rearing beast of the military industrial complex. An economy founded on death and destruction is neither sustainable nor desirable. It is shameful.

We had the audacity of hope, and it made us giddy.  But now perhaps the time has come to move beyond hope to action. Look up, Obama, we believe there can be change. Look at the unease in America. See the hunger, the growing misery.  Beside you on either side of this pillar are some powerful thinkers, helping to hold up the tracks carrying train loads of workers across the Bay.  Lift up your eyes, look at these men: the Dalai Lama and FDR. They have the tools to do what is necessary, and so do you. Compassion and Practicality. Grace and Dignity. Intelligence, Imagination.

Convince  the stubborn mean-spirited Republicans that they must compromise. Remind them of the pressing need to end corporate greed, stop war, provide for the continued health, education and welfare of the American people.  Tell the rich in no uncertain terms to dig into their overflowing bank accounts and shovel out some of that wealth to help repair the potholes of our decaying economic highway so we can all move forward into the future.

The artist who has created these portraits and taken the time to install them in a very public place is asking us all to think about these issues and to find ways of creating change creatively and peacefully.

We would all rather live in peace than rest in peace.

And to do so, we need to keep our eyes and our hearts open.

I don't know the identity of this B&W man, suited-up with his fading disappearing body and invisible mouth, but he matters in the line-up of the 7th St portraits. He stands warily on a pillar not far from the FDR-Obama-Dalai Lama pillar, and he stands alone, an everyman, a no man, with dark shadowed eyes looking east past trash strewn streets.

He is the witness. We are the witnesses. He is us; we are him.

Relief.

Recovery.

Reform.

. . . and live in peace.