9/17 Vital Conversation: Live from #OWS—Where are we one year later?

One year ago on September 17, a movement was born near Wall Street in New York City at Zuchottii Park.  Occupy Wall Street, OWS, has become a movement that has both captured and challenged the hearts and minds of the world.  From Wall Street to Oakland, Chicago to Atlanta, London to Madrid, the #Occupy movement has generated a seismic shift in narrative worldwide, that continues to focus on economic disparity and injustice that knows no borders.

8-10a PDT | 11a-1p EDT | 3-5p GMT
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For an initial period of time, all things #Occupy dominated the airwaves and media on all fronts.  Despite the movement being repeatedly denounced for lack of leadership and specific demands, it nonetheless attracted unbridled attention.

Then came a coordinated global suppression, via increasingly militarized police force, of occupy encampments and demonstrations.  Encampments disappeared and the numbers of demonstrations, as well as demonstrators, gradually waned.  A question hovering in many people's minds is where has this left the spirit and shape of the #Occupy movement?

The majority of people living solely on a mass media diet for their informational sustenance believe the #Occupy movement is either dead or in critical condition.  Those of us directly engaged in the #Occupy conversation and feeding on alternate news channels might believe otherwise, with strong, ongoing initiatives surrounding home foreclosures, labor support, student debt, economic/environmental realism, etc...

From our perspective in Occupy Cafe, the movement is growing up.  We're interacting with other initiatives and organizations more fluidly and synergistically.  The commitment to nonviolence is stronger than ever and the notion of leadership is no longer taboo.  Our pictures of what we are for are gradually eclipsing the shadows of what we are against.  It seems as though we are settling in for the long run, rather than sprinting for an imaginary finish line.

Occupy Cafe's intention for this call is to both, report live from downtown NYC where OC co-founder, Ben Roberts, will be tracking activity on the ground, capturing sound bytes and commentary from organizers and protesters, while JItendra and Pia anchor the Maestro call lines with report-ins from other hubs around the US.  We also invite and encourage reports from other #Occupy voices around the world.

Bring your perspective and understanding as we collectively paint a picture of how #Occupy, as a movement, is emerging on its one year anniversary.

What do you experience that is alive and vital in #Occupy today?

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I like this graphic.

I just noticed that the graphic for #S17 replicates the meme from Occupy Cafe's #NatGat piece:

Just letting you know that I posted info about this call over at Occupy St Louis.  Maybe someone there on the ground will call in.

Thanks, Deborah!  Good to have the pulse of the heartland...

I may have to drop in and out with my attention as I have a busy morning but I will do my best to participate......

http://youtu.be/PmlN6eYhJ4k

If you want to help out, call me at 310-594-1198 and I'll send you a script that we're using to call the challengers who have yet to sign the "Pledge for Honest Candidates"

First Anniversary Global Occupy Movement!

Danger Zone Kenny Loggins 

Friends,

This first year candle is burning brightly today as the 17 day Arab Spring Occupy Movement that shocked the entire world and created a leadership crisis running from the UN to the Washington Political Consensus based in the power of the coin.  Today the creative collapse is spreading and deepening into a fundamental worldwide unsustainable crisis where strength based in the coin's coercive deceptive arrogant militarism has lost it's power, we are suspending training in Afganistan and recognizing the futility of guns over butter in solving human conflicts.  We are witnessing masses of peoples outraged taking to the street in the middle east while the American 2012 election cycle reveals the deep seated cordial hypocrisy in prejudicial politics of fundamentalism in a dysfunctional fragmented American society.   Traditional indoctrinated belief systems based in the power of positions, titles and publications within western institutions are dead on arrival in the 21st Century.  People worldwide are demanding living authentic speech acts by real statesman (in America it's the satire of our comedians as jesters of the imperial court) committing to solutions and stopping the political pandering in the corporate manufactured mass media.  We have entered the real time pure play of the tragedy of commons in the taken for granted authority in political systems causing emotional contradictions and double binds of the globalization cultural matrix demanding our fearful obedience and negating our generative intelligence as human beings.  It's an awakening to being cognitarian's creating communitarianism from inside out and solving our permanent human and business concerns through the grass rooted unrest in family life, education, religions, politics in our neighborhoods and villages.  We are self organizing as a collective humanity accepting a knowing love constitutes who we are confronting a militarism based in arrogant aggressive fundamental regressive ideologies.  Truly the danger zone is happening causing disturbance and disruptions globally.

What is interesting and striking this morning is that "hate crimes" in the cannon laws of subjective relativism is being challenged and arrogant aggressive behaviors are no longer acceptable conduct for servant leaders in global social discourses.  Mitt Romney's 47% comment in "Mother Jones" was the ultimate Occupy Movement birthday gift.  Simultaneously the anti Islamic video by an Egyptian American on probation for fraud has ignited solidarity in the Muslim world transforming the tinder box in the Middle East into a full blown political melt down in justice in human affairs.  If we step back and widen our view as observers the crux of the immediate breakdowns. the basic fundamental questioning is a matter of human dignity in our future appreciative conversations.  In the domain of faith everyone regardless of the belief system is insulted by disparaging violations of hate crimes in human utterances.  It's not OK and we feel it, yet allow it in the denial of power.  The Internet has produced a globalized platform where psychotic hate crimes can fuel fire storms of indignation to this standrad in masses of people.  Freedom without restraint is insanity by individuals that are not willing to be responsible and accountable for the consequences created and experienced by others.  King George in my honest assessment is the poster child for this current crisis.  

Free Speech, Religion Clash Over Anti~Muslim Film is the Clash of Civilization. "Yes, we understand the First Amendment and all of this stuff," wrote Khalid Amayreh, a prominent Islamist commentator and blogger in Hebron on the West Bank. "But you must also understand that the Prophet (for us) is a million times more sacred than the American Constitution." This is a classic cultural clash of perceptions crying out for appreciative inquiry and dialog not regressive fundamentalist regressive shadow behaviors. 

Denial is not a river in Egypt rather an arrogant young nation called "America" that is blindly running on a "Exceptionalism" with statistics of 150 million in borderline poverty, injustice in jurist prudence protecting corporate plutocracies, and inequality in human rights that systematically marginalize the voice of disruptors, poverty, and conditions that are the contra varient to America's original fundamental principles that arose the "Age of Enlightenment." I am not prejudice, I refuse to be a part of either party because of the polarization in the choice of the lessor of two evils driven by a public private elitist plutocracy.  Real solutions to human predicament are ignored in the fearfulness created in political cordial hypocrisy of cowards using populist opinion polls sculpting coercive deceptive rhetoric tearing us apart as people.  Let's "STOP IT" and take back our innate natural dignity as human beings.

It's evident today that President Obama is going sweep this election cycle, yet the political economic global situational condition continues to spiral downward faster into chaotic polarization driving us to the bottom of blood infested butchering of human life, and a watershed pain point in our reflective humanity. The previous global economic strategic political design using military power to demand obedience of citizen slaves is over, and the contra varient is bringing forth a creative collapsing opportunity to the long term solutions to poverty, injustice and inequalities in masses of peoples worldwide.  Our American 2012 election cycle is bringing forth a clearing for learning in my assessment and the deceptive coercive politics of previous generations is over.  The disruptions happening and converging in diverse domains of human and business concerns requires a new agreed upon standard in our humanity in effective communication and management of our creative commons we own as proprietors, the earth.  We have much more in common than any political, economic or scientific rhetoric currently dividing us.   

Over the past year I have witnessed the participatory seed of global ethical citizen engagement in recurrent live speech acts in the appreciative inquiry and dialog in this new flower arising in the "Occupy Cafe Vital Conversations."  Our humanness is transcending the appearance of evil in the old worn out mental structure in civilization and birthing a new way of hearing, seeing and being in our world based in autopoietic self organization where human dignity is a manner of conservation of our own felt biological truth, reality and future imaginations.  I am witnessing a clearing for learning where indigenous people living in oral languaging have legitimacy in coexistence within the glitter of our technological innovations of innovation going nowhere faster, better, and cheaper in the mistaken "observer error" operating institutions in civilization.  The experience in "Occupy Cafe' has breathed new life into the deep denial pain point we feel in unleashing authentic vulnerable friendships in a new "listening" to our deeper shared heart felt reality of truth in coexistence within the web of life.  False pride, arrogance and aggressions is being replaced in the hidden tears and forbidden knowledge of love that constitutes all life. There is a precious priceless flow in movement circling the fragile seed of living speech acts confronting the pompous dead worn out patriarchal shadow standards based in militant powers demanding obedience and negating the expansive generative intelligence in our humanness.  It's easy today to fall into the ever narrowing inferno shadow sleeping in distrust, resentment, resignation and confusing despair!  Yet, to awaken is a shock and awe experience as the new beginning arises from the ashes of the old patriarchal powers in the cultural matrix.  The real courage today is to feel the optimism in our humanness beneath the indignant outrage of masses of humanity saying "NO STOP IT."  Our collective cultural matrix of hate and despising one another must stop and that is something only we can do person to person as people.  

What if, we rewind our experience in this moment and commit to listening in non violent communications based in appreciative inquiry and dialog as human beings.  Yes, we will confront finally the pain point, blind spot, emotional contradictions, and double binds embedded in our prejudicial viewpoints sorting out the resentments, injustices, inequalities, and the militant terror of our mistaken "observer error" of being sperate from one another.  And we will confront the shadowy irresponsible for our current conditional situation as a humanity in a heart wrenching valley of tears living in denial.  We will be humbled as never before in our shared pain and embrace of human suffering.  And what may arise waiting on the other side of this emergent valley of heart felt tears after owning what owns us in the swept along historic cultural drift? We begin to regret our behaviors exhibiting meanness, deafness, blindness and lack of presence as brothers and sisters in one humanity, not two.  The "observer error" is an ancient autopoietic paradox we have all participate in through the constellations of outer authorities in institutionalized mental structures that are unsustainable even in the near future.  Forgiving each other for the denial operating the ignorance within these prejudicial indoctrinated historical cultural discourses is love acting courageously to bring forth a new beginning in joyful concern for the earth and it's people, us.

When I was young we were climbing under our desks and marching to bomb shelters in silence as good little Catholic children.  How can any one of us imagine Weapons of Mass Destruction as a viable solution to any present or future human conflict?  What is so important that we would destroy all life and by whose authority would any human being consider such a solution? Certainly we can agreed that the the creator has no part in such insanity?  America is the principle negotiator in the Nuclear Age that it created.  Any leader in the world still holding even the possible possibility of using WMD's is insane in my assessment and definitely schizophrenic.  It's time for a peaceful PowerShift Power from the outside conditional situation scaring our children to the inside interior presence of our wisdom continuum in solidarity.  It's a "Clearing for Learning" where the wisdom continuum in our humanity awakens to the new tabernacle within the human heart itself.  There is only one drummer, one man in the mirror, one light being supported by a loving unseen, invisible order beyond our current imagination.  We have within our deep rooted primordial innocence a way to gather our human trust.  The real climate change is transforming our human ecology, let us settle down, knock off the hysteria, and harness the autopoietic human commitment to live forth together in a manner of human dignity for one another.  No longer allowing hate crimes as a legitimate behavior for any subjective relativistic view point in communitarianism.  We are learning consciously to restrain growth of the plague of hatred, fear, arrogance and deceptive coercive aggression in human utterances person to person P2P.  

PTSD isn't just a problem for the wounded warriors throughout our world.  Wounded warriors effect the family for generations and share the same message all war is terror.  I was in the 8th grade when President Kennedy was killed.  I still feel the pain point and tremendous loss as a child.  Then Martin Luther King protested the "Viet Nam War" and all the political social capital of the civil rights movement was destroyed by the regressive fundamentalism of the military complex using prejudicial hate intent on destroying Dr. King in public mass manufactured media.  A simple kind American Prophet that saw the "Promise Land of Universal Brotherhood."  My Lakota friend Dallas wears a shirt with Martin's quote "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."  The injustice of President Richard Nixon pardon opened the political discourse of leadership in America to go beyond "Deep Throat" and morphed itself into a form of governance where "Compassionate Fundamentalist Conservatives Occupying Wall Street has become the "clanging symbol" of high risk greed and political aggressive power based in making human beings robotic rats in a fear driven economic casino based in immediacy of ROI capital.  "Get Money or Eat Dirt" has become the mantra and central design feature of growth without restraint in the name of human survival.  Yet, we hunger in our soulfulness for wholeness as orphans disconnected from the beauty in the presence of one another.  This PTSD experience culminated on 911 when there was a clash in western occidental civilization.  The "Western Cannon" has clashed with the eastern civilization and American Exceptionalism is DOA in the 21st Century.  So the clearing for learning in this 2012 election cycle is a creative generative collapsing opportunity for "reflection on the shadows in Plato's Cave."  America also has deep phenomenal roots in social interactive human dignity based in an indigenous Native America that was on a permanent holiday and just look at the poor, injustice, inequality and independent human self regulation we have injured with the landlords of Turtle Island.  Our current social polarization is a just battle deciding once and for all "what owns us" in the world we want to create consciously in presence with one another?  Questions need care, feeding and nurturing not indoctrinated dead worn out answers we blindly worship in the name of killing one another. 

The blessing I see and experience in this "Occupy Cafe" is the deep conservative biological genetic inclinations and dispositions in all our virtual identities and narratives to care in renewing kinship, attending in hearing truth, and giving ourselves to one another in adorning the beauty and wonder of becoming something new together.  Gathering and harnessing this cognitive faith in the presence of our momentariness is an enactive embodied approach.  It is what we are doing and we can have gratitude.  Let us celebrate in joyful concern our emergent trust as a leaderless humanity and meet in the heart felt creative commons enfolding us as the pathway to a new tomorrow arises in designing a household for our humanity as illumined humanity building the earth for future generations.  Now that is a vision of fun, reverence, restoration and recreation that every unit of our ancestry has prayed for since the beginning time.  

Let's continue to be grateful for the moment and our Occupy Cafe committing to Occupy Earth in love!  

Latter Mushin    

I offer a few links guiding my current appreciative conversations:

CSC Listening Randall Whitaker

http://www.asc-cybernetics.org/2011/

The Self~Poetizing Earth 

http://ephilosophy.uoregon.edu/Dicks_SelfPoetizingEarth_EnvPhilSpri...

Capital Institute  Economics, Finance, Governance and Ethics for Anthropocene ;   Working Paper for the Third Millennium Project

http://www.capitalinstitute.org/sites/capitalinstitute.org/files/docs/Economics,%20Finance,%20Governance,%20and%20Ethics%20for%20the%20Anthropocene.pdf

The Lakota Paradigm

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nysi8S8R1Uo (10 min)

Response to the DAVOS Call to Action: Principles-Perspectives: Dawna Jones

http://www.slideshare.net/EvolProvocDawna/response-to-the-davos-cal...

The Forbidden Education "All Living Experience occurs through Conversations and this is where the Reality WE Live IN Originates."  Humberto Maturana  Movie (2 hrs 26 min)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1Y9OqSJKCc&feature=share

 

 

 

times get so busy and it affects my ability to participate here and on the calls.  I guess this is universal impediment to discourse... I often dwell on the question, what's important and what's unimportant?  With age this undergoes upheavals.

This call was invigorating to me... especially with Ben being on site at OWS,,, and with the variety of people on the call contributing in so many ways, so much ongoing energy perpetuating Occupy on so many fronts.  and of course our call only represents a small fraction of what's really going on.

It was refreshing to hear a lot of coverage on mass media and public stations about S17 Occupy all day Monday.

As I ponder I see I am OccupyAnd I've changed... quite drastically. 

For example, on our call in a break-out group I found myself in opposition to a fellow caller's premise for action.  I didn't resist any impulses and maintained my attention.  As I watched myself I saw myself looking for what I could support... and how I might find it useful in any other ways.  I found myself having questions, not challenges... wanting to understand.  I found myself thinking I was thankful for this person of character who had vitality to follow his truth.  Then thinking later I'm so glad to be in the company of such people... maybe "This is what the new world looks like."  

[truthfully, and regrettably I most often don't react this way.  And within the Cafe and elsewhere I'm watching and contemplating... why not?]

Here's my sidewalk "storefront" for the Cafe at Bowling Green yesterday (h/t Lex Hortensia--@subverzo):

I was so impressed with the deep thought that had so obviously gone into Mushin's essay - "First Anniversary Global Occupy Movement!" posted here, that I asked permission to share it in the #OccupyNow group at the A New Gaia community for which I share responsibility in a manner similar to Ben & Jitendra here.  He graciously gave his approval but humbly indicated that it was "an open creative commons post".


He also asked me a question, which I did answer fully.  I thought I'd share my own thoughts, inspired by reading his essay fully and contemplatively, with you here as well.

Mushin -

Thank you for agreeing to allow me this.  I will also embed a YouTube of the Danger Zone music, when I post this at A New Gaia.  

You asked me, "What do you find interesting in what was said?"  Well, there is a lot there.  I admit that I just "glanced" at it, before writing to you; but I could tell there was a lot of deep thought invested in it.  Now, I've gone through it with full attention and can comment more specifically on it.

First off, the language immediately invites one to read more.  I agree that Occupy is a Quality of Life movement, a desire to step away from "money" - its corruption, power and influence, as the focus of average daily life.  Yet, of course, at this point, we have to be focused on the issue as well.  But hopefully, in some future time, owing to our own efforts in this regard, that will not be the dominant focus.

Certainly, I would agree that the populace of the US is dysfunctional.  Sadly, it is jerked around by ADHD sound bites, while people go merrily (or not) on their own way accepting this as just the way things are and feeling powerless to change things (at least, that seems the perspective of the masses to me but not the perspective of the Occupy participants, as I am aware of).

I loved that image of "jesters of the imperial court" - the politicians as they serve the "corporate" interest.  And isn't it the truth ? "they" try quite desperately to "negate our intelligence".

Creating solutions from the inside out, to solve our current "problems" appeals deeply to my own self..

I would note, that while I can wade through the mass of adjectives, they might be a bit much for a more average reader.  Of course, if your intent isn't directed towards such, then I think it is fine as it is.  It really isn't a problem for myself as a reader, I simply wonder about others who aren't the choir that you are preaching to.  Yet, I do sense genuine, deep intellectual considerations, as the foundation of your writing.

I would agree that what we do confront, and it can be daunting as Occupiers discovered in very direct ways late last fall into early winter, "a militarism based in arrogant aggressive fundamental regressive ideologies".

I do sense "the danger".  I pray ever for a cool change, while accepting in the most realistic of ways, that might not be possible, if accomplishing true improvements in the human condition, that would be available for all people, is the goal.

I smile in acknowledging that "Mitt Romney's 47% comment in 'Mother Jones' was the ultimate Occupy Movement birthday gift."

It is, all of it, including the Muslim outrage, about human dignity, disparaging utterances are not OK.  I come to understand better all the time the hypocrasy of believing that America actually lives its own democratic ideals.  Individually, many of us do, in our hearts; but too many are "in denial" and willing to turn a blind eye to the real truth.  Yes !! "Let's 'STOP IT' and take back our innate natural dignity as human beings."  As such, I agree that, "We have much more in common than any political, economic or scientific rhetoric currently dividing us."

I too feel "appreciative" of what the Occupy Cafe stands for - as you say, "The experience in "Occupy Cafe' has breathed new life into the deep denial pain point we feel in unleashing authentic vulnerable friendships in a new 'listening' to our deeper shared heart felt reality of truth in coexistence within the web of life."

I definitely experienced that awakening to the reality of the country that I live in and it's political/economic "realities" as a kind of "shock and awe".  Truthfully, I felt deceived and betrayed by my public schooling in my tender, younger years; and then, blinded by the everyday needs to survive.  It does take "courage to feel optimism" when one is seeing clearly what currently "is".   I agree "Our collective cultural matrix of hate and despising one another must stop and that is something only we can do person to person as people."

You ask rhetorically - "What if, we rewind our experience in this moment and commit to listening in non violent communications based in appreciative inquiry and dialog as human beings."  Indeed, what if we all do that.  And we do need to do this - "Forgiving each other for the denial operating the ignorance within these prejudicial indoctrinated historical cultural discourses is love acting courageously to bring forth a new beginning in joyful concern for the earth and it's people, us."

You are only a little bit older than I am.  I remember getting under the desks too.  I was in the 3rd grade when Pres Kennedy was killed (I believe that is how old I was).  It was "shattering" for a child, to experience the deliberate murder of a leader who was inspiring us to live larger and greater lives.  It was equally shattering to see another great leader, the Rev Martin Luther King, suffer a similar fate, when all he wanted was dignity for not only "his people" but for all people everywhere.  I too was "anti-war" as a high school student during the Vietnam era.  It is truth, I believe that many people do "hunger in our soulfulness for wholeness"; and that is why the interest in spirituality, rather than religious dogma, has gained traction in many people, perhaps not a majority of the global population - yet - but definitely a positive trend, in my own perspective.  My heart sings as I realize that I am a participant in "creating consciously" by "renewing kinship, attending in hearing truth, and giving ourselves to one another in adorning the beauty and wonder of becoming 'something new' together".  Committing my own self, along with you, to "Occupy Earth" in LOVE.

Peace & Blessings -
Deb

I just spotted this wonderful graphic on Facebook, courtesy of Occupy National Gathering

(it mentions Occupy Cafe ;-} )

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