Welfare Update, with Taste of Crow; a Person Named 'Important' Demands My Ouster in OT Censorship Fight; Chris Hedges on How U.S. Churches Serve Capitalist Tyranny; Religious Unity as an Excuse for Surrender

PRAYING IN THE RAIN, participants in a prayer circle sponsored by Tacoma's Associated Ministries turn their backs on Occupy Tacoma protesters outside the building housing U.S. Sen. Patty Murray's office. The positions of the religious celebrants, an unavoidable consequence of their circular formation, nevertheless symbolize the reaction of most U.S. churches toward Occupy Wall Street and its local daughters. See Christoper Hedges' superb essay “Where Were You When They Crucified My Lord?” (linked below), also my own piece on AM's refusal to endorse the Occupy movement either locally or globally, a stance AM officials rationalize by citing an alleged need “to unite people of faith” taking precedence over any need to resist oppression. (This picture is another of those I made during the 16 November picketing: FujiFilm 800, 135mm f/2.5 Takumar, Pentax K-1000. Click on image to view it full frame.) Photograph by Loren Bliss copyright 2011.

*

Yes, Virginia, There Is an Ongoing Medicare Subsidy

As I reported last week, I got a disturbing letter from the Washington State Department of Social and Health Services falsely accusing me of failure to comply with an eligibility-review deadline and informing me the Medicare subsidies on which my life depends would terminate as of the end of November.

The nastygram I received is but one of tens of thousands of similar notices with which lower-income seniors and disabled people are now routinely terrorized.

Hence on the last day of the month I gathered up all my welfare files and trekked to the Tacoma DSHS office to protest, arriving at 7 a.m. to be sure I was at the head of the line when the doors officially opened an hour later.

There I learned the termination notice I had gotten is another expression of Gov. Christine Gregoire's approach to managing state government – a telling example of why I have dubbed her Christine the Cruel.

The frightening letter was automatically spewed out by a computer, not because I had been terminated, but because DSHS staff has been reduced to the point its employees can no longer keep up with routine paperwork – so said a case worker who was notably courteous, apologetic and obviously concerned.

A few minutes later the caseworker said my Medicare subsidies were indeed approved for another year – my $101 food stamp allocation too – and I would receive official notice in the mail within a few days, as in fact I did.

Which brings me to the obligatory eating of crow. The Tacoma caseworker obviously cared about my wellbeing. And the Tacoma caseworker's colleagues were obviously of a similar mind.

I was shabbily dressed that day, as I am most days at this stage of my life. Perched on a walker at the office-door end of the agency's long entrance hall, I no doubt looked like what I have become – an impoverished old cripple – a repugnant sight to the typical and typically self-obsessed citizen celebrating our Holidays of Conspicuous Consumption.

But every one of the female DSHS employees who passed me on their way to work paused for a moment to wish me good morning or inquire if I was ok. So did a couple of the normally far-more-aloof male employees. And in every instance their eyes, which never lie about such matters, told me their concern was genuine – this in marked contrast to the unanimous hostility of the DSHS caseworkers with whom I was confronted as a disabled person in Bellingham during the late 1980s.

Needless to say I was quite moved. Obviously, at least in Tacoma, the welfare bureaucracy has awakened to the fact it is part of the 99 Percent. Thank you, case workers. Please pass the crow.

(Disclosure: Though my normal orthopedic appliance is a cane, my spinal and circulatory problems make it excruciatingly painful for me to stand in one place for more than about 10 minutes. Hence I borrowed a neighbor's walker to provide myself a seat.)

*****

OT Blues: a Clash with 'Important' Helps Me Occupy My Mind

When I heed Occupy Tacoma's best slogan to date – “Occupy Your Mind” (for which thanks to Nikki Weatherhead, Joy Bonney and Autumn Jacobs) – the resultant introspection insists that above all else I am still a journalist, whether with camera or keyboard or both.

My commitment to journalism is nearly lifelong. It dates from 1952, when my father gave me a Kodak Brownie Reflex for my 12th birthday. Two years later he gave me a Polaroid Land Camera. In 1955, via the what-will-I-be-when-I-grow-up unit of my 10th grade English class, I declared myself a future reporter and photographer. Late the following year I was hired by The Grand Rapids Herald, a Michigan daily. I was a combination copyboy and stringer, in the latter role a regular contributor to the sports and youth sections. That's also when I got my union card, becoming – at age 16 – a fiercely proud member of the American Newspaper Guild.

Since then I have tried to live in accordance with journalism's oldest creed: “to comfort the afflicted...and afflict the comforted.”

It was in the latter context I wrote a blistering retort to two posters on the OT Forum.

The two were trashing a thread-starter who was trying to alert us to the huge danger implicit in the National Defense Authorization Act, which is wending its way through Congress bearing a concentration-camp provision that would turn stateside-stationed armed forces into national police, enable the imprisonment of citizens without trial and thus move the United States that much closer to becoming the de facto Fourth Reich.

Because the trashers' onslaught against this latter-day Paul Revere seemed not only unfair but vindictive, I opened the ball accordingly:

“The reactionary anti-intellectuality implicit in (the first respondent's) attack is surprising even here in the region of the United States most noted for its vindictive xenophobia and venomous anti-intellectuality.”

The first trasher, clearly enraged, misquoted me to the forum's moderator, then withdrew in a huff after the moderator pointed out the distortion.

Meanwhile the second trasher, whose screen name is “Nobody Important” and who claims to be an Occupy Seattle website moderator, was already boiling over with self-important arrogance.

Important had been subtly protecting the One Percent by denying the ruined state of our constitutional democracy, telling us the system was working and we had nothing to worry about – a tactic typical of capitalist-party operatives whether DemocRat or GOPorker.

My response was intended to end what I already recognized as pointless confrontation: “It seems – please correct me if I'm wrong – your underlying purpose is to defend the status quo, including the infinity of betrayals perpetrated by Barack the Betrayer. That being the case I see little point in debating you.”

But this gentle rebuke provoked an on-line tantrum that lasted nearly two days, with Important repeatedly proving the screen name to be not just devoid of its implied humility but a classic example of passive-aggressive camouflage.

In the parlance of the old-time newsrooms in which I learned my craft, obviously I drew blood.

Important then asserted a despotic sense of privileged entitlement, demanding ever more fiercely I be banished for “hate speech.” Apparently  Important searched not just the OT Forum but even Outside Agitator's Notebook to cobble together a less-than-literate denunciation based on my characterizations of our neo-feudal politicians (Barack the Betrayer, Christine the Cruel); our treacherous political parties (DemocRats, GOPorkers); and my factually correct, historically proven statement Nazism (and fascism in general) are logical fulfillments of capitalism.

But one brave moderator persisted in defending my right to write as I see fit, and Important finally left in a hissy, still spewing venom, a trail of petulantly self-deleted posts littering the path of departure.

***

Despite the Occupation Movement's outspoken commitment to transparency, the forum incident was not my first encounter with OT's would-be censors.

When OT was formed, Tacoma's First Methodist Church offered its facilities as an indoor locale for meetings of OT's governing body, the General Assembly. The offer was gratefully accepted; the frigid rains characteristic of winter on the Pacific Northwest Coast are of such monsoonal intensity as to discourage extended outdoor meetings – and GA sessions tend to last two, three, even four hours.

But not long after OT took its first collectively approved policy stance – a list of formal demands it presented to Washington state's U.S. Sen. Patty Murray – the church withdrew its offer, forcing the GA outdoors in the rain and cold and thereby effectively excluding most elderly and disabled people from the decision-making process.

The reasons for the church's sudden reversal have never been adequately explained, though it should be noted most OT activists emphatically assert the cause was nothing more ominous than administrative error and organizational confusion.

Nevertheless it's difficult to overlook the fact the excluded seniors and disabled people had been amongst those most active in shaping the demands OT addressed to Murray. Citing Murray's position as co-chair of the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction, OT insisted she block proposed cutbacks in Social Security and prevent further slashing of Medicare, Medicaid, veterans benefits and federal aid to education.

Coincidence? Probably – though the demographic identity of the chief victims of the church's sudden denial of its meeting facilities surely arouses my investigative reporter's suspicion.

But that's only half the story.

Soon after OT was limited to outdoor GAs, the Teamsters (a union to which I have strong social and familial connections despite the fact I have never been a member), were reportedly kind enough to offer OT their local meeting hall as a permanent meeting place.

But one of the leaders who have emerged within allegedly “leaderless” OT arbitrarily turned down the offer without bothering to consult the membership.

This was literally an anti-union coup, an outrage not merely because of its breathtaking arrogance but because – if we are to avoid the mistakes made during the Counterculture era – OT like OWS should be building Working Class solidarity, not implicitly insulting our union sisters and brothers.

Hush, I was told. “Your words are divisive and not conducive to positively working out the issue.”

***

Since the beginning of my involvement with OT I have sensed – particularly amongst its younger leaders – an underlying bias against those of us who are elderly, especially those of us who are lower-income elderly.

What brought this into sharp focus was OT's decision to center itself on a 24/7 online presence and on computer technology in general.

Recognizing the prohibitive nature of computer costs, I spoke up at several GAs citing current statistics that fully half the nation's lower-income households are economically denied computer access and thus remain cut off from an increasingly computer-oriented world. I myself, I admitted, am nearly at the economic bottom of the 99 Percent; I live in constant fear my computer will die and leave me irremediably isolated. I have no funds with which to replace a computer and short of a miracle will never have such funds again.

To exclude me and all the others who are in these dire circumstances, I said, is to nullify the core purpose of the Occupy Movement.

Again I was told I was being divisive.

The expressions on the faces of those around me left no doubt it was the majority opinion.

And now because of the lack of indoor meeting space, OT's GAs are held without regard to the limits imposed by age-related disabilities.

There's also the fact the success of U.S. capitalism's war on public transport has so radically diminished local bus service it is often impossible for those of us without automobiles to get to and from the site of the meetings.

A GA dominated only by younger, healthy women and men with enough money to own and operate automobiles is not representative of the 99 Percent.

Meanwhile OT's computer-centric mode of organization has fostered creation of a technocratic elite that has become its de facto ruling elite as well.

***

Now after considering these matters I could hardly doubt all those OT members who had tried to silence me as “divisive” also agreed with Important.

But how could avowed supporters of transparency so quickly abandon their principles?

Perhaps I was (again) encountering proof of how Seattle Sucks even in Tacoma and Bellingham and how the Seattle Freeze extends from Olympia to the Canadian border.

I even wondered if Important might have been among those who – despite my 1974-1976 role as founding photographer of The Seattle Sun – were so hatefully unforgiving of my East Coast origins they never failed to convey the region's characteristic message to outlanders: “we don't want you here.”

The bigots of those years actually slashed the tires on my car, sticking an ironically dimwitted note on its windshield: “Go back where you came from” – as if my vandalized Fiat Spyder, all four of its tires cut beyond repair, could have been driven anywhere.

I remembered too how some people I had foolishly believed were friends cavorted in nyekulturniy joy when I announced my 1983 return to Manhattan: “O goody we're finally getting rid of another obnoxious New York intellectual.”

Pugetopolis xenophobia never lets me forget I'm “not from here.” But as I wrote last Sunday to the one OT website moderator who dared favor my continued presence, “I refuse to apologize for who and what I am: not just a New Yorker, but an old, impoverished, crippled, justifiably angry and above all else still reasonably articulate New Yorker.”

Beyond the issues of age and caste and censorship, I was (again) obviously learning “a Rudyard Kipling truth that applies as much to the United States as to the old British Empire: 'East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet...'”

For a time I was convinced I should withdraw not only from the OT Forum but from OT itself.

Subsequent conversation with several OTers on-line and off convinced me withdrawal would be petulant and selfish – a pointless, stupid gesture that no matter how I rationalized it would be a rejection of solidarity.

Though I damn well won't bother posting in the OT Forum again. Apart from a few notably eloquent writers like Alan OldStudent and the knowledgeable NormaJean, it's discussion boards are a waste of time, dominated by people who are obviously amongst the One Percent's trained idiots – that or malicious egotists like Important – and since I'm nearing age 72 I don't have that much time left to squander.

So I wrote this commentary instead, invoking the principle of transparency, obeying the suggestion to Occupy (my own) Mind, discovering yet another dimension of how this strange and compelling movement is indescribably more than the sum of its parts.

*****

Chris Hedges: “Where Were You When They Crucified My Lord?”

My rejection of Christianity for its anti-sex prudery and its breathtaking socioeconomic hypocrisy led me through Zen, Taoism, Gaian paganism and finally to agnosticism long before I knew of Chris Hedges. Therefore to become an aficionado of his writing, it was often necessary for me to sidestep his frequently subtle but always undeniable Christian bias, which in a less perceptive writer would probably have driven me away.

But Hedges is not just an uncommonly talented journalist, he is also unique: a private-schooled, Ivy League aristocrat who abandoned privilege in the name of conscience. Now, a declared socialist, he reliably sides with the 99 Percent, even unto imprisonment for nonviolent civil disobedience.

Thus I read whatever I see beneath his byline and am almost never perplexed or disappointed by its message. And the Hedges piece with which I began yesterday's reading is – despite its thematically Christian core – among his most powerful essays to date.

Here are its first and third paragraphs:

“The Occupy movement is the force that will revitalize traditional Christianity in the United States or signal its moral, social and political irrelevance. The mainstream church, battered by declining numbers and a failure to defiantly condemn the crimes and cruelty of the corporate state, as well as a refusal to vigorously attack the charlatans of the Christian right, whose misuse of the Gospel to champion unfettered capitalism, bigotry and imperialism is heretical, has become a marginal force in the life of most Americans, especially the young. Outside the doors of churches, many of which have trouble filling a quarter of the pews on Sundays, struggles a movement, driven largely by young men and women, which has as its unofficial credo the Beatitudes...”

“It was the church in Latin America, especially in Central America and Augusto Pinochet’s Chile, which provided the physical space, moral support and direction for the opposition to dictatorship. It was the church in East Germany that organized the peaceful opposition marches in Leipzig that would bring down the communist regime in that country. It was the church in Czechoslovakia, and its 90-year-old cardinal, that blessed and defended the Velvet Revolution. It was the church, and especially the African-American church, that made possible the civil rights movements. And it is the church, especially Trinity Church in New York City with its open park space at Canal and 6th, which can make manifest its commitment to the Gospel and nonviolent social change by permitting the Occupy movement to use this empty space, just as churches in other cities that hold unused physical space have a moral imperative to turn them over to Occupy movements. If this nonviolent movement fails, it will eventually be replaced by one that will employ violence. And if it fails it will fail in part because good men and women, especially those in the church, did nothing.”

If you read no other commentary today, please read this.

Of course I hope Mr. Hedges is wrong about the revitalization of traditional Christianity. If he is right, the women and men of tomorrow will suffer a realm in which all pleasures especially those of sensuality and sexuality will again be forbidden and those born with the psychic sensitivities characteristic of my own ancient bloodline will again be persecuted for witchcraft as they were in colonial Connecticut and in the British Isles and mainland Europe long before.

In any case I'm sure Mr. Hedges knows that charity and humanitarianism in general are not Christian principles per se but rather far more timeless virtues, as in Lao Tzu's “If you are at one with them in poverty, the poor will come to meet you joyfully” (which dates from maybe 1000 BCE), and in the still older customs of collective nurturing implicit in tribal societies everywhere on our planet.

But there is no question the back-turned stance of the churches (which after all are wealthy beyond imagination and are thus as much a part of the One Percent as Wall Street) is intended to ensure the Occupy Movement's defeat.

Exactly as Mr. Hedges predicts, if the movement is crushed, what will take its place will be neither nonviolent nor forgiving.

*****

The Ecumenical Surrender to the 1% (w/Notes on Visual Thinking)

When I went to the corner of Pacific Avenue South and 11th Street last month to photograph Occupy Tacoma braving the rain to picket the building that houses Sen. Patty Murray's local office, I also encountered a prayer service convened by Associated Ministries, an interfaith (Protestant, Catholic, Jewish) organization that serves Tacoma and surrounding Pierce County.

The prayer service was not just kept separate from the OT demonstration, but segregated in a manner that made it quietly obvious most of the ritual's participants, many of whom were aristocratically dressed, wanted no part of the rowdily proletarian protest occurring only a stone's throw away.

We proles were on the rain-swept sidewalk in front of the building; the pastors and their parishioners were in an attractively landscaped stairway-park next door, the park's design one of many similar architectural concessions to Tacoma's notably alpine slopes.

Having asked enough questions to determine the two events were not just separate but – from the AM perspective – avowedly so, I put my reporter's notebook back inside its waterproof rubber bag and returned to shooting film.

It may seem an aside, but covering an event as both reporter and photographer is always difficult because the process demands you work simultaneously from antithetical modes of consciousness.

The photographer's sensibility is entirely right brain, a byproduct of sensual oneness with the spiral dance of light and shadow and the quest for the decisive paradas therein, the visual equivalents of orgasm.

By contrast, the writer's sensibility is definitively left-brain, the implicitly abstract and often internally contentious distancing-from-events inflicted by words and psycholinguistics, vision eternally imprisoned in the grammatical and stylistic structures by which effective prose must always be framed. The associated perception is linear, A-B-C-D-E, and the resultant expression can never be anything else.

Thus when I give myself over to the Zen of photographing an event – and Zen it always is – the reporting invariably suffers. But if I become the emotionally disciplined remote observer I must always be to function effectively as a reporter, my ability to photograph is sorely diminished. To attempt both simultaneously is crazy-making, literally a kind of self-induced schizophrenia.

My preference is of course to photograph, for me always an act of passion, and to let someone else do the reporting, which for me is never more than an intellectual exercise, reliably interesting, yes, but in the actual writing also a disheartening and often mortifying struggle against dyslexia.

Nevertheless and out of economic necessity I years ago evolved a kind of compromise in which I scribble notes to myself – typically in the same left-brain interlude triggered by the need to reload a camera – and then follow up with reporter-type interviews the next day.

Which I did by digging through the business cards I had collected during the demonstration and telephoning Rev. Heidi M. Calhoun, AM's director of mission and development.

What, I asked, was AM's stance toward the Occupy Movement? Would AM endorse it? (There was a rumor it already had.) And if no endorsement were forthcoming, why not?

It was clear by Rev. Calhoun's hesitant response she was on uncomfortable ground, but I have no doubt she answered honestly when she said there probably would be no such endorsement, either of OWS or its local offspring.

Why? “We're trying to unite people of faith,” she said. “We're an organization that mobilizes the faith community and is working toward finding ways in which we can speak and act together.”

In other words – mine not hers – though the “faith community” will piously pray for the enlightenment of the capitalist tyrants, it discourages any resistance more effective than the tactics of Father Gapon (for whom – if you don't know Russian history – please Google).

LB/7 December 2011

-30-

=================================

    Pictures and essays published in Outside Agitator's Notebook prior to 1 August 2011 remain available at lorenbliss.typepad.com.

=================================