Occupy Tacoma: Portraits of a Non-Violent Revolution (3)

Ignoring monsoonal rain, a few Occupy Tacoma stalwarts picketed outside the building that houses Sen. Patty Murray's local office. Murray, a Democrat, was co-chair of the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction, known as the "Supercommittee" for the dictatorial budget powers given it by President Barack Obama and Congress. OT members feared Murray would repeat the typical Democrat tactic of surrendering to Republican demands and thereby facilitating additional economic savagery by the nation's capitalist rulers.  Just as this OT picket's placard indicates, Occupy Wall Street and its daughters nationwide are  rejecting generations of Big Lies and at last awakening to the fact capitalism is the enemy of democracy.

     

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Photographs by Loren Bliss copyright 2011. Click on each image to view it full-size. (One-time use rights available.)

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Because Murray's Tacoma office is typically closed and almost never staffed -- scarcely more than a voice-mail facility -- Occupy Tacoma pickets were taken by surprise when Kristine' M. Reeves, South Sound Regional Director of Murray's staff, showed up. Top: Reeves, in black coat with white scarf, is confronted by OT activists Francesca Carreras-Velez, left, and Joy Bonney, holding a sign listing OT's demands.  Approved by the group's General Assembly, the demands include exempting Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, veterans benefits and education funds from further cutbacks and enactment of the so-called Robin Hood tax on capitalist financial transactions. Second picture: Carreras-Velez continues the discussion with Reeves while Bonney fetches printed copies of the demands. Third: OT pickets surround the two as the dialogue continues, intense but peaceful.  Significantly --  especially to those who argue there is no real difference between Democrats and Republicans (that both are parties of the Ruling Class) -- Murray's office is in the same building with the Tacoma-Pierce County Chamber of Commerce, a powerful lobbying organization for local capitalists. Bottom:  Reeves contemplates what she has heard. Note the obvious psychological distance between Reeves and the OT activists. (A complete list of the demands, seven in all, is available on the group's website, occupytacoma.org.) Below: views of the pickets during the five rainswept hours before Reeves' arrival.  

Visual Thinking: These Pictures Pretty Much Speak for Themselves

There's really not much need be added to the above text, and in any case the (user-hostile) Blogger system is already throwing tantrums over the additional pictures -- the reason it's taken me three hours of increasing  rage and frustration to complete this post -- as six images seems to be about the limit of  the server, which I now recognize as implicitly anti-photography and anti-photograper. Such is survival after banishment from TypePad. Tech data: FujiFilm 800, 28mm F/2.8 SMCP and 135mm f/2.5  Takumar, Pentax K-1000. (I left the MXs at home because Murray is a federal official, hence the risk of arrest and camera confiscation by the Homeland Security gesta...er, police.) These pictures were made on 16 November.

LB/24 November 2011

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