THE OSCAR GRANT PLAZA GAZETTE Friday, October 14 2011 Day 5.

THE OSCAR GRANT PLAZA GAZETTE
Friday, October 14 2011            Day 5.
“the commons is back”
FROM A COMRADE

Today, many of those of us who came of age in the past decade are waking ourselves or being awoken from the mire of irony, depression, pity, ignorance, and self-abnegation that characterized being young in America since 9/11.

I became an adult in that decade dedicated to war, impoverishment, loneliness, arrogance, mincing cynicism, finicky mockery, class antagonisms sublimated into insipid “culture wars,” the fragmentation of common intellect, the decline of labor and manufacturing as meaningful pursuits, all of us abject and (so they’d have you believe) solitary witnesses to an ongoing oligarchical takeover whose true purpose is fascistic: the administration of society by an “art of politics.” It is a decade that I abhor, and from which I now realize I must wean myself.

Fascism – by aestheticizing politics, by making politics grandiose, terrible, and beautiful – would seek to facilitate daily life in a way that appears to its subjects as abstract and natural and infinite– and not, as would true progressivism, to demystify tools of obfuscation, denaturalize channels of power, and develop ideas about how to meet people’s material needs.

If I understand this movement correctly, we are here in Frank H. Ogawa Plaza to declare ourselves separate from the neo-liberal fascistic takeover of daily life by a political ideology that keeps us blandly hypnotized by sham issues extrapolated fractally across the 24/7 news cycle to which we have allowed ourselves to be chained as if to a morphine drip, and to stand up as real progressives, progressives with blood in our throats, with the voices of the poor and hungry in our voices.

The people who “run our country” do not run our country. What they run are offices. Never forget this. Oligarchs, look around you: the commons is back.

Look around you, how beautiful it is! What is missing? Is there anything you hold in your heart or mind or anything coming to you from the wind of all spirits that says, “This should be here . . .?” Painted boardwalks? A banjo? Rain barrel garden? Woodworking tent? Ablution station? Find a way to bring it, or something like it!

The Oscar Grant Plaza Gazette aims to be a voice & record of the historic Occupy Oakland movement, part of a national & international movement of resistance.  Please consider writing your thoughts, reflections, opinions, and what you’ve seen — you are part of this movement & we want to get your words out there !
LIST OF CAMP NEEDS

~~~ highest priority listed in bold
~~~ for more info/questions contact occupyoaksupply@gmail.com
~~~ no need to contact us first, just bring it on down to the Supply Tent!
PHYSICAL/MATERIALS, GOODS
[buy used goods wherever possible!!!!! and be thoughtful about who/what businesses you patronize…]

Generators and/or 9 volt car batteries (Deep Cycle) for Food, First Aid and Media
Blankets, sleeping pads, tarps, tents – more people joining us every day
Easy up/shade/Pop up tents
Hotspot cards for Media tent
Two burner cell phones for media tent
Water
Sharpies
Magic markers, poster board, sheets, sticks for making signs!
***Funds for porta-potty servicing***
Dry erase boards – lots, for tents and committees
Zip ties
Gloves     Lentils
Storage containers (multiple tents, groups)
Clean socks
Solar collectors
Wood pallets
Bales of Hay
Phone chargers and prepaid cards
Kitchen utiliy shelving
Tape – duct, masking
Sanitizer
Milk crates
Bakers racks
Bikes
Spray paint
Batteries – A, AA, AAA, D

SERVICES/OTHER NEEDS
Medics – for actions and for tent
Printing and copying services
Access to office space/electrical power/internet/technology, showers, bathrooms
Rides in trucks and cars, BART/clipper cards

WHAT IS RIGHT

What is right is feeding people.
What is right is housing people.
What is right is fulfillment of human needs.
What is right is love and solidarity.
What is right is working together to overcome injustice.
What is right is building the new world in the shell of the old.
What is right is introducing ourselves to one another, shaking hands and exchanging names.
What is right is working together to overcome racism and the racial division of oppressed people.
What is right is this work we are doing today.
What is right is not forgetting what is right.
What is right is adding your heart’s own addition to this list and letting the person next to you know about it.
What is right is listening to what they have to say too.

Please send submissions to oscargrantplazagazette@gmail.com or drop a hard copy by the information tent at Oscar Grant Plaza.  We will endeavor to publish all materials received.  For the purposes of collective self-defense we will reserve the right to decline to run materials which would render us legally liable.