the history of the occupy movement as told in viral videos

Thanks to the ubiquity of Youtube, Twitter, livestream and smartphones with enough power to shoot a feature film, the Occupy movement has been one of the most citizen-documented in history.  In fact, almost all of its iconic images so far have been captured by citizen/activist/independent journalists.

Here, in roughly chronological order, are 16 videos that I think best tell the story of Occupy's first two months.  They are rather New York-centric, as that's where I live.  I'm sure you have your own list--why don't you share it?

1. Tony Baloney's 9/24 pepper spray rampage.  The video of NYPD officer Anthony Bologna pepper-spraying trapped and clearly non-threatening protesters one week after Occupy Wall Street began stoked outrage and built instant sympathy for the movement.



2. October 1 on the Brooklyn Bridge.  Whether it was an intentional police trap or not, it produced a New York Post headline for the ages: "S#!t Hits the Span."



3. October 5 Labor Solidarity Rally.  The multiracial, union-backed 20,000-person crowd announced Occupy as a mass movement.


4. October 14 defense of Zuccotti Park.  After not one but two emails from the AFL-CIO essentially urging civil disobedience, thousands of people poured into the park in the early morning hours to prevent a scheduled "cleaning."  Shortly before the deadline for eviction, the park's owners announced that they were "satisfied with the condition of the park."  The sentiment of the moment was somewhere along the lines of "Holy shit. We actually won something!"



5. Occupy Times Square/October 15 Global Day of Action.  The massive turnout for a rally that never even had a printed flyer smashed everyone's expectations.



6. Occupy the DOE shuts down the Panel on Educational Policy.  Perhaps I am a bit biased toward my teacher comrades, but as far as I can tell this is the first use of the mic check as a tool of disruption.



7. Riot police attack Occupy Oakland.  The October 25 assault critically injured Iraq War veteran Scott Olsen and reminded many of us of shit we've only seen in Palestine.  It marked the opening shot in a wave of escalated repression aimed at shutting down Occupy encampments.  But the story wasn't over...



8. Occupy Oakland calls a general strike.  One day after the brutal police attack that cleared the encampment, thousands of Occupy Oakland supporters marched back to the newly-renamed Oscar Grant Plaza.  In a 1,500-person general assembly, they voted overwhelmingly to call a general strike for November 2.



9. November 2: Occupy shuts down the Port of Oakland.



10. Scott Walker gets mic checked.  They didn't have a port to shut down.  Their former-Obama-apparatchik mayor won't even let them lie down on the sidewalk.  But Occupy Chicago made their mark by helping the mic check go viral.  And it couldn't have happened to a nicer guy.



11. Berkeley students stand their ground against police brutality.  What's remarkable about this video is not the riot cops who seem intent on causing some organ damage, but the fact that students held their ground and eventually forced the cops to back down.



12. Defense of Occupy Portland.  Thousands showed up and defended the encampment from riot cops all through the night.  The cops waited until the crowd thinned in the morning and then attacked, clearing the encampment, but not before the world saw this show of mass defiance.



13. Clearing of Zuccotti Park.  Of all the video shot of the NYPD's paramilitary operation in the pre-dawn hours of November 15, this one wins for its soundtrack.

the raid on zuccotti park from Casey Neistat on Vimeo.


14. Pepper spraying of UC Davis students. The cold-blooded attack on students who were sitting in on their own quad led to a call for a UC-wide student strike on November 28.



15. President Obama gets mic checked.  Although the pre-screened crowd eventually drowns out the mic check with chants of "O-ba-ma!," this should serve as an early warning to all presidential candidates, including the incumbent.



16. November 17 Occupy Wall Street "bat signal" on the Brooklyn Bridge.  As 35,000 people marched over the Brooklyn Bridge, guerrilla video artists working from the apartment of a single mom in the Brooklyn projects projected a message of hope onto the Verizon building to celebrate Occupy's two-month birthday.

five points on the occupy movement

I bet some of you have been checking back here, expecting me to write something about Occupy Wall Street and the Occupy movement.  The truth is that events have been moving so quickly that it's been hard to find a moment to stop, step back and analyze--and when I do I'm usually doing that with other activists and not on a blog.

There has been a lot written about this movement already--SocialistWorker.org is now daily required reading if you want to keep up--and so much has happened that it is really hard to sum things up.  I feel like some sort of summary post is necessary before going into more detail about things like the raid on Zuccotti/Liberty Park, which, astoundingly, happened only about ten days ago.  So I want to start with five general points about Occupy.

1. Occupy is a movement against class inequality and class oppression--in particular, against the austerity, budget cuts, and permanent high unemployment and high debt that the global ruling class sees as the only solution to the global financial crisis.  This is why it's spread so quickly and so widely--because despite the fact that we're not supposed to use the C-word in America, there is an enormous, untapped reserve of class anger boiling just under the surface.

One of the most powerful achievements of the movement is the sense of class identity, class solidarity and class anger that has come to the surface in a remarkably short period of time.  All you have to do is look at the We Are The 99% blog to see this.  There are over 200 pages of posts on it now.  Over and over again, the stories boil down to the same basic content: "I did everything right.  I worked hard.  And now I'm screwed, desperate, debt-ridden.  This cannot go on."  In these handwritten testimonials from all over the country, you can see the sham politics of individual responsibility breaking down before your eyes.  People are starting to realize that it isn't their personal failing if they can't find a job, stay out of debt, make ends meet for their family.  It's the fault of a system that's stacked against us.

While Occupy has some echoes of the global justice movement, it is profoundly different because this time we're not fighting in solidarity with victims of neoliberalism in the Global South.  This time the victims are us.  The policies that financial institutions like the IMF and World Bank used to foist on developing nations have come home with a vengeance and are now being visited on huge swaths of the populations of Europe and North America.  The ruling class (or, if you don't want to use the C word, the 1%) have been waging class war against us, and for the first time in a generation, we are getting a glimpse of what it could look like if our side fought back on a mass scale.  The struggle is still primarily a street movement.  It has not yet reached the point of production (through strikes, factory occupations, etc.).  But sooner or later, it will.

2. Occupy is not like other movements.  In fact, it's not like any movement most people alive today have been involved in, unless you are old enough to have been an activist in the 1960s.  Even for those of us who are seasoned activists, the idea of weekly and often daily protests, and of hundreds and sometimes thousands of people involved in organizing on a daily basis, in dozens of cities across the US, is something new.  Add to that the fact that the vast majority of these protests are unpermitted and frequently face intense levels of police violence--as intense as any I've seen in the US--and you have a whole generation of activists (both new people and those who've been around for a while) on a very steep learning curve out of sheer necessity.  Regardless of what comes out of this movement in terms of concrete victories, a new generation of the left is being forged, and it is so long overdue.

3. Occupy is more than the encampments, but the encampments are important.  One of the great things about this movement is the fact that you can now put "occupy" in front of almost anything and people will have some general recognition of what that means.  While the permanent encampments in parks and public places are one element of the movement, they are not the whole movement.  Students have occupied campuses, using both encampments and other tactics to protest tuition hikes, budget cuts, and the treatment of campus workers.  Teachers in New York launched an ongoing Occupy the DOE campaign to protest school closings and privatization.  One of their first actions was to use the now-ubiquitous "mic check" to shut down a meeting of the unelected, Bloomberg-appointed Panel for Education Policy in late October.  Since then, activists across the country have mic checked Scott Walker, Eric Cantor, Karl Rove, Newt Gingrich, Israeli propagandists, and even President Obama.  At the same time, large national and international days of action have brought tens of thousands (collectively, probably hundreds of thousands just in the US) into the streets every couple of weeks--in New York on October 5 (20,000), October 14 (several thousand at the crack of dawn for an emergency defense of Liberty Plaza), October 15 (up to 100,000 in what became a massive unpermitted street party in Times Square), November 2 (several thousand in solidarity with the general strike call from Oakland), and November 17 (32,000 according to the police scanners).  When you add in the countless smaller protests of a few dozen to a few hundreds that are an almost daily occurrence, the combined scale and pace of these mobilizations is unlike anything at either the height of the global justice or antiwar movements.

While the movement stretches well beyond the encampments, the role of the tent cities as (semi-)permanent organizing centers should not be underestimated.  At the height of its development, Liberty Plaza became both a fairly impressive self-organized community and a vital political gathering space.  It had a library of 5,000 books, a thoroughly-stocked kitchen that served probably hundreds of free meals a day, clean energy via bike generators, a multi-faith sacred space, a media center and an info tent keeping tabs on the times and locations of countless meetings, training, discussion groups and protest events happening each day.  Far more important than any of these, it was the central, identifiable place where new people came to talk politics and get involved in the movement, and where activists who had been slogging away at small struggles for years could form powerful connections of solidarity and shared interests.  It was a place where people came to teach and learn, to debate and strategize, to start to figure out what they thought about the world and how to change it.  The hunger for knowledge, history, books, newspapers, for ideas and learning, was palpable.  In a country where collective political space is virtually nonexistent, the existence of such an organizing hub in the very shadow of Wall Street was incredibly powerful--and ultimately, too dangerous to be allowed.

The police know what they are doing when they attack the encampments.  By destroying the physical infrastructure of the Occupy movement, they're also attacking our ability to organize.  "We built a community there, and they destroyed our institutions," said one activist after the NYPD razed Liberty Plaza, and she was right.  Destroying an encampment physically scatters the movement, as people spend time in jail or supporting those in jail, trying to reclaim seized possessions, finding other places to sleep, etc.  It's intended to send a message that the reclaiming of space for purposes of organizing resistance will not be tolerated, and that basic democratic rights like freedom to assemble will themselves barely be tolerated at all.

4. There is an intense, sustained, nationally coordinated police offensive against Occupy.  There had been police violence against Occupy protesters from the start--one of the movement's most iconic images remains the pepper-spraying of several young women at a protest in New York one week after the movement's birth.  But as it moved into its second month of existence, the movement faced a highly coordinated wave of repression, which started in late October in Oakland and peaked with the clearing of Zuccotti Park in a military-style raid in the early morning hours of November 15.  This systematic nationwide assault, aimed at destroying as many of the encampments as possible, was coordinated, it seems, through conference calls organized by a think tank called the Police Executive Research Forum, whose board of directors reads like a who's who of the architects of American police repression since the birth of the global justice movement.  It has been accompanied by a secondary offensive of campus police against student protesters--most notably at Berkeley, UC Davis and CUNY--aimed at preventing the Occupy movement from getting a new foothold on campuses.

5. This is only the beginning.  Regardless of what happens with the physical encampments, the spirit of the Occupy movement has already penetrated a very broad layer of society very quickly.  One of the strengths of Occupy is its broadness.  It's a generalized revolt against the sense that a tiny elite (what Marxists would call the ruling class) control both the financial system and the political system.  There are all kinds of debates and varying points of view about how the levers of economic and political power came to be so closely interlinked, and whether they can ever be separated (ie. is it really possible to "get money out of politics," or is it impossible without fundamental change because the political system is set up by and for the economic elite and not "the people" as we're taught in Civics class?)  These debates will continue for a long time, as this is a new and growing movement.  But new manifestations of the Occupy spirit are popping up every day.

The challenge now will be to bring the defiance and creativity of Occupy to every struggle--against budget cuts, school closings, foreclosures and evictions, incidents of police brutality and racism, campus struggles, and most importantly to any strikes and labor struggles that emerge.  Things may quiet down in some places over the winter--or they may not.  I would not be surprised if we see another massive wave of struggle in the spring, perhaps culminating at the NATO/G8 meeting in Chicago in May--a meeting of the global 1% if there ever was one.  I would also not be surprised in the least if the next wave of struggle focuses on something no one could have ever predicted.  What we do know is that the US has finally--finally--joined the global revolt against neoliberalism in a serious way.

We also know that a true mass movement in the US would involve not just thousands or tens of thousands of people, but millions.  What we have seen in the past two months is just a small taste of the struggles to come.  But (to steal from Sherry Wolf) it tastes good.

the night they killed troy davis

The American justice system murdered Troy Davis on Wednesday, September 21, at 11:08pm.

Many of us have been following Troy's case for years.  I won't repeat all the facts--you can read them here and here if you don't know--but suffice to say that in the state of Georgia, a Black man accused of killing a white cop can be sentenced to death despite the fact that there is not a shred of physical evidence linking him to the crime and seven of the nine witnesses who originally implicated him have since recanted their testimony, declaring in sworn affidavits that they were coerced and threatened by police into naming Troy Davis as the killer.

The racism and cruelty at work in Troy Davis's case were so blatant, the barbarity of the system so obvious, that it struck a chord with many people.  In the past few years Amnesty International and the NAACP took up the case as well, and the number of people who knew about Troy Davis skyrocketed.  He was almost put to death three times--once coming within 90 minutes of execution.  Each time, a mass movement saved his life.

The week before the execution date was a frantic flurry of calls, emails, faxes to anyone who could be pressured to stop the execution.  Troy's life had been saved by public pressure before.  This time awareness of the case was bigger than ever, and it was his last chance.  If ever a movement needed to do its job, the time was now.  We appealed to the DA, the judge, the Georgia Board of Paroles, the governor, the Supreme Court, Obama.  In London and Paris, people rallied outside US embassies.  A Georgia state senator called on the prison workers who carry out the execution to strike and refuse to kill an innocent man.  We know they all must have heard us.  But Wednesday came and there was silence in response.

The night they killed Troy Davis, we canceled all other political plans and marched through Harlem, from the state office building to St. Mary's Church.  As we marched down 125th St. chanting "We are all Troy Davis" and "They say death row, we say hell no!", we couldn't hand out flyers about Troy's case fast enough.

Some two hundred people packed into the main sanctuary at St. Mary's.  Luckily this is Harlem and you don't need to be quiet in church.  We chanted, shaking the rafters.  As we lit candles and waited for a screen to be set up in front of the altar to watch the Democracy Now! livestream from outside the prison in Georgia, the pastor spoke and rang the church bell, over and over, for what must have been at least a minute.  We all fell silent, listening to the bell toll.  It wasn't a joyful sound.  It was mourning and distress.

Then the livestream was up and we were connected, connected to all those people, hundreds of people, outside the remote prison where Georgia does its killing.  Troy's family--his sisters Kim Davis and Martina Correia (who has battled breast cancer and the racist criminal justice system simultaneously for the past ten years), his teenage nephew DeJuan, who speaks with the maturity of a man twice his age--were all outside the prison with us.  They were not allowed inside to watch the state of Georgia kill their loved one, although the family of the dead cop was.

We waited.  As the 7pm execution time drew near, everyone held their breath.  Many people in the church were crying, all united in grief for someone most of us had never met.

Then, suddenly, a few minutes after seven, people in Georgia began cheering. There was confusion, hoping-against-hope excitement, Amy Goodman trying to figure out what was going on, then someone from somewhere yelled, "He got a stay!"  The church erupted, everyone was on their feet, people cheering, crying, chanting "The people united will never be defeated!"  Ben Jealous of the NAACP says the American justice system has worked.  For one brief moment--maybe two or three minutes--we believed we had saved him.  Then we found out it wasn't true.

Troy had not received a stay of execution, we learned.  It was just a reprieve--a temporary order to hold the needle while the Supreme Court deliberated.

The momentary elation turned into anxiety.  Everyone is waiting, waiting.  If the uncertainty is unbearable for us, what must it be like for Troy's family?  What must it be like for Troy?  Is he already strapped to the table where a doctor from Rainbow Medical Associates will pump three kinds of poison into his veins--the first to put him in a coma, the second to paralyze him, and the third to stop his heart?  He is only forty-two.  He's spent half his life in prison.  Despite all the calming words to friends and family and supporters about being at peace and right with God, can you ever really be ready to die?

We waited and waited.  Democracy Now! kept broadcasting, even though they were scheduled to end at eight.  There was a rumor news would come at 8:30.  No news came.  We learned this temporary state of being held between life and death can last up to a week.  If the Supreme Court is deliberating it must be good, right?  It must mean we are having an impact, that he still has a chance.  Right?

It had been a long night and most of us had come straight from work to the protest.  Around 9:30, when it seemed like no news will come that night, some of us left the church to get something to eat and drink.  We were sitting in the bar around 10:30 when the text messages and Twitter updates hit.  With no dissenting opinions, the Supreme Court had rejected Troy's appeal.  He would be killed tonight.  And half an hour later, he was.

Now the momentary delay seemed not like a victory at all but premeditated sadism, four hours of torture added on to a coldblooded murder.  Did they plan it like this, waiting until it was late at night so there wouldn't be a riot?  The American justice system had worked, all right--exactly the way it was designed to.  To reinforce the idea that they're stronger, they're in control, and they can kill you--especially if you are Black, brown, or poor.

The next day there was an emergency response protest at Union Square.  It was scheduled to start at 5.  By 5:05 when I arrived, there were already 200 people gathered, and they were angry.  The murder hit a deep nerve and you can feel, suddenly, how all the buried rage at every injustice and brutality the system inflicts on us can come to the surface very quickly.  You begin to understand how urban rebellions start--people reach a point where they just can't take it anymore.  The atmosphere is explosive.  Before anything at all happens, you can just tell--if the cops decide to start something, people will fight back.

It's clear people were not going to be satisfied with just hanging around Union Square.  At some point people take to the streets.  The crowd had swollen to between 500 and 1,000 at this point.  Unsurprisingly, the cops were not happy--Troy Davis is a cop killer to them.  They boxed people in on a side street and attacked, hitting and shoving people, trying to cut the march in half.  At first people panicked and fled, but then enough people held their ground, too angry to be scared, others found their courage, and the march pushed through police lines chanting "We are all Sean Bell, NYPD go to hell!"  They marched for two hours, in the street, blocking traffic, all the way down Broadway.  Some video is posted below.

I've been involved, on and off, in protests against the death penalty and the criminal injustice system for ten years now.  These struggles often become very emotional, because they're built around individual cases; you get to know the person you're trying to save, their family, their friends, and the stakes for winning or losing are quite literally life and death.  But something felt different this time around.  People were not just devastated when Troy was killed.  They were furious, and they were ready to fight back.  Not just against the death penalty but against the whole racist system of mass incarceration--what people are increasingly calling the New Jim Crow.  Against cops who can get away with murder and rape.  It's too early to say if this will be a turning point, and toward what exactly.  But something is smoldering, under the surface, and it's only going to take a few sparks to set it off.

oh yeah. i live in new york city now.

I moved back to New York last week, after two years and two months away.  It's fucking sweet.  I haven't even been doing anything all that spectacular: hanging out with friends I haven't seen in a while, eating yummy food (although in moderation, as I am rather poor at the moment), knowing I can get anywhere on my own at any time of day/night.  But sometimes I'll catch myself walking down the street with a little smile on my face, just basking in the awesomeness: the city's energy, its pace, its diversity, the way it can seem tough and welcoming at the same time.  What more can I say?  New York is my home.

I'm going to write more about my new temporary neighborhood, Washington Heights.  But for now, in celebration of my return, I give you a pitch-perfect New Yorker post from the Village Voice, 50 Reasons to Be Pretty Damn Euphoric You Live in New York City.

UPDATE!  The 50 reasons have a follow-up post, which is almost as awesome.

i love you, new york

Photo credit: AP

Thousands in New York rallied in defense of the proposed Park51 community center, for religious freedom and against Islamophobia. NY1 is reporting five thousand. Estimates from friends who were there ranged between 3,000 and 7,000, versus about 750-1,000 assorted bigots on the other side. The rally on our side sounded beautiful.

Dear New York. You may smell bad and be prohibitively expensive, but you come through when it counts.

a 9/11 post

In the seven years I lived in New York after September 11, 2001, I kind of got over 9/11 tributes. Many a September 11th passed without my feeling a particular need to memorialize, and I think plenty of New Yorkers felt the same. Not those who lost loved ones or suffered trauma, but the vast majority of us who were just there in the city on that surreal day of blue skies and ash-white smoke. We were around for the main event. Calling it up year after year seemed unnecessary.

But this seems to be the year that some people want to remember 9/11, and for very particular reasons. People who insist on a particular meaning for that event, slave graves and other inconvenient truths aside. And while I completely agree with the sentiment of this post--about the imperial arrogance of demanding that our tragedy be remembered above and to the exclusion of all others--I do remember. There are things from that day and the days that followed that I can recall with a visceral, snapshot clarity that hasn't faded after nine years and maybe never will.

On September 11, 2001, I was a 19-year-old sophomore at Columbia University. I was six miles away from the World Trade Center that morning, at the other end of Manhattan, but that was close enough. These are some of the things I will never forget:

Checking in with friends to make sure they are still alive.

Standing on the roof of my friend's building, watching the F-16s fly over Manhattan, with a Lebanese friend who casually remarks, "Huh. That's the first time I've seen those when they weren't going to bomb somewhere."

Eating a late dinner at JJ's Place a few days later, listening to some bigot-on-the-street scream hatred on CNN, and suddenly being engulfed in a physical, palpable wave of fear. Not fear of more terrorist attacks but fear of my own government, and what it might try to get away with under the shadow of racist hysteria.

The missing posters. The faces that stared up at you from subway stops and telephone poles, framed with the desperate pleading of loved ones, and the twisted connection they invoked to that other 9/11--also a clear blue Tuesday morning--a parallel so surreal it could only have happened in real life. The way people say missing when they can't yet bear to say dead.

That demonstration, that incredible night march through the streets of Manhattan ten days after 9/11, when we expected a hundred people and five thousand showed up. Chanting "No war, no attacks, bombs won't bring our loved ones back" as if the raw power of our grief could actually make those in power listen. Marching against war before we even knew where the war was going to be. The two-hundred-person antiwar organizing meeting held on the lawn outside Columbia's student center, when it seemed, for a historical split-second, that something other than slaughter might have been possible.

The moment at the end of that same night march, in Union Square, when the wind shifted, bringing with it the acrid smell of the still-burning rubble less than a mile away. "I left Sarajevo to get away from that smell," a woman standing near me said. At that moment we were just scared civilians in another bombed-out city.

And, most of all, the thing I thought about as we went out to get food after a long day of news-watching and check-ins to assure ourselves and others that yes, everyone we knew was still alive: Imagine living every day like this.

I know the terror and grief New Yorkers experienced for one day is minuscule compared to what our government has visited on other countries and on the people who were here before us. I am humble about our place in the world historic scale of destruction. But I think it is important not to forget those feelings, to hold on to them and to see in them the reflection of other bombed cities and shell-shocked survivors. I think they are useful when remembering whom to sympathize with and whom to fear, when remembering who is the us and who is the them.

Whenever someone shouts "Remember 9/11!" to justify war or Islamophobia or attacks on immigrants, I want to ask, "Do you?" Were you there? Because if you weren't, shut the hell up. And if you were, if you really remember the fear and vulnerability and pain that engulfed the city, how dare you wish that upon anybody else?

in which i hate on los angeles some more

I love planning. It's a great way to think about the future without having to actually do anything to get there. You know what else I love? School supplies. So you can imagine that the purchase of a new monthly planner is one of the highlights of back-to-school time, which is already one of my favorite times of year because, if you couldn't tell, I am a nerd.

After a slightly ludicrous amount of time spent perusing the offerings at the USC bookstore, I settled on a planner that started in August 2009 and ran all the way to December 2010--partially because it was thin and would fit easily in my bag, and partially because I just respected its slightly odd format, which seemed to say, "Yeah, I'm a seventeen-month calendar. What? That's how I roll."

And partially, I'll admit, because those pages at the end called to me--and not JUST because I could write "DEATHLY HALLOWS, PART I!" on November 19, 2010. (Although I did, post haste.)

As I lingered on the page marked September 2010, I couldn't help thinking: Surely, I'll be back in New York by then. And, imagining that, those last pages seemed to flutter with extra crispness, fresh with the promise of brisk fall breezes, October skies, black wool coats, the comforting embrace of skyscrapers, hot coffee sipped while walking at a proper pace down sidewalks properly filled with people, and excuses to wear my remarkably soft Gryffindor...er, USC scarf.

The one task I gave myself for the mostly-empty months of July and August in Los Angeles, other than writing, was to re-learn to drive. I haven't done it, and now that the semester has started, who knows when I will. But I finally realized what was behind my willingness to tolerate the limitations and inconveniences of being a non-driver in a city so car-oriented that even stores turn their backs on the sidewalk. If I learned to drive, that would be admitting to myself that there was at least a chance I would actually be living in this godforsaken city, as, like, a real, non-student adult. And clearly that is not a possibility I am inclined to face at the moment.

If you've been reading this blog you'll know it's no secret that, although I think film school is awesome, I hate Los Angeles with a fiery passion. As time goes by, you'd think I would get used to it and start hating it less. Instead I seem to hate it more. And I've become increasingly convinced that having a car, while it would certainly make my life easier, would not make me like Los Angeles one bit more.

Los Angeles is the anti-city: a vast, flat, centerless expanse of never-ending suburb that sprawls like a fungus over desert plains and clambers up into mountain canyons where no city is supposed to be, a place where people describe neighborhoods by their proximity to various freeways, a place where the urban grid is stretched to its least-walkable dimensions. (Short blocks favor pedestrians: they have more corners, which are prime real estate for both sidewalk-oriented shops and personal interaction. Long blocks favor cars because there are fewer stop lights.)

Los Angeles has no sense of urgency. LA, for all its ungainly size and various cityesque attributes, still feels sleepy and provincial to me. It has the natural energy of the beach: nice for a vacation, but rather like quicksand when you're trying to get stuff done. Even the weather begins to get old. "Oh, jeez, month after month of sunshine and low humidity, must be rough!" I can hear you East Coasters muttering sarcastically. But seriously. With a lack of seasons, time stretches out into one long, unmarked blur. There is no sense of things moving and changing, of time passing by. You're just trapped in this hot, flat, timeless pancake filled with mile after mile of strip malls of varying bougieness or grubbiness, depending on the zip code. Also, bars close absurdly early, hardly anything is open twenty-four hours, and both the density and pace of service of Los Angeles's Starbucks is criminally low.

There was a time when I was convinced I just needed to get to know Los Angeles better. The USC neighborhood is somewhat unappealing; surely there must be other neighborhoods out there in the vast sea of Los Angeles's expanse that I could call home. Every visit to a new friend's house was like a blind date: maybe this will be the neighborhood I'll fall in love with. It was only recently that I reminded myself that between September 2000 and August 2008, I was never out of New York for more than a month at a time, and realized there was probably a good reason for that.

Perhaps this is why, after nearly two months in a new apartment, I have not bothered to unpack more than the bare minimum needed for survival (which, in case you're wondering, is my computer and other media tools, my books, three plates, one cereal bowl, one all-purpose mug, a couple of utensils, some toiletries, and about one laundry load worth of clothes). I like the feeling that this must be only temporary, because the idea that it could be permanent, or even semi-permanent, is too horrible to contemplate.

Although I fully reserve the right to change my mind, if you asked me today, I would say I plan to get the hell out of Los Angeles as soon as humanly possible. Will this reduce my chances of meeting some agent's or studio exec's second assistant in some bar in West Hollywood some night? Yeah, probably. And you know what? I think I can live with that risk. The possibility of success in any creative industry is so ridiculously low to begin with that, in my opinion, there's no point in being miserable while you're trying to make it.

gay marriage update: the force is with us

As a wise Jedi once said: "Strike me down, and I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine."

Earning more brownie points for the Northeast, MAINE HAS LEGALIZED GAY MARRIAGE! YAY MAINE! The fight is not over--although the governor signed the bill on May 6, opponents are filing a challenge that could put equal rights up for a referendum in November, or possibly as late as June 2010. But this is still an incredibly important victory, since it marks the second state, after Vermont, to legalize gay marriage via the state legislature, not the courts, thereby making the whole "this isn't the will of the people" argument less and less relevant.

Just a day later, a similar bill narrowly passed the New Hampshire state legislature--but NH governor John Lynch has not yet announced whether he'll sign it.

And here in New York, it seems very likely that a gay marriage bill will pass as early as tomorrow in the traditionally liberal State Assembly--as it did in 2007, only to be killed in the more conservative State Senate. But unlike 2007, and for the first time in SEVENTY YEARS, Democrats have a majority in both houses of the New York state legislature. Will this, combined with the recent groundswell of support for gay rights, be enough to tip the balance? We'll see.

Meanwhile, Massachusetts has had gay marriage for five years now...and, surprise, the state hasn't exploded.

And, perhaps most important of all, the first nationwide polls are appearing that show more Americans support gay marriage than oppose it.

I don't want to jinx anything with terms like "sea change." But it is stunning, truly stunning, how much the balance of forces has shifted even since March, when I attended the Cali Supreme Court hearings on Prop 8. The mood was not optimistic at the time--and it's very possible we could still lose in California. But it's seeming increasingly likely that even if the court does not rule in our favor in California, it will be a case of losing the battle but winning the war.

It is also becoming increasingly likely, I am realizing, that when the CA State Supreme Court decision comes down, I will be overseas in Gaza, busy fighting for someone else's rights--which seems, somehow, entirely befitting this historical moment.

arabs are funny

My friend Maha is the artistic director of the 6th annual New York Arab-American Comedy Festival. Check out five nights of sketch and stand-up from new and established Arab-American comedians! I'll be at the sketch show tonight at 8:30 and at the Best Of the Fest show on Thursday.

The festival is hosted by Comix, and tickets for most shows are $20 with no food or drink minimum.

nyc

If you can't tell by the recent explosion of posts, I've finished the semester and am back in NYC, for a total of about five weeks with two weeks of Egypt/Gaza in the middle.

Through a Chinese fire drill of real estate that could only happen in the New York rental market, I'm back in the same apartment I first rented with my (now ex) girlfriend nearly four years ago, subleasing our old bedroom from the friend who became her roommate after I moved to California. (I know it sounds complicated, but if you live in NYC you know that people will do anything to keep a cheap place with a good landlord.)

The apartment has been rearranged enough to not feel like mine anymore (not complaining--the new occupants are more enterprising with decorating than we ever were), but the neighborhood is still familiar, although a few things have changed. The Middle Eastern place that replaced the drug-front deli has itself been replaced by a pizza place, but the Chinese food place whose number is still in my phone is exactly the same--even the same delivery guy, gosh darnit. The music is still blasting from Cavo (clearly I'm still on West Coast time--it's 2:30 am here) and while I'm sad to report that the Astoria Diner closed (!!!), I did eat a delicious, delicious bagel at good old Lite Bites this morning.

It is easy to fall back into the routines of this neighborhood that I know well enough to traverse on autopilot. It is lovely to sit by the window and close my eyes and feel connected to the pulsing, vibrant, ever-awake city stretching out around me, in a way I never feel in Los Angeles. My current bedroom--at 88 square feet, around half the size of my bedroom in LA--feels not too small, but just right. And I realized before I left LA that when people asked me if I was going home, I had been thinking of New York and saying "yes."

conflicted

I am missing New York City particularly acutely today. Perhaps it is the fact that it's spring there, or that the Tribeca Film Festival (in which some of my friends are involved) is in full swing, or that I will be returning there in a mere 11 days, if only for a grand total of five weeks when international travel is taken into account.

Things I miss about New York at the moment include subways, walking places, good theater, bagels, seasons, subways, Astoria, yoga places in walking distance of my house, a rational density of coffee shops, weekends in the East Village, Bluestockings book store, the Ziegfeld, the fact that everything doesn't look like one giant strip mall, and subways. In fact, after being away from New York for a little while, even thoughts of sixth-floor walk-ups, $100 Metrocards and the perpetual rat colony on Bond Street seem to evoke a bit of homesickness.

I am frequently conflicted about Los Angeles's place in my future, since I continue to think that Los Angeles is just not meant to be my home. I keep remembering the numerous East Coast transplants who've said that it took them two, even three years to appreciate LA, reminding myself that I can't pass final judgment on LA until I learn to drive and have access to its sprawling expanse by car (although that fact in itself fills me with chagrin), and worrying that I'll be shooting my career in the foot if I don't stay in LA after graduation. But then I think of Washington Square Park or the Organic Grill or the 48 hours in which I went to see Che, Man on Wire, Blasted AND Black Watch over winter break and those arguments go right out the window into the perpetual SoCal sunshine. And even that is starting to get a bit boring, because when the weather is the same every day time seems to pass at a snail's pace and everyone gets exasperatingly unhurried, instead of rushing by in the proper fashion, as they do when you have freezing winters and sweltering summers to keep you on track.

So then I start to think, well, there is some film industry in New York, as well as a literary and theater scene, and hopefully the economy will be a bit better by the time I graduate, and if I have to have a day job (assuming I'm not going to sign a six-figure option deal the day after graduation) it might as well be in a place I love instead of one I kind of hate. And then I think of the avalanche of debt I will be in and wonder if I'm completely crazy to even think of moving to one of the few cities more expensive than the one I live in now. Then I think about how maybe the solution is more school--which is a very dangerous thought indeed.

Then I think about how much I also really love San Francisco. But that is neither here nor there.

student occupation at nyu!

After nearly two years of flyering, teach-ins, organizing meetings and attempts to dialogue with the NYU administration, students from the Take Back NYU! coalition occupied the Kimmel Center (NYU's monolithic, long-under-construction student center) for 40 hours February 18-20.

Chief among their greivances was the persistent lack of transparency about NYU's investments and operating budget in response to repeated calls to put a cap on tuition increases, allow collective bargaining for all NYU workers, including student workers, and promote socially responsible investing (SRI), including divestment of NYU's endowment from companies that profit from the Israeli occupation of Palestine (similar to the victory recently won at Hampshire College.)

The immediate demands of the occupation centered around disclosure of the university's budget and investments, tuition stabilization, and several concrete ways NYU could assist in Gaza relief effort, specifically at the Islamic University of Gaza, which was bombed by Israel during the recent war.

In making these demands, the students linked their occupation to the wave of university occupations in Britain in response to the crisis in Gaza, and also to the recent occupation of the New School, which also called for budget transparency, SRI, and the removal of the New School's war criminal president Bob Kerrey.

The NYU administration has taken a Bush-administration-worthy stance toward the protesters. After sealing the Kimmel Center shut and cutting off internet access in an effort to keep the students inside from communicating with their supporters, NYU administrators lied to student leaders about being willing to negotiate in order to get them out of the building, at which point they were promptly forcibly removed by NYU security. Students involved in the occupation were also immediately evicted from their student housing.

Letters and phone calls demanding amnesty for the students involved and an answer to their demands can be directed to the following people:

NYU President John Sexton: john.sexton@nyu.edu, (212) 998-2345
John Beckman, NYU Spokesperson: jhb5@nyu.edu
Office of the Provost: provost@nyu.edu
Office of the Vice President: evp@nyu.edu

If you're particularly enterprising, you can also call NYU spokesperson John Beckman on his cell phone: (917) 968-4942.

For more info, check the frequently-updated Take Back NYU! website.

from wall street to hollywood?

My friend Karen over at Scarlett Cinema has written an excellent response to this article in the New York Times, about laid-off i-bankers who, thanks to being forced to take six-figure severance packages as their companies collapse, are finally able to pursue their creative and artistic dreams.

Karen is eloquent as always, so I won't repeat her arguments. But I will say that, having worked at the same Times-Square-based financial company she mentions in her post, I also reacted to the New York Times article with a big dose of "reeeeaalllly?"

Does Hollywood, one of the most white-male-dominated industries in the US, really need an infusion of "talent" from the financial world...another one of the most white-male-dominated industries in the US?

Of course, all four former bankers interviewed for the article--all executives--are men. I cannot say whether they are all white, but, having worked in the financial industry, I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess yes. I found it interesting that the first guy interviewed has dreams of sketch comedy--probably the most white-male-dominated art scene in New York. His group has secured a spot in the Chicago Sketch Comedy Festival. Now that he'll no longer be distracted by his day job as an executive director at Morgan Stanley, I'm sure they'll have a TV show on FUSE and a movie in the works within a year.

If the New York Times article shows anything, it's simply the persistent unreality that a large swath of New York City (like these people right here) lives in, where the arts are a hobby to entertain the rich between various money-making adventures.

Interestingly, one of the auto-generated links on Scarlett Cinema as I was reading Karen's piece was to this Washington Post article, about the Oscar-nomination gender gap. Not only is it interesting, but it's FROM THE FUTURE!

violence abroad, violence at home

I wanted to take a moment to mention two other articles of note in this week's New York Times.

The first is a rather grim report on domestic violence by returning Iraq war vets--particularly the case of Sgt. Carlos Renteira, who, instead of receiving Army-mandated anger management and substance abuse counseling after beating up his wife...was redeployed to Iraq and promoted.

The article also mentions not one but *two* rashes of murders of women (both female soldiers and wives of soldiers) at North Carolina's Ft. Bragg--one that made headlines in 2002 when many troops returned from Afghanistan, and another that's happened in the past four months. Apparently babies aren't the only thing that come with the return of the 82nd Airborne.

The second article, I'd like to think, is a bit more hopeful. It describes a pilot program in New York's Washington Heights that trains hairstylists to identify signs of domestic abuse and offer basic counseling and sources of information for victims of violence--not unlike the work done by organizations like RAINN. Hairstylists might seem like a random choice, but as the article points out, they often end up serving as the "therapist of last resort," particularly for women who can't afford or are afraid to seek other counseling services. And "the salon might be one of the few places women might be without their abuser around." The program, modeled on the fairly large and successful Cut It Out initiative in Chicago, targets a neighborhood where people may be particularly mistrustful of police or city social service workers.

obamania in nyc

Several of my NYC friends were in the right place at the right time on election night and have the pics and video to prove it.

Kitzie, Karen, Segnon, Ryan and JoAnna were watching the election at the office where I used to work, which is right off Times Square (a huge pain in the ass on New Year's Eve.) Karen posted some great pics here and here.

My friend Brian was in Harlem, and shot this great video of the ecstatic mayhem on 125th St. You can also read his election night account here.

things i miss about new york

My roommate, who has lived in LA for many years, can't understand what I miss about New York. She points out that it's noisy, crowded, outrageously expensive, smelly, unbearably hot in the summer, freezing in the winter, and breeds pedestrian speeds and levels of aggressiveness that many would consider unnatural. In fact, the New York Times recently ran an article addressing how newcomers adjust to New York by becoming rude and walking faster.

Of course, all the complaints about New York are true. I'll be the first to admit that New York is an unforgiving place. So why then, does New York continue to have such a deep hold on my psyche that the stock footage on Project Runway makes me tear up a bit?

Of course, New York is the home of my girlfriend, my cats, and most of my friends, so naturally I miss being there. But it is also, undeniably, my home. Having to defend my city from its detractors (my other roommate is batting for Chicago) has forced me to think about what I really like, and miss, about New York, the city, itself.

I miss its compactness. In my opinion this is what makes a city a city and not a suburb. The roommate who has lived in LA for many years described how when she lived in Santa Monica everything she needed was in a five-mile radius. This seemed small to her. Five miles is a hundred New York City blocks. From NYU to Columbia. From the East Village to East Harlem. If you put a five-mile radius into Fandango in New York, you get theaters in Jersey.

I miss being able to buy groceries, shampoo, beer, five different kinds of takeout food, go to a movie and deposit a check without having to get on a bus.

I miss New York's diversity. Of course, LA is one of the most diverse cities in the world, but it's so spread out that you can still live in a bubble. The same roommate described how, for many years, certain of her friends wouldn't come to her house because it was in a predominantly black neighborhood. They lived on the west side, and they never left the west side. The city of LA was like a different world to them. In New York, even if you're racist, you can't help running into people different from you because everyone's smushed together all the time.

I miss its public transportation. Okay, you may have guessed this one already. But seriously, folks! It's not just that public transit in LA is shitty. It's that the traffic is equally shitty, so you can't win either way. You can take the bus, but it might take forty-five minutes to show up, or you might spend twenty minutes going three blocks, because traffic is abominable. Not to mention the added benefits of never needing a designated driver, not having to worry about getting a ride late at night, not having to worry about calling a cab (as in, dialing a phone number, not just standing on a street corner.)

I miss Kate's Joint, The Organic Grill, Cafe Bar, Tony Grocery, the New York Neo-Futurists, St. Mark's Books, Bluestockings, the awesome short haircut guy, Atlas, hearing friends play at the Living Room, shows at The PIT, Shakespeare in the Park, off-off-off-Broadway, the Perfect Pint, Vynl, even having a Starbucks or three on every corner.

I miss the diversity of things to do. Theater of every imaginable kind, music, dance, comedy, movies, yoga, a museum for everything, or just a nice place to eat, drink and hang out, a $2 subway ride away. I'm sure many of these things exist in LA, but it's different when you walk past them on your way to work every day.

I miss the artists. Here people don't say they're in the arts; they say they're in THE INDUSTRY. I think of all the many friends and friends of friends I know who are amazing musicians, great actors, writers and directors. Most of them don't make any money doing what they're doing--often the reverse. There seems to be a different psychology here. When there's billions of dollars involved, people expect to be paid for their art. Whaaat, you say? Well, it's both good and bad. Of course, people should be able to make a living doing what they're good at and what they love. That's what every artist wants. The problem, however, is that when money's involved, everyone ends up doing something just for the money sooner or later.

Yeah, yeah. This may seem like an obvious point. But it's been on my mind a lot, since the LA style of art-making gets hammered home pretty hard at USC. And not without good reason--this is the reality of THE INDUSTRY and they are preparing us for it. You get work by working. You're professionals and this is a business. Everyone does jobs for money sometimes. Network!!!!!! Make connections. Get people's business cards. Get your own business cards. Get your foot in the door. Be strategic. How will this help your career?

I'm not trying to romanticize one way of working and villify the other (although it may sound that way). It sucks to have a day job you don't care that much about that saps time and energy from your creative work. But when you're working for free, at least most people stop and think about whether they really love each and every project.

I have gotten a bit off track here. In struggling to describe New York to aforementioned roommate one night, I blurted out "New York is like a mean parent." I think I like that description. It has a lot to offer, but it makes you learn all the lessons the hard way. You might grumble and resent it when you're around it, but it's not until you leave that you realize, deep down, you really did love it after all.

for just $1 a day, you can save the yuppies!

Every once in a while, I'm reminded of the fact that there's a whole group of people who run around in a parallel-universe New York that bears very little resemblance to the one I live in.  A few of them were recently profiled here:

Starting Salaries but New York Tastes

This heartbreaking human interest story details the lives of several young New Yorkers who are struggling to make ends meet.  The article profiles the various strategies these youngsters are forced to employ to stretch their inadequate wages: dining on franks and beans, shopping at Salvation Army, and even (gasp!) going brunette to save money at the salon.  The article is accompanied by sad-looking pictures of its subjects holding the franks and beans they're forced to eat and posing in their walk-in-closet sized apartments.

Given the tragic, slightly Upton Sinclair-ish tone of the article, you'd think these kids were working at McDonalds, or at least Americorps.  But wait!  Laura Werkheiser, who stopped dying her hair, is...a publicist.  Noah Driscoll, of franks and beans, is a project manager at a marketing firm.  And the dude who shops at Salvation Army and subsists on street meat is a communications strategist who makes $60,000 a year!

In case anyone is wondering, the median household income in New York in 2006 was $40,000.  That includes couples and families with children, making the actual average income per adult somewhat lower.

If a single person with no children and (in most cases) relatively little debt from school can't survive in New York on a salary in the $40-$60K range, something must be terribly wrong.

Oh, wait.

"Adam Leibsohn [the communications strategist] pays $1,650 a month for his own apartment in the East Village."

"Cassaundra Reed...lives in the West Village with three roommates, and pays $925 for a narrow room where the only viable sleeping arrangement is a twin-sized loft bed."

"Ms. Werkheiser [the poverty brunette]...lives, with two roommates, in a $3,450-a-month three-bedroom apartment on the Lower East Side."

Clearly these young men and women have succumbed to New York real estate insanity, laboring under the delusion that if you don't live in Manhattan below 14th Street, you might as well not exist.  But they are also partially the cause of this insanity.  Rents in these neighborhoods, which are already obscene, will keep going up as long as there are fresh crops of idiots like these who are willing to pay them.

I do wish someone (preferably a working-class single mother) could walk up to these people, smack them on the head and say, "Hey, idiot!  You have it better than more than half of New York, so stop complaining and make a freakin' budget!"  

The problem for these people is not that they are poor.  The problem is that they've obviously never had to think twice about money before now.  If they had, they would realize that paying 50%--or more--of your monthly income in rent is not sustainable.  Or they would realize that if you have to do crazy shit like selling your eggs, you may need to rethink your lifestyle.  But clearly the people in this article live in a different world than me.  Among the items they lament having to forgo: Dior mascara, trips to Peter Luger Steakhouse, mani-pedis, and iPods (hand-me-down CD player!  the shaaaaaame!).  The article also contains a lengthy section on the various strategies these folks employ to get drunk, from sneaking flasks of vodka into expensive bars, to not eating dinner so your watermelon martini will pack more punch, to (horrors!) flirting.

Now, I do realize that in many lines of work, one is expected to be well-dressed and well-groomed.  Socializing is often expected to get ahead in your chosen career.  And if you're young, straight, and single, you may consider a certain level of bar-hopping and personal grooming mandatory.  But apparently no one told these kids that getting soused weekly is NOT mandatory.  Nor is $25 lip gloss or a designer handbag.

You may note, dear reader, that I keep referring to them as kids, although everyone interviewed in the article is approximately the same age as me (between 24 and 27).  I guess people just seem much younger when they clearly have very little idea how to survive as adults.

My first job in New York after graduation had a starting salary of $24,985.  After taxes, that was a take-home pay of about $1,400 a month.  With that, I paid my rent ($467); I paid for 1/3rd of the utilities in the apartment I shared with two roommates, my cell phone, a monthly MetroCard, food (and, I must admit, copious amounts of alcohol), and the minimum payment on my students loans ($82 with a 30-year consolidation repayment term).  I paid $50 a month dues to a political organization I belonged to.  I also paid about $200 a month on three or four credit cards, which was the minimum payment for the $11,000 in credit card debt I was in.  I went out several times a week, although I rarely paid more than $6 for a drink.  And I lived in Manhattan, although the young folks in this article probably don't even know there is a 149th Street.

I'm not trying to glorify anything here.  It was stressful.  Our apartment was a New York horror story, complete with rats and a Biblical flood of raw sewage one Labor Day weekend.  I ate more Wendy's, Taco Bell and Hot Pockets than any person should reasonably eat.  I hated my job.  I worried constantly about money.  And my worries were justified, because $25,000 a year is not a living wage in New York City, not even for a single person.

I guess the point of all that was that now, four years later, when I am earning a salary in the same range as the people in this article, I appreciate it a lot more, and I know how to use it.  I've never paid more than $600 a month in rent.  If a shirt costs more than $20 or a pair of pants costs more than $40, I probably won't buy it, because I really don't think anyone should be paying more than that for a piece of cloth.  I do spend money on things that I like and are important to me--going out with friends, discovering tasty vegan restaurants, theater, classes, and books.  I paid off that $11,000 in credit card debt and was able to save around $18,000 for grad school.

I sure hope that I never lose my poverty-induced price awareness.  It makes me feel miles more prepared to survive in this unforgiving city than the poor schmucks in this article.  And to the $60,000-a-year-earning dude who shops at Salvation Army: cut it out.  There are actual poor people who need that shit.  At least step it up to Beacon's Closet.

David A. Paterson, you get a hug!

In case you haven't heard, New York Governor David A. Paterson recently declared that gay couples legally married in other states/countries are entitled to the rights of a married couple in New York state, even though they are not technically married while in New York.  That's not exactly gay marriage, but still pretty cool.  What's even better is that Paterson seemingly did this (gasp!) out of his own genuine commitment to equality and despite the complete lack of any coherent gay marriage movement in NY at the moment.  How often do you see a politician do that?

A day or two after Paterson's announcement, the New York Times ran an article describing how Paterson became an advocate of gay rights.

"When David A. Paterson was growing up and his parents would go out of town, he and his little brother would stay in Harlem with family friends they called Uncle Stanley and Uncle Ronald."

ADORABLE!

David Paterson's gay uncles made a big impression on him, it seems.  Turns out he has been fighting for gay rights for most of his career.  He introduced New York's first hate crimes bill into the state senate in the '80s, and refused to support a compromise bill that did not include language about gays and lesbians.  When the hate crimes bill finally passed--in 2000--Paterson reportedly said "Now I can die in peace."  Luckily, he survived a few more years.

"In many respects...we only recognize our own struggles," Paterson said in a news conference announcing the decision.  "I've wanted to be someone in the African-American community who recognizes the new civil rights struggle that is being undertaken by gay and lesbian and transgendered people."

BAM!  Take that, don't-you-compare-gay-rights-and-black-civil-rights people!  This dude is only the second black governor in the history of the US.  And he's blind!  And he's still on our side!

Of course, someone this cool could only become governor by accident.  But all I have to say is, thank you, Eliot Spitzer, for being a giant douche.