1. Since 2001, U.S. police departments have been militarized at great expense in order to defend against Terrorism.
2. As thanks, U.S. police departments are now using military weapons against hundreds to thousands of peaceful protesters, the very taxpayers that provided the funds in order to be kept safe.

The abuse of chemical weapons (tear gas, pepper spray) by police here in Oakland and across the country is now so well-known as to be cliché. But Chicago is preparing to step up its abuse with acoustic weapons aimed at protesters of the upcoming NATO summit. The city is poised to repeat the mistakes of Pittsburgh police by deploying a weapon better known for its use against Somali pirates against unarmed crowds. The type of device that Chicago and many other cities now own can cause permanent hearing damage to anyone within 15 meters, and severe pain and other symptoms at much longer distances.

The Chicago police claim that the sound cannon is meant to be used as a “communication device,” and that could very well be the initial intention. However, recent history demonstrates U.S. police departments’ inability to resist using (and abusing) military gadgetry once they own it.

Take note. Carry earplugs.

Suppose that these artworks came from the same variety of sources and rotated with the same frequency as do advertisements. Many of the same graphic designers and photographers could be employed in this new enterprise. The billboard, as an artistic medium, would still lend itself to bold imagery that can be quickly absorbed, something former advertising employees would know how to make. Metro posters, on the other hand, can be studied for cumulative hours by commuters, who currently see the same ones daily for months. This medium lends itself to the complexity of more traditional visual fine arts.

You may object that it would be impossible to select art that everyone would like. True enough. We could use various voting-based selection processes but we might end up with the billboard equivalent of a lot of Thomas Kincaid. Likely, we would want to do some selections by committee, and have some element of competition among the artists. But more importantly, consider the status quo: the images currently displayed make people and neighborhoods worse off; as evidence, virtually everyone would prefer no advertisements if given the choice. It would not be difficult to do better than the current selection of images when freed from the profit motive driving them.

You may next ask, who pays for it? But of course, you are already paying. And not merely with your money, but with your free will and individuality, by buying things you don’t want and wanting things you wouldn’t have cared about. What I am suggesting is that rather than launder our money through corporations, we spend it directly and in our own collective interest. So the new enterprise would be publicly funded. One can imagine variations based on the public radio model or locally-minded foundations, but ultimately the citizens benefit and the citizens ought to pay.

How could this start? A city could do it. Transit agencies have great leeway to determine images in and on their property. Billboard restrictions remain legally contentious, but 4 states have long-standing bans, Los Angeles’ and New York’s restrictions have been upheld in court, and New York’s even distinguishes between commercial and non-commercial signage. The long-term benefits in population growth and tourism might very well outweigh the lost revenue from advertising on public property. Some local businesses might be hurt, but others would benefit from less attention being diverted to national brands.

No doubt, a transformation of our urban landscape from advertising to art would meet with challenges from vested interests. Yet, imagine a visual culture than inspires rather than manipulates. Isn’t it worth trying?

1. Standing arm-in-arm and sitting are the essence of non-violent protest tactics, widely used by Dr. Martin Luther King and others, against which violent police tactics are never justified. Authority figures are trying to call these tactics violent in order to justify police brutality.
2. The vague and hypothetical threats to public health and safety posed by Occupations pale in comparison to the actual injuries inflicted by the police attempting to stop them. The “public health” threat has been evoked over and over by mayors and chancellors to justify breaking up the camps. Did anyone do the cost-benefit calculation? Police actions are far more hazardous and dangerous these days than protests.
3. Police brutality in the face of Occupy protests is directly related to the militarization of police forces in the name of the “War on Terror”. Police departments bought all these fancy toys with Homeland Security money, and now they feel they have to use them. Glenn Greenwald makes this point in more detail.

Taxpayers, are you getting that? The police took billions of your tax dollars to outfit themselves with military-style gadgetry and now, as a reward, they are using them not on terrorists, or violent criminals, or even petty drug users, but on you, to prevent you from freely assembling and speaking.

Recent events give the impression that the world has lost its moral compass. You have Chancellors of UC Berkeley and Davis, who are probably very nice, intelligent, left-leaning people, authorizing violence against their own students and afterward asserting the necessity of the tactics. Why are authorities so scared to death of the Occupy protests? Why do the police keep fucking up and getting away with it? Are the violent suppressions going to work? I hope not.

It was a tumultuous day for the Bay Area Occupy movement. The previous night, a large demonstration in Berkeley followed when police beat UC Berkeley students with batons for trying to establish their own Occupation. In the afternoon, some Oakland City Council members and business leaders held a press conference about a mile from the Occupy Oakland camp to call for its removal. Occupy supporters showed up and shouted down the speakers. At the same time, Mayor Quan visited and the camp and, in an apparent change of heart 2 weeks after her last reversal, told the Occupiers they would have to leave.

The Mayor and other detractors uniformly say that they agree with Occupy’s message, and that they support free speech, but that sleeping in the plaza is causing the problems. It is a “safety hazard” and attracts the wrong element, hurting downtown businesses. They have a point. Oakland’s struggling downtown businesses are not helped by tear-gas raids, broken windows, or (additional) multitudes of homeless people.

From my own observations, the people at Occupy Oakland are not generally people you would want hanging out around outside your downtown sandwich shop or clothing store. But these are the people you would want to band with, post apocalypse. They are capable, practical people, with a diverse set of skills, able to take a small patch of mud and create all the elements of a functioning community: food service, with an elaborate pantry and kitchen; education, with the library and daily classes and trainings; government, with the General Assemblies and committee system; health care, with medics and the medic tent; entertainment, with the music tent and its ceaseless drum circle; and well-being, with their daily scheduled yoga and meditation. Some of these are also like the people you’d be stuck with, post-apocalypse: crazy people, mentally damaged by the apocalyptic trauma; leachers, looking out for themselves; and fringe types, who survived the doom because they were holed-up somewhere far from people and now they aren’t very well socialized.

But let’s set aside for a moment the question of ills wrought by Occupy Oakland’s choice of location. (Yes, one thing Occupy Wall Street has going for it is that no one cares about hurting the business of the adjacent megabanks.) One Oakland business leader had wondered bitterly to the press why protesters always choose 14th & Broadway to demonstrate when the rich people are all elsewhere. Here is the answer: the symbolism can not be beat. City Hall towers over Frank Ogawa Plaza, all white stone and columns, much like any capital building in Sacramento or Washington, looking every bit the seat of power that it was designed to be. Glass office buildings bear down on other sides and traffic lumbers by on Broadway, downtown’s central drag. A person standing in Frank Ogawa Plaza feels small and humbled. But a crowd standing in Frank Ogawa Plaza knows that everyone in all those window can see them — in fact, can’t ignore them — and feels empowered.

If I were Mayor Quan, I would look out the window of my mayoral office at the 180-tent encampment below and I would be afraid. Not afraid for my personal safety, but surely for my political future. I would be afraid because this ragtag bunch of unemployed kids has twice the proportion of public support that I do. I would be afraid because this scruffy homeless encampment can rally 10,000 to march on a week’s notice [3]. I would be afraid because every move I make would be scrutinized by the populist hoard below, each of them hungry for a reason to protest.

I don’t have a better answer than anyone else about how we can turn the Occupy movement into real change. But this is my feeling: When the President of the United States looks out his window at the masses and feels fear, when congressmen look down the Capital steps at the demonstrations below and feel fear, that is when we will get the change we’re looking for.

Dear Senator Feinstein,

It was reported by the New York Times recently that the FBI plans to
expand its already invasive practices by conducting database searches,
surveillance, and going through the trash of American citizens who are
not even suspected of wrongdoing.

This is one more outrage in a long series of outrageous secret and
illegal violations of civil liberties by the Federal government which
are destroying America. Since its founding, this has been a country of
laws, and that is what made us great. America is becoming an oligarchy.
When that transition is complete, we will be no better than the
tyrannical dictatorships we are fighting against.

I know that, as Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, you are
privy to even more of the lawless, power grabbing activities than the
substantial abuses that are publicly known. If you are a patriot, I urge
you to fulfill your Constitutional responsibility as a check on
Executive power and oppose the new FBI guidelines as well as other
attacks on civil liberties.

Thank you.

Often, I fight time. It is scarce. Internally, I rail against its scarcity. Externally, I go faster. Dangerously fast. Internally, I feel helpless. I grit my teeth. Externally, I do not do one third of the things I have planned. Meanwhile, I do other things. Useless things. Internally, I feel bad about this.

Time is a limited container. Fill it with what you will. Put in the large rocks of your schedule first: work, doctor’s appointments, crises, sleep. Sleep is sandstone, softer than the others. You may break off a peice here and there to make it fit. Then, add the smaller and rounder stones of meals, visits with friends, concerts, errands, showers. It is tempting to shake the container at this point, to settle the contents and make room for a few more. Do not do this. Leave room for travel time. Now, add the sand of daily life. Fill the space with e-mail, television, chatting in the hall, reading a few pages on the train, buying a candy bar. Finally, pour in the water of thoughts, paces, breaths, and sighs. Is the container full? Does it hold everything you want?

Of course not. But time is not a limited container. The containers are constructs of our own creation. A day is a basket, woven out of numbers and social conventions. I have woven a basket, and now I am upset that it doesn’t hold everything I want it to hold. The limits, I feel, are imposed by the fabric of the universe. Time is scare and I am helpless to stretch it, to wind it back, to own more of it. But really, I have just mismatched the basket and what I want to carry.

We convey such information in order to modify the behavior of the listener in some related way. But I would venture that the majority of words spoken in our day-to-day lives are not about transmitting information, not the kind that serves a specific purpose. We also communicate as a means of forming social bonds, of establishing social relationships.
“How about that weather, huh?”
“Yeah. Crazy.”
“Hey, now that we’ve established this bond, you know, over our shared experience of the weather, maybe it’ll be less awkward next time we pass each other in the hall?”
“Yeah, I feel so much closer to you now. I won’t look away so pointedly next time we may chance to make eye contact.”

The goal of such communication is not related much to what is transmitted, but the fact that we share something. One may still argue that communication of this type is a means to an end. But there is also communication for its own sake. We just want to connect, to feel less alone.
“I just tripped on this sidewalk and broke my ankle.”
“Oh my God. Do you need help?”
“It’s just a perfect end to a lousy day. I mean, my boss bitched me out this morning. I was all distracted, rerunning the conversation in my head and coming up with retorts, carrying all these grocery bags. I didn’t see the crack.”
“Hey, should I call 911 or something?”
“I mean, you ever had one of those days, where just everything goes wrong? It feels like the world is against you?”
“I could at least try to help you up?”
“No, I’m good. I just needed to vent.”
“Oh yeah. Well. I know what you mean. We all have those days.”
“I feel so much better now. Well, except for my ankle.”

This is the kind of communication that we crave when we’ve been alone. It’s not that we’re starved for information. We can watch movies and read books. We can even read the news and be sure of having a set of shared information with plenty of other people. One can still get awfully lonely without having two-way communication for its on sake. I would speculate that this third type of communication has fallen off as the first two types, mediated by technology, have increased as a proportion of our lives. I wonder if this has something to do with why everyone seems to be in therapy.

I started working on this project maybe a year and a half ago. It turns out, recording an album on your own is a lot of work. Why do many of us take on challenging creative projects with dubious rewards? It’s something I continue asking myself, and I think I’ve explored it far enough to know that the answer is not, simply, “for fun”.