The Phantom Knitters

Around Oakland Museum, and showing up at various other spots in Oakland and San Francisco, someone is knitting sleeves over pipes:

Welcome to My Place

High School Students Protest Education Cuts

Click on the title above to see slide show.

I came upon this demonstration after it had been in progress for a while.  It was in front of the State of California building that it is across from the old Federal Building.  (After so many demonstrations during the 1960s on the wide flat space in front of the building, they turned the area into dunes of cement as if they were expect attacks by tanks:  Government is paranoid, and their police only follow orders -- the orders of paranoids.)
Perhaps teachers had spoken earlier in this demonstration objecting to cuts in education, etc., but at this point it was only high school students or beginning college students who spoke.

FACES: After latest Expulsion of Occupy Oakland, 14 November 2011

(Click on the title above to see other participants, besides the little boy to the right, in a slide show concentrating on FACES.)


As with the previous and very bloody expulsion of Occupy Oakland, those Occupiers who were not in jail, and their supporters, met outside the Oakland Main Library, and after a few speeches, all marched down 14th Street and back to Oscar Grant Plaza by City Hall.
In the stone amphitheater, they held that day's General Assembly as the helicoptors overhead sometimes swept a floodlight over the crowd.
Take a photo of the woman below, I could keep from blurting out, "You're gorgeous!"

At the Beginning of the Day of the Oakland General Strike, 11 November 2011

Click on title above if you want to see a slide show.

Angela Davis at Oakland General Strike, 11 November 2011

Click on the title above if you want to see a slide show of other photos of Angela Davis.  The last time I saw Angela Davis was when we picketed outside Fort Ord against the American War in Vietnam, me looking in at the soldiers looking out, where I had once been a soldier myself.  Then we drove into the dunes along the Monterey Bay where Angela gave one of her rousing speeches.  Right wing thugs had driven up in their pickups, but atop all the dunes were men who were guarding Angela.

A holiday card

Too Close to Death

I am not sure I know how I feel yet about ending the day near where someone was being shot.  I wrote this account for the Oakland police, intending to take it over to one of the multitude of policemen who descended on the scene, but my printer doesn’t function just now so I emailed it to a police email address and called and told them there where they could find it.

TO THE POLICE:

10 November 2011

I dropped by Occupy Oakland to see how it was going, but did not get near it.  I noticed the City Hall clock was at 5 o’clock.  I was standing next to the BART elevator entrance where a Asian-American man was standing.  I could see along the line of shops opposite Occupy Oakland in that plaza, and very soon heard what sounded like several firecrackers but I feared they were gunshots.  The Asian-American man felt convinced that they were gunshots, and that was obvious as people were scattered away from a spot about 30 feet from me.  

I did not witness the shooting, but two men rushed right by me, and it seemed obvious that they were running from a crime.  They were African-American, wearing dark clothes, but there is very little light there so I would not be able to identify them, except that I think they were about 5’8” or 5’9”.  One or both of them seemed to shoving something into their pockets as if to conceal them.  The two seemed very pleased with whatever they had done, had an air of triumph.  They ran away from 14^th Street in the direction of 13^th Street, but I lost sight of them immediately with so many people in that intersection.  Soon a man rushed up whom I supposed was a merchant.  (The Asian-American man, for some reason, felt the shooter had something to do with a store along there.)  The merchant was pointing and shouting in the direction the men had run.  The Asian-American shouted that one of the men could be identified by some white garment – I think it was white trousers. 

Many people surrounded the gunshot victim,and it was obvious that he was receiving artifical respiration.   

Meanwhile masses of police cars and emergency vehicles were arriving, sirens blaring.  

The police arrived, and a policeman continued the artificial respiration.  The police asked the people there to disperse so I went home. 

The streets around there were being blocked off by police cars, evidently imagining it was some mass violent incident.

At home I heard on the news that they mentioned just one man, but there was that second man with him as he ran away, perhaps a friend, and both pleased by what they had done.

The shooting clearly had nothing to do with Occupy Oakland, an empty and unoccupied space existed between the shooting incident and Occupy Oakland.  That intersection was rough before Occupy Oakland arrived so that late at night I never get out at the 12^th Street BART station as it often seems that some tough is chasing another tough.  


Later it was revealed on the news that it was a young African-American man who had been killed.  It is sad that I still don't know his name or why he was killed as it seemed, so casually.  Reminds me of yesterday when I was at the V.A. Hospital.  So many veterans have "turned hippy" in their dress, but I sat next to a man thoroughly identified by cap and jacket as a Vietnam War veteran.  I said, "Looks as if Israel and the U.S. are going to start a war with Iran."  He replied, "Might as well."  The casual habit of killing.   

15 October 2011 Rally and March to "Occupy Oakland"

Click on Title line above to watch slide show.

From CHARLIE CHAPLIN MEETS THE WAR IN VIETNAM (November 1970)

XIV:  Coda

Were you damaged in the Fall?

Weren’t we all?  Weren’t we all?

Do I feel as good as new?

Yes, I do.  Yes, I do.

And who would think to look at a violet’s face

that it had seen, some other place, all the bones

of hell.  And what a great change in the leprous

carcass of one man’s dog to come back laughing

and wagging its tail as another man’s cat.

And to pull free of the earth of sorrow, hatred,

and the hungry dead – and, beginning Now,

any you of you and me of me, to pull ourselves

inside out, and then to step out completely

from what has been, and invite everyone you meet

by whatever means they will understand to walk

through the archways of their dear departed selves.

The final conspiracy is Open to All.  That the Way

is straitened and a thousand voices wail along

the Way, unweaving our hearts, we shall endure. 

That a shadow always falls across the Gate

makes the Gate less difficult to find.

And there is only one true lover for the heart –

the mind.  It leads us ever out through hell

to whatever heaven falls like the grace of morning rain

on the blue beaches of the morning mind.

Everybody, come through here!

The Great “Who, me?” carefully trips

on its stumblingblocks and falls, glad to be caught.

And all the Who‑Done‑Its and the Let‑Me‑Be‑Its

are gathered in the tomb where there has been laid

to rest one late God, alias Jaweh, alias Allahu/Allah,

alias Odin, alias The One.  And a great mechanical

gear raises up the stiff old corpse, and it says,

“You are all  my children!

  You are all  my chosen people!”

And then wheels fly, a scaffolding sinks to its knees,

and a whole contraption dances itself to death,

And all the grimey shrouds fall from the crystal clearings

of Byzantium.  The old way excuses itself for the burp

     of its long grey ghost

          drifting now like a scarf

               down the

                    winding stairwell

                         of time.

XV:  Envoi

This coin I have minted here from my dying

is but to buy bread for the living and not

to be swallowed but exchanged in the language

of fingertips and words, art, work, books, tools;

the language of finding still another reason to touch

and be new‑minted from the hand of the Human.


(November 1970)

copyright 2011

7 October 2011 (Ten Years of Afghan War) and 9 October 2011 ("OccupySF")

 [For a slide show click on title above.]

Starting at the Federal Bulding on 7th Street, San
 Francisco, we rallied and marched on the 10th
    anniversary of the start of the Afghan War.

Susan Witka showed us the newspaper her son gave her that he had picked up at OccupyWallStreet, and here had traveled to participate on a march toward OccupySF.

On 9 October 2011, I stopped by OccupySF, an encampment in front of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.  An instructor was teaching a class in Economics.  It is good to see the return of a very apt word, often used in the early part of the 20th Century when our problems were just the same -- politicians who are married to money:  Plutocrats.

 

One of the marvels of their encampment -- a stationery bicycle peddled to generate electricity.

With Leslie and Martha at Bakers Beach, San Francisco, 29 September 2011

Click on title above for brief slide show.

A Vigil for Troy Davis

 

We gathered in the plaza across the Embarcadero from San Francisco’s Ferry Building, and I did not know the names of all the individuals and groups that organized the vigil for Troy Davis –Amnesty International and others.

People recalled Troy Davis, and people spoke against the existence of a death penality. 

As the time advanced closer to the time when Troy Davis was scheduled to be executed in Georgia, a man whose name I should know, as he often joins Code Pink in their political actions, sang, “We Shall Overcome,” but it came too unexpected, or people were too troubled and depressed to take up the song and interweave their arms as should happen when that song is sung.  Then, with what always brings strength, an African-American woman with a good strong voice sang that Jesus had a place for all, and it was what was needed, and is always needed, a spiritual sung by a bright strong voice. In her there was no sense of despair or defeat.

As the time for Georgia’s murder of Troy Davis drew closer, the group, which seemed too small for the enormity of what was about to happen, drawn tight together, for comfort, in front of speakers and singers, joined hands in a circle that expanded like the wide ring expanding from a stone dropped in water until the circle was very large on Justin Herman Plaza, and we seemed many more than we had seemed before.  From my side of the circle I could see the clock on the Ferry Building, and dreaded that I could see the minutes pass and knew that at 7 o’clock in Georgia, and at 4 o’clock by this clock, Troy Davis would be put to death.  

 Songs and speeches over, we all waited and watched, solemn and sad.  Leslie counted 107 of us.  I added that there were also 2 dogs and 2 babies.  The clock struck 4.  Seconds later the siren of a fire engine or ambulance wailed as if  presaging grief.   About 10 or 15 minutes later, the leaders picked up a megaphone, and the circle closed in toward him as he announced that there had been a stay.  I said to those beside me, “But I don’t believe in miracles.” 

 Still waiting for news, listening to the streaming of news from Democracy Now as someone put a radio against the mouth of the megaphone, we heard that the stay might be of only a few minutes, and so we all were frozen in place, or interwove, pacing out our anxiety, as Amy Goodman was reporting from the prison, “We’re trying to verify.”  


“I still don’t believe in miracles,” I said, but someone said, if it's not a miracle, at least it represents hope, and then it was reported that the U.S. Supreme Court had granted a stay of at least 7 days for reconsideration of the case.  People still hung about, afraid to believe the good news was true.  

 Gradually the mood lightened somewhat, but we still waited for any snippets of fact.   Martha and I decided we could move over to a spot that was out of the way, behind the immense Plaza  Fountain, and we did tai chi where the water pouring down the outer edge of the fountain and the chattering of San Francisco's parrots in the nearby trees obscured all other sounds, and provided a haven of sorts.

I had a ticket to the San Francisco Symphony, and there was no reason not to go now.  Michael Tilson Thomas conducted Mahler’s Third Symphony.  A great box of musical bonbons, or a chest of jewels, however one might try to sum up in adequate words how Mahler tried every possible mood and combination of instruments.  Toward the end, the mezzo-soprano, Katarina Karneus, was singing a verse by Friedrich Nietsche,

  Lust tiefer noch als Herzeleid!

       (Joy deeper still than heart’s sorrow!)      

   Weh spricht  Vergeh!

       (Pain says:  Vanish!)

   Doch alle Lust will Ewigkeit!

       (Yet all joy aspires to eternity…”

  

The wide necklace of the girls’ chorus, in white blouses and bright red vests, rose as the black-garbed adult chorus rose behind them, for the final choral work, introduced by bells -- and, appropriately, and with a “klang” in the opening lines,

Es sungen drei Engel einen sussen Gesang

          (Three angels sang a sweet song.)

 Mit Freuden es selig im Himmel klang…

           (It resounded throughout heaven…)

At the end the music broke out of exclamation and into a long serenity that became something you might call an even deeper serenity, long and bountiful, that enclosed audience and all, and finally the sun was luminous on a snow-capped mountain peak – and at the end the audience made clear that they had followed the music to that same peak.

I went home and turned on the news and found that Troy Davis had been executed at 11:08, Georgia time, and was sorry to have it confirmed that there are no miracles.

  

 I dealt with grief about widespread inhumanity in the way that is available to me by staying up most of the night to make collage I call “Become Human.  Ban Capital Punishment," knowing this is what the Davis family will fight for now.

  

In the morning, thanks to Linda Beaumont’s having placed his image in glass, looking out and looking in from my window was that compassionate human who is always there -- Martin Luther King, forever a witness of how we live.  (For a slide show with more images, click on the title of this entry above.)

Become Human -- Ban the Death Penalty

Israel and the Palestinians

If the rest of the earth were more supportive and show better leadership and less indifference about the issue, the situation should have changed since Ben Gurion said, "Why should the Arabs make peace? If I were an Arab leader I would never make terms with Israel. That is natural: we have taken their country. Sure, God promised it to us, but what does that matter to them? Our God is not theirs. We come from Israel, it's true, but two thousand years ago, and what is that to them? There has been antisemitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They only see one thing: we have come here and stolen their country. Why should they accept that? They may perhaps forget in one or two generations' time, but for the moment there is no chance. So, it's simple: we have to stay strong and maintain a powerful army. Our whole policy is there. Otherwise the Arabs will wipe us out.
          o As quoted in The Jewish Paradox : A Personal Memoir (1978) by Nahum Goldmann, as translated by Steve Cox, p. 99 ISBN 0-448-15166-9

Letter to the New York Times

I am sure that the New York Times will not publish my Letter to the Editor in response to today's article by Bill Keller (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/06/us/sept-11-reckoning/keller.html?pagewanted=all) where he describes his disillusionment with his original enthusiastic support of the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq, etc.

My letter:   

Re:  “My Unfinished 9/11 Business” by Bill Keller

For all of us not in the information-glutted NYC to DC beltway, yet were informed irrefutably by our internal bullshit detectors that government lies and news media hype were going to lead us into the tragedy of the last ten years, Mr. Keller owes us more than the record of his change of mind.  We suffered the knowledge of the mass bloodshed even before it began, then lived, maddened, waiting for people like him to wake up.  Anticipate your next insular arrogance.  Lead a declaration by all news media – especially the supposed rubberstamp of truth, the NYT – that you will always anticipate each lying excuse for war.  And learn what journalism is, for example, by watching the daily hour of Amy Goodman’s DEMOCRACY NOW (www.democracynow.org).  But I know these remarks will be too raw for the “polite” club that thrives on self-delusion.

Him

Cannabis Comes Out

In a large area in downtown Oakland, including City Hall and the Police Station, the massive Cannabis & Hemp Expo is taking place on 3 and 4 September 2011.