It's taken me a long time to write about Occupy Oakland... November 3, 2011

… and the reason is that I simply did not want to rush to judgment. And for that matter, I still don’t want to.

I grew up in a household that was mostly sensible liberal. I say mostly, because I don’t think anyone can spend their entire life being completely sensible, what with life’s buffet of emotional ups and downs, sex, relationships, and everything else out there – and it would be foolish to think that this doesn’t affect and shape our political opinions.

My own political consciousness really began to form during the election that led to Bill Clinton becoming president. I’d watched the debates from the previous election that led to the first Bush as part of high school assignments, but I hadn’t really paid much attention to policy – and really, I hadn’t the grasp to do so. Yet I can remember very clearly during his presidency several times where there was a giant pall over everyone, especially during the tax hike. I recall one occasion where I went to the nearest video game store, and picked out a couple of magazines. The clerk listlessly tried to interest me in some special, but when I answered that I just couldn’t afford it we had a total bonding moment and discussion over how no one was buying anything, and could afford nothing. For me, that was one of the first times that I really started to grasp the aftershocks of political policy decisions in a way that I had never been able to do so prior to that.

My first real impression of the right-wing in this country relates directly to what I saw and heard from them during Clinton’s presidency – I recall vividly thinking that if the neoconservative spew of Rush Limbaugh was representative of the Republican Party, then they were straight up brimstone-reeking evil. Not exactly the most nuanced view, but for someone who is trying to understand what his opposite political number is all about, it’s a very understandable conclusion to come to.

And also really wrong. But we’ll get to that another time.

I wasn’t exactly down with introspection into the fundamental underpinnings of my own beliefs. A lot of this had to do with the fact that I didn’t fully understand all the issues, and as a young adult, it’s often all about faking it until you make it. And when someone points out that you’re likely faking it (especially from someone in the same situation, even if they’re on the other end of the spectrum), you’re often not secure enough in your own beliefs to examine them critically and engage in further discussion. No, you usually just throw a punch back, because whether or not that person intended it, it sure felt like a hook at you. This fundamental equation explains 90% of the political discussions out there, sadly.

When I turned 26, I moved from the San Francisco Bay Area to Chicago. And say what you will about the Bay Area, it’s on the cutting edge of a lot of liberal politics (and emphasis on the cutting here, I don’t want to glamorize things at all). For someone who had had that political philosophy as a background radio static to everything, switching to the Midwest was frightening in a few ways… but mostly, it was exhilarating and refreshing to get out of the echo chamber. Because having people who are, by their very Midwestern nature, much friendlier and nicer question me gently and good-naturedly about my politics allowed me to self-examine in a non-confrontational manner that was very hard for me to find out in the Bay Area. And it also allowed me an outsiders view into what so many people across the country believe is the Bay Area’s main export: Protest Culture.

Like it or not, this is the popular framework that so much of what left-leaning folks like me believe has been boxed into. While I agree that it’s unfair, and it’s largely the responsible of a media over-simplifying things (sometimes without intent and purpose, and sometimes laden with), this is the system that we’re working with – because that’s how the majority of folks get informed. The narrative is like the matrix – it’s everywhere, all the time, within and without. You can’t escape it. Maybe someday we will. Or, maybe as the world sheers in twain, people will slam their fists down on and blame the liberal conspiracy*.

This is why it does me good to hear stories about OWS/Strike protestors staying to clean up. Because the narrative you’re working against is partially that all of this social justice verbiage is a thinly-painted on veneer over an excuse to engage in a bacchanalia of self-defeating destruction. Diamonds may be forever, but the memory of protest footage jump-cutting to vandals smashing windows and storefronts are a close second. So when people are cleaning up after others who have co-opted a just movement for their own selfish and nihilistic purposes, they’re doing one of the most powerful things you can ever do: Taking responsibility. Those people are leading by action, and demonstrating what’s at the heart of this movement: Take responsibility for what you’ve unleashed, no matter how unforeseen or unwanted the results may have been, and how destructive and divisive they might still be in their rippling after-effects. Because to demand accountability from wall street and government for the ruination caused to use by financial shenanigans perpetuated by relaxing or eliminating oversight, without demonstrating that we can also be accountable for everything that happened even if it wasn’t intended, is one of the most powerful things you can do.

And one of the few things that might transcend the narrative out there.

Apologies for any spelling/grammar gaffes, I wrote this very much on the fly

*Guys, if this is what we’re up to, I want in on the doomsday toys, that’s all I’m saying.