For too long our voices have been stifled, scattered and alone. We were told to call our congressman but they haven't called us back. Instead they return our pleas with form letters filled with spineless platitudes and empty promises. Here in the plaza we are doing a lot of talking: creating the dialogue for where to go next and where we are currently going wrong. The cynical outside and among us deride these efforts as mere feedback loops without wider consequence. They are wrong. We are planning.
In the last 8 days I have been at occupations in Oakland, Berkeley, San Francisco and Los Angeles. On day 1 in Oakland I hatched the idea of creating a collective diary of the struggle, in order to allow further dialogue and representation of the multitude of voices in circulation. But I was too scared and nervous. Yet after a week of General Assemblies, group meetings, and simply meeting so many people I have said "goodbye to all that." Today I began recording conversations with friends, recent acquaintances, strangers and the formerly strange.
For too long our media has privileged the experts and ideologues who bloviate their trivial differences, their false dichotomies while everything else burns. While my conversations should not be seen as journalism they seek to create another outlet for the voices that have been waiting to speak to a wider audience but have not had the chance to do so and hopefully those not ready to address the assembly directly. It's high time that we honor the messy process that is required to resolve in shared understanding. By presenting the conversations in full (with some compromises in sound quality in deference to expediency) we honor that shared goal.
Also, I say "like" and "right" and "um" and "yeah" too much. I also finish people's sentences whoops. Come find me at the occupation <3
on security. internal tension. mediation. we are pioneers.
protesting is fun. the commons. collective joy.
questions about proposals. manic energy. reaching out.
ogp gazette. this is just the beginning. uncomfortable things.
These audio diaries are fantastic. Can you please support Free Software and Open Culture by posting these in HTML5 audio tags, encoded in Ogg Vorbis? They'll play directly on the page without the need for additional plugins. If you need help setting this up, hit me up.
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Tim
OccupySD
Posted by: Tim | October 20, 2011 at 04:44 PM