I made my second trip down to Occupy Cleveland earlier tonight.  I stopped down there about 2 weeks ago to check things out and I really wanted to get down there again to get a feel for the vibe.  Recently the Occupy Cleveland group lost their permit to put up tents and stay the night on the city block and appears the numbers have dropped off as well.  Now, I have only spent a about an hour and a half total observing the movement here in Cleveland, so I am not the foremost authority on all happenings here but I am glad to see it is still up and running barring this recent determent.  

My original plan was to get there tonight and talk to the people in the movement and then write about it on Can the Man, but this is not the case.  I actually had a very interesting time though.  While standing off to the side, watching the general assembly, a man by the name of John introduced himself to me.  As we began conversing we were approached by another guy named Chris.  Chris, from the hour or so that I spent with him, seems to be a very thoughtful and intelligent filmmaker among other things.  He along with his two friends, Mike and Dan, have spent the last two weeks traveling around to different occupy movements and were making a pit stop in Cleveland before returning home.  Chris will be producing a video of their experiences documenting the movement and I will hopefully get wind of when and where this will be available to view.  This will give real views on the feeling and happening in different cities, instead of the lame media coverage that we are accustom to.  In my next post I will talk about some of the things that came up in conversation with this traveling group of men.  However, be advised, Loren and I plan on being down at Occupy Cleveland at some point this weekend in hopes of having some interesting conversations to whomever we shall meet.

Randall

This sign held by professor-activist Cornel West is one of our favorites of the Wall Street Occupation. We believe it typifies the frustration of the people who have continued to speak out against a government that does not represent the desires of the masses. Is a government that protects the interests of the wealthy few against the needs of the majority a real democracy?

Nearly one month after the grassroots occupation of Wall Street began, the movement is spreading. In the past month other occupations have sprung up in major U.S. cities such as Chicago, San Francisco, Portland, Oregon and Jacksonville, Florida. One of the most recent eruptions was the October 10th demonstration in Boston where protesters were met by police who arrived “in full riot gear to assault, mass arrest, and destroy the possessions of the peaceful men and women.” As a result, more than 100 people were arrested. The growing movement has been met, almost everywhere, with fierce police action.

The protesters are both young and old, from various ethnic backgrounds. Although they hold a variety of political and religious views they are bound together by their assertion that they are representatives of the 99% of the population that is being exploited by the 1%, which controls an inordinate amount of the world’s wealth. The organization hopes to continue to strive against the tyranny of the 1% “Block by Block, City by City” and to export this spirit to cities in the rest of the world. For more extensive coverage of the Wall Street Occupation visit the official website of the occupation at www.occupywallst.org.

Last night I saw a few minutes of a TV show on the History Channel called The History of the World in Two Hours.  It was a two hour look at how the history of everything has developed on our planet.  The part that I was watching was talking about how old our universe is, which is approximately 14 billion years old.  It was said that if you take that amount of time and condense it into 14 years, while keeping the time ratio the same, some interesting things present themselves.  The planet would only be 5 years old, dinosaurs would have died out about 3 weeks ago, humans history would only be 3 minutes long and modern industrial society would have begun about 6 seconds ago.  That’s pretty crazy if you think about it for a minute.  Six seconds out of 14 years is pretty much nothing, and that represents our history since the industrial revolution began.  It simply puts into perspective how inconsequential our lives are in the grand scheme of things.  Seeing as each individual’s life is really only a blink of the eye in the life of  our universe, I wonder why I even care about some of the stupid everyday shit that so many people worry about.  Why do I need to spend an hour, let alone 4 or 5 hours that many Americans seem to spend every day, watching television for example.  As I write this I am watching Sports Center on ESPN.  Not anymore…I just turned off the TV.  I think I will now read something and use my mind instead of being mindless.  I will let you know what I decide to read.

I am updating this (on October 25th)  to let you know that I went off to read Blink by Malcolm Gladwell, check it out it is very interesting.

Randall