by Laura Love
So that’s how Dave had come by his extraordinary understanding of, and compassion for, the other half—or, more accurately, the 99%. And that’s why he didn’t have a hint of the contempt most rich folks display in the first five minutes of assessing your bottom line. He’d grown up poor, and furthermore, his greatest heroes had been the black blues performers he’d revered since seeking out their recordings, as a youth, from the nearest library. Many of his idols had never achieved great wealth or even much fame. They were men and women with names like Tampa Red, Elmore James, Sonnyboy Williamson, Jellyroll Morton, Memphis Minnie, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Big Mama Thornton, and Sister Rosetta Tharp. He immersed himself in songs like, “Dust My Broom,” “Shake Sugaree,” “Black Snake Moan,” “Keep it Clean,” and “You Can Have My Husband, But Please Don’t Take My Man.” Not a great fan of the British Invasion or early American pop music, he’d skipped over Elvis, Cream, and the Rolling Stones and gone directly to the source, delighting at how those early lyrics, deconstructed, all seemed to refer to some kind of bumping grinding sexual encounter—just like the ones, I’m sure, he hoped to have someday with Louisa.
It soon became evident to me that the general assemblies and planning meetings for OTRP were little more than snarky, provincial, in-fighting sessions, often characterized by thinly-veiled contempt for co-members, frequent put-downs, petty squabbles, and territorial feuds between self-appointed leaders. I came to understand that Pasadena, with a population of 138,000, was little more than a small town, and compared to Oakland, had much less diversity within its borders. Almost everyone at the sparse gatherings was white and male, with a few notable exceptions. On this night, a young hiply attired black man drove from L.A.—walked into the GA—and generously offered OTRP use of his large, state-of-the-art PA system, along with high-quality video cameras, as well as his labor and expertise in operating them. Furthermore, he told the meeting that he had a group of highly skilled audio/video technicians who said they were eager to work alongside him—for free. I took an instant liking to him as he politely identified himself as Marcus Jackson, and briefly outlined his impressive credentials as a current part time resident of both L.A. and New York City. At that time, he was employed as a sound engineer and producer of MTV programming. He was immediately challenged by a slovenly man of about thirty-five, bearing a shock of greasy, black curly hair, partially enveloped in a grungy black scarf. The chubby challenger wore a stained Utilikilt and a dingy plaid shirt, There was a silver ring in his left nostril that was connected by a chain to an identical ring in his ear. “Um, yeah dude … what’dyu say your name was again?” questioned kilt-man.
“Marcus,” others in the room answered, before Marcus could.
“Oh yeah, Marcus … Hey, pleased to meet you. My name’s Stash and I got a shit ton of buddies I grew up with right here in the community, and we all got great gear and mad skills, so we pretty much have video and sound handled for all the pre- and post-parade events. All the details are already worked out and my mom’s keeping the donated audio stuff in her garage, where I can keep an eye on it from my room, so nothin’ happens to it between now and then, so … thanks anyway, buddy.”
The soft-spoken visitor seemed slightly nonplussed, but made a gracious attempt to shift back onto the right foot with Stash in the meeting which was being held in a small room of a church basement. “Oh, I’m sure you’re well prepared and everything—I’m sorry if I suggested otherwise. I love what you all are doing and I wanted to find a way to volunteer whatever skills I have to whatever needs you might have. I just feel like this is a great movement and I wanted to support your idea of bringing Occupy into the living rooms of America at such a high profile event. I’ve done some work with Occupy L.A. and maybe I can help you get some good footage at the parade. Perhaps I could pitch it to my bosses somewhere down the line if you’re interested. At the very least, I could loan you my gear to flesh out your sound system if you’re planning any large set ups on outdoor stages.
“Yeah … so … my best friend used to roadie for Dave Matthews when he was just startin’ to go viral and he knows everything there is to know about outdoor venues so … again, thanks, Marcus. I’d hate to see you lose your rig by gettin’ it stolen or something, what with all the out-of-towners that’re gonna be stompin’ around here this weekend,” said Stash before turning his back to Marcus and walking over to a desk to retrieve his clipboard.
“Okay, now … let’s see … what’s next on the docket,” resumed Stash after thumbing laboriously through what looked to me to be empty pages.
“Well, now wait just a minute …” piped up a hirsute, middle-aged woman, in a pair of denim overalls. She struggled to swallow quickly and free her mouth of the audibly crunchy trail mix she’d been grazing on ever since I walked in with Daniel, another OTRP volunteer I’d met online while sussing out the event from Pagan Place. “… I know we’ve got sound and video handled, but I bet we could find something useful for this young man to do in the group.” She swept her head from side to side, glancing expectantly at the faces around her to solicit approval from the other eight or nine people in the room. As she did so, some of the trail mix crumbs that clung stubbornly to the light grey mustache on her upper lip dislodged and tumbled silently onto the tattered wool sweater she wore under her bib. Her glance was met with tepid shrugs and a few barely perceptible nods. “Can’t we just give the new guy a chance to get in on the ground floor and make history with us?” Fewer nods, fewer shrugs. “Well look, Marcus, my name is Cindy, and I’m sort of the Jill of all Trades here. I’ve been helping to plan this thing right from the start back in November. We have been trying to figure out just how the heck we’re gonna feed all the long-time volunteers after the parade and I was wondering … Well, can you barbecue? Are you any good with a grill?”
The words that fell out of her mouth sounded so condescending and demeaning that I felt my face flush with embarrassment. Could it possibly be that these well-meaning, but clearly clueless, white people had just asked the only black man in the room (who happened to be so accomplished and caring, I found myself wishing I’d done more with my own life) to cater a meal for the afterparty?
“You know what—no … Not just no, but hell no! I’m not going to flip burgers and bust out the ribs to wait on your staff. You know, I was just running sound for a GA last night at Occupy L.A., and someone announced that Occupy the Rose Parade needed some sound volunteers, so I got in my car and came down here to see if I could help. But, hey, it doesn’t look like it—so … I’m just going to carry my little self on out of here, and bid you all a wonderful night, people.” With that Marcus got up and began to gather the printed business cards he’d left on a table, to put back into his wallet.
Alarmed at the unseemly turn of events, Cindy moved to intercept him before he could reach the door. “Hey, if grilling doesn’t trip yer trigger, I’m sure there’s other chores that need doing around here. You don’t have to leave, you know. If that’s not your bag I’m sure we could put you to work somewhere else.” Marcus softened as his eyes met hers and saw her sincerity.
“You know, I didn’t come down here just to upset your apple cart,” Marcus said, addressing everyone in the room. “And, I honestly don’t need to find things to do to fill my time. I’m plenty busy, but if you think you might be able to use some of my professional skills, I am happy to donate my time and energy here to help make your plan a success, if I can, because I believe in activism and trying to make things better for people who don’t have many options.”
“Look man, that’s totally cool,” chimed in an older man from across the room. “There’s never too many volunteers for a big production like this. Even though we’re ‘Occupy Pasadena’ and aren’t technically affiliated with Occupy the Rose Parade, we put our feelers out to other Occupations to see if folks wanted to help us organize our own protest at the parade.” This was the first I’d heard that I wasn’t sitting in on an Occupy the Rose Parade meeting. “You
see, we all took a vote here at Occupy Pasadena to not officially endorse OTRP, because we don’t like the leadership over there, but we do appreciate what some of their members are trying to do. Even though we’re sorta like, overlapping jurisdictions, [air quotes] in a way, we still wanted to do something similar ourselves at the Parade. Hey, Marcus, did you just say you’re from Occupy L.A…. like the official Occupy L.A.?”
“Uh huh—yeah man, there’s only one,” answered Marcus.
“Wow, that’s interesting, because I was almost thinking I might want to join up with those guys sometime, or maybe at least go to a GA, but I heard they were super racist up there, so I never did go.” Jesus, how far is Oakland from here, I thought gloomily.
Monday, January 2, the day of the Rose Parade, dawned brilliantly with dazzling sunshine and a heady air of festivity. From all the meetings I’d attended the week before, (for who knows what organizations) I knew that the lead OTRP organizer, Jack Tatum’s main objective was to bring attention to the fact that the Rose Parade’s largest sponsor, Wells Fargo, was conducting staggering numbers of fraudulent, illegal bank foreclosures in California and nationwide. He had become a vocal opponent of the corporation’s “robo-calling” tactics and wanted to expose other murky dealings with homeowners, which amounted to, what he considered, criminal behavior. He abhorred the discouraging, complex, convoluted, and usually downright unnavigable process the banks had put in place to modify distressed loans.
Banks routinely claimed ownership of homes they could produce no deeds for, nor could they even prove in some instances that borrowers were behind in their payments. Jack, and countless other Americans (like me) felt that something drastic had to be done. That something, in this case, was to gather thousands of foreclosure protesters together to create an arresting visual that the entire country would see. What better way to usher in a new year, than to shame wrongdoers into more just ways of doing business. To that end, Jack declared Occupy the Rose Parade as the start of “Occupy 2.0,” which he touted as a more focused version of the much criticised Occupy Movement itself, which was often said to have no real direction or purpose. Jack envisioned a streamlining of the nascent uprising, which would now begin to hone in on on specific issues, such as this, and appoint recognized leaders, (like him) to implement direct actions which would address America’s most pressing concerns. I knew this from conducting a battery of Internet searches over the holidays, trying to decide what my next big Occupy endeavor would be. I was beginning to understand, from persistent grumblings at the General Assemblies, that many people considered lead organizer, Jack Tatum, to be somewhat of a slimeball, but I wasn’t sure exactly why. I’d read he was a lawyer of some sort, and that he shared my personal beliefs that America’s big banks had become cold-blooded land thiefs, but I didn’t know until the eve of the Parade, that Jack himself had been embroiled in a number of unsavory brushes with the law. On January 1, the day before the parade, a Pasadena newspaper published a scathing exposé of Jack’s past that left me wondering who, and what, to believe about OTRP’s mastermind. The article said that Jack had been busted at least twice, for shoplifting—once domestically and once in Mexico. I could forgive the shoplifting, especially if done in his youth, (who hasn’t?) so I wasn’t too put off by that, however, it baffled me how anyone who’d been caught and prosecuted could ever risk the humiliation and expense again. Still, the dirt I’d read on him wasn’t a deal breaker yet. I could easily believe that the banks who stood to lose the most if the masses turned on them, had dug deep to uncover—even manufactured—the skeletons in Jack’s distant past. The “scandal” might have been little more than adolescent bad judgment and immaturity. But I could also believe that these minor crimes were the portent of deeper character flaws, which had continued to grow and become more sophisticated over time. A more disquieting revelation to me, was that Jack had recently been involved in a nasty family dispute where he had sued his own brother for being a crooked investment banker that had bilked his customers out of much of their hard-earned money. He accused him of selling unwitting buyers some sort of creepy, Bernie Madoff-style Ponzi scheme investment fund. Now, I know that it’s not exactly fair to assume that if your brother’s a criminal and a jerk, you’re a criminal and a jerk, but that’s where my head naturally went, somehow. The news discouraged me, and I was just about to put the newspaper down without bothering to turn the page and read to the end, when I decided to forge ahead anyway, since I still had some time to kill. The last paragraph mentioned, almost as an afterthought, that Jack had lost his license to practice law in Nevada because of the second shoplifting conviction in that state. Oh, now that’s much different, I thought. The guy shoplifted in his home state as a grown man, after he became a lawyer. Classy.
Since I was already there, Jack’s being a weasel didn’t detract from my original conviction that banks had committed egregious crimes against humanity, so I continued on with my plans to Occupy the Rose Parade. The negative press had made me wince, but I wasn’t there to find a guru; I was here to protest corporate excesses. To that end, I woke up at six a.m, January 2, and walked over to Singer Park to help make signs and join in the fun. I was among the first to arrive on that glorious morning, so I got a rare opportunity to watch the sunrise, which, as a musician and power sleeper, I hardly ever do. Around eight o’clock people started filing in from all corners of the park. Anti-War activist, Cindy Sheehan, had been chosen to be the grand marshall of our parade, which Jack was calling, “The Human Float.” He told us, we’d been given official permission by the Parade Commission to march at the very end of the parade, which I thought was a major coup, given the scope of the event and the surety that millions would be watching. I had devised the perfect outfit for the festivities and couldn’t wait to show it off to my country. I’d purchased a “jailbird prison suit” at an online costume maker for under thirty dollars (delivered) and sewed the words “BANK CEO” on a large rectangular patch, that I positioned prominently on the chest. To complete le tout ensemble, I raided my nine-year-old’s toy shelves to find a cash register with large, fake dollar bills, which I stuffed all around the neck, hat, and arm openings. It was marvelously effective as many parade-goers stopped me to take pictures en route to the park.
By 9:00 a.m. I’d run into lots of Occupiers and Streamers I knew from Oakland and elsewhere—some whose faces I recognized only from seeing them on my computer screen. I estimated our crowd to be around five thousand, which was adequate, but disappointing to me as I’d dreamed of millions showing up to overshadow the whole affair. I found that my sentiments were shared by others as I was approached by a woman who wanted to take my picture before we got in line to march at the end of the parade. “Gosh, I wish there were more people here,” she whispered to me, after she captured the shot. “I’m just a stay-at-home mom, but I came all the way from Oregon to be here today. I guess most people just don’t care about what the banks are doing to us in this country. All Americans seem to care about is football and celebrities like—hey that’s it!” she burst out, interrupting her own sentence. “I got it! I totally know how we can make Americans give a shit about what’s going on. We need to Occupy a Kardashian and find out where that one … uh, the super slutty one … Kim, goes all the time. We need to follow her wherever she goes, with our signs about foreclosure and stuff like that. That’s what we need to do to get the word out!” Her enthusiasm made me smile as I envisioned gangs of political activists bird-dogging Kim Kardashian’s every move.
By 9:30 a.m. there were around seven thousand of us standing on a side street, watching the end of the parade behind temporary wooden barricades. Our lead sign was a gigantic parchment-like scroll, which read, WE THE PEOPLE, in reference to the Citizen’s United decision granting corporations personhood status. Dozens of us were upholding a giant red plastic octopus, which was extending its eight long tentacles, labeled, WELLS FARGO, as they reached out and snatched up single family homes with occupants inside, hanging out of w
indows, screaming to be rescued. A large contingent of police on the other side of the barricades informed us we could file into the end of the parade line as soon as the last float passed. I made sure to be in the lead group so I could be among the first to see the reaction of thousands of spectators in the bleachers lining the route. Three minutes after the last float had passed, police still had not removed the barriers and people were descending the bleachers in droves, leaving the scene. We the members of “The Human Float” began complaining loudly, to the cops, who still weren’t letting us get onto the route before everyone was gone. A full ten minutes after the last float passed, and more than two-thirds of the spectators had left the scene, police officers began to slowly draw back the barriers and let us come forward. As we entered the route smiling, waving, and looking up into the stands, I noticed platforms holding mainstream media cameras, which were being hurriedly powered off and removed from the area. As we advanced, the few talking heads still stationed ahead of us, rushed to wrap things up before any of their viewers could see us being disrespectful to their biggest sponsor, Wells Fargo, who had bankrolled the whole event. Wells Fargo management had been so fretful that OTRP would rain on their parade, that they’d gone so far as to phone Jack-the-shoplifter up the Friday before, and try to persuade him to scuttle the Human Float at the last minute, fearing a massive turnout, resulting in a public relations nightmare. The bank reps had promised to give OTRP an audience with Wells Fargo higher ups, who assured us they would “consider our complaints sometime in the New Year” if we agreed to abort our mission. Unwilling to do so, we now waltzed past hundreds of celebrants, who’d hung behind to let the crowd thin, wearing the colors of the football teams yet to play that afternoon. Half were in red and white to support the Wisconsin Badgers, while the other dressed in green and yellow, for the Oregon Ducks. “Boo! Boo! Go home freaks! Take a bath and get a job assholes!” came the jeers of hostile sports fans. Some even spat on us or flipped us off as we proceeded past them in our activist regalia. I reminded myself that if saving the world was easy, everyone would do it, and vowed to remain smiling, regardless of the insults. I was heartened by the small number of spectators who stood up and clapped—some even flashing the thumbs up sign and joining us.