Nights in Tents

by Laura Love

  On November 22, the student body of UC Davis had decided to come together and Occupy the campus to protest the out-of-control spiraling of tuition rates in recent years, which, again, were found to be closely correlated to the fact that many regents of the California State College system also served as board members to the world’s largest banks. Recent studies had shown that, of the various reasons Americans got into debt, higher education was deemed to be the most acceptable of all—especially when compared to car loans, vacations, home loans, illnesses, funerals, and wedding expenses. In other words, it was okay in the United States, to mortgage oneself to the eyeballs for school, which was viewed as “good debt,” because of the conventional wisdom that almost no amount of money was too much to pay for an enriching, solid education. In fact, debt incurred in the pursuit of higher education was considered not only acceptable, but even wise. To add insult to injury, regents were seen to be using this and the concurrent reality that the state of California was pitching in less and less tax revenue to fund state colleges, to their advantage, as they steadily raised student fees nearly every time they convened. They were widely expected to vote for an 80% increase in tuition, which was to be instituted, following the next meeting. For many students, this had been the last straw, as they looked around and saw how dim their prospects were becoming. They were beginning to organize and align themselves with the Occupy Movement, in an attempt to channel some of their anger and frustration into direct action.

  Thus it was that Officer John Pike found himself walking up and down a row of arm-linked UC Davis college students, who sat impenetrably before him, like a human levee. They were inhibiting the flow of obedient, uncomplaining, debt-accepting students into the buildings they sought to take instruction from, as he and his fellow officers ordered them to get up and leave the vicinity, immediately. As they stayed there, defiantly clinging to one another, Officer Pike had grown annoyed, resenting the hell out of the pampered, spoiled refuseniks, who sat there, smugly defying a direct order from an officer of the law. When his simmering pot began to boil over, Pike reached into his professional arsenal, grabbed a can of orange pepper spray, and began casually, even langorously drenching the faces of the seated students, with no more regard than one affords an infestation of cockroaches.

  His strutting and posturing was reminiscent of a contemptuous drill sergeant, setting young recruits straight, who clearly didn’t understand the chain of command in the US Armed Forces. So repugnant was the sight of this man committing these acts within plain view of his fellow officers, who did nothing, that the video, which had been captured on a cell phone by another student, had gone viral in a matter of weeks. In response to the affront, a new group of computer “hacktivists,” calling themselves “Anonymous,” had made certain that almost anyone who had eyes was likely to see this image somewhere, somehow, in a matter of days after it happened. Better still, the “AnonOps” crew had also doxed Officer Pike, which meant that they’d published every bit of data that had ever been collected on him, from the time he was a zygote to that moment—including his full legal name, social security number, cell phone number, and residential address, along with all sorts of other private information I’m sure he’d rather the world not know. In short, if this guy had ever gotten a bad report card, wet the bed, or sought treatment for acne or erectile dysfunction, Anonymous had found out, and what’s more, they’d published it to the worldwide web. So complete had the market saturation of the John Pike video been, that he instantly graduated from being an obscure, badge drunk creep in the campus police system, to being an inescapable household word, cultural symbol, and Internet phenomenon … a meme. People began gleefully photoshopping pictures of Officer Pike into iconic images, such as The Last Supper painting by Leonardo Da Vinci, however in the new meme version, Jesus was not being betrayed by Judas Ischariot, but be-sprayed by none other than Officer Pike. I saw one where ET (from the classic movie about extra-terrestrials) was reaching out longingly to the cosmos in search of his tribe, only to be answered, viciously, with a plume of pepper spray. Smurfs were sprayed, along with chipmunks, Sesame Street characters, babies in cribs, Bambi—you name it, Officer Pike sprayed it. For a few weeks there, you couldn’t get away from this meme, even if you tried.

  A close friend of mine who is skilled with a computer, sends me an original Christmas card every year, and her handiwork never fails to bring me cheer. In holidays past, I’d waited with baited breath to see what she created. For the last few seasons, she’d been on a nativity scene kick, where she would juxtapose herself and her pets in different places around the infant’s crèche—sort of a Where’s Waldo theme, only instead of calling it, “The Nativity,” she, the ever cynical atheist, had entitled her cards, “The Naivete.” This year the card looked completely normal in every way, except for the fact that Officer Pike was strolling past the baby Jesus in the manger, casually dousing the infant with orange pepper spray. So successful had this AnonOps stunt been, that it soon became the tactic of choice when acquiring film that showed officers engaging in outrageous, improper behavior, especially in their dealings with the Occupy Movement. The policeman’s actions had so offended the collective conscience of America, that it had served to bolster public sentiment toward the Occupy Movement, and against police departments, nationwide. Before the year was over, Officer Pike had been suspended, along with another colleague, and people across the country were calling for UC Davis chancellor Linda Katehi, to resign. The Campus Police Chief had been put on leave and an investigation had been launched to determine what further actions needed to be taken to regulate University policing and prevent this sort of future misconduct. So feared was this tactic becoming, that police officers, who had formerly bragged and made jokes online about the common practice of taping over their badge numbers before committing especially violent (and often illegal) acts, had begun warning each other about the dangers doxing posed to their careers. Exclusive, “police only” chat room posts were being doxed too, for all of us non-police to see and get a better understanding of their true intentions.

  Doxed officers were beginning to complain loudly about the practice, and advocate for legislation that would dole out harsh penalties to those who published such records. The family lives of cops were already known to be somewhat compromised by the very condition of being law enforcement personnel, whose members have been been disproportionately associated with incidents of domestic violence, substance abuse, divorce, and childhood bullying, among other social ills. Doxed cops were suddenly finding themselves fighting an uphill battle to control growing negative public perceptions of their characters. The beauty of doxing, in my opinion, was that it only targeted cops who were doing bad things to people who didn’t deserve it. And, to top it all off, it was non-violent. Don’t want to get doxed? Don’t be an asshole. It was just that simple. At least that’s how I, and we, saw it. The other thing I admire about doxing is that it is a collaborative effort between the legions of citizen journalists, and the less abundant numbers of talented, often brilliant, hackers located around the world—a team building exercise of sorts. Armed only with cell phones and cameras, these daring individuals captured the dastardly deeds of miscreant cops and other wrongdoers, on film, and then the Anons, acting as a guerilla tech team, compiled a wealth of damning documentation about the offenders, often when provided with only minimal bits of information. With this great new tool, Anonymous had single-handedly given the Occupy Movement a profoundly effective method of deterring horrendous assaults on political protesters in the United States. Doxing was our A-bomb—our first, last, and best line of defense in the street wars of Occupy.

  I was already a fan of Anonymous by the time we gathered for Move-In Day on January 28, but I marveled at how much reassurance I took from the existence of a completely unknown entity—people whom I’d probably never meet or know the name of, could mete out justice for me in the likely event that I was ever abused again by a municipal police force. Having Anonymous
out there was sort of like having crime fighting superheroes on hand, that would magically appear in your hour of greatest need, just when it seemed there was no hope of ever making it out of a harrowing predicament intact. On Move-In Day, when I stood outside the chain-link fence separating me from the army of cops aiming at us, I remember hearing the comforting sentence, “Somebody get those motherfuckers over there on camera—the ones pointing their guns at us—we gotta dox those assholes.”

  The exact inception of Anonymous is unclear, but it is known that with the Occupy Movement, they rapidly evolved from being thought of as a coalition of merry pranksters, to being a potent and formidable force against corporate greed and government oppression worldwide. In the early days they did things like dogpile on Tom Cruise for his comical involvement with the Church of Scientology. Tom’s antics had already provided endless fodder for water cooler conversations about his evolving nuttiness, particularly after appearing to have lost his mind on the Oprah Winfrey show, where he’d run around maniacally and jumped up on a sofa, crazy-style, all the while babbling on about how he was in love with Katie Holmes. Then, just after that bizarre episode, in January of 2008, a Scientology video featuring Tom was put up on YouTube, by a journalist who somehow got ahold of it, and leaked it to the general public. In the video, Cruise talks about how the Church of Scientology has all the answers for everything. He even goes so far as to divulge that, when driving past a car accident, he knows that he, as a Scientologist, is the only person who can really help. Needless to report, that video shot to the top of the social media charts in a big hurry, giving millions of viewers plenty to discuss for the entire four days that it was up. Then, it got snatched off the air by the Church itself, who claimed they owned the copyright, and could pull it whenever they damn well pleased. That’s the part that got Anonymous all riled up. They flat out hated seeing the video disappear, and called it censorship. Then it was on. Scientology message boards started getting flooded with unwanted posts, unordered pizzas got delivered to Scientology centers, unsolicited, all-black faxes clogged machines and drained printers of ink and paper. The robust backlash against Scientology was broad in scope, and unprecedented for the amount of people it reached through social media. Anonymous stated their goal in no uncertain terms: “The extent of your malign influence over those who trust you, who call you leader, has been made clear to us. Anonymous has therefore decided that your organization should be destroyed. For the good of your followers, for the good of mankind—for the laughs. We shall expel you from the Internet and systematically dismantle the Church of Scientology in its present form. We acknowledge you as a serious opponent, and we are prepared for a long, long campaign. You will not prevail forever against the angry masses of the body politic. Your methods, hypocrisy, and the artlessness of your organization have sounded its death knell.” In the four years since the Scientology caper, Anonymous had surfaced here and there, but never so visibly as during the beginning months of the Occupy Movement. During the 2011 holiday season, I remember stumbling upon a video link from my Twitter feed, that began with Apocalyptic music, punctuated by random explosive sounds, and super reverb-y, devil-worshippy choir vocals, that accompanied an eerie image of a metal globe, revolving continuously around a strangely lit, diaphanous blue/green haze. That got my attention right away for its Twilight Zone weirdness, but then there appeared a glowing orb, surrounding a black business suit with its arms folded. Where the head should be, there was only a dark question mark, suspended just above the tie. On either side of the suit were arches that resembled the sides of a wheat stalk penny. Then came the announcement—from a robotic, emotionless, computer-generated voice: “Attention, citizens of the world. We are Anonymous. We wish to get your attention hoping you’ll heed the warnings as follows. Your medium of communication you all so dearly adore will be destroyed.” It then went on to make the case for not just eliminating, but annihilating Facebook. “Facebook has been selling information to government agencies and giving clandestine access to information security firms so that they can spy on people from all around the world … Everything you do on Facebook stays on Facebook regardless of your privacy settings and deleting your account is impossible. Even if you delete your account all your personal info stays on Facebook and can be recovered at any time. Changing the privacy settings to make your Facebook account more private is also an illusion. Facebook knows more about you than your family … You are not safe from them nor from any government. One day you will look back on this and realize what we have done here is right … Prepare for a day that will go down in history, November 5, 2011. We are Anonymous. We are legion. We do not forgive. We do not forget. Expect us.” That last line, delivered without nuance, without inflection, sent a chill up my spine for raw, naked, cool creepiness.

  I wasn’t sure whether to be frightened out of my wits or deliriously happy with the declaration. Did this mean that Anonymous was in charge now? Were they really going to bring down Facebook? And if they could do that, what else could they do? Might this be the beginning of a new era, where we were actually being governed by a nameless, faceless avatar—an Orwellian Big Brother type, whose motivation was not greed, but rather, an infinite kindness and concern for my well-being. In those heady days, I was so taken with the masked avengers of Anonymous, I even probed deeper to learn why they wore those delightfully scary facemasks.

  As it turns out, the mask on the Anonymous videos was a likeness of an historical figure named Guy Fawkes, and its significance soon became clear. Mr. Fawkes was born in York, England in the year 1570. He joined the Spanish army in 1593, after converting to Catholicism and becoming a religious zealot. His zeal manifested itself in a failed plot to blow up the British Parliament’s House of Lords, (the original 1%) in 1605, where he was caught hiding in a cellar, guarding a cache of gunpowder that he intended to detonate, right under their noses. Sadly for Fawkes, his efforts resulted in him being tortured by the Brits to rat out his accomplices, after which he was tried, convicted, and executed on January 31, 1606, right across the street from the very building he tried so hard to blow up. So … nowadays, to prove there are no hard feelings and that they are good sports about the whole thing, on November 5, England celebrates Guy Fawkes day with fireworks (not under the House of Lords) and children donning masks while begging for pennies.

  So that’s where the love affair with Guy Fawkes started. And then, in 2006, a film called, V is for Vendetta came out in which “V,” a solo anarchist living in a society ruled by a fictional fascist party in the UK, tries to blow up the Houses of Parliament, just like Guy did. V is wearing a mask designed by David Lloyd, the same one which has now come to be associated with the Anonymous movement, as well as to stand for a fierce, courageous form of individualism which boldly forges forth, despite great odds against it. The mask itself was of a pointy-chinned, sharp-cheeked man sporting a skinny mustache and a narrow goatee. The likeness bears a strange, Mona Lisa smile which can be seen as both menacing and playful—much the same way Anonymous itself was being described. They are believed to have first been used by Anonymous during their 2008 campaign against the kookiness of Scientology. Not just a fashion statement, they provided vital anonymity for the wearers at protests, where cops were constantly trying to identify Occupiers for future retaliation. The masks became ubiquitous—a logo of sorts for Anonymous videos, as well as standard apparel at the wave of protests against banks and corporate greed that began to characterize the Occupy Movement worldwide.

  I’ve seen many Anonymous videos by now, some with the question mark over the tie, and others with a hovering Guy Fawkes mask doing all the talking. Although Facebook didn’t get blasted out of existence on November 5, nor did the world order change in any appreciative way that day, I still counted myself a fan of Anonymous and came to love their brazen, outlaw panache.

  While Occupying America, I came to look forward to proclamations from Anonymous in the same way I used to anticipate new Batman episodes when I was a kid.
Only Anonymous was even better because they were real and their shows came on randomly, with no commercial interruptions. And you never knew when you were going to log on to your Twitter account and find the link to another treat from the good folks at Anon Ops. Since my first exposure to them, I’d been kept in a perpetual OCD cycle of tapping the glass on my phone and gluing my eyes to the screen to see if there was anything new from them. For better or worse, by the end of 2011, the social media sites, Twitter, Facebook, You-Tube, Ustream, were becoming my IV, my lifeline, my unending connection to Occupy—every second of every day. I who had often been criticized by family members for being “too into” the nightly network news, was now almost never bothering to turn on my television, let alone watch something as behind the curve, shallow, and irrelevant as mainstream media news. In fact, most of the time the “news” famously failed to even cover Occupy events, which often drew thousands of people onto the streets to interrupt the flow of commerce. And on the rare occasions when they did cover an event, they got it wrong, typically ignoring the real story and the important reasons behind it. So that’s why I had broken up with NBC and CNN and ABC and CBS and all those other letters. I preferred the unedited truth and immediacy of social media, and all of a sudden, nothing else would do. Social media allowed me to reach out and touch people all over the world with an intimacy and honesty that I could only have dreamed of in the very recent past. For the first time in my life, I was able to witness history in the making, draw my own conclusions and connect the dots in ways that were never before possible.