Nights in Tents

by Laura Love

  Sometimes, however, the incessant media input becomes burdensome to me. It’s marvelous how contact with people who are outside our ken can change us and inform our positions on ethical dilemmas. Oh, the things we can accomplish when we talk to each other, rather than about each other. However, one unforeseen consequence of this outrageously cool technology is that I often argue with myself, ad nauseum, about whether I am being objective enough. I’m like Tevye from Fiddler on the Roof, (“on the other hand …”) constantly worrying that I have not considered both sides of an issue enough before reaching a conclusion. At these times I find the numerous lengthy tomes detailing every possible angle, troubling, and I want to run from the Internet and its squid-like tentacles, clawing out to me at the strangest times and in the furthest reaches of earth. Is it just me, or is it a universal truth that whichever side one is exposed to, no matter how ostensibly ridiculous or unjustifiable at first glance, if one talks to enough holders of said ridiculous beliefs for long enough, there’s usually a kernel of sense somewhere to glom onto. But, surely, there must be such a thing as absolute right or wrong—mustn’t there? Before the Internet pervaded every facet of my being, and I had only slanted mainstream media coverage to rely on, some types of issues were easier to resolve in my own head.

  I remember during the Rodney King riots of the early nineties, when enraged black people, (who witnessed a film clip of L.A. cops savagely beating Mr. King after a routine traffic stop) were taking to the streets chanting, “Black Justice,” in anger and disbelief at the acquittal of the four officers (three white, one Hispanic) who had nearly taken King’s life. While I watched the live helicopter news feed coverage, I saw a hapless white construction trucker named Reginald Denny, drive, apparently lost, smack dab into the middle of the scene, where he was converged upon and pulled out of his truck by an angry mob of black folks, who beat him nearly to death because they wanted revenge for the injustice they had just suffered. Denny was battered so severely, he had to spend years in rehabilitation, learning how to walk and talk all over again, which he is now able to do, somewhat. A few of my black friends and acquaintances made light of Denny’s ordeal, in much the same way I’d heard whites laughing at Rodney King’s thumping. But knowing many good people of all races made it easy to discern that the viciousness shown by those few individuals, (cops and rioters alike), were not representative of entire cultures, but rather a predictable consequence of institutionalized racism in American society. Certain characters had behaved inexcusably, and acts of brutality like these were absolutely wrong, no matter what the rationale. I sometimes long for the good old days.

  The more I engaged with other cultures, the more the planet seemed to be shrinking to minute proportions. During the winter, I established Twitter relationships with Occupiers in Athens, Greece as they fought hard to oppose severe “austerity measures” that continued to be imposed upon them by the European Union, in the aftermath of their government’s greed-driven financial crisis. Their economic collapse bore distinct parallels to our own. As a matter of fact, almost every point on the globe was experiencing growing unrest, due in large part to the plundering of wealth by powerful corporations and individuals. February of 2012 was an incredibly productive month for Anonymous Operations and partnerships with the Occupy Movement. On February 12, I sat in my living room, sipping coffee and chatting live with other viewers on a streaming channel called “OccupyTV,” while forty-five buildings in Athens billowed smoke and burned with the rage of Athenians, who had just been told that they would be forced to endure another round of belt tightening in order to stave off a bigger economic catastrophe, which the EU warned would ensue if they did not work harder for less money and fewer benefits. I read on the chat line that the insurrection was spreading quickly, and specific businesses were being singled out for destruction. Armies of police vehicles were spraying water cannons and throwing explosives at rioters. A comment scrolled by announcing that fifteen banks were burning, along with Starbucks, and some other multinational corporate franchises. The Twitter feed was atwitter with declarations of solidarity and support for Greece’s 99% and I’d just read that one hundred thousand Greeks were in the streets demanding change. “COPS JUST RAN OUT OF TEAR GAS,” tweeted an elated onsite protester, who was answered by one of my fellow countrymen, who sarcastically tweeted, “probably manufactured in Jamestown, Pennsylvania—GO USA.” I felt awake and alive and ineluctably bonded with my comrades in Greece, as well as in Syria and Palestine.

  The next day, while trolling the web, I came across the message, “TANGO DOWN” on the Anonymous feed. On February 14, Anonymous took down the website of Combined System, the tear gas manufacturer in Pennsylvania which was said to have manufactured the chemical dispersants fired on the Athens protesters. Upon further investigation, I learned that a number of Greece’s government websites had also been shut down, to protest the ministers’ 199 to 101 vote to impose further hardship on their workers. This time, laborers were hit with a 20% reduction in the minimum wage, as well as the elimination of fifteen thousand jobs. Around the same time, I heard an NPR story about a formerly middle-class woman in Athens, who was forced to come out of retirement in her old age, because of prior austerity measures that had already gone into effect. She said that she was struggling to get by on six hundred dollars per month, down from a pension of four thousand dollars, which had allowed her to live comfortably in years past. I learned from the Twitterfeed that, once again, rather than make the wealthy 1% architects of the Greek debt crisis accountable, in the form of direct taxes and fines, the shortfall was being levelled on the backs of the proletariat—the workers, who’d already been pushed to the brink by government takeaways. The constant threat being waved in the faces of Greek citizens was expulsion from the European Union, the EU, which would purportedly spell disaster for the average Greek citizen. More solvent members of the Union, particularly Germany, had pushed hard for the measures, as much, some said, to punish Greece as to bring them back into financial health. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, was accused of sticking it hard to the Greeks, who were stereotyped by some Germans to be an unmotivated, lazy, recalcitrant, funbefore work–loving party culture, whose passion for play had to be reshaped and redirected by feeling the sting of hard consequences for their indolence. I chatted online with a young German medical school graduate who disclosed that she had frequently taken magical family vacations in Greece as a child, which, while relaxing and wonderful, had placed her in close proximity to happy-go-lucky Grecians, who had shocked her for their lack of order, structure, and discipline—qualities that, she admitted, were highly esteemed in her native Germany. She spoke fondly of the Greek people, however, and felt that the culture could benefit greatly from adopting a stricter work ethic. She surmised that this might entail paying a bit more attention to their finances, and a bit less to Retsina and beach combing. She saw Merkel’s actions as painful, yet necessary to instill a little more stick-to-it-iveness in that otherwise charming corner of the Mediterranean. After the austerity vote, the Greek Prime Minister’s website was swiftly hacked by Anonymous, as was that of the National Police, the Minister of Finance, and a major TV channel.

  The awesomeness of being able to sit there in my Lazyboy recliner and fire off questions simultaneously to people in Germany and Greece, (while watching buildings blow up and burn down in Athens) made my head spin. It made me wonder how history would read if the Romans had possessed Twitter during the Great Fire in 64 AD:

  RomeAnon: NERO had somethin to do w/ the fire up in rome last nite IMHO—Yo Tacitus U wanna weigh in on this?

  TacMan: Imma git the fucktard been spreadin’ dat shizzy. My boy wadnt even there Homey—but when he seen the FB post, he came runnin home from Antium to set up a OccupyRome relief effort. Who spreadin’ dat shit … Cassius?

  NeroWorship: Lmfao—that’s some effed up bullsh** haters be blowin up bout Nero playin his lyre and singin up in Antium while peeps houses burnt up—lotsa smashy smashy tho. m
oralfags caint be trusted.

  CashIsGud: true dat—your lil emperor fren Nero was jammin to “Sack of Ilium” last nite all dressed up and actin a fool. totes cray cray. but he WASNT in Antium, he was in rome.

  RomeAnon: Hey Tac, Your boy, Nero is just one G away from being Negro. Doh! Sriously, I heard it was Christian blac bloc who set the fire … anybody?

  NeroWorship: no sense gittin’ butthurt … haters gonna hate—gotta bounce. BRB

  So … I began to get how social media created the platform that permitted an international groundswell of people to link arms and connect the dots between the elite forces throughout the world that collude to determine the living conditions for the vast majority of us on earth. I’m not particularly bothered that there are rich people in the world who enjoy having more than others … that’s just a fact of life. I know I am not motivated to spend lots of energy amassing wealth—I’m just not wired that way, and neither, I believe, are most people. Most of us just want to live our lives with a degree of autonomy and some modicum of comfort. But what does gall me, is the realization that the systems the 1% have put into place all over the world, allow a minute portion of society to hoard obscene riches, which relegates a huge percentage of the rest of us to lives filled with disadvantage and suffering. The mental illness of the 1% means a lack of access for many to the most basic needs—food, clothing, shelter, education, health care, and a healthy environment. And that disease must be treated. The world has a finite carrying capacity, and it is imperative that we protect its treasures and distribute limited resources equitably among ourselves, so that we can all survive and have enough. I, and my fellow Occupiers, had come to the conclusion that these sick sons-of-bitches had to start sharing their toys, and we, with the aid of Anonymous, were gonna make them.

  Now, through the wonders of technology, people have begun to see a number of encroachments and incursions into the personal freedoms we’d previously enjoyed. It must have scared the living shit out of wealthy captains of industry to see how quickly damning information could be gathered and shared by anyone who had access to a cell phone. Political movements were suddenly born and developed in very short order. Like-minded groups of activists could find each other and coalesce on a moment’s notice. As people began to experience and understand the power of social media to alter the course of history, entire nations and private interests scrambled to figure out ways to limit access and regulate content. In essence, the science advanced much more rapidly than most governments’ understanding of it. Hence, the cat was well out of the bag and down the road, before sluggish, top-heavy, process-bogged, old white guy–dominated legislative bodies could even grasp what it was, let alone figure out how to control it. While out of touch misogynistic politicians touted their binders full of supportive women, tech-savvy social justice warriors and Internet aficionados (some as young as thirteen) were hacking into top secret websites, amassing databases, and going for the jugulars of corporate crooks and high-flying criminal offenders in the real Game of Life. As these game-changing technologies began to figure prominently in political dissent, so did dampening legislation begin to pop up all over the place. Politicians argued that United States citizens would accept and even welcome close monitoring of their Internet activities in order to prevent another 9/11 from happening on US soil. To that end, Congress began feverishly pushing to pass all kinds of after-the-fact legislation, like NDAA, PIPA, SOPA, and ACTA. They began flooding floors with paperwork, which was designed, at least purportedly, to protect us from terrorists, discourage online piracy of intellectual property, and stop illegal profiteering from black market/bootleg trade in such commodities as music, movies, and video games; but whose additional, (and perhaps even primary), unstated purpose was to stem the tide of damaging information and put a lid on the power that came with these revolutionary tools. They knew that activists everywhere were using the available science to circumvent them. They saw that, with these technologies, the Occupy Movement had the power to make global alliances that were infinitely capable of fixing much that was broken with humanity.

  As February of 2012 drew to an end, Anonymous declared open war on the United States government, which it claimed was, “tyrannical and hurt its people.” In a move they called, “OpV,” they outlined their manifold reasons for wanting to overthrow the government. Though I agreed wholeheartedly with all the shortcomings and faults they found with Washington DC, and their conclusions that wealthy corporate interests were controlling America, I wasn’t positive I wanted to hitch my entire wagon to their star until I knew a little more about them. I might have even wanted to see something that looked sort of like an election before committing fully to accepting the question mark of the suit as my new leader. I wasn’t ruling it out, I just wanted some more information. After all, I’d have been horrified if the Tea Baggers had gotten this far with their wacko agenda, even though I doubted many of them possessed the skills necessary for such an undertaking. For weeks after the declaration, hacks on the NSA, FBI, and CIA, as well as other highly protected government sites, accelerated and became almost commonplace. Shut downs and Denials of Service were so prevalent among these types of agencies that even network news programs felt they had to cover the story, albeit sparingly, and with little detail. Coordinated crackdowns on politically motivated hackers seemed to begin in earnest shortly after Anonymous’s big announcement. In early March, twenty-five hacktivists between the ages of seventeen and forty were arrested in a number of countries around the globe. Later that month, I read that many of the Anons had been fingered by a man whose online moniker was “Sabu.” Twenty-eight-year-old Sabu—Hector Xavier Monsegur was the alleged leader of a computer hacking group called, LulzSecurity or LulzSec. The word Lulz is a bastardization of the abbreviation LOL, which stands for “laugh out loud.” It had become a favorite term among computer geeks to describe the joy hackers felt engaging in code cracking mischief, especially those which resulted in DDOS’s of high profile targets, like the CIA. A report that Sabu had been cooperating for months with the FBI after a low profile arrest in June of 2011 sent shock waves through the Anonymous community and Occupys everywhere. By early 2012 the United States appeared to have lost all patience with Lulz of any sort, and began calling groups like LulzSec and Anonymous, “cyber terrorists,” as they hysterically decried the threat such organizations posed to national security. I personally didn’t think LulzSec or Anonymous posed any greater threat to my security than my own government’s annoying habit of attacking countries that hadn’t attacked us first. The US began working in concert with global police agency Interpol, to compile the evidence which enabled them to make those twenty-five arrests. Hackers vowed to remain undeterred by the disheartening development. To illustrate their unfazed-ness, they broke into the Interpol website and shut it down briefly the very next day, however, it was irrefutable that the orchestrated sting had dealt a crippling blow to the momentum Anonymous had gained in its notorious spree. A few weeks into OpV, the group decided to indefinitely table the war on the United States government, sighting the unreadiness for the world to fully embrace the changes they had hoped to manifest. They did, however, promise to keep doing many of the same kinds of things that made them famous—that we all knew and loved them for. This promise, while endearing, did not change the reality that many of those twenty-five Anons who were apprehended by Interpol, now faced the same kind of hard time that Sabu had managed to negotiate his way out of by working with the Feds.

  It made me sad to hear that Hector/Sabu had turned state’s evidence against many of my adored Anonymous justice crusaders. I hated to consider that any one of my crime-fighting superheroes was, in fact, mortal; therefore, capable of cowardice, weakness, indecision, and bad judgment, or perhaps something as mundane as a change of heart—a reordering of priorities. And who could have known the trail would lead so far beyond the initial arrests of the two men in Great Britain, the one in Chicago and the two in Ireland who were known to have been capt
ured based on Sabu’s cooperation with the Feds. All of a sudden the Twitterverse was being lit up by people who were threatening and denouncing Sabu as a snitch—a rat and a sellout. In further reading I discovered that Sabu was a family man with two small children. The FBI was said to have applied heavy pressure on him to expose his coconspirators, under the threat of lengthy incarceration, which would have denied him the opportunity to be an active, involved father. It was rumored that they asked him repeatedly how badly he wanted see his children grow up. When I read this I wondered how anyone could be either brave or foolish enough to have risked so much, even for the good of humankind. I contemplated what I might have done in his position. Then I learned he was living in public housing when he was rounded up, had very little money, and was being represented by a public defender. After that, it was impossible for me to hate on him, with any kind of fervor, for doing what he did. As unwise as Sabu’s actions may have been, I do understand how he could have gotten so deeply involved with the Movement and how he could have crumpled under the pressure. Though most of the Occupiers I ran with were without small children, I often found myself weighing (on a much smaller scale) the potential gain against the cost of my own activism to my family.