Occupy Now or How I Found My Mojo

I have been taxing my brain to express how I feel about the Occupy movement and how I can put my thoughts into words that are both meaningful and succinct.

The Occupy movement is the most exciting political action we have seen since the early 70' re: the war and the 60's re: the anti-segregation movement. People are taking to the streets to complain about how their situation, their lives, have been affected by corporate greed and the lack of representation by the people we have elected to state and federal office. It is really that simple. When we have our courts system declare that corporations are people and therefore have the rights of the individual we create an inequity that is just huge. How can we as individuals even begin to compete for the attention of our government when we can just be rolled over by large corporations who's budgets for political actions so out scope our own meager offerings? Let's face it, the 1% owns not only all the wealth, but our government as well.

So, how do we fight this? How do we let both the corporations and our elected officials know that this is unacceptable? We protest these inequalities by going to the streets with peaceful actions. We let the elected and their owners know that we don't approve. When we protested the war in Vietnam, we achieved our goals and got our conservative President to remove us from the conflict. Now granted, he had indeed shot himself in the foot by the dirty tricks he and his Whitehouse committed, but through our peaceful protesting we ended the war. The time has come again where we must let those in power know “we are mad as hell and we are not going to take it any longer.”

If you are like me an unable to actively protest due to physical restraints, you might do other things to help the movement. Yesterday, the Occupy Portland Maine movement asked us for warm long underwear. As we Mainer's know, the winter is much easier to survive with a pair of long underwear under the shirt and pants. They have ask for them to be dropped off at the park where they are staying. I intend to do so on Saturday when I am in town for a party. I also speak out by the means available to me. I know that most of you are already behind this action but every little bit helps. What is it that Wavy Gravy said, “how can you end wars and stuff if you cant yell out how you feel?” God, I sure am dating myself; as some of you look up Wavy on the internet.

As many of you are aware, the 1% are trying to crush this movement. They have resorted to again using lies through their media (supposed news) outlets. They say we are a bunch of hippies (who by the way are in their sixties and seventies now and no longer the “dirty” bunch of students) and crack pots. They say we don't have any demands, we are not organized, we are clueless. They are wrong! By keeping this thing simple, we have empowered ourselves.

What do we want? We want balance. We want to be able to live the American dream which has been slowly eroded since the mid 80's by the 1% through their removal of the checks and balances that history has told us are needed. We want regulation of the banking system so that they cannot bet against themselves and their shareholders creating this man-made recession. We must break up these banks so they are no longer too big to fail. We need to get big money out of our politics. Corporations are not citizens.

We all are Americans and we want the rights and privileges promised us by our fore fathers. As in the past, we must sometimes fight for those rights but not the way our oppressors might, not through violent action. Instead we need to protest passively. We need to respect others. We need to get our messages heard but not through war. Instead we must press these issues by letting our numbers be seen. We must let our opinions be hear but not through violent actions but instead by passive political actions.

We must keep moving forward!

New York on Sunday or It's a whole new world to me.

After arriving by Amtrak to Penn Station on a Sunday afternoon in April of '76, having rapidly packed the night before and following orders from the company for which I was an Area Manager, I stepped to the curb to hale a taxi.

I had left Boston, the first city I had worked in after leaving college and my second love. We had both graduated, and were now pursuing careers. With each move up our individual ladders, we moved further apart both figuratively and actually. I had decided to accept the move up to managing the NYC stores for the young consumer electronics company I had started at only a year and a half ago. Gary had worked in Public Television in the engineering department in Springfield Mass. and had just accepted a new position, designing the new broadcast facilities in Saudi Arabia. Talk about a physical distance; we were a half a world apart.

I had decided to take up residence at SRO hotel in mid-town Manhattan until I got myself settled and had explored the many neighborhoods that the city offered. The Henry Hudson Hotel to be specific. It was ironic that NYC's public television station had offices and studios in the same building. Why had Gary decided to take such a different path?

I had come out during the summer of '69 just after the Stonewall riots. Amherst had been a very safe place to come out. With 5 colleges in a 10 mile radius the intellectual level was high and liberal (no pun intended).I had met Gary the following fall when he was a freshman and I was a junior. My first real romance had been rather disastrous. I had met him the winter before I had come out and had a rather quick romance culminating in a hot weekend at a beach cottage on the South Shore of Boston in late spring. I knew something was very wrong that Sunday when we were driving back to school. He was very distant and quiet. I discovered the next day the he had totally freaked out with our romance. I mean, he was the aggressive one at the beginning of the weekend. I was in heaven. I had finally made love to another man and boy, I really liked the feeling. I had made so much sense to me but he, on the other hand, had leaped, and then jumped, back into the closet, slamming the door after him. Well, live and learn.

Gary and I had a slowly evolving romance that lasted for 5 years but the last year had been strained. In order to find a job with growth potential, I had had to look to the east, to Boston. Well, now I was in the Big Apple, the home of stonewall, the start of the gay movement.

That first week at work was incredible. We had two stores in Manhattan and one out on the Island (Long Island). I had to find and open two more stores in Manhattan and have them up and running before the Christmas selling season. I sure learned a lot those first few months but that is another story. I had the following Sunday off and decided I needed to see where I might want to live. Greenwich Village was the place to explore on the beautiful sunny Sunday afternoon.

I took the A train down to West Fourth. I got out and first wandered over to Washington Square. It was kind of like Boston. Lots of college kids hanging. Smoke in the air and music playing. After all, it was the mid seventies, the age of pot and tunes. What better business to be in than selling the equipment that played those tunes.

I decided that I needed to venture to the west so I went up West Fourth crossing over Sixth Ave to Sheridan Square. Now I was in the really gay area. It was amazing to see so many men in many variations and all of them gay. It was like the Village people although they had not reached the fame they would achieve in another year.

From there I worked my way up to Christopher Street and wandered toward the infamous docks. The magazine “Christopher Street” would soon be standard reading for me, but it's first magazine was a few months off. Beautiful Christopher Street, the home of e.e. Cummings, one of my favorite poets. This is the, or at least, was the Main Street of the Gay community. What a change from gay night at the Quonset Club in Amherst. (I can still hear that Polka band and remember dancing with Gary.)

As I strolled down Christopher Street on that beautiful Sunday, I remember seeing men walking hand in hand, arm in arm, out, proud and enjoying the day and each other. I heard a police whistle blow and turned around in time to step out of the way of the Sugar Plum Fairy as “she” roller skated down the street, throwing handfuls of glitter as he went. You know, when your my size (very large, 6'4” and 235 lbs) you don't tend to get hassled. So I wandered, smoking a joint and cruising the men until I got down to the docks. I had seen porn that was shot on the docks but I never realized that this was what happened all the time on the weekends. It wasn't staged, it was real. I had been to Provincetown and been at the “dick-dock” after the bars had closed, but I wasn't prepared for what I saw that afternoon. Singles, couples and small groups, madly at it, totally hot and passionate sex, as far as the eye could see in the bright of day. To say that this was an eye opener is a total understatement.

That afternoon, I knew I had flown over the rainbow. Me, a kid from the sticks of Maine, here in the center of the gay world. I just knew that it was going to be an interesting life here on the island of Manhattan. Unfortunately, I had no realization of how weird and horrible that world would become in just a few more years. Yes the party would end and rather tragically. But that story,my friends, is for another day.