Back to the Garden—August 7, 2011

Today I wrote “now is the summer of our discontent” as my Facebook status update.  I am sure someone else thought, maybe even wrote the same thing.  How strange these days of a beautiful summer when the body politic is wounded by ideologues bent on gaining power by damaging the economic stability (if you have any) of this nation’s citizens.

Culture is morphing at a speed faster than that blink of the eye.  On today’s New York Times front page, evangelicals seem to be saluting (as in heil) Rick Perry’s message in Texas.  And Manhattan, thousands are waiting to see Savage Beauty for the first or last time.  I am old enough to see how the most sublime can share the times with the most absurd, ugly or dangerous.  But truly, these days are acutely strange and sublime.

So art often finds it way in the commonplace.  Like gardens. I am grateful for the gardens of Brooklyn’s Bed Stuy—the stoops, side yards, front yards and sidewalks in my community.  My neighbors like getting their nails dirty; painting planters and tires and rocks.  There’s a guy that paints faux boulders in gold and silver.  I think he must be West Indian.  When I first came to New York, window boxes were everywhere.  And throughout the East Village and the Bronx, home for decades to the city’s poorest and pluckiest citizens, community gardens thrived. But in Brooklyn, it’s-have patch of dirt, get some grass; get some flowers, get a tree.  My neighbors’ connection to earth; to sun; to rain or the need for moisture makes this harsh city, livable.

That New Yorkers now sit outside bars, restaurants, and office towers is a new phenomenon of the past 3 decades.  I remember when the first Scott Burton “chairs” were included in the architecture of the plazas on Sixth Avenue.  This was the early 80s and mostly no one wanted “street people” sitting in the plazas.  So the plazas, those chairs were as welcoming as beds of nails.  Crime or the possibility of crime was part of the issue.  But mostly, the corporations did not want to see/hear/smell the poor, the homeless who struck across the city in search of momentary comfort, food, some cash.  Now that the city is wealthier, the homeless have gone further into the shadows, away from the plazas.  They are policed in a different way.  But I hear them on my street, early mornings searching for bottles and cans. At least they will see the flowers and dwarf trees and pinwheels that my neighbors set out for all to see; to share.  Somewhere in this culture, there has to be some generosity. There has to be something that aspires to joy.

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Quick Note: re Occupy Wall Street, messages, modified Facebook Note

October 11, 2011 at 10:55pm

I think that many folk from the Left that are my age or older have a hard time with Occupy Wall Street.  They want leaders.  They want someone to be “on message”.  They have a hard time disentangling all the various messages–the different perspectives. The main one being that there is no difference between Dems & Repubs.  My response is that when it comes to the financial services industry–a pox on both their houses.  Given that Larry Summers & Timothy Geitner did everything to help bail Wall Street out & that Bill Clinton oversaw the removal of Glass-Stegall which led to the expansion of said industry.  But, the Democrats did pass excellent reforms that the CURRENT Republican controlled house is trying to stop by NOT FUNDING.

I think the OWS have a much more nuanced response to official political discourse. But as with any decentralized project, there are a range of responses from OWS on any given policy, not just one. The Tea Party is easy to digest-they hate regulations; hate taxes, hate Obama, essentially hate the federal government.  But the Left has a more complicated agenda and the message is not easy –there are many messages, but the best one is that1% of this nation’s wealth cannot sustain this nation’s resources and utilize all of its policies to the distress of the 99% who are outside that rarified realm.  Will this translate into votes for those who have ideas & positions that support ways in which to redistribute resources is of course a big question?  But up until 4 weeks ago, we were saying how powerful & (stupid) the Tea Party is.

That these disaffected have connected with unions; spiritual leaders & made a way for other places to do their own Occupations gives me great faith in the power of people to start new ideas and find a way to bring this to ballot box  and beyond.  We need a different way to gain and use power.  This is the start of a conversation about that.  Protest is the start, not the end.  The Left needs to assert its best ideas about how to take care of human beings and the environment in the best ways possible.

Our lives are “at risk” in the worst kinds of ways much like the people of Port au Prince whose lives were destroyed by both a natural disaster and human created condition. It is great to see the spotlight placed on just how citizenship, governance and privilege is executed by the men and women on Wall Street.  One of the great privileges of wealth is to limit visibility.  How ironic—we live in a society where both the rich and poor are often not seen.  But Organize Wall Street is changing that.  The earthquake that shook New York City earlier this year was the natural rebellion to the relentless exploitation of materials and resources for the benefit of a few.  Now OWS and other protests are the human made rebellion against the relentless consolidation of power and privilege.  This is about the cusp of something very very different and frankly, it makes me smile.

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Patricia Spears Jones is author of Painkiller and Femme du Monde (Tia Chucha Press) and The Weather That Kills (Coffee House) and three chapbooks, most recently Swimming to America (redglassbooks) and two plays commissioned and produced by Mabou Mines.  She is editor of Think: Poems for Aretha Franklin’s Inauguration Day Hat http://bombsite.powweb.com/?p=2944  and a contributing editor to Bomb Magazine. Taught at Queens College, New School University (Parsons), Sarah Lawrence, Poets House, and St. Mark’s Poetry Project. Originally from Arkansas, she has lived and worked in New York City for 4 decades.