when the dust clears

Last week I attended what the Nuclear Regulatory Commission calls a “public meeting, open house” about its annual assessment of the Indian Point nuclear power plant—Indian Point Energy Center to its owner, Entergy.

Entergy supporter wearing the company colors before NRC “public meeting” on Indian Point, May 17, 2012

The NRC, which concluded in its report (pdf) that Indian Point operated safely during 2011, is not required to take any action based on feedback from citizens at these meetings. All that the six inspectors and administrators behind a table at the front of the packed ballroom had to do was weather two-plus hours of withering invective, quirky performance, and, straight, often impassioned, comment—some of it quite surprising. One gentleman who said he worked at the plant offered highly technical and damning testimony, complete with photos, about what he said was an ongoing “operating leak” at Indian Point. (He refused to tell me his name.) “We did write a violation,” an NRCer responded meekly. Apparently, writing violations doesn’t fix (alleged) leaks.

Man speaks about ongoing safety problems at Indian Point, May 17, 2012

I went because I smelled the potential for a second installment of my Colorlines story on Entergy’s astroturfing, the practice by major corporations of creating, funding, and controlling “community organizations” to push an agenda while hiding their parentage. A young antinuclear activist had contacted me to tell me she had met a group of people of color affiliated with an Entergy front group called SHARE at a hearing a few months before. The woman leading the SHARE entourage told members not to speak to her, the activist told me.

Marilyn Elie, cofounder of Westchester Citizens Awareness Network, hammers NRC administrators for granting excessive safety exemptions to Entergy—and for not doing business transparently, May 17, 2012

No such luck this time. There were very few folks of color assembled at the DoubleTree in Tarrytown, NY, for the May 17 meeting. One African American labor union member spoke in support of Indian Point, touching on the core argument of all pro-planters: Indian Point equals jobs. An African American antiplanter spoke in the cadences of a Baptist preacher to stress the dire safety issues associated with Indian Point. Yuko Tonohira, dressed in a white Tyvek hazmat suit with the Japanese character for death pinned to it, spoke of Fukushima, as did others, like Yuki Endo, who stepped up to the mic.

NRC’s Bill Dean responds to a question/accusation, May 17, 2012

Immediately, nakedly apparent was the class divide. Supporters of Indian Point, similarly clad in neat polo or t-shirts, some with labor union logos, and slacks or jeans, filled a pocket of seats on the left side of the hotel ballroom. The more diversely, even wackily, attired antiplanters sat to the right—and everywhere else. (There were also contingents of business suit-wearing local government officials and legislators who fell on both sides of the divide.) There was ample heckling, with the antis winning out because of their numbers and vehemence. But there was also listening, particularly to the sober presentations delivered by folks like Clearwater’s Manna Jo Green and New York state assemblyman Tom Abinanti (both anti) and many of the union workers.

WestCAN member and Clearwater board member Susan Shapiro addresses the meeting, May 17, 2012

Entergy’s spirit was invoked, to praise and damn, but Entergy as a corporate entity did not present itself. Odd, given that Jerry Nappi, Manager of Communications at Entergy/Indian Point Energy Center, attended the meeting. Instead, Entergy let their working-class proxies duke out with the lefties in what amounted to a largely pointless, in terms of impact, though cathartic event. Who needs to worry about astroturf when you aren’t even compelled to step onto the field?

Espada, former NY state senator from the Bronx, was found guilty “on four counts of stealing from non-profit medical clinics that received federal funding” Monday, according to an FBI release.

Pedro Espada Jr. speaks at a rally in Albany, NY, in support of the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights, January 12, 2012

NY legislators Assemblyman Keith L.T. Wright, state Senator Eric T. Schneiderman, and Espada at the rally, January 12, 2012

Albany watchers of different political persuasions, including Wayne Barrett, then of the Village Voice, accused now state Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman of being too cozy with Espada, though Schneiderman did call for him to step down later in 2010.

One of his more noble causes was to support the Domestic Worker’s Bill of Rights along with other legislators. Not sure how much comfort that will give him if he gets the maximum sentence, 10 years on each count, but it’s probably comforting to folks who cozied up to him, with noses held, to get the bill passed.

The group may be a shadow of its 1980s, in-your-face self, but the march and demonstration marking the 25th anniversary of the first major action by the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power in Lower Manhattan today had some of the energy of the early days of the movement.

NYPD officers cut chains locking an activist from Housing Works to a chair during a direct action in front of NYC's City Hall, April 25, 2012

Hundreds of people gathered in front of City Hall to recognize one of the most powerful and effective activist/advocacy/education organizations of the late 20th century. Stalwarts from the early days like Jim Eigo, Bill Dobbs, and Larry Kramer were there, but younger folks from groups like VOCAL and Housing Works actually ran the show.

VOCAL’s Jaron Benjamin led the march downtown, negotiating all the way with a coolheaded African American NYPD Deputy Inspector and his boss, Assistant Chief Thomas Purtell. Housing Works spearheaded a direct action in front of City Hall Park. Members erected a mock apartment in the middle of Broadway to dramatize what Housing Works says are policies and practices of HASA, New York City’s HIV/AIDS Services Administration, that turn people living with AIDS into homeless people living with AIDS.

VOCAL NY organizer Miguel Adams chants at demonstration marking the 25th anniversary of the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, April 25, 2012

There was solidarity and tumult—the usual push and pull between marchers who want to take the street and the cops who want to keep it clear—but there was something lacking that ACT-UP had in spades: focus.

Last month Democracy Now ran a long piece on the AIDS activism documentary How to Survive a Plague with clips of heavy-duty actions against the likes of the Federal Drug Administration and multinational pharma giant Merck (a target of VOCAL not too long ago). In it, ACTers UP like the late Bob Rafsky and Garance Franke-Ruta speak with passion, a sense of urgency, and an absolute command of the issues. They knew what they needed—speeded up trials for specific drugs and lower cost meds—and they communicated it clearly, succinctly, forcefully. They were eloquent. And they fought like their lives and those of their friends depended on their actions, because they did.

Larry Kramer, author/playwright/pioneering AIDS and LGBT activist, before the march and protest, April 25, 2012

Today’s demo reminded me first, how much the original ACT-UP accomplished—its work and that of other AIDS, queer, and lesbian groups made powerful people accountable and saved people’s lives—and second, that today’s activists, Occupiers, and citizens need to learn that history, in all brilliance and messiness.

VOCAL and Community Voices Heard held a training for the 99 Percent Spring at the Children’s Aid Society on 101st Street. By my count, 100+ people gathered in CAS’s auditorium. Many were members of established groups. Others found out through MoveOn.org.

A VOCAL member speaks at the 99 Percent Spring training at the Children's Aid Society, April 14, 2012

Spring kicked off with a letter released in February, signed by a who’s who of prominent progressives, union leaders, and community organizers. Its goals:

1. Tell the story of our economy: how we got here, who’s responsible, what a different future could look like, and what we can do about it
2. Learn the history of nonviolent direct action, and
3. Get into action on our own campaigns to win change.

And that’s what I saw and heard: HIV/AIDS campaigners, advocates for domestic workers, immigrants, and low-income folks (many of whom ARE low-income folks), plus the unaffiliated of all races, ages, and orientations gathered to take the next Occupy Wall Street–inspired step.

Charles Young at Counterpunch, a left publication, calls 99 Percent Spring a “front group” for MoveOn and a Trojan horse for the Democratic Party. He claims that both aim to coopt and neuter the movement, suck all the radicalism of out it.

Young slams the effort based on an event he attended at the Goddard Riverside Community Center on the “Upper Left Side” of Manhattan.

“Inside the hall, it looked like an alumni reunion for the 1966 Fifth Avenue Vietnam Peace Parade. Almost all the 150 or so people were 55–80 years old. The ones I talked to expressed curiosity about Occupy Wall Street and enthusiasm about ‘nonviolent direct action’ but didn’t have the knees or the ears for full participation in OWS activities in the financial district,” he writes. Just a few weeks ago I attended a reading by author Fred Jerome at Goddard Riverside attended by several dozen people. At 47 years old, I was probably the youngest person in the room. Journalist Young might have considered that Goddard serves a heck of a lot of seniors, and they turn out, regardless of the event.

Will genuine direct action for social and economic justice grow out of the 99 Percent Spring? The proof will be on the streets. My bet is, after a year spent following VOCAL with camera and pen—witnessing arrests of its members at OWS demonstrations and its in-your-face protests against drug company execs—at least some of these Spring trainees will deliver.

Members of Adhikaar hold up a sketch of a model community @ 99 Percent Spring Training, April, 14, 2012

Union members—teachers, electricians, building cleaners, and many others—plus supporters, and hangers-on marched from Herald Square at 34th Street down Broadway to Union Square. The New York City Central Labor Council, an umbrella group, called for the Occupy Wall Street-inspired rally, “The March for Jobs and Economic Fairness.” The objective: “Fill the street from curb to curb so government and big business get our message: enough is enough,” said the press release. “It’s time to end the unfair economic policies in this country that benefit too few, and leave everyone else behind.”

And fill the streets they did, blocking traffic at one point. From what I saw at Union Square, though, it was a supremely orderly and low-key affair. After marchers flowed into the area around Union Square Park, some waving placards and banners, things kind of went coffee-klatchy, at least from my vantage points. Folks gathered in clusters and chatted. Sporadic, low-volume chanting emanated from the odd clump of people. The ubiquitous drum circle—sigh—did its percussive thing in one corner of the square. I did observe one less-than-low-key moment: a gentleman with unruly gray hair harangued a Fox News TV camera for the network’s anti-union bias. “They’re the worst!” he shouted, among other unkind things. Problem: there was no one behind or in front of the camera, only the lonely high technology device sitting atop a tripod. I assume the man was rehearsing for the arrival of the Foxians.

The rally also offered a boost to members of 32BJ SEIU, which voted today to give a bargaining committee strike authority. The union represents 22,000 office cleaners and commercial building workers who are resisting property owners’ conditions for a new contract. The union is negotiating with the Real Estate Advisory Board on Labor Relations, which represents commercial building owners and big cleaning companies, says 32BJ is asking for unrealistic wage hikes. Follow the links to read both sides of the conflict.

Union members march on Union Square

James, a retired union worker, at the end of the march. Tired.

"Rough on Rats"

Traffic, pedestrians, and union bagpipers

Photographer/journalist/activist/educator (and friend) Shahidul Alam was in NYC last night—from Dhaka by way of Bamako, Addis Ababa, and Dubai—to launch the US publication of “My Journey as A Witness,” a collection of his photos and writing. Essays by Sebastião Salgado, Raghu Rai, and Rosa Maria Falvo, who is also the editor.

Shahidul writes: “I don’t want to be your icon of poverty or a sponge for your guilt. My identity is for me to build, in my own image. You’re welcome to walk beside me, but don’t stand in front to give me a helping hand. You’re blocking the sun.”

Pix from the event:

Like several hundred others, I spent the very early hours of Friday morning just a couple of blocks north of Wall Street at Zuccotti Park.

I’d visited the Occupy Wall Street protest twice before, once while photographing the activist group VOCAL, which joined the October 5 rally of support, and a few days later with Erin, my fiancée. On that particular sprint through the encampment, I saw clusters of grungy, crunchy kids lounging and talking, several long-haired and funky lefties closer to my age holding forth, giddy tourists angling for photos, plus thousands of uncategorizables. It was chaotic, body-to-body, animated, and relaxed.

We weren’t there long enough to hear any speeches or witness the formidable “people’s microphone” in which folks amplify a speaker’s voice by repeating what she says to those farther away. But we saw and felt something—optimism, goodwill, even curiosity—among many, occupiers as well as passers-through like us.

On Friday morning, in a soaking rain, the park was no less animated, but less crowded, and more purposeful. When I got there at 1:30, the park beautification process that OWSers hoped might prevent the scheduled 7AM eviction by the New York City Police Department at the behest of the park owner, Brookfield Properties, had been cranking for hours. Teams of occupiers carted trash to drop sites at the park’s corners. Others scrubbed sidewalks with stiff-bristled push brooms and detergent. One girl dashed to get a bucket of clear water to flush a puddle of soap residue pooling in the dirt around a spindly tree. Microwave and satellite trucks from the various media outlets ringed the park. (I didn’t see FOX, so I figured they were incognito and using the services of an independent transmission provider.) Most journalists seemed to be waiting for the minutes before zero-hour to pounce.

An NYPD “SkyWatch” mobile observation tower stood at one corner of the park, a very impressive piece of high-tech surveillance equipment. SkyWatch is made by a division of FLIR, a military contractor with $1.9 billion in revenue, known for its thermal imaging technology. I’ve seen their products at military “force protection” trade shows.

The people’s mic was in full effect in impromptu assemblies. Someone would shout “mic check” and those within earshot would repeat it. If the statements that followed struck listener-amplifiers as relevant, vital, interesting, uplifting, or anything else good, the chorus grew. Discussions occasionally got disputatious and went off track. Gassers-off would mic-check and divert the group from the issue at hand toward their own general fabulousness. But when those around the speaker caught on, that people’s mic would fade out, and another mic-check would get recognized. All of this is maddening for a linear guy like me, but quite beautiful once I felt the power of the process rippling through the kids around me. They might not be bathed in the spotlight themselves, but each could decide whether to cut off the verbal voltage she was providing to a speaker or to keep generating it.

I wandered, soaked to the niblets, through the tiny park and fell into conversations. The first was among a half-dozen people knotted around a collegiate 20ish young white man. The wealthy earn what they have, and they deserve to keep it, was his point. Those gathered around him disagreed in varying degrees. When the agitation level rose, a woman named Deborah, 50ish and white, gently intervened to remind folks it was just a conversation.

Deborah shared her story. “I was such a good legal secretary I was raking it in. I was making like 90 grand at the end—plus overtime.” Life, of course, is what happens to you while you’re making plans to spend all that cash. Breast cancer. Her treatment is covered by the COBRA program, she told us, but only for a few more months. (She now pays $706 a month.) Before COBRA runs out, she must buy an additional insurance policy so that she’ll be able to purchase coverage on top of that when her COBRA finally ends.

“If I’m a multimillionaire, that’s not going to present a problem, but if I’m a regular working stiff, and we don’t have a single-payer health care option, I am fucked.” Respectful silence from all, even the kid formerly at the center of the conversation. Deborah is virtually uninsurable under our present system. That’s why she supports OWS (she visits but doesn’t sleep in).

A kid, 20-something and white, swaddled in a trashbag shuffled over.

“This is a very, very serious—” he paused—“thing. I won’t ask a rhetorical question. In my opinion, nothing is going to change–”

“Uh huh,” Deborah interjected.

“Them—” the boy said.

“Right,” said Deborah, impatiently.

“—is gonna change them unless we change ourselves…. It’s all about us creating a new society where, where we love each other like we love ourselves.”

The boy spoke slowly, perhaps to keep from slurring his words. He was drunk or compromised by something other than booze. The diverse group—young and less-young, white, black, biracial, professional and student, agitator and agitated—listened. I stifled the “shut-the-fuck-up” I was gnawing on.

“I think we need to just focus on loving each other,” he added.

“Okay. That’s nice. I think love is a good idea,” Deborah replied. “My health insurance doesn’t get paid by love.”

Our conversation was over. I waded back into the park.

Sun guns atop TV cameras illuminated another kid belching power-to-the-people platitudes, giving him fleeting legitimacy. It took a few determined mic checks and several minutes of verbal dueling for the young men and women from the Direct Action group to get center stage, but they did. They called a special assembly and gave updates on the impending eviction and the plans in place to deal with it.

A faint “late last night” in a girl’s voice wafted over to me and then got trumpeted sometime after 6AM. “We received notice from the owners of Zuccotti Park.” This got repeated three times, of course.

I heard the distant voice say “postponing the cleaning,” and then whoops of joy from the thousands of folks around me. This was the people’s sound system on overload. (Audio to come in next post.)

I followed OWSers as they celebrated by marching through the Financial District.

I watched a horde of still photographers encircle a brown-haired white man, also a 20-something, cigarette dangling from his lips, glaring into the visor of an NYPD riot cop, one of a squad that had been deployed to City Hall’s front gate. The kid was no more than a foot from the cops. Macho, narcissistic, dangerous.

I had seen this before in the dozens of demos I’ve shot in past 20+ years. The violent scumbags were crawling from the cracks. They can’t emerge and don’t figure in the park’s wonderfully messy democratic process. But in the street, they can play their cowardly hit-and-run games—and tarnish the reputation of a movement. A young woman from Direct Action urged the photographers to keep moving with the crowd, otherwise, she pleaded with them, “the cops will beat our heads in.” I agreed with her, complied, and left the provocateur to his star turn. Then I broke off from the march and headed north to teach my undergraduate photo class at Baruch College.

Minutes after I left, a senior NYPD officer, a white shirt, grabbed marcher Felix Rivera-Pitre from behind and punched him in the face.

“I didn’t do anything to provoke him. I was just doing what everyone else was doing in the march,” he said. There’s video shot by Animal New York that’s shows a fragment of the interaction between Felix and the cop here.

I had photographed Felix, a slight man who is HIV-positive, earlier in the week in a series of group portraits of VOCAL. (He’s a member.) VOCAL issued a statement here. A VOCAL member tells me Felix is OK.

Photos from the occupation’s near-eviction from Zuccotti/Liberty Park here in NYC today.

More—plus audio—to come….

The Aperture Foundation hosted a symposium last week, What Matters Now—Proposals for a New Front Page, which I participated in. We explored possibilities for creating a website rooted in images that would be a source for news, information, narrative journalism, and other forms of nonfiction narrative work, AND—and this is the key— also foster civic engagement.  Below is a short item and a photo I submitted to the web page. I made the image while traveling from one demonstration to the next with members of VOCAL (see previous post). The point of the photo is: communication. A VOCAL member was discussing the purpose of their direction action against Merck with an interested commuter.

VOCAL member reaches out between actions, July 28, 2011

Any new web entity, however engaging and brilliant, will be lost unless it has an active constituency participating in and supporting it. There must be a community behind it, a movement in fact. For inspiration I look to community organizers such as Saul Alinsky, Mike Gecan, and the Industrial Areas Foundation—and the Tea Party. All stress the centrality of building communities and movements around both shared values and substantive person-to-person connections. These are the keys to our success with this project—and to the challenges we face.

“In organizing, we teach that great and thriving institutions do three things: they provide people with opportunities to relate publicly; they design ways for people to learn together, satisfying the enormous appetite for knowledge and improvement that seems wired into our DNA; and they engage in meaningful public action.

“Relating, learning, and caring—when a congregation, or association, or party, or community, or country hits an all three of these cylinders, it can really move forward. When it misses on one or more, it either lumbers or stalls or goes into reverse.”

– Mike Gecan. “The Tea Party Movement Isn’t Radical Enough.” February 2011