Emergency Relief: Thank You Alex

Arrest me before I 
can speak freely. 

On 27 April I was arrested for being a participant in Occupy Wall Street. You can read that story here. As I was in police custody and working to secure my release, the NYPD raided the Occupy camp at Union Square and confiscated my personal rolling luggage as 'unattended' amongst other group property. That story is here. Inside that luggage was all the paint, brushes and supplies I use to make protest signs for the movement, and to collect donations that support my and the work of the movement. In one day, in a completely illegal arrest of an individual and theft of his personal belongings, a person was not only accused of crimes not committed, but denied the ability to support himself in his attempts to exercise his (and your) first amendment rights. And what's left of middle class America tucks in the kids and settles down to a hot cup of Nestle's cocoa, secure in the fact that the American dream is alive and well and the grass will still need cutting on Saturday. Or maybe not.

On Monday, 2 May, the New York Times reports NYPD Arrest Units, using old bench warrants for misdemeanor crimes, entered the homes of Occupy participants and woke them up in an attempt to disrupt May Day activities and provide surveillance on the Occupy movement. Was that part of the dream?

And the beat goes on. Thank you Alex for helping me rebuild after my attack by the NYPD. Never did I suspect, in my return to America from an expat life, that the banks would now be able to rob people, and that the people would now need to defend themselves from the law enforcement officials who are supposed to be protecting them from the other people who used to rob the banks. A bad dream at best.

Alex sent me $100 and reports: "I know this will go to a good cause". 

NYPD: "Duh"

In my quest to retrieve my stolen personal property, I have now logged 4 days at 4 different police locations but have yet to see a single item. I am told that it does indeed exist and have even seen some items on a computer printout but absolutely nothing has been returned to its rightful owner yet. 

Here's the routine so far:

Friday, 27 April, 10pm:

-  Arrested 7am - taken into custody

-  1 black rolling luggage cart removed from Union Square

Saturday, 28 April, 9am:

-  Visit Precinct 13 to pick up personal items from arrest - inquire about luggage cart/contents

-  No luggage cart found - told to inquire with Officer who took items

Sunday, 29 April, 3pm:

-  Interview Officer Lombardo - in charge of property impound at Union Square

-  Told property would be at the 7th Precinct and to check there

Monday, 30 April, 4pm

-  Arrive Precinct 7 - ask about property

-  Told no record existed. Need officer's badge # and precinct. Say, "Lombardo". They say they don't know Lombardo - send me away. "Try 1 Police Plaza", downtown. Extremely unhelpful.

Tuesday, 1 May

-  May Day march from Bryant Park to Union Square to Wall Street to Bull - Big success - not a good day to visit police stations

Wednesday, 2 May

-  Heavy rain, no travel

Thursday, 3 May

-  Heavy rain, no travel

Friday, 4 May, 2pm

-  Arrive at 1 Police Plaza - helpful friendly admittance, two very helpful officers at computer let me view the screen as we search first for Lombardo - found, search for lost property report - found, search for individual items: Interesting. At this point the officers determine that once found, my large black rolling luggage cart was emptied and the individual contents each logged with a catalogue number. My luggage cart has been sent to a warehouse in Long Island City, whilst the individual items have been mixed in with all items from the day and are at Precinct 7 - will need to visit both.

-  The officers print out 4 sheets listing some of my belongings and direct me to Precinct 7. They advise me to be very nice with people there and I will get my things.

-  5pm - Arrive at Precinct 7. Another Occupier is just receiving his belongings after 2 1/2 hours because the staff cannot figure out how to get a working printer on the network for property. A very nice civilian lady is just leaving for the day, but she checks my sheet, checks the property room, and then tells me that indeed, my items are there. I am advised to come very early in the morning, and retrieve the items, before they are sent to Police Plaza 1, back downtown.

Saturday, 5 May, 8am

-  Arrive at Precinct 7. Am almost immediately told that nothing would happen and that property could only be retrieved on Monday - Friday, from 8 - 5. Officer looks at my paper and asks where I got it. When I say Police Plaza 1, he looks surprised, as if they weren't supposed to give me that.

-  On the paper are listed POM, Craig Goodwin from the 105th Precinct as Invoicing officer, SGTs Jay Garcia and Quentin Fox from the 7th as Approval officers - yet the staff on this day wants nothing to do with any of this. Best to die and come back another day.

Again. Thank you all for your help. I had a thought this week that I should start a Kickstarter project called "Help Me Beat The NYPD". With it I would make a blog and documentary film that follow my arrest trial along with my efforts to retrieve my artwork stolen by the NYPD. Let me know what you think of that project, and what amount you think would be sufficient for funding.

  

Occupy Wall Street Forecloses on Bank of America ... Every Night

Sleeping protected
as a form
of self expression

According to the New York Times, seizing the upper hand in the battle to maintain a 24 hour occupation in New York City, Occupy Wall Street demonstrators have repelled the NYPD with a paper shield in the form of a 12 year-old Federal Court order that allows "sleeping as a form of public expression" and spent a number of nights in front of Bank of America at Union Square and two other banks in the area. Brandishing a large paper facsimile (mounted on previously declared illegal cardboard) Occupiers moved onto public sidewalks adjoining the banks on April 6th and have maintained a nightly vigil for over a week without arrest or serious incident. "So long as we're not making noise, obstructing pedestrian traffic or doing any other thing that could be construed as disorderly conduct, we're cool", explained one of the nightly Occupiers at BoA. The reaction from the NYPD has been even more interesting as winter warms into an American Spring that could make Rodney King proud. A feeling of "Can't we all just get along?" pervades both fronts on the sidewalks at night, contrasting greatly with the general shock and awe tactics of the police plus park rangers in Union Square during the day. Firmly knocking on the wooden table at which I sit and compose this missive at the Apple store, I sense a reshaping of tactics that may be the heart of allowing Occupy and mayor Bloomberg's self described personal army to get along as the Occupation now sets it's sites on breaking up Bank of America as a first anniversary present to itself come September this year. But let's not get ahead of ourselves. My experience the last three nights shows that both Occupy and the NYPD can play cat and mouse with equal aplomb. 

There goes the
neighborhood

04.08.12 - On the heals of a Rolling Stone article by Matt Taibbi that described Bank of America as "the world's worst-behaved teenager, taking your car and running over kittens and fire hydrants on the way to Vegas for the weekend" Occupy's mainstream media described l'enfant terribles rolled up to the BoA at the corner of 14th St. and University place almost making it look like the neighborhood was gentrifying and pushing out the neighbors that had caused property values across the US to plummet in the wake of a massive sub-prime mortgage crisis the bank helped to perpetuate. As it has become the practice for the NYPD to close Union Square Park at midnight with the placing of hundreds of barricades to block entrance whilst deploying another few hundred zip-tie-handcuff armed police inside the barricades to make sure Occupiers really don't want to go there, demonstrators have opted out of being arrested in favor of just taking a real legal eagle nap and possibly having a little pizza before bedtime. All they need to do is leave the park and head across the street to BoA, Citibank, or others surrounding the park. Currently the sidewalks beside three banks host Occupiers with sleeping bags in safe, well-lit locations where the only thing missing might be the mints on the pillows. Wake-up calls, however are de rigueur and provided by smiling NYPD officers who are starting to look like they just might be enjoying that rolled up legal document that's been shoved up their butts. Friday night turns into Saturday morning without incident and smiling, cheery police officers were not uncommon as protesters awaken at 8 and are pretty much told by the nanny state to "go to work".

Easter preoccupied

04.09.12 - Midnight Easter morning rolls around and one might have thought that Occupiers and their babysitters were planning an Easter egg hunt. The Washington Post National edition declares that Occupiers were holding a "slumber party" and a movement, now renowned for their horizontal structure, takes the same position in relation to speaking out. Horizontally. But before it's time to snooze Occupiers schlepp the 'People's Library' from the park to the sidewalk adjacent BoA and can be seen reading, sharing a cache purchased from Taco Bell as well as sharing the days stories as the Occupation doesn't so much wear thin on Occupiers but quite possibly wears tiresome on the city coffers. The New York Times reports again that so far 17 million dollars have been spent on the Occupy police detachment while mayor Michael Bloomberg proceeds to layoff 4,675 teachers - a total of 6% of all the city's public school teachers.  Officer Lombardi, a real hard case from old Zuccotti days looks quizzically at a bunch of people he can't arrest because they aren't breaking any laws and then comes up with some didly shit just to give people a hard time. "You can't sleep on arranged plastic milk cartons with cardboard on top because that's considered a structure"- really important stuff considering that the crime rate continues to climb in the 5 boroughs as 400 officers are kept on reserve just to police the avowed non-violent Occupiers. And the crime? Hmm. Sleeping. But, not a crime, so some other crimes will need to be found to justify all those cops. But not this night. Midnight has turned into Easter Sunday, even Lombardi is tired and there are eggs to be hidden at home by the younger officers on patrol who can't quite remember this sequence from the training films they saw at the academy. All quiet on the occupied front. Good night John Boy.

NYPD nightlights

04.10.12 - As the next day rolls in so does a refreshed shift of newly minted officers. Seniority keeps the oldsters at home on holiday and fresh grads are shipped in to handle the Occupiers. And it is far from a fair fight. Piling out of two squads these fresh faced defenders of the public trust try to figure out who's going to be the leader and approach a leaderless movement. Lumbering up to the wall of reclining Occupiers an officer who must have studied Jack Web in his training days, says. "Ok, boys, you're gonna have to move".  "Why?" a seasoned Occupier and six-year veteran of the streets counters. "Because you're on private property, you're all homeless, and they want to steam clean the sidewalk", returns officer unfriendly. Hidden muffled snickers abound from the Occupy camp, "Jeeziz", you can almost hear the NY Occupiers say. "They never steam clean the frigging sidewalk". Seeing this is going nowhere another officer sheepishly says, "I don't know, I've never been here, I don't know what to do" and turns back to the pack as our Occupier of the moment proceeds to take the first big mouth apart by citing what is public and what is not, what is legal and what is not, and another eloqutes how he has seen the city's homeless shelters and declares that this sidewalk is cleaner and safer than the lot of them and he's not moving an inch. Time to call for back-up.  And so on the day following Easter, a paddy wagon is parked on the corner with a flashing rack of lights left on all night, just to warn the citizens, that an Occupier might wake up and go fishing through whatever food they have left from the previous day's kitchen stash. And all in front of Bank of America.

Some days, it hard to decide what real or not, what's true or not. When the richest man in New York marshall's his 'personal army' to defend just one of the banks who has systematically robbed the American people, and the people have marshaled their right to defend their money - where does it all end? Occupier and organiser Nelini Stamp says in AlterNet news " “We want to highlight that banks steal homes.” Occupiers at the Union Square location remain intent on just just stealing a few winks on the zombie bank's public sidewalk to make that point. 

Today's Epiphanies: Goldman Sachs' Executive Director, Greg Smith, Quits - Pat Robertson Endorses Legalisation of Marijuana

"Wake up Dorothy, the tornado's over", said Aunti Em to the American Public. And so today, with a sidebar in the New York Times that features the two most popular stories on Facebook, 'Trending' stories as they say, we are treated to two seeming epiphanies from the far right. 1) Resigning Executive Director Greg Smith in an NYT OpEd: "Why I Am Leaving Goldman Sachs" and 2) Leader of the Televangelist stalwart The 700 Club, 81 year-old Pat Robertson, with the NYT bullet: "Pat Robertson Says Marijuana Use Should Be Legal". Holy shit Tin Man, it seems we have all just woken up from a terrible dystopian nightmare - and are now what? Free? Nah, it's not that good yet, but these two stories are a helluva start for an otherwise slow news day in New York.

Victor Kerlow

Smith begins his revelation with this striking moment of clarity: "TODAY is my last day at Goldman Sachs. After almost 12 years at the firm — I believe I have worked here long enough to understand the trajectory of its culture, its people and its identity. And I can honestly say that the environment now is as toxic and destructive as I have ever seen it." 

Boy howdy, Scarecrow, I believe you have seen the light! But TheDailyMash in London takes things even a shade more truthful in its parody resignation letter from Darth Vader to the Empire. "The firm has veered so far from the place I joined right out of Yoda College", states Vader, " that I can no longer in good conscience point menacingly and say that I identify with what it stands for." Hilarious, but more patently heartfelt than anything in Smith's confession of conscience. I mean, really, where in the fuck did he think he was working for the past twelve years? Oz?

Conversely, on the other side of the right, as if it had two sides, Pat Robertson, a five-decade evangelical leader and outspoken voice of his own moral minority, the Christian Boadcasting Network has come out in favour of the legalisation of Marijuana. “I really believe we should treat marijuana the way we treat beverage alcohol,” Mr. Robertson said, "I think: this war on drugs just hasn’t succeeded.” And his comments come as music to the ears of many whom have argued that drug laws unfairly attack young minorities. “It’s completely out of control,” he continues. “Prisons are being overcrowded with juvenile offenders having to do with drugs. And the penalties, the maximums, some of them could get 10 years for possession of a joint of marijuana. It makes no sense at all.”

So imagine if you will, that we all woke up one day and everything was fine in Kansas, or Tokyo or dare we say, New York and we could go about our daily business with less fear and a whole lot more hope about the world in general - but oh no.

No high profile resignation from the evil empire that is Goldman Sachs would be complete without a rebuttal from the head Satans named in Mr. Smith's letter. "Our firm has had its share of challenges during and after the financial crisis, but your pride in Goldman Sachs is clear. You’ve not only told us, you have told external surveys", they state, writing to clients to control damage, citing an 89% approval rating from clients and employees. Hmm. Denial. That's a tough one. If I had Goldman Sachs on my couch today I could only advise that maybe they click the red slippers together twice, call Pat Robertson and smoke a joint. Maybe then things would be alright.

U.S. "Day of Rage" Protesters Hit Wall Street Against the Financial Corruption of Our Homeland

Make Jobs Not War

According to CBS News protesters have been occupying Wall Street and surrounding streets since Saturday in an effort to call attention to the real terrorists of the world financial crisis - the banks themselves.I and a friend walked down Sunday to lend support only to find the police had blocked off Wall Street itself and shuttled them into less obvious areas. We found a torn hall meeting in a small park featuring a speaker with a bullhorn and a rather calm and reasoned discussion of the current financial mess. Whatever suspension of disbelief the participants might have originally brought to the financial crisis was firmly dissolved and replaced by indignant condemnation of the unhealthy bed partners of big bank business (read Goldman Sachs) and government. Geithner and Paulson as wolves guarding the hen house comes to mind.

"Protest organizers seek to persuade President Barack Obama to establish a commission that would end "the influence money has over representatives in Washington.'" Their website isoccupywallst.org. 

"According to The New York Times, New York City Police confirmed that arrests were made under provisions which make it illegal for two or more individuals to wear masks. (You're shitting me right?) Another woman was arrested as she wrote on the sidewalk in chalk." (You're shitting me again right?)

If you haven't figured it out yet, since the Patriot Act, we are all living in a police state. Peacefully protest in whatever way you can, but protest for sure. I traveled to ground zero on Sunday with a Navy vet who served in Afghanistan and on the way he said to me, "Terrorists? Nah. I think we did all this ourselves to distract the people while Wall Street robbed all the money."

And the new Skidmore Owings and Merrill Freedom Tower? It's ugly and uninspiring, from a firm who specializes in precisely that kind of building. I also overheard a 9-11 tour guide telling a group of visitors that jet fuel burning and burning building contents brought the towers down - a fact that any first year structural engineering student knows is not true. Wake up America. Things are not exactly as you have been led to believe.

Flying to NYC on 09.11.11 Finds a Paranoid, Manipulated and Depressed Nation Upon Arrival

Those little town blues

Flying from Asia to New York is punctuated by an announcement on the PA from the pilot leaving Taiwan that says they are required by US law to tell passengers that they are not allowed to congregate in groups of more than two, anywhere on the aircraft during flight. It is only a small notion of the American paranoia to follow. You don't hear that going to China. On the flight from San Fran to NYC the first sign that America is in deep shit is that there is no free food on the flight as there had been from Saigon to Taipei and Taipei to San Francisco. Nope. You can buy a breakfast cookie for $3 on American Airlines or a limp shrink-wrapped croissant with ham and cheese for $6. It sucks. Welcome to the good ole US of A. Time to pay for everything - including the free-everywhere-else carts that you use to get your luggage out of the airport. In America, those cost $5. In Europe, Asia and Africa, all of which I visited in the past two years, they are free - and supported by advertising on said carts. "Sorry, we're fresh out of money in America because all the war and shit over the past 10 years", reads the idea and fresh out of things like 'freedom' and 'liberty' too according to the press I read.

'Soul Dust: The Magic of Consciousness' by Nicholas Humphrey - a Revelation or Just an Academic Suspension of Disbeliefs?

Had I been educated as a theoretical psychologist instead of a writer, graphic designer and advertising guy, I might have come to have used the word 'consciousness' to describe the end result of what I have designated as A Suspension of Disbeliefs, the title of this blog. No matter. In any case it turns out that my thesis, that we all create realities that are essentially states of suspended disbelief by our choices of religion, political persuasion, career, country, love, belief or not in the magic bullet theory, or choice of architecture' is paralleled by Nicholas Humphrey, emeritus professor of psychology at the London School of Finance, in his new book, 'Soul Dust: The Magic of Consciousness'. Combining theories in neuroscience and evolutionary psychology, he argues,"consciousness, is nothing less than a magical-mystery show that we stage for ourselves inside our own heads - this self-made show lights up the world for us, making us feel special and transcendent - or by my description, consciousness is just the result of our own little suspensions of disbeliefs.

In the New York Times, Alison Gopnik, illuminates Humphrey when he says, “The bottom line about how consciousness changes the human outlook — as deep an existential truth as anyone could ask for — is this: We do not want to be zombies,” he writes. “We like ‘being present,’ we like having it ‘be like something to be me.' " Humphrey ingeniously works out the many consequences of this apparently simple fact. He points out, for example, that we humans will work as hard to get a newer or more vivid or more intense experience as we will to get a meal or a mate. Almost as soon as we could use tools to make hearths and spears, we also used them to construct consciousness-­expanding art installations in painted caves like Altamira. But this grand desire to be fascinated with life and continued learning and creation also comes along with a very human fear of death, not because it means the end of our body but because it means the end of our consciousness — "better to be a spirit in heaven than a zombie on earth." So essentially, consciousness is a show we stage for ourselves - a show that keeps us alive and potentially happy.

The origin of the modern concept of consciousness is often attributed to John Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding, published in 1690. Locke explicitly defined consciousness as “the perception of what passes in a man’s own mind". The earliest English language uses of "conscious" and "consciousness" date back, to the 1500s. The English word "conscious" originally derived from the Latin conscius (con- "together" + scire "to know"), but the Latin word did not have the same meaning as our word — it meant knowing with, or having joint or common knowledge with another - not the same as Locke's more singular explanation of knowing oneself. But where Humphrey's theory seems to break with ideas of the past that consciousness was simply a passive state of being and being aware of being, is that he surmises that we actively choose to write whatever drama it is that we ascribe to the concept of being. And we like being us!

Of course, to have a conscience, to have consciousness of ones own mind and to be physically conscious are all different in relation to the science from which they are derived - Conscience as a philosophical concept (right & wrong), consciousness in a psychological sense (self awareness) and conscious in a medical/neurobiological sense (brain functioning). Many philosophers have argued that consciousness is a unitary concept that is understood intuitively by the majority of people in spite of the difficulty in defining it. Others, though, have argued that the level of disagreement about the meaning of the word indicates that it is an umbrella term meaning different things to different people. And then there are the spiritual definitions of achieving consciousness - But Humphrey argues that our quest to live, love and learn is the result of a benign evolutionary illusion. Something ineffable - too extreme for words. It does feel good to be alive, and it feels especially good to be me being alive. And that in turn makes us go to great lengths to extend our lives and to fend off death. Similarly, we are most vividly conscious of the unexpected and the novel — consciousness is linked to curiosity and exploration. So, Humphrey argues, the thirst for consciousness keeps us on the move, reveling in new information even when the immediate usefulness of that information isn’t apparent. In the long run, though, pursuing new information does give us important and distinctively human evolutionary advantages. - So maintaining an active and positive suspension of disbeliefs about the world around us is a good thing. According to Nicholas Humphrey biology, psychology and neurobiology all combine to drive us to be more happy, more creative and more curious about life, because it's our life.

It's good that a theoretical psychologist of considerable world-renown and a blog writing advertising guy in Vietnam can agree on something. Of course, it will take years for many other scientists to go about proving or disproving Humphrey's hypothesis - so in the meantime, I hope A Suspension of Disbeliefs becomes a place for all of us to write the best possible script we can for ourselves - and find Humphrey's magic of consciousness in that.

D a v i d E v e r i t t - C a r l s o n

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