The Oldline and Occupy: Separated at Birth?

We love meetings.  We do.

Over the Thanksgiving weekend, my attention was drawn to an interesting interchange between the church in which I grew up and the Occupy movement.

I'm a child of New York Avenue Presbyterian Church in downtown DC.   My parents were married there.  I was baptized there.  I ran and played with other kids through the five-ish stories of the building.  I got confirmed there.  It was there that I watched my very first nasty church fight, which soured me on church as an institution when I was a teen.  It was there that, despite the fight,  I learned the value of Christian service as a way to shatter the self-absorption of adolescence.  It was there that I returned to serve those in need as an adult, and where I reclaimed my faith.

She's a grand old progressive dame of a church, and just a short walk to the White House.  The pew in which Abraham Lincoln sat to worship still holds a place of honor in the sanctuary, and the original copy of the Emancipation Proclamation sits in one of the many parlors.  Martin Luther King Jr. preached from the pulpit, and the church was deeply active in the civil rights movement.

So it's been fun and not-surprising to see the folks who Occupy nearby using the church as a base for occasional meetings.  The church, being the flagrantly and unrepentantly liberal gathering it is, has also reached out to the Occupy folks.

That took most recent form as the congregation opened its doors for a Thanksgiving feast, one that gave the Occupy folks a chance to eat and celebrate together.   It sounds, by all accounts, to have been a joyful occasion, attended by hundreds who had the opportunity to give thanks together.

What struck me, though, was the process by which the whole thing came about.  That process was outlined in an article in the WaPo.   You have to subscribe/link up via FB if you want access to it, so follow this link forewarned.

Here's how it rolled: An organizer from an interfaith coalition approaches Occupy to ask them to dinner.  He is told that any invitation must be handled as an announcement to the General Assembly, the Occupy decision-making body.   There are protocols to follow, though, and such announcements need to be handled by the outreach committee.

The announcement is made, and there's discussion, but it goes nowhere.  

There's another meeting the next day.  Having worked its way through the proper committee channels to General Assembly this time out, the second attempt at the announcement was well received, and approved by consensus vote.  The decision was made, although the outcome was not entirely clear.

I read this, and I think to myself:

Sweet Mary and Joseph, these people are Presbyterian.

We say aye and nay.  They do jazz-hands up or down.  But dang.  Toe-May-Toe, Toe-Mah-Toe.   The similarities are uncanny.

And a bit worrisome, if Occupy hopes to avoid sliding off the same cliff of cultural irrelevance that the old-line has.

One of the aspects of the old-line denominations that makes us so challenged in the face of more aggressive, corporately structured non-denominational churches is the incredibly high transaction costs within our polity.  Yeah, I'll unpack that.

As a community, the way we approach decision making is immensely demanding.  Committees are layered on committees, and the processes of getting anywhere requires negotiating all manner of well-meaning procedural hoops.

Which means getting things done can frequently be an exercise in frustration, and what does get done is so filtered through competing agendas that it frequently reflects no direction at all.  More importantly, a huge amount of effort is poured into managing the complex dynamics of community life.  Those energies can make for strong and mutually accountable communities, but they also are energies being poured inward.  

And if you pour your energies inward, you do not build a church.  Or a movement.  You simply don't have the time, or the sustained sense of purpose.  This is the profoundly ironic reality of anarchist gatherings.  There are few structures more convoluted and time-consuming than the complex political dance of a collective.

Or a presbytery, for that matter.

Occupy Targeting

Stay on target.   Stay on target.

With a tiny bit of free time on my hands this last week, and my flighty muse temporarily disinterested in the book I'm chugging away on, I found myself doing a little bit of research.

With the days growing short and the winter coming on, the Occupy Movement here in DC is going to be facing a conundrum of sorts.  The long history of sustained camping-demonstrations here in the Nation's Capital combined with a moderate-to-progressive local ethos may not yield the sort of forcible removals we've been seeing in city after city this last week, but one never knows.  It didn't stop the aggressive action to clear out Zuccotti Park last night in New York, at the heart of where the Occupy movement began.  There, the response of the Movement was mostly what it needed to be.  Just clear out.  Just pick up peaceably, smile at the nice officers and tell them you love them, move, and then settle back in the next morning, like the murmuration you are.

Still, time is short.  The Death Star is clearing Yavin.  It is important to stay on target.

The larger challenge will come, in DC at least, in reinforcing identity and in spreading popular support for the movement among Americans generally.   To do this, I would ask that Occupy K St and Occupy DC consider direct action that reflects the actuality on the ground.   Having gotten the satire out of my system on that subject, here's a simple proposal for consideration by the General Assemblies in question:

As the political system is not, not yet, the focus of Occupy, focus on the ground you inhabit.  Call out those places of power that are not accountable.  What troubles most Americans is the control over our political system by powerful, entrenched, and moneyed interests.  The One Percent, as they say.  These are the lobbyists, the potent influence-shops that employ our politicians and politicos after they've left office.   This is where corporate money buys the direction of our culture, and where the good of the country is taken out of the hands of voters and citizens.   This is the heart of injustice.  The political leaders from either of the two parties we're permitted to choose from do not speak against these places, and they will not.  Not ever.  It's where their campaign staffers go to work, and where they themselves hope to pad the nest for their retirements.

Resisting those places would have purchase, deep purchase.   If America hears you are doing this, Honeychild, ninety-nine percent of them will wave their hands in the air and say AMEN.  Even the Tea Party will acknowledge the excellence of your kung fu.

Here in the District of Columbia, there are plenty of office-fronts where a few hundred souls with signs making noise could light up, in a prophetic way, those places of unaccountable power.  These are not places known to most citizens, but as I'm a DC townie who likes to do research, I know 'em.   The next time you're considering a nonviolent Guy Fawkes-masked march or an impromptu resistance dance party, consider these as destinations:

The Podesta Group.   Akin Gump.   Patton Boggs.   I have selected these three against two primary criteria:  1) they need to be in easy walking distance of your encampments, and 2) they need to perfectly represent the essential power you oppose.

Let me light 'em up a little for ya.

The Podesta Group is a good place to start.  They're at 1001 G Street, NW, Suite 900.   They are, according to opensecrets, the number three lobbying shop in DC this year, pulling in over twenty million dollars from their clients in 2011 alone.  And oh, what lovely clients they have.  They've pushed the interests of BP, Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, Bank of America, and various Big Pharma corporations, and that's just this year.

If you're having a Pavlovian response to Podesta, well, that's because it is just so very tasty.

Akin Gump is a DC powerhouse, and has been for decades.  I used to work in the same building they inhabit, at 1333 New Hampshire Avenue, NW.  I watched former lawmakers and power-players go in and out, in and out.  The guy who advised Clinton to hush up the Lewinsky thing?  He worked there.    They represent, among many others, Chinese interests, Big Oil, Boeing, and casinos.  It's a short walk, right next to Dupont Circle, and if you want to stop in for a beer at the Front Page afterwards, it's right there.  They're number two on the list of 2011 lobbying firms, at twenty-five million in receipts in 2011.

Finally, there's Patton Boggs, the big boy on the block.   They're looking at nearly thirty million in client money for 2011.  Their huge client list includes various large big Pharma players and Walmart.  They are also in the notable employ of several big-ticket investment and financial interests, who are their largest dollar amount clients.

Meaning, my friends, that they work for Wall Street.  This is where the power of Wall Street reaches into the halls of governance, kids.  This is where the social connections of power are leveraged, bought, traded, and sold.    This is why you're here, and it's only a 25 minute walk from McPherson Square, at 2550 M Street, NW.

So I will leave this in your hands, to do with what you will.  Be peaceful.  Be loud.  Be gracious.  Be bold.