Occupying Providence with Alfred Corn and Doug Anderson (by Leslie McGrath)

I spend so much time online that the majority of my friendships are virtual, particularly friendships with other poets. We’ve taken to the quiet and ease of the electronic ether like the strange birds we’re often accused of being. And I like it that way. But over the last few weeks, as I read about the protests on Wall Street which have spread throughout the country, I’ve wanted to see for myself what these “occupations” were all about.  Ignored at first by the mainstream media, the first coverage I’d read in the New York Times was so dismissive that my interest was piqued. I’m old enough to remember precisely the same turn from dismissive to disdainful to curious on the part of the media forty years ago. Those demonstrations were about civil rights and the Viet Nam war. I had begun to think that the days of American protest in the streets were over. After all, our economy had surged for decades toward the end of the twentieth century, bringing a cultural evolution that seemed to embrace many American ideals. I was wrong.

     Last Friday, I was fortunate to spend an afternoon with two writers whose work I’ve long admired-- writers who were older and more conscious than I during that period: Alfred Corn and Doug Anderson. Both these men have written extensively about those earlier protests. Corn was a student at Columbia University and his book-length poem, Notes From a Child of Paradise, excerpted here, is among other things, an account of his participation in those movements. Anderson served as a medic during the Viet Nam war, which is the subject of his memoir, Keep Your Head Down: Vietnam, The Sixties, And a Journey of Self-Discovery.

We spent a couple of hours in Burnside Park, where about fifty tents were set up in small encampments around a bronze statue of General Burnside, who was draped with a red banner which read  Amor, Solidaridad, Libertad. The park is bordered by the Providence town hall, a federal building, and numerous office buildings, including the Bank of America. It was lunchtime and the outdoor kitchen served plates of green salad, bread, boiled potatoes and fruit salad to a steadily-moving line of people of various races and ages. I had the impression that Occupy Providence was serving not only the protestors who had committed themselves for the long term, but the unemployed, the homeless, and anyone who entered the park. We met a few people. Bill, one of the organizers, told us he’d been laid off from his job as an ironworker. Another man told us he was a naval architect whose work had dwindled significantly over the last few years. There were toothless elderly, young adults and a few children as well.

I felt overwhelmed at times that afternoon. It was moving to see how this group of citizens had established a well-functioning nonviolent protest. It was heartbreaking to see these protests in my country. Last Friday I lost the last bit of my sense of feeling protected, and yes, exceptional, as an American.

I asked Doug and Alfred (who has also spent time at the Occupy Wall Street protests) to write a bit about their impressions.

Alfred Corn: Occupy Providence  (OP) was different from Occupy Wall Street (OWS), first, in that I saw many more tents in Burnside Park than were in Zuccotti Park.  But, paradoxically, fewer people.  The day we were there it was very quiet. No one was holding up signs or chanting.  I heard only one drum played briefly and not very loud, whereas drums were uninterrupted at OWS.  Burnside Park seemed very well organized, with even a sign-up for "Garden Detail."  Food service was efficient and clean. The first-aid table seemed ready to help any person with minor injuries.  There were fewer onlookers at Burnside, which was more a world unto itself.  Sixties demos didn't provide as much for participants as OWS does.  But then the duration of the event is now longer.    

If I compare OWS to demonstrations of the Sixties, I would say there is less anger expressed now than then, more determination to make a peaceful statement. No one uses the word "revolution" now.  The percentage of older participants is greater now than then.  In fact, some of the older participants are former activists from the earlier decade.  The focus of discussion in the Sixties was war and imperialism. OWS and its fellow demonstrations are focused on the financial plight of the "99%."  The Sixties also had a cultural message, involving alternative ways of forming communities, a bias in favor of mind-altering substances, a different aesthetic proposed for music, visual art, and poetry, indeed, unconventional, perhaps "tribal" ideas about clothing and personal ornament.  But OWS isn't much concerned with culture.  

Demonstrations in the Sixties had a limited time frame: a given day for a limited number of hours. OWS is a sort of "live-in" for an unspecified duration.  It reminds me of the "Hoovervilles" of the 1930s, semi-permanent housing thrown up by those made homeless by the Great Depression.   Because there are no leaders as such, it seems provisional, ad hoc, fluid, and hard to define.  Definition will probably come, and there is already a lot of education, via discussion and distribution of flyers, etc.  I don't believe most Americans were aware, before OWS, that 1% of the population holds 40% of the wealth.  But now they can't fail to know it.  Knowing it, they may take steps to change this ratio.  I hope they will. 

Doug Anderson: Going to Occupy Providence filled me with hope. Watching the networks give their homogenized versions left me feeling lonely until I got to Burnside Park.  There is nothing more powerful than bodies in the street working for change.  There were all kinds of people: those my age who remember the 60's, middle class professionals, and very smart young people full of solutions for everything from alternative energy sources to reforming the electoral process.  There were disabled people with signs pertinent to their fate if their various disability funds were cut. There were children and the very old.  I felt like I'd come home after a long exile.

*

I left Providence late that fall afternoon feeling grateful to have taken it in with two writer friends. I don’t yet know how, or even if, what I saw that day will find a way into my poems. I’m not sure Alfred or Doug knows either. But it was important for each of us to be there—as writers, as citizens, as witnesses.

 

 

 

 

Comments

[Amy Greacen]

I met Doug in Amherst MA when he was a teacher at Hampshire and I was a student at Mt Holyoke -- and we were both in a play at Smith! (A classic Pioneer Valley experience). It's been fun to re-encounter him in the virtual world -- And Leslie, since I work outside academia I too find I keep up with other writers mainly via facebook these days. I can well imagine how reassuring it would be to go outside and share something public like that with "virtual" buddies. Nice post. Thanks.

[Leslie McGrath]

Hi Amy,
I love the idea of you and Doug onstage!

I never get over, despite how vociferous and complex it seems, how small the poetry world is. Doug's just about to move back to that area.

Sometimes I wonder what the effect of social networking sites will have on our literature. It certainly *is* reassuring to be able to be in contact with our peers, to broaden our group of friends, and to venture back out into "the land of flesh" as I've come to call it.

[Jane Hirshfield]

Leslie, thank you for this extraordinary post, and for giving Doug and Alfred the chance to also offer their own responses.

I love your sign, encouraging the 1% to "Occupy Empathy." Just so.

In NYC, last week, after my Poets House craft talk, I wanted to go see OWS at Zuccotti Park. It was my only chance to do that, on a quick trip in and out of the city. A board member emerita walked me over. It was late, almost midnight, and windy, raining, cold. She told me about the library, the kitchen, the drumming she'd seen on previous visits. When we arrived, what we found were mostly mounds of plastic tarps. Under some, people. Under some, the kitchen, the library, the "Comfort Station" (supplies of sleeping bags and such, I later learned). A few people stood quietly, talking, still up. I felt as if I'd come into a living room uninvited, that late night, uncharismatic hour. I didn't feel right about asking many questions. I just went from person to person and said "Thank you for what you are doing."

One man (in homemade plastic raincoat in the photo I asked permission to take), I did ask, "Have you been here since the beginning?" Yes, he had.

Here are some not very good photos of what I saw:

https://picasaweb.google.com/janehirshfield/OccupyPhotosRainyNightOct1902?authkey=Gv1sRgCP61hP2L-v7A4AE

I read this blog post after having watched on TV news last night the removal of Occupy Oakland. Tear gas and blows. It looked terrifying. What the Occupy people were chanting to the police: "Who are you protecting?" I couldn't help but think-- this is the same thing that people in Syria are now chanting to the army.

I hope the values of peace will outweigh the impulse for violence, as these demonstrations continue. The balance is precarious, always, in transferring balances of power. But all over the world now people are asking, "What kind of country do we want?" Asking in Europe, in China, in Burma, in Somalia, in Mexico. Also in Bhutan, and in Denmark. Whatever the culture, it's being made by answering that question.

I would like a country--and a planet--that answers by saying, among other things, that it chooses respect, dignity, health care, housing, education, equity, for each of its persons. I believe this is what the founders of this country wanted--some of them, even then, wanted for every single one of this country's citizens, without exception. I still sign on to that vision, and am grateful to all of those who are stepping out of their regular lives, far more fully, to do that.

I thank you again for this post, Leslie, Alfred, and Doug.

[Leslie McGrath]

What a joy to see you here, Jane, and to read this beautiful reply to this morning's post. How timely that I was able to get it online the morning the police began to "crack down" on demonstrations in Oakland and Atlanta. I'm hoping the demonstrators, many of whom appear to be educated in the practice of nonviolent protest, will continue that tactics, even as they meet fear and, yes, violence. I love the thought of Syrians, like the Libyans and Egyptians before them, all asking much the same question, "Who are you protecting?" of their governments and police forces. And now the question is being asked in more and more languages across the world.

I can't help but think about the hundreds of thousands of people who, like me, are stepping out from the ether to see what's happening and think anew about dignity, and yes, empathy.

I smiled while I looked through your photos. Would it be too cheeky too suggest you *not* quit your day job and turn to photography?

With love and gratitude.

[Amy Greacen]

Aww. Oakland is my stomping ground (and Jane's done time in the East Bay too, right? Can recall you reading a poem on a session with krasny on the juxtaposition of pyracantha berries and plum blossoms that's very east bay hills....). and it's been a bummer to see how things have played out in that case. Oakland has, I think, a form of collective ptsd from a long history of protests that were not especially peaceful. While i personally (don't hit me!) think Frank Ogawa Plaza is a pretty stupid place to Occupy (there's virtually no Wall Street presence in Oakland, from whom are we trying to take the place back?) the police response has been ten times stupider. hopefully last night was as bad as that one's going to get. Oakland's a rough time of it. They don't need any more violence -- not the citizens OR the cops.