Rise Above Oppression

"If only the war on poverty was a real war we would actually be spending money on it."

Everyday I wake up and I have to rise above the oppression. Just the day in and day out mechanics of my life are often overwhelming and I have to remind myself that no human should have to live this way.  The 1% and even the top 50% of the 99% don’t live like this.  They can decide to go shopping and buy new clothes or decide not to cook and clean and go out to eat.  They have choices that I haven’t had in years.

Every day I have to remind myself not to be depressed or discouraged.  I have to remind myself that just by the very fact that I haven’t crumbled under the weight of impossible odds and circumstances is nothing short of a miracle and a true testament to the inner strength within me that refuses to be extinguished. 

If I can’t manage it alone now I don’t have to, all I need to do is walk around and talk to just about anybody at the occupation to know that what I experience isn’t some kind of delusion but a cleverly disguised form of societal abuse. 
 

Before this movement truly brought light to the causes of my distress, I blamed myself and looked within to find a way out.  I studied the power of the present moment, the power of your own mind and thoughts,  I sought counseling, took anti-depressants to relieve the pressure, I exercised, fasted, prayed, meditated, read book after book designed to improve your life, I practiced gratitude, you name it, I tried it. 

It doesn’t surprise me now why not one of these methods brought anything but temporary relief.  If anything the best thing I ever did was try to come to terms with the suffering and accept it.  I tried to stop fighting against it because beating your head against a brick wall only hurts your head.  The wall doesn’t even care or know you are there so you only hurt yourself.  Even in as much as I tried to accept  the emptiness of living a life of lack and focusing on the little things that are free in life such as my child’s smile, I could never really do it.  You have to literally kill off a part of yourself to just silently watch the injustice.  You have to become numb and uncaring to no longer question or fight back and that is a lousy way to live.  The only people I know who can live like that are on some kind of drug or drama.

Most people however have actually managed it somehow.  I don’t know why I can’t be among them but I can’t.  My rage at the insanity of it all seems to consume me and stokes a fire that won’t be put out. 

When I was a teenager, my brother attacked me without any provocation on my part.  I was simply using the phone at the wrong time.  When I defended myself against him by throwing my cola in his face, in the living room he had chased me into with the brand new white carpet, my father having only seen my action proceeded to beat me and my brother got off scot free. 

This seems to be the way of the world these days.  I see it so clearly how innocent people are put down through no fault of their own.  Sometimes I just wish I could just take my children and runaway to a new land where everybody was cared for but I don’t know where that would be and I don’t have the money to get there even if I did.

I love this movement and I hope it grows to the critical mass it needs to succeed.  At long last, some of us have got it right.  We can’t just blind ourselves to not only our own suffering but the suffering of others.  We want to make it right.  We want heal the causes.  We want to stop the madness of cutting off a person’s limb and offering a band-aid.

Everyone is talking about life these days, how precious it is and so forth, how we should love each other and make the world a better place.  When I imagine it, I can only let my tears fall as there is no stopping them, I see it finally at the occupation.  It’s only a handful of us compared with the population but it’s there.  We care about the world.  When will you?

Cold Weather

Cold weather is a huge deterrent to our movement.  That those who wish to demand their right to freely express themselves in this supposedly great country of ours should be denied their right to even the comfort of living in a tent barely a step away from being exposed from the raw elements of winter is unconscionable.  Why are we being denied this?  Is it not bureaucratic oppression wielding it's mighty sword and just another weapon in it's arsenal of weapons to keep us right where they want us submitting to pointless controlling laws that keep the real voices from being heard?

I just went down to donate plasma and guess what?  A social security card and driver's licence were not enough.  I was denied because I need a letter from a utility company or some other sort of documentation that I am resident of the area.  Why?  Am I not a human and a legal resident of the United States of America?  Or is the real reason because if you are homeless in this country it's actually assumed that your blood is not good enough?  Isn't that the real reason?  We actually have laws and ordinances that support the idea that if you don't have enough money for a permanent residence you are some how defective and your blood should not be used.  This my friend is the WAR ON POVERTY not in the sense that we want to wipe out poverty but we want to continue to discriminate and keep them down not only by not providing a living wage for them but by emotional and psychological warfare.

We need huge tents at the occupation with heaters inside to us to keep us warm otherwise we will be so busy and occupied with our mere survival that our other activities will fall by the way side.  Is this not what has been happening all along to our entire society?  I have heard the message over and over again that those who can't come camp with us to make the takeover complete are just too BUSY with their own survival.  This has been the underlying cause of why we have let things get as bad as we have in this country, people are so concerned with making enough money to keep their homes, electricity, cable, phone, food, add 100 other concerns here that nobody has had the time to even THINK about what needs to be changed much less take an active role in making that happen.

What most don't even know is that this has been the plan of the 1% all along.  They planned to saddle you with these concerns so that you would not be able to stop the systematic placing of controls on the masses.
Well, our mission is to wake you up.  Our presence is a reminder to stir and awaken the tremendous power within after your long and brilliant indoctrination into accepting whatever comes your way as either someone else's problem or something that you couldn't possibly fight against.  Every able body should be camping, we should all be quitting our jobs, all of us refusing to pay our electric bills, our phone bills, our medical bills, our rent, closing your bank account if you are lucky enough to have enough money to still warrant one, refusing to shop at the big corporate stores.  We are more than them, we always have been.  The only thing we are lacking is the mass courage to really make a go of it.

Those of us in the movement invite you to join us.  We will help you uncover the courage which was put to sleep through mass media and 1000 other forms of your intentional dumbing down by the 1% and it's allies the U.S. Government in all it's different disguises and forms.

What more can I say?  If you value life at all and not just your life but the lives of the countless suffering not just in our country but all over the world you will join us.  Take a moment of silence to find that place inside of you, the only place they have no access to brainwash and destroy, and wake up to the real terrorism that is being waged against you every minute of your day.

I'll know when you find it because when you do, I'll see you at the Occupation.

OccupyKC My Findings

When I came to Kansas City 5 days ago to OccupyKC I did not know what I would find. Often a single mom in America is met with suspicion and let's just face it, many people are intolerant of children these days, especially children who are inclined to speak their minds about anything and don't just obediently obey orders to be compliant and quiet. Poverty also has a way of deleting you of all hope of acceptance and connection, so naturally I was terrified I would just find more of the same. Sometimes though, being completely wrong is the best thing that can happen to you.

Now I ask myself and delete sentence after sentence in an attempt to adequately describe what we have found here but the words seem hollow in comparison. Maybe there are simply no words to truly describe what is missing in mainstream society and what we have found at the occupation. Even the word compassion, which is thrown about so often by charities and organizations, doesn't grasp it, or maybe too many people use that word to describe something that isn't really it. Either way if you can imagine something of all the compassion you've ever known and multiply that by 99 you might get just get close enough to grasp it.

After that you would need to add acceptance but it's not the same one you know about because this kind is very rare and extremely difficult to come by. In fact, a person or peoples might wander their entire lives in search of it and never find it but of this kind we have suddenly found in great abundance free for the taking.

The word community comes to mind but again it's very definition as we've known it in this country once again lacks something. It's so watered down that you can barely recognize even the outline anymore. Here at the occupation they have the real version, and if you care about it at all, all I can say is you will have to come down and experience this for yourself. You would not believe me anyway.

Many other words come to mind now like beauty, trust, individuality, freedom, tolerance, diversity, and I could even go as far as to use the word love but nothing of the kind that you have been taught or even heard about for it only exists in theory in most places because it's always conditional. Here it is not.

Most people are in a daze or a haze, they are on auto-pilot conditioned to behave, to heed the drudgery, the alarm clock, the start of another day that doesn't excite them. For those that have no job to toil at, many just go back to bed to hide away from the falseness that meets them outside their doors but there's none of that here. If you don't get up you will miss something valuable for every moment people are connecting with each other and learning something new.

This is just a brief overview. I'm kept very busy here as there is always something to do or someone to talk to so I can't go into great details at this time.

So if you are afraid to venture out out of your comfort zone because of your thousands of bad experiences with main stream America, don't be.  This is the place to go to have your entire outlook on what it means to be human changed.  You won't be neglected here.  Every person is valued and appreciated.  Come and be among the awakened and those that know that if the change doesn't happen fast, very soon it will be too late. 

I'm Anni, ask around, someone will know me and find me and I will personally welcome you to the REAL WORLD.