Clarion Content

You might have heard about the fabulous local start-up, Organic Transit. Our very own Ned Phillips did a feature on them last week. This terrific feature led to Organic Transit engaging Ned to shoot their Kickstarter video. He knocked it out of the park. See below.

The Organic Transit Kickstarter went live today. Check it out here.



Organic Transit's ELF from Ned Phillips on Vimeo.

Labels: Durham, economics, energy policy, vehicles

The Clarion Content has high hopes for Durham's future. We were planning a series on development and Durham this week. We are hoping we didn't wait so long that the debate is over before it started.

We will give you, dear readers, our take anyway, for what it is worth. The new county courthouse and associated parking, for the record, cost over $119 million dollars.

What does it say about the County's and the City's priorities that they built this while Durham remains in the top five metropolitan areas for income inequality? Is this their solution? Is this a better investment, a higher priority, than in the schools?

Or even than community policing? This is enforcement. What of deterrence?

Labels: cop stories, Durham, economics, Politics

A new, Durham based, business run by three sisters, The Makery, is set to debut tomorrow. The Makery is sales platform. It is an attempt to connect local shoppers with local artists and artisans.¹ They want to make it even easier to buy handmade.



If the reaction to their launch party, held at Mercury Studios Friday night, is any indication, Durham is behind them. The place was packed wall to wall with supporters; artists, friends and locals, all came out on a Durham Art Walk night.

The Makery's platform provides a collective venue for artists to get their name and their work in front of the public. The Makery provides a valuable service. The idea is to take away some of the logistical difficulties and associated headaches with marketing and selling one's own work.

The Clarion Content is a proponent from a philosophical standpoint. We are always in favor of someone other than the artist being the pitch person for the artist's work. We believe that a strictly sales based focus, for the artist his or her self, slowly annihilates the work.²

The Makery exists to play that role, between the artists and the cold, cruel, capitalist world. At first, they are just inviting a select number of early adopters, connoisseur, artists, bon vivants and handmade lovers to be founding members of the community. Invitations are available here.


Notes
¹Some of have classed them a local Etsy, but because they also help with marketing and consulting support, they are even more comprehensive than a massive entity like Etsy.

²See Warhol or Hirst, whom are no more artists than Ford's and General Motors' engineers or the folks writing TV ads, applying the appellation artist to such snake oil salesmen voids the word of meaning and bespeaks of the cultural morass the American Empire has become.

Labels: Art, Durham, economics

If we had a way to plot all our missed-connections on a map and post them for public view, they would be clustered around the hubs of Durham's mass transit. The bus, in and out of The Federal for a quick early evening beer on a Tuesday at six, rolling down Main Street towards the West End Wine Bar or Pop's or Toast or Whiskey or Dame's Chicken Waffles or any other spot where, despite the small metropolis feel of this, our charming little city, there are simply so many plush cultural options that it is almost impossible not to feel like a bon vivant.

To recognize the spirit, the vitality, and the importance of public transit, we wanted to shoot some of our fashionable Durham men, fully styled, riding the bus, in operation, a Fashion Drive-By on the Bull City Connector. We have a FREE bus, people. Cities this size, this culturally fly, don't have free public transportation. Surely, not in America. Oh, but yes, here in Durham.

The route wraps around downtown, Golden Belt, old west Durham, Erwin Road, Northgate Park, and a bus comes by each stop about every fifteen minutes. A free ride to downtown on a Friday or Saturday night? Sure, we'll take that.

Our wardrobe partner for this Fashion Drive-by, #FashioninTransit was Vert & Vogue, the environmentally conscious, gorgeous, high-end boutique located in Brightleaf Square. This shop features both women's and men's wear, but is one of the only boutiques in the area with such an amazing selection of men's clothing. It is no wonder they have won the Indy Weekly's Best Men's Clothier award, three years running. They carefully and personally select every item that comes into the store from their fashion partners, the result is unmatched quality.

Vert & Vogue and our Creative Director, Cady Childs, channeled a late sixties, laid back look with modern twists, like Raleigh Denim jeans and pants, handmade belts by De Palma and Tanner Goods. The hair styling was done by Emma Frink and Christina Pelech of Rock Paper Scissors.

And, of course, you may recognize our models: Cody Tyler, the face behind, Totes Codes, which hosts some of the best events and DJ'd parties in the hip Durham clubs, The Pinhook and The Bar, Joe Hall of Hammer no More the Fingers, and Jolo, and Ned Phillips, the filmmaker who created Lila's "Heart to Heart" and HNMTF's "Kilowave" videos along with Jessi Blakely of Jessica Arden Photography (who also is the photographer behind the Clarion Content's #FashionDriveBy movement).

Durham, the degrees of our separation just keep getting smaller and smaller.

Joe Hall of Hammer No More Their Fingers, wearing a Steven Alan shirt, available at Vert & Vogue.

Joe will be performing his solo project Jolo, Thursday, September 20th at The Pinhook, along with long lost Durham favorite, Violent Dreams. 

In Durham and on the bus, work doesn't stop for Fashion shoots, it just keeps on rolling.



 
Keep in mind the Bull City Connector buses continued normal operations the whole time the Fashion Drive-by was being shot. Our special thanks to the bus passengers and the bus drivers who were all very accommodating.


And one more thank you to all those who made this shoot possible.

Jessica Blakely aka Jessica Arden Photography
Cady Childs, Creative Director
Vert & Vogue, special thanks to Tessel
Emma Frink and Christina Pelech and Rock Paper Scissors
Margaret McNabb and the Durham Convention and Visitors Bureau
Lauren Parker and Go Triangle.org
Cody Tyler, model
Ned Phillips, model
Joe Hall, model
Eric Waters, coordination and staging assistance
Ashlie White, second shooter
Seth Felder, videography

Labels: Art, Durham, economics, energy policy, Fashion, Fashion Drive-bys, photos, Pop Culture

There are those it makes awful mad to hear the Clarion Content excoriate Barak Obama¹ for the lack of change we have seen in the last four years. This video clip is a reminder, that it is not so much President Obama as it is the institutional barriers, blockades and outright resistance from The Establishment² that makes real change so difficult.³

Without further ado, ladies and gentlemen, Representative Alan Grayson of Florida and the Inspector General of the Federal Reserve, on where your tax dollars have gone.





Notes
¹Fortunately, Representative Akin is out there in Missouri to remind our editors, no matter how tempting some of their minimalist vision of government might be, their social mores haven’t changed since the Inquisition. Romney’s V.P. nominee, Paul Ryan, co-sponsored a bill with Akin last year, that would have banned abortion except in cases of forcible rape, incest or the mother’s life was in-danger. Making the all important Evangelical Republican distinction between rapes where the victim invited it and “true” rapes. Unclear on where that slippery slope leads? Watch “The Accused,” starring Jodie Foster.

²The Man, the lifers in unelected positions of power, the holders and controllers of great and institutional wealth. Not that their secretive or unresponsive, but on Federal Reserve dot gov, one notes they have not revised the section headed "Purposes and Functions" since 2005, since ya know, like nothing of note has happened since then.

³Incidentally, The Man was who the Fed bailed out while the rest of us sucked on the carbon-monoxide filled tail pipe of The Great Recession. The bankers sure are taking it hard.

Labels: economics, Economy, Ethically questionable, political quips-n-quotes, Politics

The Clarion Content had a fabulous time on the bus yesterday. We cannot overemphasize what a good deal a free bus that runs down Main Street is for Durham.¹

Want to see something at the Nasher?

What about an event at Goldenbelt?

Perhaps get a drink and listen to some tight grooves at the Pinhook?

Or have a $1 PBR on Monday at the James Joyce?

Or anywhere and everywhere in between and then some. Free. Pull the cord, the Bull City Connector will drop you off where ever you want.²

Yesterday, they let the Clarion Content team, photographer, Jessica Arden,³ and Creative Director, Cady Childs⁴ hop aboard the bus to photograph a fashion shoot, the latest of our Durham Fashion Drive-by series. We mingled with the public.⁵ The drivers, especially our pal Medoza, were amazingly accommodating, able to get their passengers to their appointed destinations on time and keep up with our photographic needs and desires.


We can't wait to show you the whole thing...but in the meantime can we whet your appetite with a preview?


Models from left to right, Cody Tyler of Totes Codes parties and events, director, Ned Phillips, aka the Cozmik Gangsta of the ODD crew, and musician Joe Hall of Hammer no More the Fingers and Blanko Basnet…


Amazing men's clothes from Vert & Vogue.

Special thanks to the stylists at Rock, Paper, Scissors Salon and Gallery for their work with the model's hair.


Notes
¹It is our contention that the bus is an important public good and a social justice issue. In this day of modern transportation and therefore distance, people need cheap options to travel to work.

²Seriously, for more than fifty Durham restaurants, bars, clubs, art spaces and more, the Bull City Connector's service is just about door-to-door.

³This was a physical shoot, can't wait for the behind the scenes footage. Ms. Arden must be doing her pilates, because it was circus act to keep a steady base to shoot from while winging around corners, stopping at traffic lights and otherwise having the floor move beneath her feet, as the wheels on the bus went round and round.

⁴Managing three models, nine outfits, in the drizzle on a moving public bus while coordinating with three PR people, two videographers and three photographers; a veritable whirlwind, Ms. Childs was unbelievable. This all after coming off of working the fabulous soft opening at Durham's newest hot spot, Mateo Tapas.

⁵It wasn't quite this packed.

Labels: Duke, Durham, ecology, economics, Fashion, Fashion Drive-bys, Politics

The Clarion Content ran across a fascinating article in the New York Times recently about the nature of new, American middle class jobs.¹

Since reading Jerermy Rifkin's prescient² and controversial The End of Work more than ten years ago, we have understood that there is an upheaval coming for the American workforce. We are in the middle of that massive, uncomfortable shift right now. And perhaps it is not affecting 99% of the country, but there surely is a goodly chunk of folks who are feeling the socio-economic ground tremble and shift beneath their proverbial feet.


Maybe one day they let Rifkin out of the basement where they are keeping Paul and Anne Erlich...

Here is what the New York Times wrote, June 30th:

Personal training requires many of the skills and qualities of the new typical middle-class American job: it is a personal service that cannot be automated or sent offshore, that caters to a wealthier client base and that is increasingly subsidized (in this case, by employers and insurance companies).

But as people with such jobs have found, the pay is low. Unlike the clock-in-and-clock-out middle-class jobs of the past, personal service occupations have erratic hours, require entrepreneurial acumen and offer little job security.

“The kind of job where you come in and work 9 to 5, and where someone tells you what to do all day is becoming scarcer and scarcer,” said Erik Brynjolfsson, an economics professor at M.I.T. and co-author of Race Against the Machine, a book about how automation is changing the job market. “The kind of job where you have to hustle and hustle and where you’re not sure whether you will have enough clients next month, where you have less job security, is becoming much more common.”

For personal trainers, the median hourly wage is less than $15. Because they have to find clients and set up their businesses, trainers must be flexible, adapting to client schedules and physical abilities, as well as the availability of exercise machines and accommodating weather.

They must also be able to engage with all sorts of personalities — precisely the skills that help keep these jobs around while others are replaced by algorithms.

“Knowing how to keep someone motivated and how to keep a connection are skills humans have learned and evolved over hundreds of thousands of years,” Professor Brynjolfsson said. “A robot can’t figure out whether you can do one more push-up, or how to motivate you to actually do it.”

Notes
¹Truth be told, one of our twitterers sent us this way, and we would give credit where credit is due, if we could only remember whom it was. Speak up, if it was you!

²Not that we believe every word of crazy old Uncle Jeremy...but its like the best tall tales, fables or ghost stories, there is a nugget of truth or a lesson at the core.

Labels: economics, Politics

The Clarion Content loves to turn to our interesting links posts when something crosses our desk that we don't have time to examine in a full article. We appreciate when you the readers send us, the cool, the interesting, the outlandish and the different. Check out old Interesting Links posts here (you will have to scroll down below this one).



For this week's edition, our initial link is of both scientific and historical significance. The first man made object in our recorded history is about to leave our solar system. Voyager 1 is about to be the first space craft in our time to enter interstellar space.

Voyager 1, a sixteen-hundred pound space probe launched by NASA and Cal Tech in 1977, is now 11.1 billion miles from Earth and entering the heliosheath, the outer most edge of the solar system. Read the whole story here at The Bunsen Burner.

Next up, something a bit more low tech, but equally unbelievable. Token sucking. That's right, you read that correctly, token sucking. We saw this on William Gibson's Twitter feed. Gibson is a favorite Clarion Content author. His Neuromancer is just as ground breaking and dramatic today as it was twenty-five years ago.

Token sucking is an old school crime according to the New York Times, fortunately/unfortunately, it is over, as the New York Subway System eliminated the last of its physical tokens about eight, nine years past. Token sucking works like something like this,

"The criminal carefully jams the token slot with a matchbook or a gum wrapper and waits for a would-be rider to plunk a token down. The token plunker bangs against the locked turnstile and walks away in frustration. Then from the shadows, the token sucker appears like a vampire, quickly sealing his lips over the token slot, inhaling powerfully and producing his prize: a $1.50 token..."

Wild. And that was before the Great Recession. Read the whole article here.

Following about as low tech a crime as we have heard in some while, we have a couple of high tech tip links for you. First, "Five Killer Strategies for Brands Engagement on Pinterest and Linked-In" from Social Media Today. So many companies are wondering what they should do with their social media presence once they sign on, here are some good suggestions.

The second tech article from Kathleen Holmlund, a digital media strategist, dissects search engine optimization techniques for your Word Press site. If you use Word Press, it is worth the read. Check it out here.

Finally, even the main stream Man has gotten wind of crowdsourcing. The Economist breaks it down here with a take from the staid business world that is fascinating for its more measured, reasoned take that stands in strong contrast with the hyperbolic fan-dom on crowdsourcing which often simply assumes, a priori that it is paradigm changing.

Labels: economics, interesting links, Politics, Pop Culture, technology

Have you heard about the Sol Food Mobile Farm?

If not, you should.

It is one more fabulous, innovative, concerned group of Durham citizens. Four Durham School of the Arts graduates, Eliza Bordley, Reid Rosemond, Ellen Duda and Dylan Hammond are taking a biofuel¹ powered bus that they converted on a six month, 9,000 mile, nationwide tour. They are fiscally supported by Zomppa, a food education and advocacy non-profit(and your Kickstarter cash).


This is the roof of the bus...
It is planted as part of a scheme to regulate the temperature inside the vehicle.
Photo credit Scenes from my Lunch Hour


The Clarion Content sat down with this fascinating foursome for an interview yesterday, on the bus that will serve as their home and sleeping quarters, as they prepared to embark on their nationwide tour. They depart from their south central Durham farm base today, first stop Asheville.

Their journey will include ten workshops and as many fifty expos. It is a non-paying gig so the group will be working as many farm trades, farm stays, and farmer's markets as they can. They will also be growing herbs, vermacomposting and stocking up on staples like beans, corn meal and polenta as they hit the road.

During their workshops they will construct community gardens with local children and interested adults. The Sol Food Farm team already has experience in this arena. They partnered with several Durham school of the Arts teachers, including another DSA alum and high school pal, Victor Cadilla, now a DSA history teacher, to found the school's Urban Farm Club. Together with students they built eight raised beds and planted an herb and vegetable garden.

The Sol Food team has amazing plans. They are headed for some fantastic destinations and wonderful collaborations, including, in Maine with renown agricultural researcher and educator, Elliot Coleman, author of The Four Season Harvest.

One of their goals is to bring the message to adults and kids alike that local agriculture exists. Urban farming is possible. Food does not have to be massed produced and shipped across country. As Rosemond put it, "We are doing it out love, it is what we are into."

They are also partnering with an incredible Durham start-up called In R Food that analyzes, among many other things, the distance a product has traveled to market, what's in it and what are the locally produced alternatives.


Left to right Ellen Duda, Dylan Hammond, Eliza Bordley and Reid Rosemond.
Photo credit Scenes from my Lunch Hour

Durham, you never cease to amaze.

Sol Food Mobile Farm will be filing more dispatches from the road. We wish them well. The Clarion Content will keep you updated on their fabulous journey. We will be running a full length feature on the crew, their bus and the mission next week. Stay tuned.

For now, check out more pictures of the Sol Food Mobile Farm bus and crew at Scenes from my Lunch Hour.


Notes
¹ Technically waste vegetable oil, which is even better than a many a regular biofuel, because it never goes through processing, it just goes straight from the restaurant's fryer into the fuel tanks.

Labels: Durham, ecology, economics, energy policy, food, Living things, science

Wait, what, Facebook sucks?

Like no way. I can't believe it.

All right, extract us from our dreamy Valley persona and perhaps we can believe Facebook stinks, after all we have been writing about the ways they have been screwing their users for years. As the Los Angeles Times notes, "[Facebook has] what is widely regarded as the world's largest cache of personal data — a treasure trove for businesses looking to reach their ideal customers."



Your info is for sale.
Unfortunately for investors in Facebook, the company has not figured out how to make money on all that data it owns. As the Wall Street Journal notes, "[Facebook] revenue fell 6% in the first quarter. Profit fell 32%. [2012]" As any Facebook user can tell you, no one clicks through on the ads. Corporate America, still slowly extracting their heads from their proverbial bums, is just coming to terms with this reality. General Motors recently pulled all of its ads from Facebook, saying it wasn't seeing a return on its investment. A recent AP/CNBC poll found 57% of Facebook users say they never click on ads or other sponsored content and another 26% said they hardly ever click through ads.¹

And when the Facebook posse fishes for ways beyond traditional advertising to exploit its massive network, nearly one billion users, it often ends up running afoul of the law.² For example, Facebook is still trying to settle a lawsuit regarding what it called 'sponsored stories.'

Beginning in 2011, Facebook let brands pay to retransmit users' activities to their friends' pages. So that, if someone clicked the "like" button for a corporate brand, the activity would show up as a "sponsored story" on their Facebook friends' pages. Sued for using its account holders images and likeness for commercial activity without their permission, Facebook is settling out of court without admitting wrong doing reports The Seattle Times.

Facebook's anecdotal popularity could hardly be lower among our peer group. Witness the hue and cry when Facebook bought popular photosharing service Instagram. The instantaneous reaction was, 'that sucks' and 'say goodbye to Instagram' and 'sh*t, how do I take my photos down.' The polling data backs up what we are hearing, the same AP/CNBC poll we cited above found 59% of respondents said that they had little to no trust in Facebook to keep their information private.

Facebook's fastest growing demographic of users is now the least technologically savvy, old people. It is rapidly gaining users in the fifty plus age set. And as we know, nothing makes something 'uncool' to youth than a bunch of old folks digging on it.

Facebook's footprint is far too big for it to go away completely, or even to collapse like MySpace, but it would not surprise the Clarion Content at all to see it lumbering down the dead end paths to irrelevance followed by the likes of once untouchable internet behemoths AOL and Yahoo.

As we have stated many times before, it is our contention that the internet's primary purpose is not simply to be a better sales tool than television.

The historical pattern on the internet³ has been when an organization tries to disguise its intentions, yet its ultimate and evident goal is 'Sell, sell, sell,' users eventually react with distaste, moving on to nimbler, more entertaining, less fiscally obtrusive sites that have likely yet to figure out their own revenue model; see Twitter, Pintrest, Tumblr, et al.

Facebook's huge public offering, the one that valued the company at upwards of $100 billion, marked a beginning all right, the beginning of its decline.⁴⁵


Notes
¹Not a math major, but 83% of your users hardly ever or never click through ads? What are you selling? The Brooklyn Bridge, you don't say...

²We are not referring to its monopolistic practices, although it is blatantly in violation of existing anti-trust laws in America.

³To date the internet has proved itself fairly well able to be lateral in its ability to adapt around and/or subvert existing hierarchies.

⁴They do have nearly a billion users so this fall may be glacial at first, but momentum in the internet age is a brutal leveler this is not the Roman Empire, Facebook's power is far more virtual.

⁵All predictions offered with heaping handfuls of salt.

Labels: economics, Predictions, technology

The story is only a week old, and the NFL effective buried the lead by announcing the New Orleans Saints bounty scandal the same week star quarterback Peyton Manning became a free agent.

Perhaps, if you are not a sports fan you have not heard about the story. According to the NFL, the Saints had an organized bounty program to reward players for knocking opposing teams' players physically out of the game, cash bonuses for incapacitating them via injury.

The hue and cry about this discovery from the talking heads in the media, especially at ESPN¹, has been ludicrous.

Our view, "What a bunchy of smarmy politically correct nonsense!"

The Clarion Content has no love for retired quarterback, and noted publicity hound, Brett Favre, but we think he got it right in this case. Favre said essentially, bounties or no bounties, it is a tough guy's league and people are basically trying to knock you out of the game on every play.

We at the Clarion Content cannot stand all the sanctimonious carping of the media mavens, like Dan Patrick, about how awful, how wrong, how devious these bounties the Saints put out on opposition players were.

Pul-leeze. The same folks who have been moaning about the NFL turning into flag football are suddenly horrified by bounties?? The same folks who were running weekly segments called "Jacked up!" and laughing their butts off at huge de-cleating hits are now disturbed by bounties??

Uh, huh, what?

It comes as a shock to you folks that the defenses were trying to knock quarterbacks and other star players out of the game? Really? That's a surprise?

Or it was the part where they were getting paid extra for it that bothered you morons?

Isn't that what their salary was for to begin with? NFL defensive players are performing a glorified version of the little kids' game, "Kill the Guy," week in and week out. Now somehow, because there are bonuses ponied up by the players involved its amoral?

What a crock!

Forgive the harsh language, but it is the same bullshit we see across a litany of other capitalist contexts. Whatever egregious violation of human rights or environmental degradation is being wrought, so long as it keeps costs down and it is largely behind closed doors or unreported, the mass of morons, will casually bury their heads in the sand and deny it is even happening. What Walmart/Nike/MNC X is paying little kids pennies a day in Asia to make our toys/clothes/crap? Eyes shut tight, head buried in sand, "No they aren't. No they aren't."

Undeniable mass media exposure brings said scandal to light, and the tune changes to "Oh wait, they are. Dang. Somebody needs to do something about that. Now! That's terrible."²

The standard political correct operating procedures see sanctimony rear its ugly head, and those caught out blantantly being abusive are punished, but real systemic change is never considered.³

In this case, sports is once again a microcosm of society. The reality is football is a hyper-violent sport. Kids are paralyzed and permanently injured playing the game every year. High school and college players sustain thousands of concussions annually, for a shot to make it into a pro league where the minimum annual salary is nearly $400 grand a year. Sudden traumatic death and/or disabling injury is an obstacle, but no kid ever thinks it is going to happen to them. Many serious injuries happen on otherwise seemingly innocuous plays.

Fans cheer the big hits. Violence sells.⁴

Pro football is a multi-billion dollar sport, and they play to win the game. To foolishly single out the New Orleans Saints, to pretend that their deliberate attempts to injure opponents are somehow unique is beyond ludicrous, it is civil hypocrisy of the most society annihilating sort. Don't hate the player, hate the game. Don't blame the player, change the game. Or accept that Americans are getting what we pay for, a brutal violent contest between highly compensated young athletes.


Notes
¹One of the leading practitioners of yellow journalism today.

²A similar example: Joseph Kony has been running the LRA conscripting child soldiers and committing a litany of heinous crimes for more than twenty-five years, only now when the visual evidence is positively shoved down their proverbial throats are the masses reacting. During the reign of King George the II, more than 5 million people died from civil war in the Congo, there was no hullabaloo. No call for intervention, Americans, en masse, ignored the tragedy.

³This is why most American's are fine with the United States intervening in Libya and equally fine with the United States ignoring the wholesale slaughter in Syria. It is the left to the morally stolid, the John McCain's, Ron Paul's, Dennis Kucinich's, Noam Chomsky's of the world to point out the blatant hypocrisy. Alcohol related hazing is treated the same way. 1) Deny it. 2) Over-punish the individuals involved when tragedy occurs as it inevitably will periodically. 3) Ignore the system until it happens again in such a way that the horror is an unavoidable spectacle.

⁴Why do you think Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) took off just when they started trying to limit the violence in boxing? Why did NASCAR, for all its attempts to run and hide from its roots, suddenly bring back the "Rubbing is racing" mantra when attendance and ratings figures started to fall off a cliff? In America, violence sells.

Labels: economics, ESPN, Ethically questionable, NFL, sports, Sports Economics

In this brief video, Harvard Professor Lawrence Lessing explains how we, the People, have lost control of our supposedly representative democracy. And what we might do about it...

As Lessing points out, if there is one thing the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street agree about, it is the pervasive and pernicious presence of systemic corruption.

Labels: 2012 presidential election, corruption, economics, Politics

Double Fine Adventure Breaks Kickstarter Records (& My Twitter Feed)

by: Beth Mandel


Full speed ahead


9:15pm, February 8th: I am lazily scrolling through tweets on my phone, deciding whether or not to watch another episode of Daria on DVD or just collapse into bed for an early night. Suddenly a tweet pops up from @avantgame, the handle for famed game researcher, GDC ranter, and TED talker Jane McGonigal. It’s an auto-tweet from Kickstarter, indicating she backed a project called Double Fine Adventure with her added description of “Point and click adventure games are my FAVORITE xoxoxoxo”. I have deep respect and admiration for Ms. McGonigal, considering her to be far more than a researcher and more of a modern-day philosopher, whose philosophy of games could quite possibly change the world (which, by the way, is the theme of her book: Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World. Given Jane’s recommendation, I pull out my laptop to hop on Kickstarter and take a look.

Google+ is still open in my browser from earlier in the evening. I notice as my feed refreshes that one of my more “ahead-of-the-curve” online friends*, @rulesaremyenemy, has already posted that he’s funded Double Fine Adventure too. I head on over to Kickstarter to read the pitch. Unlike Jane, point and click adventure games are not my favorite type of game. And this pitch, despite being written by industry icon Tim Schafer, (creator of Full Throttle, Day of the Tentacle, Psychonauts and several other important pieces of game canon) was a little lacking on details. Nothing about the game concept, or plot gave me nothing to latch onto and say – “This. This makes me want the game immediately.” I was momentarily tempted by the fact that just pitching $15 was enough to get a copy of the game on Steam upon release. But then I thought to myself, “With backers like Jane spreading the word this will surely get enough pledges to be made, and I’ll just wait to hear how it is when it comes out before I buy it.” In fact, as I checked out the page around 9:30pm, it had already raised $50K of its $400K target. It just wasn’t swaying me enough to contribute.

Apparently, I was in the minority.

I watched another few episodes of Daria and checked my phone again before hitting the hay. Twitter was blowing up. Felicia Day (@feliciaday, writer and star of pioneering web-series “The Guild”, and geek chick icon), was one of about ten celebrity bloggers who had already funded Double Fine Adventure, not to mention about thirty of my PAX twitter friends. But it wasn’t just the auto-tweets from Kickstarter clogging up my feed; it seemed as if everyone who backed the project also felt compelled to retweet other people they saw backing the project. As if, it’s not enough to say, “Oh look at this cool thing I’m supporting,” but instead have to say, “Check out all these OTHER cool people who are ALSO supporting it.”

Eight hours after Tim Schafer posted his $400,000 project, it was completely funded! In twenty-four hours, it had doubled that number. As of this morning, not even two full days later, it has passed $1.2 million and is teetering near the edge of $1.3, with over 35,000 backers. Word is out – this is the most money a project has ever raised on Kickstarter, and moreover, the fastest it has reached such levels. According to game industry blog Joystiq, a Kickstarter representative said, “I can confirm that there's not been a project that has raised as much as this one in such a short timeframe.”

The phenomenon has captured great attention. McGonigal tweeted: “This feels like a historic day, now that DoubleFine has raised over half a million dollars in 12 hours on Kickstarter.” Schafer himself edited the text of the Kickstarter plea to acknowledge, “We're getting a lot of attention already and it seems like this little project could have an impact beyond itself.” Certainly their case proves that some Kickstarter maxims previously acknowledged as gospel might not be, such as “always include a video.” Now people will say, “Look what Schafer did without one.” Beyond that, this sends a clear message to the big dogs in the game industry – indies are no joke. If you don’t up your game creatively, and stop designing for your ability to market instead of your ability to captivate, people will look elsewhere for games. The discussion has so much prevalence at this point it’s even triggered a new meme on reddit, from which I pulled this imgur: http://i.imgur.com/LFspv.jpg. For those who don’t recognize him, the bottom picture is Schafer.

It even makes those of us (like me) who decided to sideline it ‘til release reconsider – if this many people are convinced the game is going to be awesome, perhaps I should jump on the bandwagon. Funny how mob acceptance can produce front-running that way. In any case, the message is clear: INTERNET, take notice.

Labels: economics, Guest columns, Pop Culture, technology

The president and founder of the Campaign for Change, Otis Lyons, is also the writer, director, producer and driving force behind, "Ridin' Wit' Joe Crack."

It is a one night engagement, for now, tomorrow night, at 7pm at the Durham Performing Arts Center (DPAC).

Our advice, Durham, do not miss this show.

This is the eighth year in production for "Ridin Wit' Joe Crack." Each year Lyons adds an element of showmanship and drama, raising the game and the excitement level. This year one hundred and twenty-five members of Hillside High School Marching Hornets band and dance team will be joining the cast of Joe Crack on-stage at the DPAC.

From what we have seen in rehearsals, Durham, do not miss this show...



Steve Collins is Joe Crack
All photos courtesy of Scenes from my Lunch Hour


The Clarion Content is fond of the maxim, truth trumps fiction. It is a mantra that Otis Lyons has lived so empirically that he needs no reminders of its veracity. Lyons was a talented student according to peers and acquaintances, but he was rolling with the wrong crowd. His role models were leaders in the streets, not the classroom. Like the tale he tells in Joe Crack, Lyons was a gang member who made his living selling drugs.¹ As Joe notes, "Few live and survive life's ride to tell this story."



Otis Lyons aka Vegas Don (standing)
All photos courtesy of Scenes from my Lunch Hour


That is the sad truth for Lyons old crew, as the man they affectionately call Vegas Don looks back from the far side of forty, by some estimates as many as two-thirds of his high school "crew" may already be gone. Twenty out of thirty young men, waylaid, doing life behind bars or dead. Lyons is doing all he can to prevent this outcome for others in our community, Durham.



Left to right---Orishio Williams, Otis Lyons, Steve Collins, Monte C.
All photos courtesy of Scenes from my Lunch Hour


Lyons is not only spreading the message through the show itself, but literally picking up people along the way. For many members of Lyons cast, the story of Joe Crack is personal. Nick Alejandro, whose performance as Joe Crack's running mate, T-Money, sends shivers down the spine says, "This [role] touches me because its so real."

The mantra of truth trumping fiction rings authentically for cast members who have experienced much of the tale of life on the streets that Lyons and Joe Crack unfold.

Alejandro admits before the birth of his daughter Amaya, five, his life was headed down a dangerous path. He has been working with Otis Lyons and the Campaign for Change three years. Campaign for Change is Lyons non-profit organization dedicated to anti-gang, drug and crime education through youth empowerment, positive role modeling, goal-setting and outreach.

It is this same gripping reality that captures the minds of audience members young and old alike. Lyons narrative, his ability to show the truth of what is happening in the streets, opens eyes and moves hearts. The show incorporates live music, from modern hip-hop to R&B to Carmina Burana, spoken word, and a powerful personal message from a wheelchair bound former gang member², it is a raucous wall of sound and an explosion of energy, with highly stylized blocking and elaborate choreography.

The vignettes depict scenarios that many young people face: peer pressure, street life, relationships, family interactions, girlfriend/boyfriend dynamics. They are deliberately archetypal without sounding corny or shying away from the real.

Lyons is a demanding taskmaster of his cast, often sounding like the basketball coach³ he is.

Drilling and honing the tiniest details, he demands, "Why is he sweating?" looking at Joe Crack, played by Steve Collins, who is literally dripping with the intensity of his effort.

Lyons answers his own question, "Because he is giving 110%. Why isn't everyone else sweating?"

His voice reverberates and his actors dig deeper.

Lyons knows he is tough. It is because he is about the message. He states firmly and forthrightly, it is not about the song and dance for him. It is not the spotlight of the production that drives him. It is the message, "We are changing lives here. We can't play. We don't have the time."

The earnestness of his intensity mixed with his record of success breathes fire. His people want to run through walls for him, uncomplainingly repeating takes, working as their own stage crew humping pieces of set and props on and off stage again and again.

Steve Collins, a NCCU theater graduate, playing the lead, Joe Crack, has no problem declaring it is so, "I gave up everything for this. My car. My place. I am sleeping on a friend's couch. I am willing to forgo everything else."

Collins is a veteran of professional theater who has been working with Lyons for several years. The cast is stocked with talent. Older actors like Orishio Williams and Johnny Foster stride the stage like the streets to create a seamless illusion of the world where Joe Crack dwells. Younger performers like Moriah Williams, Fred Jones, and Rahim Royal aka the DeFacto Thezpian, shimmy and strut with confidence and feel. Williams plays a "street girl" like she owns her character's diary. Jones, as the comedic junkie, has touches of everything from Jimmy Walker to early Damon Wayans. Royal's body control and movement in a non-speaking role is mesmerizing.

It would be impossible not to highlight the powerful, ebullient, vibrant performance by Jakayla Hart as Keisha, Joe Crack's girlfriend. If there is one cast member whose passionate work rips at the fabric of your very being, it is Hart. She stands strong next to the virtuoso intensity of Collins's Joe Crack and Alejandro's T-Money. In a male dominated cast, about a male dominated milieu, Hart might not be able to save Joe Crack and T-Money from themselves, but the emotional strength and harmony of this triumvirate under Lyons direction will touch you.⁴



Jakayla Hart as Keisha
All photos courtesy of Scenes from my Lunch Hour

"Ridin' wit' Joe Crack's" message is powerful and inspirational.

Among the memorable lines from the production:

"Real G's don't hurt the people they love."

"Visiting a living corpse behind steel bars."

"The thin line between walking it, talking it and living it. Giving it or just pretending it's all right."



Steve Collins as Joe Crack and Jakayla Hart as Keisha
All photos courtesy of Scenes from my Lunch Hour



Steve Collins as Joe Crack and Jakayla Hart as Keisha
All photos courtesy of Scenes from my Lunch Hour

Durham, you do not want to miss this show.

Originally published January 5th, 2012.


Notes
¹Read Otis Lyons's Durham story of poverty, violence, high school, family, gangs, prison, and ultimately redemption here.

²Lyons often uses former gang members as speakers. In this case, it is a personal family friend, Mike Spain. Mr. Spain, a wheelchair bound casualty of gang violence, tells it like it is. He warns young audience members, "You don't have to end up this way. You have a choice. I have to have help to take my pants off. I might spend twelve hours or two days waiting for someone to come by my house to get me, to go anywhere."

³Word is Lyons, aka, Vegas Don coaches the Carolina Don's youth basketball team in his spare time.

⁴We defy you to go and not cry. This, too, is Durham. Too ignore the reality of it is a moral failure.

Labels: Durham, economics, facing race, Pop Culture

Clarion Content fave, and perhaps the most insightful pop culture commentator today, Stephen Marche takes on the American dollar in last month's Esquire magazine. Who is Marche, you ask yourself, dear readers? Only the kind of man who can cite Milton Friedman and Kanye West in the same article and have you nodding your head.

As he says in this, his latest blast, "As sound as the dollar," once proverbial, now sounds ironic. And while at first, this might feel unsettling, as Marche concludes, it is ultimately liberating.

Read the whole piece here.

Labels: economics, media, Pop Culture

The way the train used to roll into Durham...
Photo courtesy of Old West Durham Neighborhood Association

Durham passed a half of a cent sales tax increase yesterday designed to augment mass transportation in the area. The program includes improvements to Durham's bus system beginning in 2012, including more buses on high rider-use routes, expanded regional bus service and expanded bus service to RDU Airport. Of course, the plan's authors sold it the public as a light rail program, knowing that despite its practicality and relatively low cost, nobody loves the bus.

The trains are in the plan, too. It calls for thirty-seven miles of commuter rail between Durham, RTP and Raleigh. This portion includes the construction of four new commuter rail stations in Durham, beginning as early as 2018. It also includes the much publicized seventeen miles of light rail between Durham and Chapel Hill, with as many as twelve stations scheduled to begin construction as early as 2025.

Long time readers know, that like many, the Clarion Content has a hard time advocating in favor of more taxes and increased government spending. But even in our limited government preferring hearts, we can see where a common good like mass transportation infrastructure is the kind of thing that the classic social contract calls for government to do. Build infrastructure so our individualistic, car-loving neighbors don't so clog the roads, and thereby pollute the air, that our little neck of the woods becomes the next sprawled out Atlanta or Los Angeles.

The Clarion Content gets especially edgy when the plan's advocates will not entirely disavow the use of eminent domain to construct the mass transit system they envision. We recall the very first time we heard about light rail in the Triangle, it was more than a decade ago, and it was because the word on the street was that they were going to close Sam's Blue Light.

We were opposed then and we are still concerned now and not just about our beer supply.¹ Eminent domain has a history of being used diabolically to help the strong take advantage of the weak. We believe in the good intentions of the authors of the Durham Bus & Rail improvement plan. We think they genuinely want to help the community. And our area needs the help, some projections show regional population is set to increase by nearly one million more people in the next twenty years. If folks continued to use their cars at the same rate that we do now, the Durham/Raleigh/Chapel Hill area would be among the nation's most congested.

And all those cars would continue to gobble up open space, encouraging development to spread further out. Conversely trains drive development to city and population centers, preserving outlying and rural areas by default. The Clarion Content is not totally sold on this rationale. This is especially because we have heard that existing plans call for the construction of a rail station in the heavily wooded area on Farrington Road between NC 54 and US 40. We can, again, see the good intentions and the utilitarian logic of building a station in this location. We cannot ignore geography or demography.²

The kicker, the tiebreaker as it were, is the economy. In good times, there might be better rationale to debate against this kind of government investment, but in these times of stagnation and persistently high unemployment, infrastructure spending that yields jobs is welcome. Initial estimates by the plans authors project both a significant number of new jobs related to years of construction, and permanent professional service jobs, perhaps as many as 6,400 new positions in total. These jobs would be huge boon to the community.

Furthermore, there is some smart planning that is part of what has us convinced of the good intentions and aims of the authors of the proposal. The buses are an important piece to the Clarion Content. Buses are disproportionately used by the neediest members of society. Additionally, in an effort to minimize the regressivity of the new sales tax, it exempts gas, food, housing, utilities and medical bills. This we approve of, and, it gives us a good opinion of those moving the plan forward.

The jobs and the economic impact combined with heading-off potentially gruesome sprawl and congestion are enough to tip the Clarion Content's scales in favor of this proposition. We will be watching and covering its implementation closely.

We would note that it is our contention that far too many Americas take lightly what we have, and we don't just mean the loot/material things that we call our "stuff." We mean the very houses that we live in and streets that we walk. America has a massive amount of infrastructure and development. Somebody³ built every bit of it: roads, bridges, sewer systems, the electrical grid, etc. Although he has been blithely ignored by Congress, we did agree with the gist of the argument that President Obama made in his now nearly forgotten jobs address.⁴




Our grateful thanks to Bo Glenn without whom this piece would not have been possible.


¹This plan, under the auspices of the Triangle Transit Authority, failed for lack of local government investment.

²This area has already seen a tranche of new homes built. And there will be far more downtown stations and downtown construction than there will be in rural and outlying areas.

³Immigrants.

⁴Three years too late, but right idea, finally.

Labels: 2012 presidential election, constitutional issues, Durham, economics, infrastructure, Politics

What does "to the barricades" really mean?

The Clarion Content has largely been a support of the Occupy movement, we feel a certain solidarity with their grievances. It is inarguable that the rich-poor gap in America is growing, that the ultra-rich are advancing faster than anyone else in our society, that the globalized movement of capital has once again tilted the balance radically in favor of investors. (Labor can not move freely in the same way.)

The nature of protest is always complicated, frequently during times of wrenching change things get worse before they get better. Is there the stomach for such change? Our New Jersey based political commentator, Storey Clayton, noted that increasing unemployment and underemployment has given folks more time and energy to examine the fine print of the social contract as it is now playing out. No surprise, people don't like the way the man is putting the screws to them. The question is: Can protest achieve change?

We read a sad story of a battle playing out at the barricades in Lower Manhattan. This battle, unlike Occupy's successful forays in Oakland, is amongst the 99%, rather than worker versus investor.

New York based DNA Info reports that Marc Epstein, the owner of the Milk Street Cafe, at #40 Wall Street, laid of twenty-one employees last week. He says he supports the protesters right to assemble and air their grievances, but feels his employees are collateral damage.¹

The Milk Street Cafe says the biggest problem is that police barricades have lined Wall Street since September 17th. This makes it difficult for people to see the restaurant and cross the street to get to it. Local subway entrances are also closed and numerous police checkpoints dot the area.²

Not surprisingly the cops and the administration blame the protesters. Mayor Bloomberg, auditioning his head for a nifty place on stake said, "Protesters are trying to destroy jobs."

Occupy spokespeople noted, "The NYPD makes the decisions on the part of police barricades."

The owner of the cafe said no one from City Hall will return his calls about removing or reducing the barricades. In the most uniquely American twist to it all, he has asked his landlord to intercede with the city on his behalf.

And who might that be? Why, it's Donald Trump.

And the beat goes on.


¹Better to be collateral damage on Wall Street than in Iraq or Afghanistan where the phrase is usually code for "Sorry about how that missile killed your family."

²Remember how the Palestinians are always saying that scads of checkpoints choke off their economy's ability to function normally? Well apparently when it happens on Wall Street, it's for real.

Labels: cop stories, economics, Politics, public protest

Clarion Content political cartoonist and resident New Bruinswick philosopher, Storey Clayton, walks us through the occupation, eviscerating the media myths behind it. Why have people occupied? What has changed? From whence did they come?

Storey dredges his personal memory to deposit us all, readers and editors alike, in a profoundly thoughtful place. What might Occupy mean? Where might Occupy go? This piece doesn't have all the answers, but it will surely leave you reexamining the questions.

It is long, but very, very worth it---Ed.

Read more of Storey Clayton's work here at the Blue Pyramid. Check out the insights of his famous cartoon Duck and Cover, here on the Clarion Content.


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I used to counsel “emotionally disturbed” kids in a group home, the Seneca Center. That was my occupation. We used this system generally known as “behavior modification” whereby we rewarded good behavior and punished (to a degree) bad behavior, usually by changing the meter on what kinds of activities someone could do. There were behavioral levels someone would start out on in the morning based on their behavior the previous day. They were color-coded, running red, yellow, green, and then purple and finally gold, which could only be earned after sequential days on purple. For example, you couldn’t watch TV on red. You couldn’t watch TV after dinner on yellow. On gold, you didn’t have to stand at each doorway announcing yourself and waiting to be permitted to cross a threshold, as long as you told the staff where you were going and responded if they asked you to stop.

There were also behaviors which would warrant an immediate “level drop”. Contrary to my ex-brother-in-law’s assessment, this did not indicate that we would dump a kid off the stairs, but merely that they’d go from yellow to red or gold to purple if they swore or made a threat or tried to make a peer act out. And then violence meant “R&R”, a term I guess we were trying to reclaim for the bad, which would be resolution and restitution in this instance and prompt spending the rest of the day on red, usually after long periods of sitting time to calm down.

A lot of our job, other than navigating and assessing people through the process of earning their levels, was about keeping people motivated to meet their goals and make their level. After all, most of the kids had grown up in households where, de facto if not overtly, bad behavior was rewarded and good behavior was punished. If you were quiet and humble and polite and got your homework done, you’d get neglected. If you set the house on fire and kicked the family dog and yelled and screamed at the table, then you’d get some attention. And in the world of six year-olds whose parents are addicts, any attention is good attention, because it means you get fed or talked to or even physically contacted, even if it’s to be hit.

The hardest part of this engagement and motivation was finding ways to get people on red to believe that tomorrow would be a new day and they’d have some way of climbing out of their bad level. Often they’d be on red after spending significant portions of the day in R&R, which meant no points were being earned toward the next day’s level while they were in the quiet room (an Orwellian term if there ever was one) or restraint or sitting staring at a corner thinking about what they’d done. Usually this meant they’d spent the day not only being unstable and unhappy, but they knew that the next day was doomed to be another day on red – that it’d be 36 hours before they could watch TV or even think about going on the computer. And 36 hours is long enough for a well-adjusted adult human – for an anti-social adolescent, it’s an eternity.

One of the things my boss – an ex-drill-sergeant (literally) and college football player the size of a small house with the voice of an irate seal – was very good at was advising us what to do with these kids in these situations. He told us that the key to their motivation and improved behavior was engagement. Keeping them interested, distracted, putting their minds to something. In a word, keeping them occupied. The man was often a blunt instrument, but he had incredible insight into the mindsets of these kids, having worked in mental health facilities like ours and/or juvenile hall for the better part of two decades. And he implored us to, when times were stable, engage and stimulate the kids who were on red with the few activities always allotted to them – playing outside, playing board games, reading, talking with peers or staff. And there, over time, I learned a fundamental truth: that people act out when they’re bored. It’s something to do.

The human mind despises boredom. Probably more than pain, certainly more than sadness. The brain is too complex, too creative, too active, to tolerate monotony and absence of objects. It will create things to think about where none exist, it will foment processes and possibilities in a vacuum. The only antidote to this is another element of our strategy in engaging red-level kids: exhaustion. Playing outside was not only good because it kept someone occupied, focused, and not-bored, but it also meant they came in too tired to create a ruckus. Adolescents have restless unspent energy in the best of times – abuse/neglect victims triply so. A kid who comes in tired from his day will be disinclined to take offense at a peer’s comment or a staff direction to a time-out. One who has nothing but seething surging energy beneath the surface will be ready to rumble.

This difference of exhaustion is why so many people can put up with assembly-line jobs or grocery-checking or long commutes, but buckle under the universally feared torture of solitary confinement. The capitalist structure of our country went through a really glorious period of getting humans to willingly accept and even embrace monotonous boredom because the tedium of their jobs created the byproduct of wearing them down. So even if they were getting repetitive stress injuries from twisting the same widget the same way and almost falling asleep from the 3,275th time making the same commute, they would arrive at home too beat to complain about it, having only just enough energy to awaken the next day and do it again. Meanwhile, those confined to small dark boxes alone with little or no exercise were slowly driven insane in their prisons.

Something’s been happening in this country the last three years. People have lost their occupations. No matter how small and crappy and minimally engaging their jobs were, they were still jobs that carried the heavily taxing byproduct of exhaustion. They were still something that took enough mental and physical energy to negate the urge to rebel, to foment discontent, to hold out for something better. But one-by-one and in droves, they were turned out of the opportunity to spend their energy flailing in the capitalist mill and instead made to consider the walls and corners and televisions and want-ads of a solitary existence.

Some have turned to creativity. Some have expanded their minds to accept the lack of occupation as a gift and driven themselves to occupy themselves instead. Most have not. Most people turned out of work by downsizing or offshoring or consolidation or automation have turned forlornly and blankly into an abyss of disinterested blandness. They wake each day not even sure what to do without someone telling them. They wander aimlessly through a directionless day, storebought distractions no longer working for them in light of the fact that they are only sufficiently entertaining or engaging for an exhausted person, but not someone with all their faculties at disposal. No longer exhausted, they become restless, agitated, rumbling with a soul-deep longing for something to do, be, create.

This, my friends, is the fundamental root of the Occupy Wall Street movement. It is the quest for occupation. And despite my framing the question in the context of a job where I tried to modify violent kids’ behavior toward the more productive, I am very much in agreement with the principles and methodology of this budding revolution. The powers that seek to maintain order, stability, and the status quo in America have overlooked some fundamental tenets of how to stave off rebellion by controlling the masses. They have forgotten that bread must join circuses in sufficiently distracting the people, insisting instead on a system which puts bread at a premium as a mechanical rabbit to hold in front of the racers. They have allowed the attitude of those at the top to become perniciously elitist, rubbing superiority and greed in the face of all society. But most fundamentally, they have forgotten that people must have something to do or they will find something to do themselves. That people accept the terms of their social contract when they are too occupied or too tired to read the fine print, when people have nothing else to do but read the fine print because they are so bored, they will realize what they are forfeiting and rail against it.

What is most exciting and inspiring about the Occupy movement is that it does not overtly seek political solutions. Naysayers and corporate threshers want the occupiers to write their Congresspeople and go to the polls, knowing that anyone accessed in such a way has been bought and paid for to the point of complete imperviousness. Even those not explicitly on the payroll of corporate America are believers in the fundamental tenets of a system that rewards greed and punishes altruism, a way of aligning society to maximize the consolidation and stratification of wealth and power. It is blindingly obvious why this is so, as any student of history (from age eight on) could tell you: those in power like being there and will rig the game so they can stay there. And capitalism is one very effectively rigged game.

I myself have struggled mightily with the advent of the Occupy movement, feeling pulled almost inexorably to the front lines of its tent encampments and yet not even setting foot there, as yet, in the wake of my overwhelmed exhaustion at my full-time job. For me, unlike most, it is not the gun-to-my-head need for the pay of a job or even the expected pressure of finding fulfillment in one’s occupation, but rather the true motivation of actually loving my work and wanting to devote sufficient time to it that it brings me to the brink of capitulation and illness. I hung out with Ariel and discovered yesterday that I may be her only friend whose problems wouldn’t be largely or entirely solved by money. Which itself is no small factor in the Occupy movement, that reality. For me, I work because I want to and I love to, but it has thus far kept me off the sidewalks and streets of a rising tide that could sweep the whole world.

It is hard to feel twin obligations that are mutually exclusive and equally compelling. Even at Glide, I think I might have begged out of work to go join the protests, though there I may have felt the pull of alleviating the suffering that was driving so many to this brink. But I also must self-examine and recognize that each marginal person could be part of a tipping point in creating more change in this country than anyone born prior to this year could have imagined was possible. When I first saw the most recent Zeitgeist movie, I chuckled at the slightly naive vision of hordes of people gathering around Wall Street to give their money back in rejection of the system that printed it. Now it’s underway. And it feels wrong to not only not be a part of it, but to not be a spearhead.

And yet it feels like a hedge is in order too. It is unclear the direction or power the movement will have, whether it can be co-opted by money and politics and all the American powers that have resisted internal change before. And throwing away the best job I’ll ever have, one I created from scratch, and all my obligations to people I feel a deep personal bond with, for what could be a week and a jail term depending on how things bounce, seems crazy.

But it only seems crazy because I am occupied. Were I not, it would be the most obvious thing in the world.

I will continue to wrestle and struggle with the question, continue to dance on the razor’s edge of conundrum. I can’t really see myself abandoning everything to go live in the encampments, at least not yet, so the Rutgers debaters reading this should let out their breath. But there’s a big part of me that feels I should anyway. And I know it’s not zero-sum – I know I can go try to participate without sacrificing it all. And I will. More than anything, though, we need to develop a way that people who are occupied can still Occupy. We need a day where everyone who still wants or has to go to work can show their solidarity and support. Sometimes revolutions can’t all involve defection from the military, because they need people in the military to be quietly sympathetic so they can make sure that institution changes with the rest of society. This revolution needs occupied people too in order to make all the changes necessary.

If those on top of this precipitous pyramid know what’s good for them, they will create new incentives and occupations. They will come up with some way to motivate the masses and make use of their time and brains. But it can’t be through capitalism, at least the way it’s been manifest in society so far. The market is editing out jobs, ensuring they never return. We need a new system to occupy our minds. Until then, we must occupy the streets.

Labels: corruption, economics, Guest columns, Politics, public protest