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One of Occupy Austin's free speech tents with the Austin Overpass Light Brigade's signs.
On February 3 2012, Occupy Austin received about an hour’s notice before a violent police raid which cleared the encampment at City Hall. New regulations imposed a 10pm curfew and rules against tents, bedrolls or other “permanent” structures. As occupiers took the streets, there were several arrests. Activists and journalists were threatened by police ambush and, at one point, a pepper-spray can brandished by Austin Police Officer Jason Mistric. Three undercover police officers that had infiltrated the group in order to entrap its members were present throughout the day.
Occupy Austin erected tents and celebrated the one-year anniversary of its eviction from City Hall on February 3, 2013.
One year later — this past Sunday — Austin’s occupation gathered again at their first home to honor the day and all that had taken place there since the movement began. Publicly, the group announced a simple potluck. Occupiers put up a food table that was soon overflowing with everything from both vegetarian and carnivore-friendly chili to the infamous piggie pie, a surprisingly edible concoction of graham cracker crumbs, donuts, soy “bacon,” and coffee chocolate syrup.
38 “food fight” arrests took place in late 2011 when occupiers refused to remove a food table, eventually leading to a successful lawsuit against City Hall. On Sunday, a security guard emerged with a photocopy of the memo banning permanent structures from the site.
“Do you have a permit or something that allows you to be here today?” she asked me.
“Yes,” I said, “it’s called the First Amendment.”
She tried to give me the memo but I refused, explaining I had read it before. When she placed it on our food table, I tore it up as she walked away being careful not to drop any on the ground — I didn’t intend to litter. Grabbing a piece of chalk (which Austin’s occupation is never without) I wrote ‘The First Amendment is Our Permit” on the plaza. Soon, chalked art and messages appeared everywhere and, as the afternoon wore on, two tents were erected.
Another occupier later thanked me for standing up to the security guard because she credited me with emboldening the rest of the group, which swelled to about 30 at its peak. But I just acted on my knowledge that the security guards have no power without the police backing them up, especially in light of the lawsuit.
The Austin Audio Co-Op erected an amplified sound system and Dan Cioper played folk music, followed by a group jam session. We cheered visits by old friends we hadn’t seen since the encampment. Police drove around City Hall or stopped to observe us but kept their distance.
Our tents seemed to provoke an intense response from the Internet, with messages of solidarity pouring in on Twitter and Facebook from around the world. The local media even appeared, including the Austin American Statesman which captured another of my interactions:
At one point, while occupiers were addressing each other with a microphone, a security guard inside City Hall appeared to be taking a photograph of the group. One protester, Kit O’Connell, noticed this, gained the attention of the group, and said to the security guard: ‘If you take my picture, please tag me in it on Facebook.’
On the microphone, I told the assembled occupiers that our encampment had shown me the best and worst of humanity.
Noted Austin musician Dan Cioper and other occupiers celebrate free speech with a jam session.
To me, the real power of Occupy and movements like it is not any of our particular issues. It’s the way it gets people from all classes and walks of life interacting directly, unmediated by the mainstream media or the government. Our camp created a place full of rich, nuanced political dialog and debate. It was a place where almost any time, day or night, you could mobilize a march or other direct action if your words and passion were strong enough. The camp was also a place where you could see the true damage that modern capitalism has caused for those it harms the most — people so desperate for survival that they’d steal or fight to take from a place where almost everything was given for free.
More police arrived — a handful of bike cops hung around the plaza or wandered in and out of City Hall. Four other officers came in two squad cars. Occupiers were unimpressed, dancing and singing to KRS-One’s “Sound of the Police.” Two officers lurked behind yet another security guard as she insisted we take down our tents, and that if we didn’t she’d take them down for us. But we sat in the tents, and refused to accept more copies of the City Hall memo. To our surprise, they backed down and let us remain for the evening.
As night fell, the Austin Overpass Light Brigade assembled their lit signs to show the world that the city was OCCUPIED while a peace sign reminded viewers that our movement is nonviolent. Drivers honked and cheered out their windows. We laughed as an idiot yelled “Get a Job!” just like old times. The mood was high, even as our numbers dwindled as we grew tired. Eventually, we took the tents down, cleaned up the plaza and went home. There were no arrests.
Days later, our pop-up occupation is still a subject of conversation on Twitter. Noted activist Mark Adams commented:
What @OccupyAustin has shown is that re-occupation is a possibility as long as it’s a guerilla tactic.
I think Sunday was a success on many levels. Most of all it reinforced the power of Occupy’s potent symbol of free speech: the tent. For a few hours, we reminded Austin that our city is still occupied with a revolutionary movement for change. Even if only for a day, we reclaimed one public space for the people.
The Austin Overpass Light Brigade at City Hall on February 3, 2013.
More: John Jack Anderson’s Austin Chronicle photo gallery
All photos by Kit O’Connell, all rights reserved.
18 Comments
Byootifull. Well done, guys and gals.
Thank you. It was an uplifting day!
“Get a job.” Some things never change. :)
Sounds like a wonderful day, although I am not sure I would have had the nerve to eat the piggy pie. I especially appreciate your thoughts about the power of Occupy. Gathering in the commons is important; I refuse to acknowledge that that part of the movement is over.
Nor does “I don’t have a job; I have an occupation.”
I know! It was funny someone said ‘hey I haven’t heard “Get a Job!” yet’ and then a little while later someone hollered it out a car.
I confess: I didn’t actually eat the piggie pie. But it all got eaten!
Yes whether we have camps again anytime soon or not I think its important to gather in public spaces and USE them. That’s so important to me, and so much of what Occupy means in my opinion.
“Got a job, took a shower. STILL ANGRY.”
WOOT!! May a new wave of occupation begin again someday.
Bwahahaha.
Inspirational, and hooo-eee! I love the lights! Well done, Occupy Austin.
Rec’d. ;~)
Thanks Kit for being there and for telling us the story. I wish I had been there too.
Your courage is an inspiration.
Rawk on Kit and crew…!
Totally dig that OLB peace sign…! *g*
Like a Mosler is fond of saying: throw nine bones in a room and send in ten dogs to get them. One dog is gonna go hungry. Our government doesn’t care about you. You’re just a dog.
It’s contagious. Keep it up.
I love the Occupy movement, and I think it has been much more effective than the PTB will ever acknowledge.
Among many other things, no one was talking about the 99% before Occupy started. Now, almost everyone know what term means.
Do you know how much time and how many millions, maybe billions, of ad dollars it normally takes for that kind of recognition of a brand or slogan?
A perfect example of “feel good, accomplish nothing” activism. This group “swelled to 30 at it’s peak”. According to wikipedia, Austin’s population is 820,611, so the OA shindig “swelled” to 0.0037% of Austin’s population.
While to you
to a more reasonable person, it reinforced the transient, unfulfilled or even aborted potential of the Occupy movement, for which a tent, which is only up for a day, is indeed a fitting symbol.
OA has “totally redeemed itself”, but only in the sense of the movie Dumb and Dumber.
The way forward for disenfranchised millions, as well as for the ever-being-ground-into-dust middle class, which numbers in the 10′s of millions, has to involve more than sentimentality and clinging to illusions and delusions of “success”.
Well, at least no OA ‘genius’ decided it’d be “like way cool, man!” to scrawl “Murderers” on a wall, referring to police. That would elicit far more contempt, than sympathy, which is not the way to build a mass movement.
Actually, I don’t think you care about building a mass movement, in any significant sense of the word “care”, which would be massive enough to change things in the real world. But, hopefully, some people reading this comment will care, enough to embrace reality, no matter how painful.
Unfortunately, a lot of the children of baby boomers, themselves somewhat spoiled, screwed up their children even more, via encouraging the narcissism of equating “success” with “just showing up”, as opposed to some useful level of mastery. I suspect a lot of younger people reading my comment can’t even process what I’m saying, due to their {cough} {cough} upbringing.
For such poor souls, consider what history would have been like if MLK had descended into sentimentality early in his career, content to “show up” and claim “success”, without having accomplished much of anything.
The accessibility and barrier-less aspect of Occupy was recognized by Chomsky and Chris Hedges as something very positive. I recognize it as such, also. Calling this positive feature a “power”, though, might muddle things in the minds of people reading this, in that they may suppose that Occupy achieved and sustained real political power.
If it had achieved and maintained real political power, elected politicians would be worried about it. Of course, they’re not even thinking about Occupy.
So many people who are just scraping by and living paycheck to paycheck are convinced they are ‘middle class’ and thus ‘above’ the poor. At one protest, a guy almost wrecked his car — by nearly crashing into a parked police car — to yell out his window ‘You’re poor!!!’ We weren’t even protesting OWS type issues…