the health board, the picnic and A BUNCH OF NUTTERS. [guest starring valerie luthor king jnr] part III

[let me disclaim this post and say that nothing mentioned here is official ‘The Simple Way’ stance on these issues but rather my personal reflections and experiences]

OUTSIDE

i arrived at the health board meeting venue just as Monkman [aka Aaron Condon, my housemate] did and we did what all activists do to get ready for a protest – we played a round or two of new addictive card game golf and i totally dominated… but then people started arriving and chatting to us and so we put the game away [he hardly had to force me] and got chatting to some people…

fairly soon after that the occupy philly people arrived and started setting up tables and the first sign i saw someone from their group holding up was one which read “Nutter is the Antichrist” – now I’ve read the book a few times and I’m not sure if that is true…

my big problem with that is that you have immediately thrown your integrity as a reasonably protesting group out of the window and so it actually made me quite angry and not amped to be connected or associated with them at all – other signs like ‘Greedy Pigs’ or ‘Feed the poor, stupid’ and even ‘Nutter vs Homeless’ were less blatantly ridiculous but i am not sure how helpful they are either…

when the police arrived and this guy Jessie who was serving food [and would later feature in the Valerie Luthor King Jnr speech] turned around and shouted “No Donuts” that really made me change my opinion about Occupy Philly and think these guys are people we want to be in close partnership… no wait, REALLY? Did you really just say that? Not a statement/act that is going to make anyone want to listen to any of us with any kind of seriousness and just really not helpful as people trying to give the impression that they have anything valid to say.

INSIDE

then we got to go inside in groups of twenty to observe the meeting – i was in the second group and joined Val, Shane, Erica, Jamie Moffett, Sueihn and some others of our group were let in later, and was there for the start where they explained how the meeting was going to proceed and that there would not be commentary available to the public…

the health board reviewed the changes they had proposed to the previous 14 page document and as i mentioned before they all seemed pretty reasonable… they had just gotten started on reading through the ammended regulations based on that response document when one of the occupy people started their pre-planned interruption by shouting out “Mic Check” and then everyone in their group [somewhere between 20 and 40 people] repeats and then the person makes a series of statements [well scream-ments] and everyone repeats – things like “WE LISTENED TO YOU” “YOU’RE NOT LISTENING TO US” “YOU HAVEN’T GIVEN US A CHANCE TO SPEAK ON THESE THINGS” and so on… so completely disruptive and different ones of us [from the Simple Way and friends] had differing ideas as to how effective/right/reasonable any of it was [with some thinking not at all and others thinking up to a point] – one of the girls did a “Mic Check” and took a sandwich she had “made with her clean hands” that “she would eat” and put it on the table in front of Dr Schwartz, who was chairing the meeting, and invited him to eat it [he thanked her later for the sandwich altho i don’t think he ate it at the time]…

so that was all disruptive and completely disregarded the process that was happening up front [which was the intention] but it was a little later that it really started to cross lines – there was one particular guy in a green shirt who just got really louder and obnoxious – after declaring that he was a christian and that this process was very unchristian, he proceeded to call Dr Schwartz the antiChrist [so is it Schwartz or Nutter or are we talking antiChrists here?], swear at the board and spit [have heard at someone, have heard on ground] and then the group [who passed the Open Mic leadership from person to person] just became completely disruptive and the board eventually had to leave and continue the meeting elsewhere [with two occupy philly people present apparently, but not green shirt child]

and so the board left [having been really well composed through most of it and most of these are mediumly old ballies so good on them] and then Val went and approached the occupy group and made me so proud by speaking her mind in a controlled yet direct fashion and letting them know that by acting the way they did they took away her opportunity to hear the rest of the process – so they disempowered her, well us who actually were really wanting to know what was going on… and it’s hard to explain exactly how it all unfolded but she was really great and when donut-screaming Jessie tried to interrupt her the rest of the occupy group got on his case and shouted him down… [he eventually came to Val outside and apologised]

i went to green shirt guy and told him that the Jesus he said he represented was not the same Jesus i followed and while i was talking to him his friend kept on interrupting and not letting me speak and then called me an idiot [kinda made my point there, guy!] and he reminded me that Jesus threw over tables and told us to have swords which i’m not sure is a fully exegeted understanding of who Jesus is and the way He would have treated people in that meeting…

what was really cool was that before that all happened, during all the craziness, a couple of people linked to occupy [altho not necessarily directly from them] came over to us to see if we were okay [cos they sensed we were not happy with proceedings] and made an effort to talk and hear and dialogue and connect and a bunch of the occupy people [i think] came over to us and apologised [especially after Val spoke] and also thanked her for what she said, and we got to chat to a bunch of them outside and realised that we can’t blanket the whole group as a bunch of morons [which would have been easy to do because the few shouted loudly enuff to feel like they represented the many] because a lot of them are doing some really good things and have a lot of good to say and do and we can definitely pursue relationship with them…

so we have connected with some groups that do regular feeding and will look at building relationship and connection and hopefully together continuing to fight [non-violently and treating people with dignity and respect] for justice and to help those who are seen by many as ‘the least of these.’

[a new friend of ours Robert Martin who drove an hour to be with us wrote this blog on his experience and captured it well]