Most Earthers, including humans, excrete. That’s true whether the humans are protesters or not, conservative, progressive, or some type of radical. The portajohns in the above photo were at Marshal Park in Charlotte, North Carolina, where protesters camped during the 2012 Democratic National Convention.
There were not quite 100 of us human Earthers launching marches from the encampment, protesting the concentration of political and economic power in the hands of a relatively small number of humans to the possible detriment of the majority of other humans. I didn’t count how many other Earthers there were such as ants, mosquitoes, worms, or pigeons.
A few, but not nearly enough in my opinion, of us humans were concerned about how the concentration of power affected non human Earthers. In fact, one human working with Occupy Wall Street said to me as we rode on a bus from Tampa, Florida to Charlotte, “We need to take care of human rights first, before we worry about animal rights.”
During the last day I was in Charlotte, someone getting a cup of coffee and being asked about food as he stood in front of an old school bus that had been converted to a mobile kitchen proudly and loudly said, “I’m a human rights activist, not an animal rights activist.” But is it one or the other ?
As for humans, some say we’re in unprecedented trouble because of peak oil, climate change, and the collapse of global capitalism. A half-serious question that crossed my mind as I noticed myself and fellow protesters getting smelly, and as I noticed some of them smoking cigarettes down to the filter to make the most of the hunger-alleviating nicotine, was this. To what degree does the mostly voluntary impoverishment we see at these low-budget protest encampments foreshadow ecologically-induced involuntary impoverishment?
Assuming tobacco will be available, will more of us self-medicate with nicotine if civilization goes thru a process of collapse?
With or without peak oil, climate change, and the collapse of global capitalism, humans around the world face unmet needs. Some are in the US. Though most of us protesters were living on the edge in Tampa and in Charlotte intentionally, we got at least a clue of what it’s like to be homeless, at least in terms of struggling a bit for places to shit and , though we had food; water for drinking and showering; and tents.
And we had more gadgets than most homeless folk. At Café Hay, about a 2 minute bike ride from Romneyville, at 11 am, Thursday, the last day of the RNC, every table was full, and every electrical outlet was being used. There was no soap in the restroom. People were waiting to use power to charge phones, and run laptops. Two or three humans from our encampment or maybe Occupy Tampa’s encampment were sitting on the floor near the restroom, dozing while waiting their turn.
This calls to mind the logistics to out of town activism. In Tampa, the Romneyville encampment had portable toilets that consistently ran out of toilet paper and they were not cleaned regularly. More than a few protesters staying at Romneyville opted out of using them or simply didn’t have toilet paper. Even if we did have toilet paper, there were feces on some of the seats and walls of the portable toilets that stayed there all day or longer without being cleaned by spraying and using a wet vac.
They weren’t cleaned daily as the portajohns were in Charlotte, in the latter case maintained by what appeared to be city workers or workers for a company with a city contract. As for the coffee house in Tampa, Café Hay, on at least two occasions, people working there complained about protesters using the restrooms. I talked with one of them who said, “ We don’t mind you guys using it, but we’d like the rest of our customers to be able to use it.”
Another aspect to the logistics of activism is the amount of money it takes to travel, even if there are encampments, which we likely won’t have for every action. This makes me wonder about where people slept, showered, ate, and shitted during the NATO protests.
Perhaps local activism makes more sense in that it doesn’t involve as much gasoline being used and carbon and other pollutants being put into the atmosphere. Another question is how activism might have a contradiction in terms of how many resource-intensive and slave labor-dependent gadgets we use in our attempts to have horizontal communications and decision-making.
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Someone with Occupy Charlotte told me people who had been living in hotels were priced out by the price spike in the lead up to the DNC. She said, as a result, shelters were overflowing and that some churches were helping.
There were 12 portajohns at the encampment in Charlotte.
A couple of weeks later, Tues, Sept 18, Billy Lolos told me as he drank a cup of coffee and I ate a couple of bananas at an eatery near Liberty Square aka Zuccotti Park, that it’s better to have encampments on private property. That involves the dual benefit of being able to enforce rules regarding violence, drugs, stealing, and other disruptive behavior.
“The people who break the rules, we can tell them to leave, even have the cops come and escort them out.” This did happen in Romneyville. Someone called the police when Dante Sea, 24, broke the jaw of Eddie Thomas, 60.
I was awoken by the police radios outside my tent which was near the entrance to a fenced-in section of Romneyville.
“This is private property. You can’t be here without a warrant ,” I heard Wright say as I lay in my tent.
“That’s not true. We can be here if someone called us. And someone did,” said of the police officers.
It occurred to me then and it occurs to me now as I write this sentence weeks later that calling the police can be seen by some fellow protesters as a lack of integrity or lack of trustworthiness or as some other weakness. I myself don’t agree with that and think Lolos has a point when he says having an encampment allows us to get aid from the police when we want it yet gives us the ability to not allow them to enter the encampment without a warrant or without being called by one of us. The key is leasing private property from someone who supports our cause.
As for relations with police, Wright seemed at times skillful. During the second to last day I was at Romneyville, Wright talked tough with a police captain.
“You need to leave this property if you don’t have a warrant,” he said as the police captain’s face reddened and two or three subordinate officers standing nearby winced, perhaps embarrassed or at least feeling awkward about the showdown between Wright and their superior officer.
“If I step off this property, will you talk with me then?”
Wright agreed. He and the captain spoke for a few minutes and about 30 minutes later cops in vans and SPV’s (special purpose vehicles which were a cross between a dune buggy and a golf cart) arrived with about 100 sandwiches and as many, if not more, bottles of water. The vehicles were John Deer “Gators.”
Am not sure if that’s why the police captain showed up at Romneyville in the first place, but this stand-off-turned- delivery of food and water surprised, if not intrigued me. Police officers in khaki shirts and shorts carried large plastic bags from the curb to a long folding table, not far from where the ghost of the Rainbow Kid’s Village Kitchen bus tugged at our hearts and stomachs. Leftovers from mass meals for the thousands of police and national guard, there were ham sandwiches, cookies, and potato chips in white paper boxes. We were advised to eat them before they spoiled in the searing heat. In hindsight, could have passed some out to some of the folk living under a nearby overpass, but didn’t think of that at the time. Was too concerned about my own dehydration, sun exposure, and a ride from Tampa to Charlotte to think of that. So, I ate the ham and cheese sandwich, despite being vegan. Then I wondered if my un-showered body would now stink more because of consuming the franken death vittles.
At Café Hay, about a 2 minute bike ride from Romneyville, 11 am, Thursday, the last day of the RNC, every table is full, and every electrical outlet is being used, no soap in the restroom, people waiting to use power to charge phones, and run laptops. Two or three from our encampment or maybe Occupy Tampa’s encampment, sitting on the floor near the restroom, dozing while waiting for their turn to use it.
This calls to mind the logistics to activism out of town. In Tampa, the Romneyville encampment had Portable toilets that had no toilet paper and were not cleaned regularly. More than a few protesters staying at Romneyville opted out of using them or simply didn’t have toilet paper. Even if we did, there was feces on some of the seats and walls of the portable toilets. On at least two occasions, people working at Café Hay complained. I talked with one of them who said, “ We don’t mind you guys using it, but we’d like the rest of our customers to be able to use it.”
Another aspect to the logistics of activism is the amount of money it takes to travel, even if there are encampments, which we likely won’t have for every action. This makes me wonder about where people slept, showered, ate, and shit during the NATO protests.
Some people used pallets as a barrier between themselves and the wet ground in the piece of property that was Romneyville. Don’t recall pallets available at Marshall Park.
There was a lot of rain in Tampa and in Charlotte with some of us not having a way to dry our socks and shoes in which we marched for miles each at day during protests. This is yet another detail of the logistics of political involvement for those not willing or not able to money on hotels or even hostels, both of which likely became higher priced and booked full during the RNC and DNC.
Throughout Marshall Park were light posts with electrical outlets from which many of us charged cell phones and run computers.
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