TIME Magazine's Person of the Year for 2011-The Protestor!! Too right!

TIME Person of the Year 2011

Marcher

Communal Art Project From No Comment Art 3

Artist From No Comment Art Show 3

From Zuccotti Park

From Zuccotti Park

People are emerging from the shadows, speaking their minds, and sensing that  people are listening.

Suggestions for Protest Signs

Protest Signs

One sign can't communicate my frustration

Why aren't you marching?

From No Comment art show at old JP Morgan building, 23 Wall Street

Letter to the Bank #74 (No Comment Art Show, 23 Wall Street)

Dear Mr. Bullrider, my very own personal bank manager (am I right?),

Thank you for inviting us in to the very belly of Wall Street last night so Art and all his (Arthur’s) and her (Artemis’s) friends could express themselves without reserve in face of the financial calamity that we are all confronting. I’m not a realtor and cannot begin to fully understand how it is that last night a pop-up exhibition occurred at the old J. P. Morgan bank building at 23 Wall Street, but happen it did and what a joy. Certainly there was fury—burning dollar bills, protest signs—in spades. There was also a young woman playing a beautiful rendition of the Jimi Hendrix Star Spangled Banner, live gambling, body artworks, graphitti (on the spot murals), puppeteers and performance. The building, a gargantuan yet vacant space that even bankers can’t afford I’m guessing (I already know I’m wrong—when you can make money out of nothing what’s to not afford?) was filled with what can for the most part be described as anti-corporate art. There was plenty of humor and a ton of energy. Even the barriers and excessive police presence outside (including mounted police) failed to discourage a large attendance. Be encouraged! There is Life on other planets. You just have to look harder.

I left before a silent auction planned by the organizers, No-Comment-Art, took place. Though allied with the Art Committee of the Occupy Wall Street movement some saw the auction as yet another Capitalist Enterprise and therefore dubious. Considering the movement is in a beautiful infancy and has a lifetime (I hope—full of hope) to figure out what its demands are we urge such thoughts to be picked up as conversations and discussed heatedly but in mutual respect. Some of the money will go to the protesters, some to the artists and organizers and some, possibly, down a black hole. The show was happening, after all, across the street from the New York Stock Exchange. Such is life and life isn’t perfect but it is life, pumping veins and all. Whether Occupy should build a list of demands, whether those demands should be mutable, inchoate or wide open is already a matter being tested out in the blogosphere. I do know divide and conquer is a great way to sow discord in a movement and that for now it would probably be for the best if tolerance/give-and-take ruled the day.

Enjoy some images of the show.My dear BM, you should run down there. If you went now you could snap up the art for nothing I expect!

Though ever a thorn in your side I remain none the less most sincerely yours,

Kristian Witherkay

The banner image for this letter is a half sign, a symbol of expression finding voice. It is okay if the message is unclear. The emotion is very clear.

The Theater on Wall Street

Why Occupy Wall Street?

Thanks to huffington Post for use of this banner image from their Occupy Wall Street coverage

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/30/occupy-wall-street-protests-new-york_n_989221.html

An elderly group leads a march up Broadway towards Police Headquarters, Friday, Sept. 30, 2011, in New York. (Louis Lanzano/AP Photo) http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2011/10/occupy-wall-street-protests-spread-across-the-country-bloomberg-calls-them-misguided/

http://rogueoperator.wordpress.com/2011/09/26/police-crackdown-on-left-wing-protesters-on-wall-street-right-should-not-be-pleased/

http://notmytribe.com/date/2008/09

I was cheered this morning by a Nicholas D. Kristof opinion article in this weeks New York Times Sunday Review. You can access his video on line. He mirrored some of my own thoughts on the topic of rage without clarity, fury without direction. I’m all for primal screams but it is thrilling when these feelings, in all their forms are captured effectively. Kristof decided to provide some well articulated and definable goals for the growing, passionate but as yet ill defined Occupy Wall Street movement. Thanks to people getting out on the streets some of the huge but hard to articulate frustrations of the 99% are beginning to be formulated. Personally I thank them for beginning to build an archive of grievances that stand in contrast to those of the Tea Party movement. The Tea Party may well be clearer in its demands but the demands of the Tea Party appear to be infuriatingly simplistic: “Let me keep my money/no taxes,” “Smaller Government”, and “Why should I pay for your bridge building?” The Tea Party is all about wanting what the bankers have—an abundance of riches which they’d rather not share.

Images are appearing from all over the blogosphere—each credited and sourced back—and from corners with hugely varying responses to the protesters i.e. all over the political map. More to come.

One image (Eat The Rich) here is from three years ago. The only difference is the fury is beginning to have traction and build a clearer message.

Letter to the Bank #64

Dear BM,

Apparently some conservative member of Congress was saying something about how the poor should do their bit, pay their part, contribute their portion to the tax rolls. Probably went on to declare them—er...the vast majority of the citizens of these fair states—spongers and welfare state leeches. In fact didn’t the whole tea party thing start with some mean rant by some news commentator (Rick Santelli) about how people were in debt and being kicked out of their homes because they made stupid, irresponsible financial decisions and they deserved nothing less? What a strange inspiration for a movement, and what a nasty foundation to build a political platform on.

I am constantly appalled by the nastiness of the disconnected classes in this society. In some form or other the same disconnect is repeated in each and every corner of this planet—those born to wealth or those who have built their wealth, especially those who know deep down they have built it on the backs of underpaid, under insured workers, cannot afford to feel the depth of their own self disgust and so they separate, compartmentalize, divide, pull apart until they no longer can see their own role in the financial mess around them and can then sit back, inspired by the likes of the verbally dexterous Rick Santelli, and bemoan the stupidity of the little people who they (as they perceive it) float. In their fury (that runs in counterpoint to the fury of the working classes) they have set about to dismantle the safety nets that have for so long, in their opinion, only coddled the masses. They blame these so called masses and fortify their compounds waiting for the day when the plebeians come to demand their rights—rights the rich know, in the backs of their clouded minds, the privileged classes steadily eroded or even denied working families in their own efforts to maintain an ultimately unsustainable lifestyle.

I’ve been trolling the internet for images of protest signs world wide, specifically from Cairo where a fledgling democracy is having a painful birth but appears determined to breath strongly and deeply, South Korea where the embattled middle classes are making their voice heard as the gap between rich and poor grows, and Athens where the debt crisis is at CRISIS point. I show a random few here (without credit but this can be corrected if anyone insists) that I found visually interesting, and to which I could relate (no I cannot read Greek). I assumed I’d be finding signs I mostly empathized with but far from it. The desperate and the indignant comprise of all political stripes. The difference lies in their comprehension of their relationship to power, or their understanding of power structures. The disenfranchised with nothing to lose and those with plenty to lose will fight for their perceived rights on different platforms targeting governments or the wealthy and either way they are hoping to be heard by someone or something deep in the cloud of their wildly divergent frustrations. We live in a world where governments either merge with wealth, or clash with it and in doing so either prove themselves strong enough to impose regulations on unfettered profit motives and tax havens, or so weak they loose their clout because they  come to depend too much on the very thing that is undermining their credibility, the people with the money to vote them back in. At any point in any given day it becomes harder and harder to know who one’s opponent is, or who it is you need to educate, need to aim your frustrations at. As you know I choose you as the object of my fury and—all too frequently—contempt. You, the lowly bank manager, the petty bureaucrat, the salesman or woman, who is supposedly there to help the customer but usually is only doing the company’ bidding. I do not blame you for doing what you have to do to hold onto your job but you will suffer the consequences of being the face of unscrupulous and uncaring companies. The appalling optimist in me hopes that my letters will work on you by attrition, slowly wear down your thick skin, and eventually result in lights going on all about you that show how only if we all work together can the world stop catapulting toward financial disintegration.

In hope I wait for the current administration to prove itself as having the backbone and the vision to stand up to the corporations who currently appear to be setting the agenda, an agenda that is driving the middle and working classes slowly into the ground, and impose the kind of regulation that will dismantle heinous profits and bonuses, (neither of which ever trickle down) and replace them with programs that set about earnestly trying to create sustainable infrastructure, jobs, homes and healthcare for all.

Yours sincerely,

Your irritating conscience,

Your Chinese water torturer,

Your friend and your fiend,

Kristian Witherkay

Letter to the Bank #63 (baby boomers behaving badly)

Dear BM,

Face it! Things are no different here than in England. The kind of power wielded by Rupert Murdoch in Merry Old England, a power that had politicians, police and the media all quaking in their boots, is also being thrown around right here in the good ol’ USA. With the closure of the News of The World, that unseemly rag, England is waking up to a new era, one where there is some hope the media, the police, politicians and, yes, maybe even the banks, will wake up, man up, and finally do the job they are supposed to do. Sadly the idea of Democracy has taken a knock but then again it was thin to begin with. Maybe this time it will harden into to something more durable and tougher to scuttle. Perhaps being courageous, honest and concerned for the health of the community as a whole will be rewarded, and maybe—maybe—unscrupulous special interests and the profit motive will no longer be worshipped but will be regarded with deep suspicion.

There is an article you should read by Thomas Friedman in this week’s (newly designed, newly named) Week In Review: The Clash of Generations. In it he talks of “baby boomers behaving badly”. He quotes many of the protest signs he sees. They are the results of a younger generation meeting in the squares of Cairo and Athens, struggling to figure out what the hell is going on, and coming to some fierce conclusions.  The “Me” generation has dumped on the “them” generation and has left them holding the bag, caught in the headlights, stuck with a worldwide debt initiated by greed and self interest.

I’ll do what many I know are doing. I’ll continue to grapple with ways to manage my own fraying situation—to put it in perspective—old, failing cars, a house that needs painting, lack of the kind of resources needed in this day and age to visit family in other parts of the world—middle class, lower middle class problems perhaps...and I’ll turn to my passions, the things that keep me alive and kicking, happy even—my family, my painting, a garden, friends.

Why do I continue to share these thoughts with you, my non-existent bank manager? Because I wish to send a shiver up your spine, a shiver that infects your boss and your boss’s boss, a shiver that is eventually recognized as the cold of rejection, a shiver that finally will penetrate the wall of cosy self interest they have all been building for so long that even now as the world struggles to stay on its feet they fail to see because they are out on the ocean in their hundred foot yacht catching tuna.

Yours sincerely,

Kristian Witherkay



PS: My friend gave me this bag. I imagine she thought it would amuse me and fule the fire of my ire, an ire we all need to keep stoking. She was right!


PLEASE NOTE: Even as I begin to name names, something I have mostly avoided until now, I remain polite even as I “Yield to rage”.

Signs of Protest

Protest Signs

Thanks to Matt Stopera for posting at Buzzfeed.

Sign of Protest