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Saturday, April 21st, 1-4pm
The Old Foundry, 100 E Maple Street, Bellingham, WA

Sometimes we are overtaken by tragedies and traumas that stop us completely in our tracks. From these episodes, powerful emotions of fear, anger, anxiety, and sadness can arise that seem impossible to escape. Mythologically, this emotional territory is known as the underworld—the place of shadows and death. While we often interpret it as hell, many spiritual traditions render the underworld as more benign, a dark and difficult region we must visit at times to learn essential information about our deeper selves. Alongside practical tools and ideas for navigating underworld experiences, the workshop will also be rich in opportunities to share your own story and hear from others who may be going through similar periods of hardship and loss.

Register with the Whatcom Folk School at www.whatcomfolkschool.org Cost $30. Contact me at matthewbrouwerpoet@gmail.com or (360) 510-9686 if you have any questions.

In the next month, I’m planning to revive odinstongue.com as a blog for spiritual, cultural, and political commentary as well as my home site for promoting my work as an organizational consultant and mentor.

Stay tuned. In the meantime, how about a poem:

Boulevard Park

Sun pounds the Earth with a mallet
It’s September 2
Time to cast things in bronze

Last night some longing slipped up
the Salish Sea
died it an unquenching blue

And upon the wind
first spittle of cold sends an early text

Vacation on Baffin nearly through

All of us lying out on the well-manicured grass
amidst the carefully positioned trees
trying our best to believe it can’t possibly be true

Wispy high clouds part like stage fog

And there’s half-smile moon
floating
like a white kiss

And now again she’s gone

Catch me if you can

Which was to look splendid
doing yoga on the rocks above the sound
which was to sit within the silence of the sun
until the stillness seeped in past
my epidermis

Which was to wait at this junction
in the mineshaft of my life
until I finally could discern from which direction
the subtle scent of air

But a squad of undergrads
in matching sweatshirts
had already stormed the beach

And some teenage girls
had collected downwind
making vicious quips about barefooted hippies

And a father had gotten the grand idea
of teaching his two sons, bb guns in hand
on the finer points of riflery

Of course, I came here in a rush
from the world hours and lists
came here scrambling
like an open-lidded mason jar
trying to scoop my fill
of February rays

I take my problems for a jog
on hamster wheel mind
til I’m tired enough to recall
it is the heart that should decide

Go down to the beach
take off my shoes

the sand is tolerable

sink my toes

And it comes to me
that I am in love with them

With the belligerence of the gulls
and the kelp and sweetness of the salted rocks
with the shards of glass
and the beers that were drank here
and the ashes of the fire

With the broken bits of shells
and the creatures who lived in them

With the women
with the shape of their thighs
through the tightness of their jeans
and their boyfriends
with their sturdy necks and awkward haircuts

With the little girl
chasing minnows in the pool
and the patience of her father
watching

With the couple cuddling
holding hands
stuck within the sticky syrup
of love

And the college boys trying to flirt
with the coeds on the towel, failing

With the chatter
with the noise

And the silence of the waters and the rocks
and trees
that yields for them

I don’t want to scrape the sand from off my toes

I don’t want to put back on these shoes
and go back up the trail

I want to stay here for a while
in the country of no answers
just watching how things shimmer and lie

Sinking sun
pushes firm upon my chest
with a growing chill

I return back to my car
where a clock and my phone
and my credit cards
wait for me

And though I abandoned them
they take me back in
as they always do
one of their own

WRITING POETRY THAT HAS POWER

Saturday, January 28th 1-4pm
Time in Play Cafe, 311 E Holly Street, Bellingham, WA

You’ve probably encountered a poem at some point that has struck you to the core. Something about its imagery and language stirs your emotions and reaches you precisely where you’re at. This workshop explores how to connect with that place inside us that is passionate, agitated, and alive in order to produce poetry that has both intellectual and emotional power. When coupled with one’s natural capacity for language, the product is writing that stimulates the mind, jolts the body, probes the soul, and moves the heart.

Registration is through the Whatcom Folk School. Register at: www.whatcomfolkschool.org/for-students ($15 WFS Registration Fee, $15 Instructor Dues). Please contact me if cost is prohibitive, matthewbrouwerpoet@gmail.com.

Occupy Wall Street’s Anger Isn’t Enough: How the Push for Change can be Sustained

Craig Ruttle/AP Photo

A few days ago, the New York Times ran an article on the phenomenon of “Zucotti lung,” the slew of respiratory ailments manifesting as coughing, congestion, and wheezing that is spreading rapidly amongst Occupy Wall Street protestors as they endure November’s dropping temperatures and increasingly inhospitable weather. Witnessing this deterioration, health officials have growing concerns about the spread of more pernicious conditions such as the colloquially named winter vomiting virus and tuberculosis. Increasingly it seems that, like the colonial army camped at Valley Forge, Occupy Wall Street’s primary question before it now is not whether it has the strength to engage its opposition, but rather, can it survive the hostility of an east coast winter. To me the very nature of this predicament is yet another sign that the Occupy Movement in its current structure and posture has little chance of achieving its lofty goals.

I want to be complimentary, where compliments are due. At this point, there is widespread agreement that Occupy has successfully voiced public outrage about the abuses of the financial sector and shifted national media attention and political debate to the issue of wealth inequality. It’s also been noted that the movement has galvanized local activism across the country, instilling the public with a sense of hope and inspiring numerous actions aimed at checking corporate excess and corruption.

Here lies my main hope for the movement: that it will continue to spark the popular imagination, giving people a sense of agency that they can successfully build community power and restore government and corporate accountability. As for the movement as a whole, my experience as a community organizer and understanding of successful social movements leads me to believe that Occupy will perish having fallen far short of its intended aims.

When it comes to the realm of community activism, I take my cues from Saul Alinsky, the eminent activist contemporary of Martin Luther King Jr. who is sometimes referred to as “the father of community organizing.” In his philosophy and work, Alinsky tried to hold the tension between the utopian “world that we want” and the brutish, conflicted “world as it is.” While maintaining high ideals, he engaged in pragmatic and sometimes gritty politics in order to build an impressive resume of victories in poor communities across the United States. He also birthed the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF), which today presides over a national network of 59 affiliate organizations that are responsible for a substantial set of political accomplishments at the metropolitan and state level. These include universal healthcare in Massachusetts, living wage laws in Baltimore, and thousands of units of affordable housing in New York, Philadelphia, and Washington, DC to name just a few of their many laurels.

Alinksy’s doctrine for organizing is built on three founding stones: local leadership, a target you can hold accountable, and a concrete set of demands. The Occupy Movement has taken issue with this traditional model for organizing, believing it limits the scope of their work and prevents them from reaching deep enough to dig out the roots of corporate corruption. This puts the Occupiers in line with the populist movements of the 19th century, which, predicting the dire consequences of emerging corporate dominance, sought to reverse the series laws and court decisions on which the power of the corporation was based. They ultimately failed, and in the early 20th century were replaced by the progressive movements which conceded that the corporation was here to stay, but sought to curb its power and ensure that its benefits were more equitably distributed to the people. The labor, environmental, women’s, and civil rights movements all fit under the progressive category. Though they involved limited goals, engaged in pragmatic politics, and accepted compromise, each was able to successfully expand power and rights to a new segment of society in deeply meaningful ways.

The Occupy Movement, in contrast, wants the full meal deal. Rather intriguingly to me, Occupy Wall Street’s official statement doesn’t even mention Wall Street. Instead, it excoriates the corporation for its vast litany of woes against humanity. Compare this to an IAF action back in 2008 during the height of the financial crisis, during which community leaders issued a list of demands for specific policy changes that would force the financial sector to behave more fairly.

As many have pointed out, the Occupy Movement’s lack of structure and talking points has initially worked to its advantage, helping it to establish a big tent for people to gather under and generate a sense of intrigue about what the movement might do next. Possibly a brilliant opening tactic, but at the end of the day, what Occupy Wall Street has been able to accomplish amounts to a flea bit on the back side of a rhinoceros. Even at their largest, demonstrations have been relatively small, in the tens of thousands. Compare this to the historic March on Washington in 1963 which turned out as many 300,000 people or even Jon Stewart’s “Rally to Restore Sanity” which saw more than 200,000 participants. In my estimation it will take similar hundreds of thousands if not millions of people in the streets to really bring the financial sector to the bargaining table. When Occupy Wall Street can begin turn out more people than the Daily Show Team, I will start to get excited about its potential for revitalizing America.

Occupiers argue that the movement is still in its infancy and that it will take years for it to achieve such an ambitious agenda of reform. But in my opinion, nothing has been shown to demonstrate the movement’s ability to develop leadership, build consensus, and organize a coalition capable of acting on such a mass scale. Sure, certain national activist leaders such as Naomi Klein and Juan Gonzalez have been drawn to the movement and stepped up as spokespeople. But tell me, where are the local leaders with established community rapport who know how to sustain institutions and inspire their constituencies? Where are the committed volunteers willing to work largely behind the scenes over the long haul to grow a network of individuals and organizations capable of engaging the power structures in a substantial way?

If you take a look at the polling that has been done of protestors, you find they are still largely a collection of leftists—the same loose confederacy of radicals who spearheaded the WTO protests and Iraq anti-war movement. While these groups have proven that they are very talented at producing a good show, they have thus far proven incapable of reaching out to moderates and speaking a language that builds consensus across a wide cross section of the electorate. And preferring the utopian shelters of their encampments and protest lines, they have mostly proven unwilling to engage in the messy and convoluted processes of politics and administration.

To find a prime example of this detachment from the public, just take a look at the polls. While most Americans are upset by wealth inequality, only a small minority seem interested in radical changes to corporate structure. Historically, successful movements have always been able to mobilize moderates by speaking their language and empathizing with their balanced concerns for both improved living conditions and sustained economic security.

The impact Occupy Wall Street has had on the neighborhood around Zucotti park demonstrates the movements inability to truly empathize with the very people they intend to represent. Headlines from yesterday describe how neighbors are planning to stage their own demonstration down at city hall as a way to voice their complaints about noise, safety, and sanitation. Local businesses as well have bemoaned lost profits as the protests have limited accessibility to the area. To be fair, Occupiers have taken steps to lessen their impact and have attempted to compensate some businesses for their losses. And yet I have to believe, a more realistic and sensitive movement would recognize the consequences of such an entrenched campaign and might instead adopt tactics that would minimize disruptions to the people who it hopes might join its ranks.

This reflection leads me to ask the question about what kind of institution to which we might compare the Occupy Movement? The kind of institution that seeks to achieve its aims with only marginal regard for human concerns, which lacks the creativity and common sense to adjust its actions when faced with glaring realities. Hmmm….sounds like to me a little bit like the corporation.

And this point leads me to my chief point about the Occupy Movement; though it seeks to overturn the corporation, it in fact, at least partially mirrors the corporation’s mindsets and mentalities. Consider the current militaristic posturing going on in occupy camps throughout the country. While most members are probably deeply opposed to the military industrial complex, the movement is in fact plotting out the logistics for a siege, acquiring provisions and equipment necessary to withstand the winter. Zucotti Park may have major symbolic value, but at this point, little strategic importance. A truly creative and sensible movement might be willing to pack up its tents and organize through the winter from the safety of union halls, community centers, and private homes. Here I might also point out that in true organizing, public demonstration is only one forum for action. Courtrooms, council chambers, boardrooms, and city halls are all equally if not more important settings for pursuing social change.

Unfortunately, much that masquerades these days as activism lacks the creativity, discipline, and humanity to reach any significant ends. Though it seeks to stimulate imagination in order to create a new paradigm for economics and governance, much activism suffers from ideological blocks that prevent it from exercising true creativity. Consequently, it has yet to mobilize a significant enough following or adopt realistic strategies to make any real impact on our politics.

Despite my criticisms, I really do hope that the Occupy Movement is a piece of a growing public awareness about the wounds inflicted on our society by abuses in the corporate sector. I do believe that at their legal roots, the corporation and our crony political system are fundamentally flawed. At the same time, I recognize it will take decades, if not centuries for citizens to build the community power and popular consciousness necessary to abolish this system and replace it with a more humane and equitable alternative.

I have heard it explained that the corporation is the mediating institution of our era, much like how feudal state was the mediating institution of the Medieval period. Like feudalism, the corporate model will eventually die out, but my hunch is that it will have as much to do with its inability to maintain integrity due to resource scarcity and environmental degradation as from any populist pressure.

In the meantime, I intend to devote my energy to building local institutions that wield real community power and meet authentic human needs. This type of work is slow, painstaking, and rarely glorious. However, I believe it promises greater fruit than battling out the winter in a rain soaked tent.