Cantor's Overplayed Hand

The video above is my three-and-a-half minute take, Cantor’s Overplayed Hand, on part of what spawned the Occupy/The 99% phenomenon. More specifically, it's a commentary on the link between the Republican Party’s longstanding gross-out-the-voters-to-keep-the-turnout-down tactics and the OWS/The 99% movement.

Note: There may be off-the-wall, or even satirical, material included. So don’t let that scare you. And, for the record, or just in case you’d rather not view the film, the script I wrote for it is as follows:

For decades Republicans have been using a low-road tactic that has helped them win elections: They have deliberately tried to make politics seem so frustrating and disgusting that a lot of people have opted to ignore that side of life … when they can. The process has worked like a charm, because it usually discouraged more Democrats than it did Republicans. It’s no secret that Republicans have seemed to benefit from low turnouts for a long time.

The elections of 2010 provided a good example of what I mean. Lots of liberals were so grossed out by the growling repetition of the Tea Party’s rants, together with what they perceived as the Democrats’ wimpy response, they simply ignored Election Day.

Rather than cite a laundry list of other examples of how this style of gaming elections has worked over the years, usually to the advantage of the GOP, I’m going point out that I sense a change in the air that stems from recent events. Over the summer, to protect the interests of America’s wealthiest one percent, Congressional Republicans threatened to push America into a default, to renege on its debts.

But that time Rep. Eric Cantor and his teammates overplayed their hand so egregiously it became a tipping point. The GOP’s unprecedented brinkmanship blew back into its face. Forget about the phony Super Committee, this time the gross-out strategy helped launch the Occupy Wall Street phenomenon.

When some good number of young citizens returned to school this fall, it seems they had lost their faith in governments at all levels in America. Of course, lots of factors caused the OSW/The 99% movement to materialize this fall. What happened in Egypt and in Wisconsin earlier this year surely played a part, too.

Now the seven-week-old movement has already changed the national conversation. A new, free-spirited force seems to be affecting the political landscape. My hunch is that this country’s three-decades-long drift to the right ended abruptly on Sept. 17th, with the birth of this year’s Occupy movement. Wishful thinking?

Maybe, but Mic Checks are changing political vernacular.

Moreover, in a message aimed at Cantor, and other cock-of-the-walk politicians who routinely do the One Percent’s bidding, I’m saying this: The previously scheduled frog-marching of the American culture back to when it was OK to dump Kepone in the James River, back to before Democrats provided Americans their Social Security program — that forced march back to Gilded Age — it has been cancelled.

Meanwhile, will the GOP’s propaganda machine stop trying to hold down election turnouts, using whatever means necessary?

Of course, they won’t.

Will that immoral, anti-worker, anti-student, anti-99% strategy keep working forever to serve the 1%?

We’ll see.

The 1982 Handbill Art Show

The handbill art show in the lobby (photo Commonwealth Times)

Starting with the second anniversary, the Biograph Theatre’s birthdays always meant a party. Some of the celebrations were promoted and open to the public, others were small affairs for the staff and friends. Former staff members were always encouraged to attend, so the parties served as reunions, too.

On Friday, February 12, 1982, the Biograph celebrated its 10th anniversary with a party that surrounded the Richmond premiere of “My Dinner With Andre.” It was especially fitting, because the artsy film had been shot for the most part in Richmond.

To prepare for the occasion we did some touch-up work on the big collage in the hallway to Theatre No. 1 and the entire lobby got a new paint job. To make the party more fun we brought in the caterer who had prepared the dinner for the characters featured in the film, Chris Gibbs (a friend), to serve our $25-per-head guests exactly the same dish. The whole shebang was a benefit for VCU’s Anderson Gallery.

Each day of the shooting of the Louis Malle movie in the old Jefferson Hotel -- it was closed at the time, soon to be renovated -- Gibbs had shown up with a platter full of Cornish game hens and bowls of wild rice, etc. That's what the actors, Wally Shawn and Andre Gregory, had for dinner in the movie’s imaginary restaurant, supposedly in New York City.

About a year-and-a-half before the Biograph’s movie premiere party had been imagined, I had gone with Gibbs to the set, to see how it all looked. For each scene, the production crew had to pick apart the fresh sets of meals to make them look eaten/aged to the point that they fit the timing in the story.

*

While putting the party together with the Biograph’s staff, Gibbs and the Anderson Gallery was a lot of work, it was also a lot of fun. Fortunately, the Biograph’s owners in DeeCee were 99 percent behind such promotions. For me, it was the sort of special project that I loved, even as my passion for the day-to-day routine of operating a movie theater was slowly dissolving into a blur.

Later that same year another special project appeared, to become my raison d'être for months. Although it was a big distraction from my duty to find solutions for the cinema’s endemic problems, winning the “handbill case” still stands as my favorite singular achievement as manager of the Biograph.

In my thinking, first it was about free speech. I had long admired freedom-of-speech heroes and people who fought censorship, so I was eager to do my bit. In a more practical sense, it was also about defending a promotional tool I had relied upon for 10 years. So, it was about keeping the theater open. From experience I knew eye-catching handbills posted on certain utility poles and in particular shop windows were vital to promoting our smorgasbord of attractions, especially midnight shows.

In the larger picture, culturally, it was Rock ‘n’ Rollers vs. Yuppies. The Fan District Association was dead set against handbills promoting nightlife. Prompted by that civic association’s pressure, the City of Richmond officially proclaimed the matter to be strictly about trash.

So, early in 1982, City Council tweaked the statutes about posting notices in the public way. Then the police department began cracking down directly on those who posted handbills. Not so much the notices posted about yard sales or lost dogs. No, the focus was strictly on flyers promoting entertainment.

After noting the arrests of fellow handbillers, musicians who played in popular bands, David Stover (Prevaricators) and Charles Williams (Good Guys), I decided to confront the situation. While some other promoters in the Fan District chose to let the crackdown stop them, I simply went about my routine handbilling rounds, as I had since 1972.

Which led to an 8½-by-11-inch paper poster for “The Atomic Café,” which opened on June 24, 1982, becoming evidence. When a cop brought the flyer to the Biograph, to issue us a warning, I freely admitted to having posted it on a utility pole. So, he handed me a summons to appear in General District Court.

Subsequently, I told my bosses it would cost the Biograph nothing in legal fees, but that I wanted to fight the City of Richmond on freedom of speech grounds. I assured them a couple of my friends who were lawyers would handle the defense.

The study of laws and decisions about free speech and using the public way for the common good became my obsession. Scheming about how to present the argument filled my head for the next four months. First, I wanted the court to see an important context -- our society tolerates all sorts of signage on utility poles, because the messages are considered useful.

Then, I wanted to convince a judge that once you considered all the handbills in the neighborhood around VCU, as a whole, it could be seen as an information system. It was a system that some people were relying on for information, just as others might rely on newspapers obtained from a box sitting on public sidewalk.

One person might read the entertainment section in a local periodical, another person might glance at the utility poles in their neighborhood, to read the posters touting live music shows or poetry readings.

To gather plenty of good examples to use as evidence, we had a handbill art show at the Biograph. On October 5, some 450 flyers, posted on black foam core panels, hung in the theater’s lobby. In all, there were probably three dozen, or so, different artists represented. A group of impromptu art experts acted as judges to select the best five of the show. Naturally, there was a keg of beer on hand to grease the wheels of progress.

One of Phil Trumbo’s Orthotones (later Orthotonics) handbills was named Best in Show. Most people who knew much about the handbill artists in the Fan would have said Trumbo was top dog, so it was a popular decision by the judges. Trumbo would later testify at the trial as a “handbill expert.”

Two of the handbill art show judges from that night also served as expert witnesses at the trial. They were: Gerald Donato and David Manning White. Donato was an art professor at VCU; White was the retired head of the mass communications department at VCU. The best 100 of the handbills from the show went to court as evidence.

After all was said and done, we won. On Saturday, November 6, the Frank Green-penned story about winning the handbill case was draped stylishly across the top of the Richmond Times-Dispatch’s front page.

In dismissing the case, the judge (Jose R. Davila) appears to have opened the question of the enforceability of the city law used by police to combat the proliferation of advertising and other signs on utility poles and other “fixtures” in “public ways.”

The case concerned the seemingly simple issue of the allegedly illegal posting of a handbill. But before it was over, the proceedings touched on topics that included free speech, soup cans, and nuclear energy, and invoked names of such diverse personalities as Andy Warhol and the city’s public safety director.

Rea’s attorneys, John G. Colan and Stuart R. Kaplan, argued the city ordinance was unconstitutional because it violated Rea’s right of freedom of speech.

Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney William Bray argued that Rea had means of expressing himself and of advertising the movies other than the posting of handbills on public property.

Davila did not rule the city ordinance unconstitutional, but he dismissed the charge despite the defense’s concession that Rea had the handbills posted.

Without elaborating, Davila said he was concerned about the use of the term “public way” in the ordinance.

“The city, the GRTC, VCU, churches, the Boys Club and all the candidates use the public’s utility poles to post their signs. They know as well as the general public that there is nothing pretty about a naked pole. Handbills pose no danger to anyone. Is free speech only for some?” Rea asked in a handbill he had printed up before yesterday’s trial.

*

So I walked. We probably had a little party, but I don‘t remember.

A month or so later, I began planning the Biograph’s 11th anniversary program, which would feature Abel Gance’s restored masterpiece, “Napoleon” (1927). That would prove to be the last special project, the last anniversary party that I planned for the Biograph ... while it was still open.

Stay tuned...

Key questions about the Penn St. coverup

A question about the Penn State facilitating-the-predator scandal for which there is no good answer:

If Mike McQueary had walked into a room and seen Jerry Sandusky beating a cornered 10-year-old boy with a bullwhip, or a two-by-four, would McQueary have walked away? Would he have simply told his boss, Joe Paterno, something about the incident the next day and let it go at that?

After all, short of paralyzing the victim, would a beating such as that really be any less damaging to his long-term health than what is alleged to have happened?

Unfortunately, the next question has to be:

If McQueary had walked in on what one might assume was one of the most disturbing sights of his life, could he really have walked away without taking any direct action to stop the crime from continuing? So, that makes me wonder what else McQueary might have seen in his travels that would make what he claims he saw Sandusky doing to a helpless child seem like something to mostly keep quiet about?

What could possibly make the eyewitness, McQueary, opt to participate in such a coverup?

A question about the Penn State facilitating-the-predator scandal for which there is no good answer:

If Mike McQueary had walked into a room and seen Jerry Sandusky beating a cornered 10-year-old boy with a bullwhip, or a two-by-four, would McQueary have walked away? Would he have simply told his boss, Joe Paterno, something about the incident the next day and let it go at that?

After all, short of paralyzing the victim, would a beating such as that really be any less damaging to his long-term health than what is alleged to have happened?

Unfortunately, the next question has to be:

If McQueary had walked in on what one might assume was one of the most disturbing sights of his life, could he really have walked away without taking any direct action to stop the crime from continuing? So, that makes me wonder what else McQueary might have seen in his travels that would make what he claims he saw Sandusky doing to a helpless child seem like something to mostly keep quiet about?

What could possibly make the eyewitness, McQueary, opt to participate in such a coverup?

Spinning won't cure the problems at Penn State

This Washington Times article, “At Penn State’s stadium, profanity, scorn greet one father’s protest,” penned by Nathan Fenno, suggests the shameful denial problem up in Happy Valley still needs a lot of work.

STATE COLLEGE, Pa. — In the middle of Curtin Road, John Matko held one handwritten sign in his right hand and rested another against his jeans. Two inches of black tape obscured Penn State’s logo on the 34-year-old father’s hat, as he tried to ignore the jeers, slaps and beer hurled at him.

“Put abused kids first,” one of Matko’s signs read. “Don’t be fooled, they all knew. Tom Bradley, everyone must go.”

Penn State's Beaver Stadium loomed 30 yards away, rumbling with the first roars of Saturday’s game with Nebraska. The sea of blue-clad supporters wearing gray fedoras and camouflage hunting jackets and “This is JoePa’s house” T-shirts parted around Matko.

“That is such [expletive]!” one young woman screamed at him after glancing at the signs. “Who the [expletive] do you think you are?”

Eyes hidden by blue aviator sunglasses, Matko didn’t respond.

As I watched (about half of) the Nebraska at Penn State game on TV this afternoon, much of the commentary I heard about the facilitating-the-predator-coach scandal amounted to gushing over how the healing has already started. How the riot Wednesday night was an aberration, not at all indicative of how Penn State people truly feel … now, upon reflection.

Listening to the damage control -- the ESPN spin and the Penn State slant -- I had to wonder if a college town community that for decades has been bound together by its idolatry of Paterno could actually wake up, snap out of its denial and start to change so fast.

Change in the football-worshiping culture at Penn State?

Maybe ... some day.

Today?

Nebraska 17, Penn State 14.

700,000 Americans have moved their money

A note from Markos Moulitsas of Daily Kos:

To SLANTblog,

Since September 29, at least 700,000 Americans have moved their money out of big banks and into credit unions.

The big banks say they don't care because they are getting rid of their least profitable clients. In reality, they are so freaked out by what's happening that some have locked their doors and even called the police on customers who tried to close their accounts.

Click here for ten amazing stories about big banks desperately trying to stop customers from closing their accounts. Please share the stories with a friend, too. Everyone needs to know we have the big banks on the run.

Saying it ain't so for too long

The unfolding story of former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky's alleged crimes is truly mind-boggling. The firing of 84-year-old Joe Paterno -- heretofore, a living legend -- who has been Penn State's head football coach since 1966, was unthinkable in most sports fans’ minds until the horrific Sandusky child abuse story broke over last weekend.

But as shocking as this has been to most of us, it's obvious there are people in Happy Valley who have known this day of reckoning was coming for some time. From here on that part of the story is going to get steadily more important. It may lead to people going to jail, besides just Sandusky.

In my memory there’s never been a sports-related scandal like this one. But as others have already pointed out, this is more than a sports story. It's more than an aberrant story about a predator. This story is about idolatry. It’s about money and politics. At the bottom line, it’s about the corrosive effect power can have when it grows, unchecked, to bully all sorts of supposedly decent people into doing shameful things.

Eventually, Penn State is going to have to fire everyone who was in any way connected to Paterno. That's going to mean everybody! To clean house, all the assistants, the secretaries, the people who washed the uniforms, popcorn vendors at the games, etc., will all have to go.

Who knows? This may even mean a SMU-like death penalty for football at Happy Valley.

Over the last few days, each time I’ve read about what’s been going on at Penn State, I’ve said to myself, that's it! I'm so disgusted that I'm not going to read any more about it. Then I read/watch the next story, anyway.

So here are some links to related stories that seem worthwhile, without being over-the-top on being sensational:

• Click here to read “Penn State tragedy shows danger of making coaches false idols”
• Click here to read “Coaching icon Paterno sacked in ignominy”
• Click here to read “Abuse victim's mother says Paterno had to be fired”
• Click here to read “The Question Joe Paterno Needs to Answer”
• Click here to read “Will Paterno Scandal Hurt Pennsylvania Republicans”
• Click here to read “Who knew what about Jerry Sandusky?”
• Click here to read "Penn State Sponsors Anxiously Watch How Events Unfold at University"
  

A long way from home ... on a horse

A Veterans Day Remembrance: In 1916 the fit young men who had already volunteered to be members of the Richmond Light Infantry Blues were dispatched to Brownsville, Texas, to watch over the border and chase Mexican bandit/revolutionary Pancho Villa, who had crossed the border to stage a few raids on American soil ... or, so people said.

To do the job the Richmonders were quickly converted into a cavalry unit.

My grandfather, Frank W. Owen (1893-1968), seen at the age of 23 in the 1916 photo above, was one of those local boys in that Richmond Blues outfit.

Following that campaign, in 1917 the Blues were sent to Fort McClellan, located in the Alabama foothills, near the town of Anniston, for additional training. Then it was across the pond to France to finish off the Great War -- the war to end all wars.

Frank Owen grew up in South Richmond in what was then called Manchester. Before his active duty he had mostly made his living as a vocalist. The stories I remember him telling from his years as a soldier were all about his singing gigs, playing football and poker, and various other adventures.

Owen is on the right in the photo above. Like other men of his generation, who saw war firsthand, he apparently saw no benefit in talking about the actual horrors he'd seen. At least I never heard such stories. However, he was always quick to point with pride at having been in the Richmond Blues, then seen by many in Richmond as an elite corps.

Eventually, he became a draftsman, then an architect with the Chesapeake & Ohio Railway (forerunner to CSX), which was then based here in Richmond. He continued to perform as a soloist, as a studio backup vocalist and in barbershop quartets into his 60s.

F. W. Owen believed there was a coward at the heart of every bully. Without hesitation, he depended completely on his own view of life. He passed what he could of that self-reliance on to me. The badge below is from the mid-1950s.

My grandson's middle name is Owen. It's a name he should always wear proudly. A long way from home, almost a century ago, his great-great-grandfather certainly did.

The Origins of Occupy Wall Street

For an account of how the Occupy Wall Street movement got started, click here to read "Reawakening The Radical Imagination: The Origins of Occupy Wall Street" by Matt Sledge for the Huffington Post.

Here's a brief excerpt:

The movement didn't get that big simply because AdBusters, a Canadian magazine, sent out a flashy email promoting it, or because the hacker collective Anonymous flicked out a few tweets. Instead, it took a group of about 200 committed activists 47 days to outline the ground rules that have allowed the protest to flourish.

Abuse is Forging Tomorrow's Bloody Monsters

The mind-boggling story at Penn State has reminded me of a piece about child abuse I penned for STYLE Weekly in 1999. "Abuse is Forging Tomorrow's Bloody Monsters" was written not long after the shocking Columbine High School incident.

Today I might write it somewhat differently, but the point still hits home about how our society, as a whole, routinely refuses to look unflinchingly at the obvious cause of so much trouble and heartache.

Hey, I know people who usually believe the accusers are making most of it up, regardless of what sort of abuse is being reported. They think the reports of child molestation by Catholic priests have been greatly exaggerated. They even believe disgraced boxer Mike Tyson was not a rapist.

Here's the text of the 12-year-old piece:

We've all had to listen to almost monotonous explanations of the reasons for the explosion of teen-age mayhem: too many guns, not enough morality, too much violence on TV, not enough personal responsibility. These are all true. But as the news directors and speech writers spin in their desk chairs to find out what we want to hear, there is one aspect of the picture that is being avoided.

Perhaps this reason is considered an uncomfortable subject. Maybe it strikes a little too close to home. Consequently, we aren't hearing much about the common denominator in many massacres, wherever they occur. Instead of recognizing the systematic abuse of children as the key factor it has always been in such matters, we fret and search for peripheral reasons to explain the bewildering carnage.

In a knee-jerk response to the recent school yard blood baths, some would make schools and streets safe by putting a cop with unlimited power in every classroom and on every street corner. Hopefully, most Americans would still see such a cure as worse than the malady.

But the truth is we don't enjoy absolute freedom and never have. It is the balance between freedom and control that is the secret to making our system of democracy, free speech, and free markets work.

America is a representative democracy, not a pure democracy. Elections are held at regular intervals to control public policy. Freedom of speech doesn't allow for a fool to yell "fire" in a crowded theater, and so forth. What we do have is a tradition of wanting as much freedom as possible because we believe that it brings out the best in us. Amen.

Returning to the trouble that launched this most recent national debate — teen-age violence — I'm convinced we need to divide our thinking into long term and short term, or perhaps indirect and direct.

The long-term/indirect approach should recognize that the four obvious reasons for the escalating violence are excellent areas for concentrated efforts.

However, there is a solid reason that violence on TV, or the availability of guns, hasn't made us all blow each others' brains out. And that reason is tragically simple: Most of us have not gone through a soul-crushing experience of abuse as a child.

Some children who are tied up and beaten bloody will not break. Some little girls who are sexually molested by an adult they naturally trusted will outgrow the painful confusion and learn to trust again. Some little boys, who hear gunshots outside their windows most nights, will resist giving in to fear and grow up without joining a street gang. Some kids who suffer from cold neglect will be strengthened by the ordeal and become good citizens.

The others, the ones who can't overcome their bad luck, may shoot each other at school. If they survive the nightmare of their childhood, they are likely to end up being a perpetual nuisance to everyone. At some point it's probably too late to help them. However sad that may be, it's the truth.

By the time the most damaged kids are in school, they aren't really that hard to spot.

Here's the unvarnished truth: We can't continue to allow kids that we know are powder kegs to play with matches. Children of this ilk must be watched constantly and have absolutely no access to weapons with more potential than a spitball.

Here's the short term/direct strategy: We have to accept that children who are being subjected to systematic abuse must be taken away from the source of that abuse immediately. It's their only hope. It may be our only hope.

Yes, in some cases this essay is advocating the government's bold intrusion into private rooms behind locked doors. And that will always be painful. Yet, in order to protect the freedom of the many, we must be willing to focus our effort on the few who are central to this particular problem.

Once again, it's a matter of balance.

So forget about ranting at Goth fashions or the Internet. Unless we slow down the assembly line process of neglect and overt abuse that is forging tomorrow's bloody monsters, there's precious little use in talking about what else we are going to do to make schools, streets, workplaces or homes safe.

If we continue to allow our politicians to demagogue this issue, if we allow an irresponsible media to go on promoting aberrant behavior in the name of reporting on it, we do ourselves no good.

Furthermore, if we fail to act effectively to slow down the assembly line, then the very tenets of our free society could soon be ablaze on the altar of order, at any price.

Not much has changed on this front in recent years. Most people are still averting their eyes. Then again, there is this discouraging news about child abuse.

Cantor's Overplayed Hand

The video above is a commentary on the link between the Republican Party's longstanding gross-out-the-voters-to-keep-the-turnout-down tactics and the burgeoning Occupy Wall Street/The 99% movement.

Note: There may be off-the-wall, or even satirical, material included. So don't let that scare you. And, for the record, or just in case you'd rather not view my three-and-a-half-minute film, the script I wrote for it is as follows:

For decades Republicans have been using a low-road tactic that has helped them win elections: They have deliberately tried to make politics seem so frustrating and disgusting that a lot of people have opted to ignore that side of life ... when they can. The process has worked like a charm, because it usually discouraged more Democrats than it did Republicans. It’s no secret that Republicans have seemed to benefit from low turnouts for a long time.

The elections of 2010 provided a good example of what I mean. Lots of liberals were so grossed out by the growling repetition of the Tea Party’s rants, together with what they perceived as the Democrats’ wimpy response, they simply ignored Election Day.

Rather than cite a laundry list of other examples of how this style of gaming elections has worked over the years, usually to the advantage of the GOP, I’m going point out that I sense a change in the air that stems from recent events. Over the summer, to protect the interests of America’s wealthiest one percent, Congressional Republicans threatened to push America into a default, to renege on its debts.

But that time Rep. Eric Cantor and his teammates overplayed their hand so egregiously it became a tipping point. The GOP’s unprecedented brinkmanship blew back into its face. Forget about the phony Super Committee, this time the gross-out strategy helped launch the Occupy Wall Street phenomenon.

When some good number of young citizens returned to school this fall, it seems they had lost their faith in governments at all levels in America. Of course, lots of factors caused the OSW/The 99% movement to materialize this fall. What happened in Egypt and in Wisconsin earlier this year surely played a part, too.

Now the seven-week-old movement has already changed the national conversation. A new, free-spirited force seems to be affecting the political landscape. My hunch is that this country’s three-decades-long drift to the right ended abruptly on Sept. 17th, with the birth of this year’s Occupy movement. Wishful thinking?

Maybe, but Mic Checks are changing political vernacular.

Moreover, in a message aimed at Cantor, and other cock-of-the-walk politicians who routinely do the One Percent’s bidding, I’m saying this: The previously scheduled frog-marching of the American culture back to when it was OK to dump Kepone in the James River, back to before Democrats provided Americans their Social Security program -- that forced march back to Gilded Age -- it has been cancelled.

Meanwhile, will the GOP’s propaganda machine stop trying to hold down election turnouts, using whatever means necessary?

Of course, they won’t.

Will that immoral, anti-worker, anti-student, anti-99% strategy keep working forever to serve the 1%?

We’ll see.

The 99% @ City Hall

The footage for this short video piece was shot outside of Richmond, Virginia's City Hall on Nov. 2, 2011. The commentary on the demonstration at City Hall and about the Occupy/99% movement, in general, is by yours truly.

At Mayor Dwight Jones' behest, the Occupy Richmond encampment at Kanawha Plaza had been disassembled by the Richmond Police Department two days before. Nine arrests were made. The charges ranged from trespassing to being in a public park after dark.

More demonstrations in front of local branches of big banks are apparently in the works for Occupy Richmond.

Click here to view an earlier video of mine on Occupy Richmond in Monroe Park.

Occupy Richmond's Halloween Move

Let the record show the 15-day Occupy Richmond demonstration/encampment at Kanawha Plaza was broken up by forces of the Richmond Police Department in the wee hours of the chilly morning on Halloween Day, 2011.

Irony aside, most of the local occupiers left the area when ordered to go by the cops. That, while reports say nine stalwarts were arrested for refusing to move. A meeting in Monroe Park was called for the afternoon.

What’s next?

As cynics have predicted, maybe the movement itself will fizzle, nationwide, as the nights get longer and colder. Then again, the entire Occupy Wall Street/The 99% phenomenon may have taken on a life of its own. So, like an impossible-to-kill monster in a midnight show, it may be mutating into something much more formidable and relentless.

Happy Halloween.

Updates:

• Click here for a report from WCVE-FM.

• Click here to read a firsthand account at Occupy Richmond.

• Click here for a firsthand account at Auspicious Jots.

Cain's past under scrutiny

A story that dredges up something about sexual harassment on the job from Herman Cain's past, when he was CEO of the National Restaurant Association, was published by Politico last night. So far, we don 't have the raw details. Whether this still-developing revelation will turn out to be a loose thread that unravels Cain's long-shot bid to win the Republican presidential nomination, or a false alarm, remains to be seen.

The Cain camp is hitting back, but the language being used is not necessarily a good sign for Cain. Among other things, J.D. Gordon, a Cain spokesperson, said, "...Sadly, we’ve seen this movie played out before — a prominent Conservative targeted by liberals simply because they disagree with his politics,” Gordon said.

Perhaps Cain's spinner knows that a "liberal" gave the story to Politico. But if he doesn't know that to be true, I have to say it's more likely that a trickster who supports one of Cain's Republican rivals planted this story, a story that isn't likely to go away by simply blaming unnamed liberals and the media.

Stay tuned...

The Pursuit of Extremism

In 1964, Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater (1909-98) famously said, “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.”

Now, in the name of defending liberty, Republican candidates are debating one another over who is more against abortion in every case, to the point that some now seem to be opposed to birth control. They argue over who is more willing to allow the environment to be poisoned for the sake of quick and dirty money. They fight over who is more willing to beat up on teachers, veterans and firefighters to protect the fortunes of corporate CEOs and the zillionaires of Wall Street.

In 2011, Republican candidates are striving to top their opponents in the all-out pursuit of extremism … for the sake of extremism.

Through a partisan prism darkly

From its inception, what we’ve seen of the Occupy Wall Street phenomenon has been shaped in some part by our own point of view. The occupiers hadn’t been in Lower Manhattan long before the gathering movement was being seen through familiar partisan prisms.

Some Democrats rushed to praise the demonstrators, some Republicans rushed to put them down. For the first week, it seemed the mainstream media were rushing to trivialize what was happening in Zuccotti Park. Outside the ranks of party politics and beyond the reach of slanted newsy talk shows there had to have been millions of regular people who were mildly amused and wondered what was going on.

So millions of Americans awoke to find themselves in the midst of a stampede to label the movement as good, bad or insignificant. “What do the protestors want?” demanded a discordant chorus of liberal and conservative pundits.

Since its first week the burgeoning OWS movement that has labeled itself The 99% has spread from Manhattan to cities coast-to-coast, and to other countries. So, most people who want to see for themselves what’s going on can simply take a look by visiting one of many “occupations” in public spaces all over America.

However, for some people, rather than seek out firsthand knowledge of what’s been going on, it’s too easy to project their own feelings.

Conservatives can depend on Rush Limbaugh and Fox News to tell them all they really want to know:

(To paraphrase) Occupiers are mostly moochers and lazy good-for-nothings. Plenty of communists and jihadists are embedded within the OWS/The 99% movement, which reeks of George Soros’ money ... and so forth.

Still, opponents of the OWS/The 99% movement aren’t the only ones who are complaining about how the demonstrators seem unfocused and in need of forming a clear agenda. Democrats have been projecting their preconceived notions, as well. Clearly, some want to see today’s demonstrators as resembling Civil Rights marchers and Vietnam War protestors.

Well, from my vantage point, this year’s demonstrations look different from their supposed counterparts in the 1960s. There is no particular overriding law or governmental policy the demonstrators have been citing as the bull‘s-eye for their protests. If anything, perhaps a general opposition to the concept of “corporate personhood” is a popular target.

Rather than pursuing specific goals through influencing the government, OWS/The 99% seems to be about the process, itself. It seems to be about refusing to obediently accept the ticky-tacky future the young demonstrators sense is being foisted upon them by the powers that be.

These demonstrations will end, one way or another. Sadly, we have already seen violence break out in some cities. My guess is that brutal police tactics will do little to make the OWS/The 99% movement fold up its tents and go away.

So, this can be read as a heads-up to Richmond’s Mayor Dwight Jones -- don‘t create a problem you can‘t possibly solve. Later on, there will be plenty of time to worry about what precedents are being set and whatever complaints the Tea Party wants to hurl your way.

Still, nobody knows when or what will cause the demonstrations and sleep-ins in public spaces to end. Not in New York, Oakland, or Richmond. However, when they do, what happens next is what this thing is really all about.

That’s my view.

Once all the tents have been folded up and people go home, or wherever, what happens next will depend on what the process has taught the demonstrators. It will depend on what they, especially the youngest among them, take away from their experience as occupiers.

The demonstrators have been learning how to cooperate and how to organize. They are learning about how tedious democracy can be; they are learning civics. Then, too, they are connecting with their counterparts, who empathize with their concerns about the future, all over the world.

What began on September 17, 2011, has set a new force in motion. The most important thing about this force probably isn’t what it demands now, or what shape it will take this week. People who think they already know what effect it will have on 2012’s elections are kidding themselves.

Yes, it’s been disappointing to see some of the local reactions to what Occupy Richmond has been doing in Kanawha Plaza. To scrape the bottom of the barrel there’s Dale Brumfield’s snide Back Page piece for STYLE Weekly, which hardly passes as an analysis of the movement. Rather than an essay, Brumfield offers his readers a heap of low-brow zingers crafted to piss off folks he likes to irritate.

Fortunately, there are ways to follow this movement’s story without having to rely on the likes of STYLE Weekly.

Bottom line: There are times when it's better to rely on your own firsthand knowledge, rather than the labels others might want you to use.

Too many cigarettes

These little drawings (click to enlarge) were part of a pitch I made to the Virginia chapter of the American Cancer Society in 1985, to make a 30-second public service announcement for them in 16mm. Each frame shown here represented a decade, starting with the 1950s. The film was to have used a series of about 10 still photos, one fading into the next. Essentially, it was about women smoking too long.

My aim was to make the act of smoking cigarettes look less stylish. The last scary frame (not shown here) of the PSA would have depicted the brunette in a hospital bed with tubes going into her face. 1985 was the year after my mother had died of lung cancer. The executive director of the ACS turned me down, saying she liked it, but it just couldn't be done ... not in Richmond, Virginia. So, the little film was never made.

Lou DiBella on the stadium issue

In response to this article in the Richmond Times-Dispatch the Richmond Flying Squirrels' managing partner put out a statement via press release. Here is Lou DiBella's statement:

“The Flying Squirrels will continue to provide the quality of baseball, entertainment and community impact that the Greater Richmond area has grown to expect from us. We are not actively looking to other locations at this time, but we have always maintained that our long term success is dependent upon a new facility that our terrific Front Office Staff [sic] can maximize for the benefit of the entire metro region. We believe that the RMA and its’ [sic] stakeholders share this same desire and that we will collectively work towards accomplishing this common goal sooner rather than later.”