Today, I joined a hippie commune.
Facebook was the first place where I heard about Occupy Delaware. They'd spent a day in Rodney Square and then got kicked out. Sounds like my kind of party, I says to myself. I says self, I should see if I can get involved in this kind of a thing, so I follow them on Facebook. Controversy brings the group into the News Journal, and the next thing I know, I'm Occupying Fletcher Park.
If you know me well, you know that I'd love to discuss the politics or the usefulness of a movement like this, but that's not what I wanted to write about. Being a part of today's rally fueled my understanding of democracy in a way that brought the term into reality for me. Frankly, it's a textbook term. We're all habituated to it, and it becomes more of a given than a beauty to us. It has been significant to me before, but this really jolted it for me.
The first moment where the meaning of it came to me was while we were marching. We went up Market St. around to Rodney Square, the symbolic center of Wilmington and home to many banks, including the Bank of America headquarters. What it meant to be a taxpaying citizen became clearer to me during the march. These streets really were mine. I'd payed for them. I payed for the park. The idea of independent humans choosing to come together and use their money for the benefit of everyone is just so neat. I watch CNN daily, and in the hustle of the social debate we forget what it all even does. It becomes a show, and the government just a character on the TV (not much different from The Jersey Shore a lot of the time). On top of that reminder, I remembered that I have the right to go there and speak ill about the government that organized it. Let that sink in. Look outside and recognize that in a very real sense, you own that street. You share it, but you own it, and you can say almost anything there and do a lot of things there. The constitution is three dimensional, and applies right here.
Four hours later, my new sense of what patriotism really was came at my first Occupy Delaware General Assembly. Occupy Delaware considers itself a group without leaders, only with organizers. All decisions must be voted on by whoever decides to show up. What do you know! I showed up. As I sat on public property and debated a central issue of the Occupy Delaware Movement- should they stay at Fletcher Park illegally or be bullied into the obscurity of Brandywine Park- a whole new wave of democratic feelings overcame me. Everybody was gathered around a few people who wanted only to maintain order. The decisions rested on everyone as a whole. Anyone could speak, and anyone could say anything they thought appropriate, and finally, everyone had a final vote. Once you see pure and real democracy, the entire idea of an election or a vote seems a lot more meaningful than it did before.
As I said, this post isn't meant to be about the stances of the movement or the debate over the location of Occupy Delaware, both of which are pretty touchy subjects. I'd love to address them, but this isn't the place. But no matter what you say about the movement, it is democracy at its purest. The only thing that disappointed me was that I was the only high school student there. Our generation stinks at caring about things.
Oh, and for anyone who likes a good laugh- two dishes of food were brought to the event, a vegetarian pasta salad and baked ziti with meat in it. The hippies devoured the whole pasta salad in minutes, and four hours later there was still half a ziti sitting there.
Facebook was the first place where I heard about Occupy Delaware. They'd spent a day in Rodney Square and then got kicked out. Sounds like my kind of party, I says to myself. I says self, I should see if I can get involved in this kind of a thing, so I follow them on Facebook. Controversy brings the group into the News Journal, and the next thing I know, I'm Occupying Fletcher Park.
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| And on a pretty good day for it, too. |
The first moment where the meaning of it came to me was while we were marching. We went up Market St. around to Rodney Square, the symbolic center of Wilmington and home to many banks, including the Bank of America headquarters. What it meant to be a taxpaying citizen became clearer to me during the march. These streets really were mine. I'd payed for them. I payed for the park. The idea of independent humans choosing to come together and use their money for the benefit of everyone is just so neat. I watch CNN daily, and in the hustle of the social debate we forget what it all even does. It becomes a show, and the government just a character on the TV (not much different from The Jersey Shore a lot of the time). On top of that reminder, I remembered that I have the right to go there and speak ill about the government that organized it. Let that sink in. Look outside and recognize that in a very real sense, you own that street. You share it, but you own it, and you can say almost anything there and do a lot of things there. The constitution is three dimensional, and applies right here.
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| Me marching, Courtesy of Occupy Delaware |
| The General Assembly where I'm sitting between a teacher and a veteran. Courtesy of The News Journal |
Oh, and for anyone who likes a good laugh- two dishes of food were brought to the event, a vegetarian pasta salad and baked ziti with meat in it. The hippies devoured the whole pasta salad in minutes, and four hours later there was still half a ziti sitting there.
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