As I watched hour after hour of footage from Occupy Wall Street (OWS) sites across the country looking for visually and emotionally compelling shots, I started getting a little testy – do something interesting! Watching people talking, debating, explaining what consensus means, how General Assemblies work, may be greatly motivating when you’re there, but it’s not all that thrilling when you’re putting together a video with a soundtrack. There are now over 2,500 OWS communities around the world, so that was a lot video to look through.
After awhile though, my thoughts shifted, and I started finding the beauty in these small groups, and the courage. It’s one thing to head over to Zuccotti Park in downtown Manhattan, with the hundreds, sometimes thousands, of other people. It’s another to stand on a sidewalk with ten or twenty or a hundred people and brave the initial curiosity and maybe scorn from passersby. “For every I’m with you honk I get from a passing car I get a get a job thrown at me” said one woman. A friend put it eloquently when he said “It’s hard being the first one on the dance floor.”
So, with that said here is the video Franklyn Strachan and I produced with the help of thousands of people around the country, and around the world. Melvin Van Peebles song, “Love That’s America” is the soundtrack, written forty years ago during the time of another great upheaval in our country.
I hope you enjoy it!
Occupy Wall Street, Occupy Together, Melvin Van Peebles.
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To my wonderful smart niece. What are these occupiers accomplishing? Is anything productive being done?
Today is Nov 17th. I had the television on for a little while this morning. One thing that really bothered me were the protesters carrying American flags with messages written on the flags. Is that beautiful and courageous? I think not!