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My Brush with Brutality and Love

Yesterday evening, I was brutally beaten by my brothers on the Seattle Police force as I stood before an entrance to Pier 18 of the Seattle Port in my clergy garb bellowing, “Keep the Peace! Keep the Peace!”  An officer pulled me down from behind and threw me to the asphalt.  Between my cries of pain and shouts of “I’m a man of peace!” he pressed a knee to my spine and immobilized my arms behind my back, crushing me against the ground.  With the right side of my face pressed to the street, he repeatedly punched the left side of my face for long enough that I had time to pray that the crunching sounds I heard were not damaging my brain.  I was cuffed and pulled off the ground by a different officer who seemed genuinely appalled when he saw my face and clerical collar. He asked who I was and why I was here, to which I replied, “I’m a minister of the gospel of Jesus Christ, I believe another world is possible.”  He led me shaking to a police van where began a 12-hour journey of incarcerated misery.

How did this happen?

The afternoon of Monday December 12 began with a march from downtown Seattle to the Port in a coordinated attempt by West Coast Occupy movements to expose exploitation of workers and interrupt business as usual at major Pacific ports.  Upon arrival, the crowd spread out to picket or blockade entrances.  I joined a small group of about 40 to picket a side entrance (we did not stop anyone from walking in or out).  Several hours later, word came that business had been canceled for the day and our group dispersed in high spirits.  My wife, Freddie, and I considered going home after a long, chilly day of standing up for what we believed in, but decided to see if there was an important need we might fill at other locations before departing.

As we neared a major entrance, Pier 18, the tension was almost palpable. Hundreds of people had been occupying the blockaded road for hours while police kept their distance.  But night was falling, mounted officers arrived on the scene, and the police began to maneuver into position and adopt menacing expressions.  Shortly before they pounced, I began to feel a great fear ballooning in my chest and seriously considered leaving.  I sensed that the police would be ruthless under the cover of darkness. This fear was particularly strong because although my Christian convictions call me to non-violence, I had only practiced this by intervening in street fights, and never in the face of a militarized force that believes they can act with legal and social impunity.  But in my spiritual core, the place where conscience prevails over fear and self-interest, I knew that I could not run away when the situation desperately called for disciplined non-violent voices and presence.

Utterly terrified, I made my way to the line between the occupiers and the police, held my arms out, and began shouting to my occupation brothers and sisters: “Peaceful Protest Everyone,” “Keep the Peace,” “Do not respond with violence.”  My brothers and sisters on the police force began advancing behind a wall of horses and heavy bicycles.  I linked arms with a young man in dark clothing on my left and a gnarled grandfather on my right.  We stood still until the officers approached us and began throwing their bikes into our bodies, shoving us toward the sidewalk.  I stared into the eyes of the most aggressive officer, who was seething, and shouted above the noise, “Why are you causing violence to peaceful people?  Think about your actions! Think about your humanity!”  With an open hand he rammed my throat.  The old man to my left was attacked similarly and reached back with a cocked fist, but I yanked him back.

A minute later, an officer threw me to the ground and punched me numerous times.  With hands cuffed behind my back, I was led into a police van and caged alone for a half hour.  In the dim light and cramped space, I sang “This Little Light of Mine” and recited Psalm 23 to stave off a gnawing fear.  Eventually, a few more occupiers joined me and we were transported to a holding facility where they split us into pairs and left us in tiny concrete rooms for several hours.   The rooms were voids in every way: windowless, empty (no facilities, no benches), lit with glaring fluorescent bulbs, gray and white.  My void-mate was a terrified kid who had gotten in over his head.  He gave me heart by singing protest songs while I shared some meditation techniques for maintaining self-possession in trying moments.  Eventually we were hauled off to the county jail and had our handcuffs removed after four long hours of immobility.  As I walked through the metal detector at the jail, a fellow occupier I hadn’t spoken with yet looked at me in my collar and said, “You’ve just been baptized.”   They outfitted us in thin cotton jail uniforms, and proceeded to move us from cell to freezing cold cell for the next eight hours without any clear purpose or explanation.  During that time, the adrenaline wore off and my bruises and lacerations began aching intensely.  I asked officers and staff at least six times to see a nurse and was consistently denied that, as well as water and food.  During the final hour a nurse took pity on me and found an ice pack for my face.   Not all the staff, it seemed, had contempt for their charges.  Finally, at 5:00am we were released to the street after obligating ourselves to appear before a judge at a future date.

Why was I there in the first place?

First, I participated in the port occupation at the behest of some of the most exploited and underpaid laborers in our city—the men and women who truck containers in and out of the port.  Over the past nine months, the spiritual community that I convene, Valley & Mountain, has stood in solidarity with these drayage workers in their struggle for dignity in the workplace.  We have listened to the truckers’ stories, held a focused study of the issues, attended a Port Commissioners meeting to demand justice from elected officials, and participated in a major rally in support of the workers’ simple requests for access to bathrooms, less toxic trucks, and basic workplace protections (to learn more about their plight, read their open letter in support of the port occupation).  I participated to stand alongside them.

Second, I participated because I have witnessed overwhelming evidence that the economic and political systems of my country stand against those people who the God I worship stands for.  My conception of God, inadequate as it may be, is better described as the Love that generates creativity and community, than as a super-man judging us from a heavenly skybox.  Such a God cannot be exclusively claimed by a political party, a religion, or even a movement like Occupy.   Such a Love contrasts with everything that reserves power, dignity, wealth, and the status of full humanity for some while depriving it from others.  My commitment to Love requires me to challenge the increasing consolidation of all these good things in the hands of a few, and to collaborate for the creation of something that Love would recognize as kin.

A call to transformation

Here is what I am asking of anyone who will hear it:

• · Listen deeply.
• · Get upset.
• · Generate Love.

By listening deeply, I mean allowing the experiences of others to alter your own worldview.  It might mean allowing my story to challenge assumptions you may have about the reliability of police discipline or mainstream media impartiality (reports of the activity by the Seattle Times, for example, are significantly skewed thus far).  It may mean allowing the stories of exploited people, like the port truckers, to challenge your assumptions about the American narrative of equal opportunity.  Whatever it means, it will require humility and proactive encounters with those you tend to avoid.

By getting upset, I mean being appalled at the dehumanizing forces operating in our world—forces unveiled by deep listening.  Nothing changes just because you become aware that port truckers have to defecate in plastic bags because their unjust classification as “independent contractors” bars them from using the employee bathrooms.  Nothing changes just because you know that some cities have police cultures that encourage brutality, particularly against people of color.  We must have the tenderness of heart to become upset when human beings are violated and oppressed.

By generating love, I mean channeling that passion into creative and liberating action.  There are so many excuses to avoid it: “The issues are so complex,” “There are two sides to everything,” “I don’t want to alienate anyone and lose a chance at making an impact later.”  But as the great preacher/activist William Sloane Coffin once said, “Not taking sides is effectively to weigh in on the side of the stronger.”  As finite creatures, we cannot fight every worthy battle.  But refusing to participate in any struggle for a more loving world is a nihilistic rejection of even our very finite power.  Right now I am praying for the courage to transform the molecules of my anger and the raw material of my frustration into the greatest, most indestructible, most transformative power on earth: unconditional love in action.

Yesterday evening, I was brutally beaten by my brothers on the Seattle Police force as I stood before an entrance to Pier 18 of the Seattle Port in my clergy garb bellowing, “Keep the Peace! Keep the Peace!”  An officer pulled me down from behind and threw me to the asphalt.  Between my cries of pain and shouts of “I’m a man of peace!” he pressed a knee to my spine and...

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Notes on Economy (Pt. 1)

Last week the New York City General Assembly, the democratic body through which Occupy Wall Street (OWS) is administered in Lower Manhattan, set a profound precedent by approving a proposal to convert the Screen Printing Working Group to a horizontally-organized workers cooperative. The proposal flew under the radars of virtually everyone, as far as I can tell. For those unfamiliar, the Screen Printing Working Group had busied itself up to that point producing signs, t-shirts, and all other manner of protest visuals through an on-site silkscreen station in Zuccotti Park (and at various off-site locations, following the NYPD’s eviction of the encampment). The proposal in question would initiate a transformation that would both generate revenue adequate to provide occupiers with a livelihood, and put OWS’s hat in the proverbial ring by actively creating frameworks for dignified, remunerative work in contrast to the neoliberal gospel/methodology of job creation.

While subtle, it’s difficult to overstate the significance, here. After all, this is the first tangibly alternative economic structure spun out of the movement, and the spectrum of economic positions within OWS might very well be its broadest and most contentious aspect. It seems just as likely that a more liberal-minded micro-finance program (or such) would’ve made its way out of the GA first, setting a far less demanding bar for mapping horizontalism and direct democracy onto economic and productive activity. Given the holiday season demand laying in wait for such an operation, effectively jumpstarting prospects, there’s good reason to expect this will be the benchmark for modeling the economic vision of OWS, going forward.

For those interested in forging a correspondence between the Buddha’s teachings and the unfolding of OWS, this particular event poses something of a deep question: What is an economic/productive form that reflects the ethical training laid out in the Dhamma? What is the standard against which we evaluate such relations?

Certainly, the Buddha gave a number of teachings related to conducting business, investment, etc. They’re not terribly radical, and appear to prescribe behavior within the framework of existing norms and structures. Not surprising. One has to keep in mind that the Buddha himself was, by his own admission, solely preoccupied with liberation from greed, hatred, and delusion – to the exclusion of a number of considerations he regarded as imponderable, even. There’s a sort of individualizing and resigned reading of this that takes the Buddha’s parameters less as a tactical decision, and more as a sort of totalizing gospel aimed at individual salvation, somewhat indifferent to external conditions. There’s also a reading that suggests that matters beyond the Buddha’s narrow focus were for the rest of us to sort out together, as we follow our own paths. I’m inclined toward the latter reading, and find adequate encouragement for it all through the canon.

When I spend time with this question of production relations, I come back over and over to the second lay precept for ethical behavior: the training to refrain from taking what is not freely given. The conventional takeaway here, simply put, is “don’t steal.” But an array of teachers have taken great pains to insist that the training is far more broad; it challenges us to consider how we take up others’ time, attention, space, and energy in ways that they are not freely offering. If we can expand our understanding of the precept to include something so immaterial as how we take up others’ attention, reading it as inclusive of something so material as production relations ought to be fair game.

Well aware of the controversy I’m courting, here, and genuinely interested in the discussion I very much hope to provoke, I want to argue that no production relations under capitalism can be reconciled with the Second Precept. Beyond even the foundational roles of the dispossession and extermination of indigenous people and the subsequent slave trade in the accumulation of surplus and capital in North America, (and those outside North America are encouraged to consider the role of colonialism), one cannot speak of anything “freely given” in a world where one’s choices are limited to submission to the available price for one’s labor, or homelessness, starvation, the starvation of one’s family, or worse.

Outside a dedicated mapping of direct democracy and equality onto the productive sphere (which, I’ll add, offers a good deal to ecological aspirations), I see no real possibility for labor under capitalism that is carried out with any degree of freedom. I’m as comfortable with that claim as a reflection of the Second Precept as I am with its more conventional political trappings. Having made my living in worker-owned/operated enterprises for the last half-decade, I’m intimately familiar with the discipline and moment to moment practice that equality and dignity require in a workplace. It is an often visceral and painfully challenging form of off-the-cushion practice. For this reason alone, the decision taken by the OWS screen printers ought to draw the gaze of those who’ve taken up liberation as laid out in the Buddha’s instruction. It’s an indirect call for us to reflect on how deep our liberatory aspirations run, and the conditions we want to cultivate for each other.

Last week the New York City General Assembly, the democratic body through which Occupy Wall Street (OWS) is administered in Lower Manhattan, set a profound precedent by approving a proposal to convert the Screen Printing Working Group to a horizontally-organized workers cooperative. The proposal flew under the radars of virtually everyone, as far as I can tell. For those...

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Generosity Keeps on Giving

On the morning of November 17, I watched the livestream of protestors in NYC being beaten as they attempted to shut down Wall St. I felt the intensity of the togetherness of the crowd, the depth of what seemed to be their commitment to nonviolence — these vast numbers of people surrounded everywhere by militarized police, keeping their eyes on the prize of economic justice and liberation. So many emotions ran through me: anger, inspiration, rage, love, determination, doubt. Yes, doubt. Am I doing enough? What more could I be doing?

In Oakland, there were no planned mass actions during that day, but our little affinity group had decided to do another action in front of Chase Bank on this day, in honor of the OWS attempt to shut down Wall St. In this action, we’d all be practicing generosity, offering one-dollar bills freely to all who passed. Such a completely different energy from what was happening that very moment in NYC. The sense of doubt was lingering. Was this generosity thing silly, juxtaposed with the injustice the world was experiencing and witnessing?

We’d planned our action for the lunch hour downtown, at the same Chase Bank branch we’d visited before. The security guard recognized us as we arrived. He wouldn’t allow my comrade in to the bank to get change, so she had to go to another bank nearby. Another bank employee came out to speak to me. She told me that after we’d been there the previous time, their windows had been smashed and their ATM had been burned. In the spirit of generosity, I committed myself to really listening to her. I asked if it had caused her hardship, or made more work for her. She said they’d had to close down for a day, but nobody lost any pay. There was a short silence between us, and then I said we weren’t planning anything like that, we’re doing something different. I proceeded to show what we were about by starting to offer money to people as they passed, “Would you like to take this dollar and give it to someone who needs it? We’re practicing generosity.” The bank employee remained by my side for another minute or so while I did this. Then she turned to me and said “let me know if you need me to get you any change,” and went back in to the bank.

Chase Bank, Nov. 17, 2011, photo by Melvin

Eventually there were six of us. New arrivals were allowed into the bank to get change. We occupied half the block, about 10 feet apart, each of us gently holding out our money in offering to all who passed. It felt a bit different this time, with no mass action happening around us, just an ordinary business day lunch hour. It’s said that the path to liberation involves swimming upstream, and I’m reminded of this because that is so clearly what we are doing. There is not one single person walking down that street expecting to be freely offered money they didn’t ask for and which comes with no expectations. It goes against everything we think we know, and every reaction shows it.

Some folks were delighted by the surprise, others were shut down to it. The range of responses tells the story of human existence. One who was devastated by foreclosure of their home seemed to think we were part of a PR campaign for the bank. Another told stories about how she loved giving, and that she’d take the money to her church, where there was always someone who needed it. One guy had a grumpy response for each of us, such as “go home to your mother,” or “Halloween’s over, pal,” in response to my hat. One person stayed to join us. Another initially took a dollar, then came back with more money for us. There was one who, when asked if he’d like to give a dollar to someone who needed it, said “no, when people ask me for money I tell them “‘that’s not my job.’” There were plenty who ignored us entirely, and plenty who were tickled by the strange and unexpected joy of our action. Some who initially ignored us,  after walking past not one, not two, but six of us offering them a dollar, would stop at the last of us and say, “so, this isn’t a joke or a trick?” Nope, no catch. We are practicing generosity and encouraging you to do so, too. That is all.

I was struck deeply by the surprise of my  internal experience. On an ordinary day in an ordinary context, I’d be annoyed by the grumpy ones, defensively judging those I perceive to be judging me, and likely to be generally unpleasantly reactive. But this practice of generosity has a kind of magic to it. It changes the narrative, and offers a completely different possibility. I felt no annoyance or impatience with anyone, and any judgements that floated through my mind were barely whispers. I was seeing each of these people in their full humanity, on a path that contains infinite choices and infinite possibilities — each potentially able to touch liberation at any moment. We were offering one possibility by example, planting the seeds of generosity through embodying it. Each offering felt completely unencumbered, naturally accompanied with a genuine feeling of goodwill.

I don’t think any of us were feeling doubt about the quiet revolutionary potential of our little generosity action by the end of that lunch hour. All actions that address injustice and greed are needed in these times, both internal and external, large and small. We weren’t shutting down the bank, instead we were doing our part to shut down human greed by digging a new pathway in our minds, and the minds of all those we encountered. So, to the passerby who asked if our action had been “successful,” I say “absolutely,” without a doubt.

On the morning of November 17, I watched the livestream of protestors in NYC being beaten as they attempted to shut down Wall St. I felt the intensity of the togetherness of the crowd, the depth of what seemed to be their commitment to nonviolence — these vast numbers of people surrounded everywhere by militarized police, keeping their eyes on the prize of economic justice and...

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Sunday Morning West Oakland

Click here to listen to the poem:

As the birds make their noises I ask myself questions.

Why do we feel most alive when at war?

The church sings hallelujah over and over

across the empty street. A small blond child

is playing harmonica to a cat when I find

a scrap of paper on my floor with an invitation

to discuss a quote downtown

in the plaza that has become the center

of the local occupation. In bold it reads

“the role of the police is not to serve and protect the people.

It is to serve and protect the system that rules over the people.”

I realize that this is the first morning

without helicopters circling the sky

like giant angry pterodactyls. Now that the cops

have taken a break from firing tear gas

into veterans’ brains on 14th and Broadway

Oakland is finally out of the news.

The voices across the street rise louder in unison now

“only love will save us, thank you Lord, thank you Lord.”

I wonder if we can save ourselves. I try

to dedicate Sunday mornings

to my version of the sacred. Today that is the memory

of strangers repeating each other’s words, phrase by phrase,

to a crowd of 3000 people assembled

under streetlights and stars. Today

it is unicorns smashing border walls, queers

confronting racism, the electric blue

atmosphere after work, where Oakland’s finest tree

is untouched in the middle of the tent city

where people hold a public forum

on a miraculously warm Friday night

to discuss the words “occupy, de-colonize, liberate.”

Is it possible we could win

this war against capital?

The birds in the strangled palm tree out front

don’t know. They make nests. They raise young things.

They don’t have trouble remembering to sleep

when they hear that Cairo is marching

on the US Embassy in solidarity

with our erupting town. Do they  notice

the kids in golden capes

hoping to save the world? The marching bands

outside the city jail? Do they worry

that we live on stolen land? Do they know

most of us cannot say who our ancestors were?

Do they spend time thinking about how to fly

in formation? My mission this morning will be to make us wings

out of words, out of cardboard and duct tape

because we were not born with pairs of our own.

Click here to listen to the poem:   As the birds make their noises I ask myself questions. Why do we feel most alive when at war? The church sings hallelujah over and over across the empty street. A small blond child is playing harmonica to a cat when I find a scrap of paper on my floor with an invitation to discuss a quote downtown in the plaza that has become the center of...

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Practicing Generosity at the Oakland General Strike

One of the many things I love about the Occupy movement (also known as the Decolonize movement or (un)Occupy movement, both of which I support) is the vast array of artistic, cultural, philosophical, educational, and practical contributions coming from so many people and communities. I’m seeing so many folks who are really showing up, and masses of people who are acting like it’s possible to create the world we want to live in, acting like liberation is within reach. We’re exploring how to be together, how to make decisions together, how to disagree and stay united, how to take responsibility and hold each other accountable. It’s as though we, as Eihei Dogen suggested to his Zen students back in the 13th century, are practicing like our hair is on fire, and the only thing that can save us is practice. Only now, it’s our world that’s on fire. And we are realizing that our only hope for survival is going to the heart of the matter, both internally and externally. We are fed up and will settle for NOTHING LESS than the real thing.

For the day of the Oakland General Strike, a bunch of us from my queer sangha (spiritual community) formed an “affinity group” of sorts, to participate in the strike together. A few days beforehand, we met to plan our actions. One thing we planned was to find a large bank and do sitting and walking meditation outside. Later that night, one of our group lay awake in the wee hours, and was suddenly struck with a brilliant inspiration! S~he envisioned an expansion of our bank action — practicing generosity by giving away money in front of the bank. The polar opposite of what banks are doing.

The morning of the strike, we gathered early at Oscar Grant/Frank Ogawa Plaza, many of us sporting our queerest, most colorful outfits, armed with a few signs and our personal collections of $1 bills. Around 10 of us showed up. Some of us danced in the flash mob, then we all took off with the big march down Broadway. A few blocks into the march, our affinity group split off from the march and headed for the large branch of Chase Bank.

In front of the bank, we lined up not far from the front door and the ATM. There was a security guard at the front door, clearly on alert, checking us out, and unlocking the door only to let in one customer at a time. We went about our business, a motley group of rainbow and frills. Some of us wanted to do sitting meditation, one wanted to hand out felt hearts she’d made with words like “compassion,” “generosity,” and “kindness,” and some, myself included, wanted to hand out money. Folks in the group passed me their $1 bills, and between us we came up with around $40 total. We’d been saving our ones for the occasion.

As I reached out with one $1 bill at a time, I experimented with different ways to offer it, and how to say to passersby what we were doing. I remained seated on the back of my scooter, as disarming as possible in a muumuu with a rainbow zebra print, simply holding out my hand. With the helpful feedback of my comrades, my words evolved into something like this, “Would you like to take this dollar and give it to someone who needs it? Or keep it for yourself? We’re practicing generosity.” If they simply kept walking, I’d add, “We’re giving away money.” Sometimes that would be the phrase that got their attention.

The array of responses I received was fascinating to me. Some folks absolutely didn’t want to engage at all and just kept walking. Some would engage after a minute. Some needed the money for themselves and said so. Some loved the idea of participating in our action with us by taking a dollar, and letting me know they intended to give away.  Some seemed thrilled at the total surprise of being offered money. The bank security guard, who kept coming out of the bank and going back in, seemed pleasantly surprised at the completely non-threatening protest. One of the bank tellers came out of the locked bank and offered to go into the bank for us and get us change if we needed it. Excited by her gesture of appreciation, someone gave her a $20, and sure enough, a few minutes later she came back out with twenty ones. Along similar lines, some passersby loved it so much that they took a dollar, then reached into their own pockets and gave me all their $1 bills so I would have more to give away. So many people gave me money that I ended up giving away over $200 in the hour and a half we were there.

Some of my favorite interactions happened when a group of other protestors showed up with a much different mood and different tactics, shouting angry chants at the bank and blocking the door of the bank. They seemed unsure what to make of our calm and happy group. Then I started offering some of them money, with the same words and gestures I’d offered to everyone else. Every single protestor I engaged with was ready to engage back. I watched so many expressions change, from righteous anger to surprise and then amusement or excitement. From where I sat, it was with the protestors that our generosity action was most infectious — some of them started giving away money, too, living into those words with their own voices and outstretched hands, inviting strangers to take their money because they were practicing generosity.

I watched my own experience change, too, as the act of generosity moved from something I was enacting to something I was embodying. Some people I’d offered money would ask for more, and I noticed there was no resistance inside me, no questions to be asked, no clinging, no other possible answer but “yes, of course you can have more,” just the simple outflow of sharing what I had. We are all connected. All that I have is yours.

Our affinity group hasn’t had a chance to really debrief yet and share all of our experiences and interpretations of the event. Other folks in our group gave away money, and we each had a different approach and experience. One in our group actually walked with people as she tried to give them money, in contrast to my more passive, seated position that required people to come to me. Some of us gave away coins. A man of color in our group experienced some people thinking he was a panhandler. I look forward to hearing more of my comrades’ experiences with our action, exploring what came up for each of us, and discussing what we want to do next.

There’s a lot of talk right now about the movement’s “diversity of tactics,” and the discussion is often centered around violence and nonviolence. There is a lot of complexity to that conversation, and I am learning so much. It occurs to me now that I also want us to pay attention to how the tactics we employ affect our ways of being in the world, and what impact they have on the culture. With every word and action, we are planting seeds (whether we want to or not). Not just our mass actions, but every action. Our group’s little generosity action was one small creative experiment, which we are planning to continue, and perhaps to expand. I invite everyone to try similar experiments, to share the results, and to share ideas about ways to highlight and transform our ways of being in the world. May we all be free of suffering and the causes of suffering.

One of the many things I love about the Occupy movement (also known as the Decolonize movement or (un)Occupy movement, both of which I support) is the vast array of artistic, cultural, philosophical, educational, and practical contributions coming from so many people and communities. I’m seeing so many folks who are really showing up, and masses of people who are acting like...

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Bringing Shantideva’s Prayer Home at the General Strike in Oakland

November 2, 2011. When I arrived at Frank Ogawa / Oscar Grant Plaza this morning, the day of the General Strike in my home city, Oakland, I couldn’t find the Interfaith Tent. Various faith leaders had been invited for time slots throughout the day; I was supposed to lead a Buddhist meditation at 11 a.m. Almost immediately, two people came up and introduced themselves as parents of a teacher at the Oakland public high school my son attended.

“We’ll follow you,” they said.

“I don’t know where I’m going,” I said.

May I be a protector to those without protection—a leader for those who journey—and a boat, a bridge, a passage—for those desiring the further shore.

My life in Oakland is flashing before my eyes. Over twenty years in Oakland, including eleven years of volunteering in the Oakland public schools, assisting teachers, tutoring, teaching literature, in moldy classrooms in ancient portables that were never meant to be used permanently, in classrooms with windows that wouldn’t open, with broken computers and no textbooks. My life in Oakland, including the huge Oakland-Berkeley hills fire, and my young son’s subsequent trip to the ER room of Children ‘s Hospital when his lungs started shutting down; my life in Oakland, including the riots in downtown Oakland connected to the killing of Oscar Grant. Those had left shattered windows and empty shelves in the small business a couple of doors down from the meditation center where I teach. The business couldn’t sustain the loss and never reopened.

May the pain of every living creature be completely cleared away.

After rambling around the tent- and people-filled Plaza in front of Oakland ‘s City Hall for a few minutes, I found the Interfaith Tent. An old Dharma friend and fellow poet, Kenji Liu, materialized by my side. Other Buddhist friends appeared also, including the kinetic sculptor Therese Lahaie, who gave me a bag of kiwi fruit grown in her East Bay garden. Even though there were several thousand people around us, giving speeches, singing, talking, a small area cleared in front of the Interfaith Tent and people sat down on the straw-strewn ground. I noticed that there seemed to be plenty of time for everything to happen just as it should, and that the Sangha, the community of practitioners of the Dharma, had assembled. I rang the small meditation bell I had brought with me, and half an hour later ended with a recitation of the first verse of Shantideva ‘s Prayer from the Bodhicaryavatara, or Guide to the Bodhisattva ‘s Way of Life, using  “the human mic” to bring the words alive.

May the pain of every living creature be completely cleared away.

Only a week ago, violence had erupted between Oakland police and protestors in the area where we were meditating. The OPD had entered the Occupy Oakland encampment before dawn, “cleaning out” the Plaza on the morning of October 25. I had woken that morning and glanced at my email, finding a bulletin from the City of Oakland saying not to come downtown. The East Bay Meditation Center’s carpet was supposed to be cleaned that morning, and I had a date with the cleaners. I drove downtown, cautiously, and was moving some furniture around inside the center when an Oakland policeman knocked on the glass doors of our storefront space. He was holding up a dented, flimsy metal folding chair.

“This belongs to someone from the nursing school, who was giving CPR to someone who needed it,” the policeman said. He was sweating heavily and looked unhappy.  “Is this yours?”

“No,” I said. “We ‘re a meditation center.”

The communication device clipped to his shoulder squawked, and he bent his head toward it.

“I have to go,” he said. “Someone is trying to cut and stab himself. I guess I’ll just leave the chair here and hope it gets back to them.” He carefully, almost delicately, leaned the chair against the wall outside our front doors, and ran down Broadway. There were helicopters choppering overhead and the sound of ambulance and police sirens. That was last week.

May I be the doctor and the medicine—and may I be the nurse—for all sick beings in the world—until everyone is healed.

After the Buddhist meditation session for this morning, the day of the General Strike in Oakland, was done, I saw my friend Sarah Weintraub, the executive director of the Buddhist Peace Fellowship. We decided to walk around the encampment and ended up standing in a small patch of shade behind what seemed to be the main Occupy stage, across from tables where free food was being served. People waited patiently in line for their lunch. Next to us a man was napping on a plaza bench, and a woman in a brightly colored T-shirt that said “Domestic Workers Unite” on it stood to my left, watching her toddler, who seemed still to be in his footed pajamas, playing around her legs. My friend Shirley Yee, a social justice activist who had co-led a TODOS training for diversity facilitators that I took some years ago walked by with her daughter Kai, who had a fever and was sticking close to her mom’s side. I felt very comfortable occupying the Occupy Oakland space, I noticed. I had memories of being here in Frank Ogawa Plaza, now being called Oscar Grant Plaza, also. When my son graduated from high school in 2007, he had been among a group of public high school students from across the city who had received scholarship awards at a ceremony in this very spot.

Across from us, glass shattered on the pavement. People calmly picked up the broken shards without visible annoyance, and Sarah said, “I think a jar just slipped out of someone ‘s hand.”

“See how everyone’s cooperating to clean it up?” I said. “People are really making an effort to keep everything peaceful and harmonious. And Mayor Quan has kept the police away from the Plaza this time. What I’m noticing about this entire Occupy Wall Street movement is that it’s not only peaceful, it’s bringing out an immense amount of creativity: art and singing and flash mob dancing and blogging and videos. It makes sense. People who are working all the time aren’t making it. People who are unemployed aren’t making it. Young people can’t find jobs, even if they follow all the standard advice and have college degrees. As Aitken Roshi used to love to say, the system stinks. It’s broken, totally broken. And when you take the lid off all of that human feeling, it makes sense that creative expression comes pouring out. Personally, I’ve thought for quite awhile that our spiritual practice is creativity, is the very essence of creativity.”

Sarah looked interested. She ‘s a writer, an experienced social justice activist. And we’ve both logged a considerable number of hours in the Zen meditation halls. I gave myself permission to soliloquize a little.

“Speaking as a mother, the fact that we are aware of the breath means that we breathe, means that we took that first breath when we were born, and being born results from an act of creation. There’s no getting around it. The point of Dharma practice, in my point of view, is creativity! We all know the thousands of habitual thoughts that pour out of our brains. They’re boring. They’re old. But I think that when Shakyamuni Buddha sat down under the bo tree and looked up at the morning star, the reason we hear about it is that he saw something new. And it was amazing!”

“Would you like a rice cake and some peanut butter?” Sarah said, opening her bag.

“Rice cake, no peanut butter,” I said. “Thank you!”

And until they pass away from pain—may I also be the source of life—for all the realms of varied beings—that reach unto the ends of space.

In fact, the General Strike succeeded. Later today the Occupy Oakland crowd grew to 10,000 people or more, who marched from downtown Oakland to the Port of Oakland and stopped it from functioning. “I love Oakland!” notes appeared all over the Facebook pages of the social justice activists in my circle of FB friends, and aerial photographs of the Port takeover, which had also been peaceful. And then, late at night, reports, again, of the police, dressed in riot gear, moving in with tear gas.

“You’ve got to think about values, not abuses,” the 96-year-old, legendary activist Grace Lee Boggs says in her two-part video message to Occupy Wall Street (http://vimeo.com/30514311 and http://vimeo.com/31519206). “You begin with a protest, but you have to move on from there to another stage. You have to begin becoming the solution yourself rather than protesting and challenging the enemy. We need people to be reinventing the institutions of our society… reinventing work… education.… We’re at one of those turning points in society where we need revolution, and revolution means reinventing culture.”

If there’s one thing I’ve learned in two decades of occupying the many spaces I’ve occupied in Oakland, it is far too diverse with too many constantly moving pieces to be reduced to any single description, or formula, or solution. It’s large and sprawling and small and tightly knit in its communities; it’s gritty and dangerous and filled with blooming plants and it’s reassuringly familiar and relaxing; many of its systems are corrupt and dysfunctional and there are kids learning to read and there are quinceañeras and people getting acupuncture and there is depression and rage and joy and boredom and contentment. None of this is unusual, none of this is to be taken for granted, and none of this is far from my meditation practice. The system stinks, and we are all 100% capable of doing better.

Mushim Patricia Ikeda is a Leadership Sangha (board) member and core teacher at the East Bay Meditation Center in downtown Oakland. She teaches meditation retreats for people of color, women, and social justice activists nationally. www.mushim.wordpress.com

November 2, 2011. When I arrived at Frank Ogawa / Oscar Grant Plaza this morning, the day of the General Strike in my home city, Oakland, I couldn’t find the Interfaith Tent. Various faith leaders had been invited for time slots throughout the day; I was supposed to lead a Buddhist meditation at 11 a.m. Almost immediately, two people came up and introduced themselves as parents...