I stepped out of my car on a sunny 90 degree Phoenix afternoon, but it soon felt closer to 100 degrees by the time I reached the all cement environs of Cesar Chavez Plaza.   A quick scan showed about seven or eight makeshift tents, but I was soon told that these were not really tents.  They were “canopies”, since neither tents, blankets, pillows, or sleeping bags were allowed by the Phoenix Police.  I was most surprised to see only about 40-50 people milling around the site, hardly the numbers nearing the thousand reported on October 15th, the first night of the Occupation.   I’ve since found out the group has several teams of roughly 40-50 people who show up in  planned rotations. 

I arrived a little after noon, just as the group was starting one of their “wiggly fingered” meetings, only they call them “General Assemblies”.  The General Assembly is defined as a meeting designed to facilitate collective decision making in an open, participatory, and non-binding manner.  The girl trying to lead the meeting was doing so without the benefit of a microphone, as the police had shut down electricity to the plaza days earlier following the initial arrests.   She would utter three or four words, then the group intoned their chant-like repetition of her words.  By the time she reached the end of her declaration, you could clearly see confusion in some of the more “stoned” looking faces.  Patiently she would reiterate her sentence followed by another plea for “consensus”.  If a single person did not give the wiggly fingered gesture, she would begin the process all over again…perhaps with added clarification or the defining of a troubling word.  She sought consensus for one single proposition:  Would the group seek to resist the Phoenix Police when threatened with the closing down of their tents (canopies) later that evening?

I quickly tired of watching the assembly and turned to the tent behind me. A young Native American looking man with a ponytail was sitting by himself looking somewhat perplexed.  I introduced myself, and commented on how earnest the group was in seeking a consensus.  He looked up from his seat and surprised me with his reply.  He thought the whole thing was a big waste of time.  He spoke of the lady who showed up a day earlier who only seemed intent on impressing everyone with her linguistic abilities.  She had asked for a definition or clarification of one word after another….what did the words “really” mean after all?  An entire evening’s worth of debate was turned into a semantics lesson, and was thus for naught.  He was kind enough to warn me to avoid the young guy who looked like Kid Rock with the red sunglasses. “He’s only here to make trouble”, said the young man.

I went on to ask if he had any literature he could give me on the movement, as he appeared to be surrounded by boxes filled with papers.  He made a halfhearted attempt, then apologized saying nothing was left.  I suspect after the fiasco over the “When Should You Shoot A Cop” flyer the day earlier, the group had decided to ditch anything too controversial for the time being.   My initial impetus for coming to Occupy Phoenix was to see a copy of the flyer for myself, but no matter who I spoke to, I received the following response:  It had been left by a young girl no one had ever seen before.  She passed out a few, then left a stack on one of the media tables before leaving.  People quickly scanned the initial first lines of the flyer, but because it was relatively long, they failed to read the really threatening part towards the end.  Once it was picked up by the police, and subsequently became a hot news item,  it was quickly gathered up and sent to a Phoenix landfill.

Before leaving I would have one last question for him, as he had been by far the easiest person to chat with.   Why had the immigrant groups and other minorities not chosen to stay past the initial days of the protest?  Was the local ACLU offering any aid?  He sadly shook his head….he was at a loss for why so many had simply abandoned the effort.  As I scanned the plaza I could see no food supplies, only a few mostly empty water jugs, and none of the fun and free stuff usually employed by the Left to attract the masses.  Yep…clearly George Soros had not signed the check for this little gathering.

Turning back towards the group meeting, I heard their leader make one final plea for a consensus….which was quickly followed by a sea of “wiggly fingered” hands held high.  Consensus had been achieved!  The group would be resisting the police when they came for the tents (canopies) later that evening.  The tent that clearly had the police most on edge, the one they had their officers stationed closest to, was the “Anarchist’s Tent”…a bright red-topped canopy located at the entrance to the protest.

When I poked my head inside, expecting to see a bearded Rasputin or maybe even a young Karl Marx, all I saw were two freshly dressed teenage boys.  Neither were particularly pleasant to talk to or in any way eager to explain their purpose for being there.  Where did they go at night?  Why home of course!  Only then did the young girl, who sat between them hugging a dirty stuffed Pikachu toy, choose to speak up.  “I go to the homeless shelter at night”, she quietly said.  Apparently being a young and upcoming anarchist doesn’t mean feeling obligated to extend the offer of a warm meal or a bed to another fellow human being.

What Phoenix’s Occupiers are mad about seems to vary, depending on who you ask.  Outside of smoking marijuana, hating the police, and wanting open borders…what else could they all agree on?  If Occupy Phoenix is a reliable microcosm of the larger Occupy Movement, then the movement is certainly not a monolithic one.  At its most radical fringe you have the anarchists, but on the other hand many more are simply seeking the legalization of pot, the cure for autism, or increased aid for the homeless.
Looking over the many pictures I took at the Plaza, I see the faces of aging hippies, communists, anarchists, stoners, and a great many simply homeless.  I can almost hear Janis Joplin singing….“Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.”
More photos of the day…..