Lay your traps for a thousand miles…

“Please, don’t let me escape…”

Every morning, I wake up up and remember the heat of your body. The beautiful inhale and exhale of your breathing. Everything I knew about you is subsequently evaporated into memory. And I’m stuck with just the thought of you as I stretch out onto the floor. Alone. I have been doing quite a bit of complaining as of late, but what do you expect? Its me. Sonny Estrada. Melodramatic and upset at the fact that I can’t keep a relationship. Well, not a good one at least.

I’m sitting here, and I’m thinking of all those times we spent. And all the times that we spend now… which is hardly anything. Because I know that you have your life now, girl, and it is nothing that I can change.

So I sit here, idle, and thinking about hope and faith and all those other things that might bring you closer to me. But I know that that is something that is so far-gone that I can’t make the moves or the decisions that might make you happier to be with me. I understand that there is a great deal of skepticism. And I am at fault for that.

I have been spending my days trying to deal with the not-so-important feelings of wishing.

I have been working on this poem/song and I think it will be one of my best, because it involves the two things that I love. Words and Love. You know, honestly there are times when I’m writing things like this, and I wonder to myself for what? I’ll leave it at that. Thank you Reader.

“My #Occuposition”

I am not ashamed to say that I don’t know much about capitalism, economics, government, corporate lobbying, and many other things that Occupy are fighting for. I do remember that I began to visit Occupy camps, specifically Occupy San Francisco and Occupy Oakland, because I share a belief that 99% of our society are trapped under the corruption and imperialistic control of both corporations and governments. I also share the belief in complete transparency, an improved health and social welfare system, a bigger focus on local governments, that men and women should be treated equally, that all races should also be treated equally, and that all people should never have to be hungry, unhoused, or neglected.

I am not a print journalist, so I cannot write an analytical piece on each mentioned subject that would-so be mentioned in this post in order to explain myself completely.

I am not anti-capitalist, I have not seen any economic system survive healthily by any other means. However, I do support calls for many socialist-influenced reforms. Mainly reforms that would create positive trickle-down effects for workers: sweatshop-free labour, life event benefits such as mental health/maternity/paternity/childcare leaves, and the freedom of individual ethical decision making without fear of losing one’s job.

From my knowledge, what we need may be new employment schemes, because persons like me - university students/recent graduates, the genuinely unemployed, the disabled who can work to the most of their ability, are being left stranded with shrinking benefits programmes that promote dependency.

I am not an anarchist, because from history and studies, there will always be a power hierarchy that will come to the forefront. Smaller governing bodies, such as neighbourhoods, cities, and counties should be more respected, but the absence of a government does not seem to work for me. I see safety in the beginning, I see people working together in the beginning to self-organise democratic settings, but I also begin to see the human condition, as people begin to sway proposals and begin to discredit or become separatists in order to achieve the goals and agendas that they solely want.

I am here to simply say that I am continuing to learn more and more about my own self, and believe that not everyone in Occupy has found a sense of solace within themselves. I also add that I am continuing to learn more about Occupy as a movement itself, along with the corporate agendas that they are trying to organise against.

I do respect diversity of tactics, black-bloc, and other methods to extend a group’s messages, but I cannot yet understand why one group or one person in such groups can claim that their tactic is the more-so effective way to proceed. I am a livestreamer, and I do it because I am drawn to unedited raw video and do want to show the full context of human behaviour - from police smashing limbs to protesters smashing windows. Capturing raw video has brought a lot of newfound interest about the movement, and to see how police have been treating the peaceful assemblers. Though I would never like to be in support of incriminating someone because of my livestream, I have an understanding that broken objects must be repaid for, either through existing taxation or by personal funds of small business owners.

My diversity of tactics ends with being the presentation of different ways that one can promote love, solidarity, unity, and capturing the hearts of people who may have never learned about the Occupy movement. I understand that each occupation has its own local issues, but the 1%’s corruption is not only national but global.

I feel as if the movement, at least at the locations I have visited, is beginning to stray away from being in support of everyone that is of the 99%. There has been much infighting, threatening, and a rising rate of persons who, at one time, called each other their brothers and sisters but now call them their enemies.

As more division is created: schools are closing, tuition is increasing, many are being left in pain in emergency wards at hospital because of inabilities to afford expensive health insurance, a person is being harassed by their own billing statements & policemen & intimate partners, a teenager may be in the midst of attempting suicide, parliaments are passing more laws to create inequality and censorship, arms are being traded from country to country, men and women are being sold into slavery, someone is being fired for standing up for themselves, agribusinesses are injecting more chemicals into our foods without labelling them, austerity measures invisibly being enforced upon citizens, and a few hundred other injustices that have certainly happened by the time you reach the full-stop of this sentence.

—-

The Declaration of the Occupation of New York City reads:

As we gather together in solidarity to express a feeling of mass injustice, we must not lose sight of what brought us together. We write so that all people who feel wronged by the corporate forces of the world can know that we are your allies.

As one people, united, we acknowledge the reality: that the future of the human race requires the cooperation of its members; that our system must protect our rights, and upon corruption of that system, it is up to the individuals to protect their own rights, and those of their neighbors; that a democratic government derives its just power from the people, but corporations do not seek consent to extract wealth from the people and the Earth; and that no true democracy is attainable when the process is determined by economic power. We come to you at a time when corporations, which place profit over people, self-interest over justice, and oppression over equality, run our governments. We have peaceably assembled here, as is our right, to let these facts be known.

-They have taken our houses through an illegal foreclosure process, despite not having the original mortgage.

-They have taken bailouts from taxpayers with impunity, and continue to give Executives exorbitant bonuses.

-They have perpetuated inequality and discrimination in the workplace based on age, the color of one’s skin, sex, gender identity and sexual orientation.

-They have poisoned the food supply through negligence, and undermined the farming system through monopolization.

-They have profited off of the torture, confinement, and cruel treatment of countless animals, and actively hide these practices.

-They have continuously sought to strip employees of the right to negotiate for better pay and safer working conditions.

-They have held students hostage with tens of thousands of dollars of debt on education, which is itself a human right.

-They have consistently outsourced labor and used that outsourcing as leverage to cut workers’ healthcare and pay.

-They have influenced the courts to achieve the same rights as people, with none of the culpability or responsibility.

-They have spent millions of dollars on legal teams that look for ways to get them out of contracts in regards to health insurance.

-They have sold our privacy as a commodity.

-They have used the military and police force to prevent freedom of the press.

-They have deliberately declined to recall faulty products endangering lives in pursuit of profit.

-They determine economic policy, despite the catastrophic failures their policies have produced and continue to produce.

-They have donated large sums of money to politicians, who are responsible for regulating them.

-They continue to block alternate forms of energy to keep us dependent on oil.

-They continue to block generic forms of medicine that could save people’s lives or provide relief in order to protect investments that have already turned a substantial profit.

-They have purposely covered up oil spills, accidents, faulty bookkeeping, and inactive ingredients in pursuit of profit.

-They purposefully keep people misinformed and fearful through their control of the media.

-They have accepted private contracts to murder prisoners even when presented with serious doubts about their guilt.

-They have perpetuated colonialism at home and abroad.

-They have participated in the torture and murder of innocent civilians overseas.

-They continue to create weapons of mass destruction in order to receive government contracts.*

To the people of the world,

We, the New York City General Assembly occupying Wall Street in Liberty Square, urge you to assert your power.

Exercise your right to peaceably assemble; occupy public space; create a process to address the problems we face, and generate solutions accessible to everyone.

To all communities that take action and form groups in the spirit of direct democracy, we offer support, documentation, and all of the resources at our disposal.

—-

Lets get back to the roots of what brought a massive load of the 99%’s random strangers together and continue our fight against the 1% from there. In the spirit of love, peace, process, and democracy.

From an average Occupy participant,

who may not know everything and accepts that,

who may innocently find themselves enemies,

who only hopes to work towards bettering government

as well as the whole of society,

I love you.

“Everything,”

Jeff Kloythanomsup