That evening I had my first meeting with Dr. Kim Hopper. Dr. Hopper, adjunct professor, Columbia School of Law is a medical anthropologist who also works as a research scientist at the Nathan S. Kline Institute for Psychiatric Research where he co-directs the Center for the Study of Issues in Public Mental Health. He is author of Reckoning with Homelessness (Cornell University Press, 2003), a stocktaking of two decades of research, advocacy, and theoretical work in that field, He also served as president of the National Coalition for the Homeless from 1991-1993. Shirley Lindenbaum of the CUNY Graduate Center summarizes Dr. Hopper's book as such: "In its poetic sensibility, passion, and political purpose, Kim Hopper's tale of homelessness in the United States rivals George Orwell's classic account of unemployment in pr-war Britain.
A man and his box: The author in Zuccotti Park
Kim and I were introduced by Cynthia, a psychiatrist who had found me in Zuccotti park, painting a box. A box which said, "I think Outside My Box". If interested in me as an artist, a cliche writer with a visual twist or as a clinical study, Cindy visited me on a few different days and then suggested that Kim and I meet. It had taken nearly two months to make that happen. Once introduced we talk of collaborating on a project for one of his university studies.One of the things I am told often by other homeless and people familiar with the academic study of the subject is that, "You don't know anything about the homeless unless you've been there".
I remember asking Douglas Lopez, my first case worker, if he had ever been inside the Bellevue men's shelter on 30th St. as he was checking me in to the place. "No, I haven't", he said. And it took me a while to learn that if any of the caseworkers working outside the shelter system had ever been inside the shelter system, they would never send anyone there. Aside from the threats of theft, bodily harm and sometimes even death, reported regularly by the New York press, the psychological debilitation on a daily basis was just too much for me, too wrong for me - and I am no anomaly in these cases. The instances of 'voluntary homelessness' grow every day - from those who find they would much rather deal with the vagaries of the street than the oppression of a careless plutocracy or an autocratic family. And whether Occupy Wall Street ever wanted to be a conduit for the homeless in search of a society of compassion and care or not - it is now - and there is no turning back. The Occupy movement, for whatever politics it may represent, has always presented itself as an inclusive society as opposed to the exclusive one as represented by the 1%. And so now the movement immediately is faced with dealing with one of America's most humiliating and inhumane social contradictions - the idea that we find it preferable to spend billions to kill people in other countries who don't share our ideology - an ideology that is incapable of or disinterested in care for the needy of its own country. Sick fucks we are when you think about it.
Dr. Hopper seeks to deal with the homeless problem from an academic perspective. And the Coalition For the Homeless deals more with it on a corporate level, but never, before the Occupy movement, have the people affected by the problem been tasked with finding a solution. Maybe it is now time for the inmates to run the asylum. After all, they know the problem best because they are in part, part of it. As a societal movement then, it only makes sense for Occupy to step up and be part of the solution.
I left that evening and needed to bum money from Cindy for my train up to 86th street again. I had spent a greater part of the day sending emails to all the right people to get on the list and receive confirmation of my stay on the premises, but once arrived was greeted by a man with an iPad who finger swiped and insisted I was not to be admitted. "I see your reservation and I see your confirmation but it's my decision and I say you're not getting in", he said. Days previous had been filled with guest conflict and he was simply in no mood for new blood that might possibly be bad blood. So out to the street I went. Again.
No part of the plan: How New School Went Old School
The New School Occupation had sprung up in the past week as an affinity project in line, but not supported financially or administratively by Occupy Wall Street. Nevertheless, information had gotten out that they were indeed open to occupants so long as you had a valid ID. With no room at the 86th St. inn it seemed only logical to see if I could get in at the New School. As occupations go, the basic idea is to commandeer an otherwise public space and use it for voicing public grievances. And in this, the organizers of the New School Occupation had succeeded admirably - so much so that the administration of the school had sanctioned the action and the students had a picture of the school president, standing in solidarity with the members, to prove it.
But having taken over a student study space complete with two escalators, modern furniture/lighting, carpet, heat, hot and cold running water, Macintosh computers and enough paint to graffiti Australia, they began treading a fine line between occupation and degradation of a space meant for all. For all the media hoopla given to the makeshift tent city that had been assembled in Zuccotti Park for OWS, it hurt no one, and didn't damage public property at all, save for a few trampled plants. But the New School occupation had taken things a step further. As I arrived not a space was available for new graffiti on any wall. It was already covered and covered thrice over - so much so that it restricted my painting activities to the ceiling for the duration of my stay. As the place had already been trashed, there could be very little I could do to make it worse, so my work on the ceiling made it arguably better - a Sistine Chapel for revolutionaries so to speak.
My arrival was greeted warmly, if not enthusiastically. "You're the dude in the box", someone said. "Have some food", said another. In this space people could smoke, drink beer and even smoke pot. It was art school all over again for me. Heaven in some sense. A warm place to paint and contemplate - a place for me to put the real world on hold and work towards a better one. But the organizers had different ideas - some not very good ones. GAs (General Assemblies) were fraught with conflicts and ended in disarray. A general paranoia about being booted by the cops circulated daily and with good reason. As conditional with the university's support of the occupation, the school wanted them to move - to a space a block away and out of the traffic of 14th St. - an art gallery and part of the Parson's School of design. Understandably the occupiers objected to the move. The new space had only one room, no computers and was set up like a fishbowl to the sidewalk on 13th St. - onlookers being able to peer in at the animals on display. "
k'y-pas", the sign would read. "Homo-erectus-occupotomus", it would say below in Latin..The new space would also allow guards to monitor and electronically lock the only way in and out. Essentially, they could lock you in or out of the space at will - and many people's wills were at test here - the students in being true radicals, and the administration in being true guardians of student safety, parent financing and the public trust as a whole.Way too many egos on the line here.
So the students decided to act out as they had in too many childhood tantrums before. Too many years in upper middle class homes with little to worry about except which video game platform to support, Facebook and Twitter cred were at stake here. How bad could they be without actually killing anybody? And where they could have chosen to have been modern day Che Guevara's or Ho Chi Minh's, instead they just bought the t-shirts and resorted to the predictable sophomoric antics of painting defamatory slogans on the walls (photo) and generally trashing the place. I left in the middle of thei Thanksgiving day declaration of stupidity and headed for the new space. Having now broken laws, equipment and trust, the original leaders of this 'leaderless' group scurried like rats into the night leaving $45,000 in physical damage in their wake. The rest of us were evicted from the new space the next morning - not surprisingly.
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