Don’t listen to the hissing buzz of the shame machine

To everyone who is protesting, everyone who supports the growing nonviolent revolution,

There is no shame. Don’t feel shame.

Influential corporate-run yellowpress is pushing it on you. It’s a tactic used by them before to diminish dissent: They will try to shame you out of protesting.

They will make you feel shame about who you are. They will diminish your movement by citing baiting names of the past to stir the collective consciousness to a boil. They will call you red and hippy and trust fund baby, or lowly and filthy and angry and young. They will say you know nothing; if you only understood how the world worked, they say, maybe then you’d understand that you’re wrong, that your pithy little shouts are just whines of little already-got-it-all know-it-alls.

No matter who you are, they will say this. Look around. They’re doing it now.

Don’t let them win.

****

They are scared of you and your power. But they know how to work collective mindthink, and they use it pretty well to their advantage. It’s simple: they tell the same lies over and over and over again. They will tell you, those who are on the fence of your determination, those of you who are ready to make the next step, towards dropping the veil authority wrapped around you — they will tell you that you have no merit in protesting. That once you’re done you’ll go back to your ways you were raised. They will tell you that you do not deserve to make change. They will attempt to convince the world you’re nothing but a bunch of dirty college kids with no clear vision.

This is not true. This revolution is made up of a sea of different faces, old, young, all races and professions, backgrounds and stories, for love and truth and a level playing field. To demand economic justice. To end censorship and suppression of human expression.

Even if you explain this, they will still say you have no right, say that you owe the system for the very privilege to sit in a park and talk strongly about changing your world, for the world is bleeding. That your demands are petty, and stepping outside the lines is a farce.

They must play it so because they are scared of you. You are realizing you have power, for the first time.

You’re realizing that you’ve been trapped in breakable chains, and you’re coming together with your fellow human beings to try something new. That scares them. When they can’t predict what you will do, that scares them.

So they will shame you. No matter man in a cubicle, union admin or home worker, high school kid with a brain and a plan who’s now an unemployed twentysomething with a BA and $30,000 in real debts and no way to catch up, the mama of a boy taken in by city police who corked him into taking out his pocket contents, teachers and construction workers who have faced the same real wage since 1978, a trans teen on the run from her abusive stepfather, the workers beholden to the demands of their unfair company lines, you, me, anybody needing real freedom and relief who is in this revolution — they will try to shame you when you stand up. For shame is their only weapon against you.

You are powerful, you have a right to stand up for what’s right, no matter your background, no matter your creed. You have a right to stand together with others in peaceable assembly. You have a right to speak for what you believe in. You have a right to not be suppressed. And they know it.

They try and push their beliefs on you, to censure your curiosity, to make you forget about your own voices. Don’t let them. They want you to believe them because you watch their screens and buy their things, year after year you buy them, you watch them, they try to make you lust. And they want to make you lust, and lust, and never be satisfied, so they can repeat the process over and over while you mortgage yourself to them, so you can live in their world.

But then, you do something as simple as say, “No.” And that is the one thing that advertising can’t buy. that no amount of money can take. You, as a human animal, a cognizant being, have a right to, and sometimes a duty to, say no. They are afraid of “no”. They can’t fight “no”.

Say no to letting them run you. No to letting them shame you and your sisters and brothers. Tell them you don’t believe them when they shame you. Tell them that you know they skew the truth. Tell them you are proud of who you are, proud to be marching for what is just. Tell them.

There is no guilt. Because you have nothing to feel guilty about. What you are doing is right, and noble. Don’t feel shame. There is none.

*****

Revolution is truly happening. Their system as they knew it is falling apart, and they are scared. While their world can now be penetrated, they will use their remaining broad powers to attempt to suppress real information, to limit your communication by the things they control.

That is the real fight we face. The fight is for the freedom to not be suppressed. To meet and speak and gather and demonstrate. For art, for home, for airwaves and stages, for sidewalks, streets and parks. The fight is to make our voices heard, that injustice is injustice, and no pulling up by anyone’s bootstraps is going to help those whose entire lives have been ravaged by the choices, directly or indirectly, of the largest earners, of the unequal dealers, the power brokers.

Yes, they still operate the mechanisms for exercising this power, and will do everything they can to stop critical voices. But:

You have a voice, and your own energy. Hands can write, and voices can shout, legs can march, and words can be written on stone. You have a voice. It doesn’t need a system to be amplified. It needs you. And humanity around you to resonate, and remember, and listen to each other.

You’re doing the right thing.

Don’t listen to the hissing buzz of the shame machine.

Tags: #ows, american autumn, daily news, huffington post, new york post, new york times, nonviolence, occupy wall street, zuccotti park