As part of Occupy Long Beach's media outreach I am collecting stories about your experiences there with the police or city council members. I spoke to a few members of the homeless population in Long Beach today and I will be writing a diary about their stories here.
In my personal opinion, one of the most powerful tools we have as citizens who want change are the individual stories of our experiences with our elected representatives and paid city employees. Our experiences either tell the story of being represented by our officials or being repressed by them. Where there is repression, we have the power to shine a light on it.
My sense of things from talking to the community is that the way we are starting to use media is our biggest strength. Instead of worrying whether we get a story in the corporate media or not, we can use our connections to spread the story from one group of friends to another group. Because we can do this with social media, it can go faster and farther than it has in the past. I think the people who sympathize with the Occupy movement but who are uncomfortable staying out in the encampments (I have trouble with this word as it is currently being used by the city of Long Beach to deny us our first amendment rights to assembly which to my understanding has no time limit attached, but I'm going to use it anyway) might be willing to work with us in this way. This is the people's light. This is the way we take our rightful power back.
I want to be clear here that I am working on this with a small group of Occupy Long Beach members. When we have a proposal of action we will go to the GA and get group approval for our action. Right now I am only collecting stories and leads to follow up on. You can either post comments to this diary or you can email me at the email address you find on my DK user page. Thank you for your help.