Revolutionary Reading

It was a beautiful, warm American Autumn day in DC. At McPherson Square, the Occupy DC protesters were going about their daily tasks. Some were cleaning up the area.  Others were engaging visitors in spirited talk about the group's aims and the state of the nation. Some were simply sunning themselves as they watched a professional film crew and several of the curious capture the growing, bright-tented encampment in pictures.

At the camp's large main tent, a trio of Occupiers sat behind a long table lined with information and handouts, ready to answer questions from the curious.

A young, well-dressed couple approached. "What are you going to do when winter comes?" the young man asked. The response came from the oldest of the trio, who, with his open-necked dress shirt and sports jacket, resembled a casual college professor prepared to deliver an informal out-door lecture.

"Ah, what do they call it in rugby? Oh yeah,  a scrum. We're all going to pile together one on top of the other, huddle close, and then get covered with a big tarp and wait until spring. Hopefully that will keep us all all right," he said with a chuckle.

Then, turning more serious, he added, "Something like this has never been tried in Washington before.  But we're staying. The people are with us. And that gives us hope."

Tales, Tidbits, and Traveling Tips:
No where is the planned staying power of the Occupy DC movement demonstrated more dramatically than in the growth of the group's impromptu library. A couple of weeks ago, the library consisted of a one table and a small 3-shelf bookcase. Today, the library is housed in a large tent and consists of numerous tall bookshelves with the books contained in labeled sections like philosophy, politics, and war and peace. The reason for our visit today was to donate to that library. I had brought a bag of books including my dog-eared collection of Kurt Vonnegut novels and several dystopian paperbacks by British writers like Orwell, Huxley, and Wells. Those books had informed my thought processes during my college years and now I wanted their ideas to be internalized once more. Immediately after thanking us for the donation, the bright-hatted young librarian turned to one of the members passing by and asked "Did you get your daily reading yet?" Now I don't know about you, but the idea of well-read radicals pleases me. Armed with the humanism of Vonnegut and the healthy skepticism of Orwell who knows what they could do?  Maybe restore a dream or even reform a country?