Another hot and humid day today in Charlotte—perhaps the worst of them yet. A fitting allegory for the atmosphere all around us. Sometime on Friday the nomads of ideology and cause plopped down right across from the Blake.
They came hungry, sweaty and scattered as usual; but they also carried with them that indefatigable spirit of the Movement. A bunch were diving into a fresh round of anti-establishmentarianism, having just arrived from Tampa, where they were protesting the Republican National Convention.
We were undergoing our own Exodus of sorts. The Blake Hotel had put up with the slew of college students who came to Charlotte early for seminars and speakers; but now the Convention was kicking off in earnest. The California delegation had been allocated all the spots at the Blake….so it was time for us to go.
There was thus a certain amount of resonance between the protesters, us, and the scattered vagabonds and panhandlers who had been swept out of their transient residences throughout the city, and into holding cells, where they are kept out of sight until the politicos and journalists have cleared out.
The Occupy movement has, since its sunny beginnings a year ago, has undergone the bifurcation inherent to movements of its size and passion. The fundamental division seems to be between those who have concluded that a movement needs a more specific enemy than “The Man”—and have thus opted to point the finger, somewhat self-consciously, at the conservatives—and those who go on believing that America, from its slick bankers to its slick politicians and money and cars, is broken.
After walking around Tent City, I was left with a notepad filled with as many opinion as people I had spoken to. From drone strikes to women’s health to the electability of Vermin Supreme, the demonstrators’ sole unifying theme was that America is broken.
We set off to Frazier Park, where we hoped to gain something—maybe a leader, a sense of purpose, some insight into how and why the division in the Movement spread; and whether it was simply the growing pains of a powerful, maverick group….or the death throes of it.