A convergence of radical art and radical politics – Occupy GR and the Beehive Collective

On Saturday I had the opportunity to participate in two different activities that were aiming for the same goals.

Starting at noon at Monument Park in downtown, Occupy Grand Rapids had its ongoing presence along with a serious speakers and open mic slots.

The open mic slots allowed people to speak about why they were participating in this collective action and what their ideas are for what it could become. Some people talked about their own experiences, some talked about specifics issues and some read poetry that spoke to the power of this grassroots movement.

People talked about their own economic situation, concerns about the environment, unemployment and the need to expand this movement to include more than those who have been showing up so far. There were people from Kalamazoo who came up for the afternoon, as well as some one from El Salvador who share his own experience of living under oppression.

There were also time slots where people did either skill shares or people presented critiques of the current economic/political climate. The first skill share was done on the theme of consensus, where  the presenters talked about basic principles of consensus, the roles that different people play during the consensus process and some examples of how this decision-making process has worked.

The examples provided about consensus being an effective means of decision-making on a large scale were important for people to hear. The examples provided were the 1999 WTO protests in Seattle and other anti-globalization actions, such as the large-scale actions against the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) meetings. In addition, the example of 1930s Spain was discussed, where workers essentially took over the country and used consensus to govern the country. The presenter also pointed out that many indigenous cultures used consensus as an effective decision-making process prior to the European Conquest.

In addition to consensus, people presented on racism, Wall Street documents, Marxism, local Indigenous history and media education & analysis.

At one point I left the Occupy Grand Rapids gathering and went to the Red Hydrant Studio to be part of a workshop that the Beehive Collective was conducting on radical banner making.

The workshop began with an exercise in collective decision-making and collective creation of art. One of the Beehive members then walked the group through a Mind Mapping process, where people talked a bit about what Grand Rapids meant to them, both the negative and positive aspects. The goal of this was to make a banner that the group could give to the Occupy Grand Rapids group to use in whatever way they chose to.

In many ways, the Mind Mapping was sort of a local power analysis, where people identified individuals and companies that had political and economic power in Grand Rapids. People indentified the DeVos, Van Andel, Prince and Meijer families as a local representation of the 1%.

People also identified segregation, gentrification, pollution, poverty, religion, homelessness and ecological destruction as negative aspects of Grand Rapids. Some of the positive elements identified that could be symbolically represented on a banner were the Grand River, neighborhoods, gardens, urban animals and the indigenous history.

Once the ideas were put on paper, people were then asked to talk about these identifiers were connected or inter-related. People said that the local elite owned a great deal of property, had their names on everything, dictated politics and had the support of some sectors of the Christian community. Other people also acknowledged that there are members of the 99% that either defend the local 1% or aspire to be like them.

Once the Mind Mapping and discussion was over, people came up with ideas about how to represent the dismantling of local power and the creation of authentic community. About 30 people participated in this process that lasted about 4 hours.

Back at Occupy Grand Rapids, people were sharing literature, ideas and food provided by Food Not Bombs. All throughout the afternoon people held up signs along the Division/Fulton intersection and were often greeted with supportive feedback. At the interior of Monument Park people discussed the failures of capitalism and ideas for how to transform society.

Like the artwork created at Red Hydrant Studio that day, the practice of democracy at Occupy Grand Rapids was creating a community of resistance.