Compassion is the new currency

I felt invisible today. I bought produce from nearly every farmer there. I bought items from two of my fellow SM vendors, plus ice cream, which technically I didn't buy because I had a filled up customer card. I spent about five times as much as I made. No farmers bought from me, no occupiers or occupy supporters bought from me. Friends came to visit, but I saw just as many who avoided my zone completely. I saw lots who didn't cross the street.

Two Market vendors bought from me. I had the same conversation with about a dozen Market vendors: what were the protestors thinking to set up in our space? Did they not know we are part of the 99%, don't they know anything about our needs, don't they care? I assured all of them that we have a most excellent manager who will make sure that we will be in our spaces on Saturday. I assured them that everyone who was speaking for the Occupiers has said they will be leaving the space on Friday. I encouraged everyone to trust and listen and not worry. We are the 99%. The occupiers know this.

Sometimes I think I show up on Tuesdays as a public service. Come see how I express my politics, come see how I live my ideals, come see the wonder of Jell-O Art. But you know what? I'm there to make a living. I'm obviously doing it wrong.

The scenery was different, looking over at the occupation instead of the farmers, but the feeling was the same. I did not matter to anyone, and they would not notice if I wasn't there. I felt strongly today that we needed, as a group, to occupy our own space there, which we revere. We might have done better over with the farmers, but the space they offered us would have our backs to the occupation, and we would have acted as a barrier between the protestors and the farmers. Not the position for us. Instead we faced the occupation and stood there all day with our hearts open.

I know why the occupation wanted to be in that space; it's obvious. For several decades Saturday Market has nurtured a beating heart there in the center of downtown.

When the thousands of marchers filled the west block on Saturday night, it was the velvet embrace of an unstoppable force meeting a gently yielding lover. I slowly relinquished my space, the one I have held all day and all season and all my adult life, to a group I was part of and not part of. I took about twenty hats off my display and gave half to one of the legal team, who thanked me, and laid the other half on the ground about ten feet from my booth. They were immediately grabbed up. I didn't see anyone wearing one of my hats today, but I didn't give them away for any return. It was just spontaneous generosity from a heart filled with joy at the power, and participation the way most of us vendors participate: we give our creations away.

I've always considered myself to be an activist, but it was confusing to feel part of a group that was ignoring me, and worse, waiting for me to get out of the way. The hats disappeared. People tripped on my hat display as they walked through my space, oblivious to my work, not seeing my organized packing as I loaded my awesome human-powered machine. No one had the slightest interest in me. And so it was today.

Yes, a few of the occupiers came over and asked us if we needed help. No, I don't need help to do my job, but thanks for your concern. Do you really want to help? I need customers. Can you help me with that? I need acknowledgement of my lifetime of activism and my generosity of spirit and my tireless pursuit of justice and my dedicated service to my community. Can I get a handshake? Can I get any of you to see me at all? I can see you. Just stand here and look at my stuff for a few minutes. Most of the conversations I did have were about the t-shirt people wanted me to make. At my own expense. At my own risk.

I don't know, we are all so wrapped up in our own importance in this society, caught up in our own ideas. I know I am too. I'm watching the livestream from the distance of the internet. I'm not participating, I'm watching. I'm holding in the middle distance, keeping myself separate, because I don't want to camp out downtown. My back hurts. I'm a Facebook activist. I'm commenting now and then, I'm encouraging. Hell, I told people to shop at Farmers Market. I told people to trust the movement to consider us. I reassured and reassured.

I suppose this is part of the problem, that I did not know how to integrate the confusion I felt Saturday night, being gently occupied, that I did not know how to be both the artisan selling in the public square and the person shifting the square to another purpose. I didn't know today how to be a Saturday Market stalwart and a person looking out for my own financial interests. I expect I would have sold more with my back to the movement, with my heart open to the farmers, who have looked upon me with so much suspicion and even anger in the recent past, but maybe not. There wasn't really a good place for me, so I held down the default, my little bench on the east block.

I would have been better off financially if I had stayed home. I'm having a hard time figuring out what I was doing down there today. I was holding space for my organization, my Market family. My greatest loyalty is there. But my products, which I created to promote social change, to express some of our best collective attitudes toward that purpose, were not useful to the movement. They were not even noticed by the movement. Maybe it is not the same movement.

I have to take responsibility for keeping the occupiers at a bit of a distance. I've been observing, and I walked around a little yesterday, but I'm not involved. Many people have asked me to make a t-shirt for the movement, and presumably a few of them would buy one if I had done so. But I'm broke right now, in debt right now, and I have a lot of political t-shirts and hats already. People aren't buying those, so I don't think I'll throw more money at that target. I don't need more shirts to give away.

People in the movement don't have money. It's about economic insecurity, about how to get out of this pit we have been thrown into by the 1% who use us and manipulate us and toss us aside. It's about how to combat this, how to not get defeated by it, how to collectively survive and thrive despite the oppression. I have always prided myself on doing my part. I have always put my own needs aside to some degree to serve my community, to promote security and prosperity and what is right and good. My currency has been compassion for some time now. I noticed this during the Bush "elections", when people were so fearful it seemed like they couldn't be any more scared. I was happy to stand on the corner telling everyone it would be all right. They were happy to believe me, though of course it has not been all right and most of my hope and trust were misplaced.

I've been happy to use my listening skills and my counseling skills and my writing skills to do everything I can to help out. That's what people do, they bring their skills and assets to share, they pitch in. I always pitch in. I thought by going today I was making a contribution, and envisioned dozens of movement supporters supporting me, someone with something practical to contribute. Who doesn't need a hat with an encouraging slogan on it? Fear less. Practice peace.

Maybe I'm just tired. Maybe I'm being selfish. Maybe I'm scared of poverty and the future for a little old woman. Maybe I got my expectations of the movement up a little too high, remembering the exhilaration of being part of the solution, the fun that protests are, the great energy that comes from standing together and shouting together and being a part of something big and important.

I guess I could have abandoned my booth on Saturday and hollered for awhile, marched for awhile, but I am more responsible than that. I had a big workday and did my work. On the way home I passed the OCF annual meeting, where my outrage and woundedness needed to be expressed, where I don't feel treasured and I don't feel my other membership organization sees me or has compassion for me. I would have stopped, but I had just worked a fourteen hour day and still had an hour of unloading to do. I didn't engage there either.

So I'm just not part of the solution today. I'm part of the disenfranchised, the disaffected, the discouraged. I'm sitting here, staying up too late, trying to find some clarity for myself.

I'm overwhelmed about all the things that need fixing due to our self-absorption as a people, our lack of understanding of what compassion looks like, our self-centered obsession with what we think is the only important thing, what we ourselves are doing. I'm just as guilty of it as anyone. I'm just as bereft of solutions, as empty of ideas as the next person.

I'm glad people are trying, I really am. I think there are many earnest people who are losing sleep right now trying to find solutions to giant and weighty problems. I love consensus and working on privilege and learning compassionate problem-solving and crisis intervention and I'm very glad people are practicing this kind of peace downtown in the place where I keep my heart, opening and reopening it every Saturday and Tuesday. I hope they feel that heart there and keep it safe, show it reverence and feed it their passion and hope.

I expect to trundle my wares down there again this week and have my clean old space ready for me, to do my work some more. I trust in all of those people to work for justice for me as well as all the rest of us. I know their intentions are good.

But if compassion is our currency, we have to expand our understanding of that word a thousand fold. We have to get out of our own worlds where our own needs are paramount and really look at each other, really see each other. I did not experience that today. I brought home a lot of food, but I did not get fed. I saw a lot of difficulty and not the same amount of humor and ease. I saw some giving but more expecting. I saw raw needs, but not needs getting filled.

But there's always tomorrow. Yesterday's gone. Today's gone too. I'll try sleep.