— tapioca world tour

I know I haven’t been talking much about the Occupy Movement, because I’ve been buried under other work and a bit under the weather and just generally not so much involved. But I support it. And I share everyone’s concern about what just happened in Oakland. Whose brilliant idea was it to tear gas protesters in a city with a long history of riots, racial oppression AND police brutality? Does anyone remember Oscar Grant?

I lived in the East Bay for a summer, and have many friends in Oakland presently. I know there’s a lot of mobile videos floating out there right now, but I thought I’d post just one of them to illustrate how alarmingly police state-ish we seem to be becoming. If I was Mister Obama, I would address this. Say what you will about mob culture, mob thought, mass unorganized action, hazy goals, hazy ethics, fearful authorities, etc. We still live in a country where freedom of assembly is a right, and violence against citizens can and should be avoided. Obviously many people are upset about many things right now. And this movement in particular is way bigger than the global anti-war protests of February 2003. Someone should be paying attention.

Thinking is boring!

(This isn’t the clip I wanted to show, but a longer and differently edited version. Still, it makes a point. In one scene one of the guys is wearing an MIT t-shirt. I actually feel like I’ve seen him around campus, but that might just be my overly active imagination. Anyway, skip to 2:15 for its actual start.)

Despite living in a tiny city and working with a bunch of people who are part of the Occupy Movement here in Boston, and despite spending much of the past two weeks in New York City, including one evening where I was slightly barricaded in Times Square because of the Occupy Wall Street protesters, I have managed to avoid most of the goings-on. Not because I’m trying to, but because, I don’t know, I guess I’ve been under the weather. Also I have to write a book chapter and make an organizational website and manage the development of a mobile app and design wireframes and edit two videos, not to mention secure an international job. One could argue that my response to this economic crisis is escapism, but I would counter that I’ve been trying to move abroad since the 90s, so there.

Anyway. Ran into an old college pal on the streets of Brooklyn the other day. He won an Emmy this year for his writing on The Colbert Report, but here’s a clip from The Daily Show (sorry, Opus) that I think does a great job of summarizing OWS:

Foundation for Education and Development (formerly GHRE), the human rights org in Southern Thailand that I visited twice and volunteered for, now has someone on staff who’s a videographer. I’m so proud of their multimedia outreach! They’ve been doing such great work for so long, it’s awesome to see those efforts documented and promoted online. And for me personally, it’s nice to see familiar people and places in this video – including Htoo Chit, their founder, and the stick-shift pickup truck that I nervously had to drive (sitting on the right side, since they drive on the left side of the road) down a narrow dirt path into the jungle in pitch blackness with mosquitoes and frogs and stars and rubber trees all around.