late october 2011 i resolved to relocate to new york’s zuccotti park, fascinated by the bacchanalian / populist occupy wall street protests. sleeping in the park with hundreds of others, i managed to get mixed up in the business of the press relations working group. early one morning some daily show producers came by the press desk and asked for a zuccotti tour, which i gladly provided. later they asked if i minded performing the same on camera with samantha bee, i said no. thus the 15 seconds of fame warhol foretold as future birthright literally came to pass.

taking a brand new chance
we open our hearts to new romance
in the dead of night

using our thoughts to dream
we’re finding ourselves in different scenes
full of love and light

dreaming builds the future
only we can lead us there

it’s time to use our imaginations

everyone take a hand
use our hearts to heal this land
from nightmares of war

taking a brand new chance
we open our hearts to new romance
that’s what hearts are for

the sun is all full of light
a brilliant dawn is coming on
like an open door

updated US one dollar bill great seal (an incantation)

late summer 2010 : i visited edinburgh, scotland intending to stay a few days only. via couschsurfing.com i discovered a place in the forest just south of the city where a constantly shifting mix of european eco-activists, international backpackers, and UK social misfits live in a treehouse village, subsisting on the city’s luxuriously discarded excess. 8 years before there’d been a municipal plan to build a road through a protected woodland to service local bio-tech firms (including the facility where ‘dolly’ the sheep was famously cloned). local activists didn’t like this plan and occupied bilston glen to stall construction. the road remains unbuilt but the plans have never been formally cancelled, so bilston glen is still technically a ‘protest site’ but over the course of successive summers it’s become less about political activism and more about personal liberty, community, anti-consumerism,  living in nature, and generally savoring each day surrounded by friends, beautifully lush forests, and medieval ruins. coastal images are from the 2010 ‘punx picnic’ on crammond island, a decommissioned WWII naval decoy peppered with decaying pillboxes, just off the coast northwest of edinburgh. the island is only accessible at low tide, so visits are either very brief or last over 12 hours. there was much (generator powered) rock music and irreverent revelry.

late summer 2010 i ended up attending the uk climate camp 2010 direct occupation / action against the royal bank of scotland’s headquarters outside edinburgh. the action was intended to aggressively protest and publicize RBS’s deeply irresponsible investments in the canadian tar sands oil extraction project, one of earth’s biggest currently unfolding environmental disasters. several hundred protesters managed to occupy territory on RBS’s HQ. workshops, talks, and planning sessions were held in preparation against a day of action, with a rigid emphasis on ‘non-hierarchical’ organization and decentralized planning, which seemed theoretically admirable but practically resulted in what i couldn’t help regarding as a sadly comic squandering of the camp’s genuine potential to create a noticed media sensation. what could have been, with some organizational leadership and delegation, a headline seizing global publicity event instead worked out as a series of petty aggravations and vandalisms the UK press predictably spun as the work of over-privileged malcontents, mostly failing to spark any significant public scrutiny of RBS’s little known dirty investments. in any case, these photos are from the main action against the bank, in which many protesters in white hazmat style suits overpowered an unprepared police force, stormed the campus, broke a window, and generally dissolved into a confused mass of people with no plan and mostly no idea what was even happening.