Do you know where your money spends the night?  Wall Street banks are trashing our economy and our environment in the name of their own profits—do you buy into their corruption and greed?

It’s time to Pink Slip Big Banks and invest in a more peaceful and just future by moving your money!  How?

Here are some great resources:

•    Tool: Find a Bank or a Credit Union near you


•    Print: Download and print out our PINK SLIP BIG BANKS statement to hand into your bank when you close your account

•    Checklist: 7 Simple Steps To Move Your Checking Account

•    Make socially responsible investments as an alternative to bank CDs or money market accounts

•    Share your banking story with us! Upload a video to our website, submit a photo, or email us your story.

Moving our money is one of the powerful ongoing direct actions that has come out of the growing Occupy movement.  Join an Occupy action near you today and put your money and your body where your values are.  And meet us online at www.womenoccupy.org.

A: Action(s) – Take part in a daily or weekly action at your local “Occupy.” March, stand in vigil with a sign, speak out in a rally, etc. Don’t forget to make it fun: sing, dance, start a rhythmic chant at a march, as Molly Ivins urged us to.

B: Bring Our War $$ Home – Take the anti-war message to your local occupation, it’s going to take all of us to end the US wars and occupations.

C: Consensus – The occupy movement operates on a consensus model that emphasizes participation and inclusion. Watch this video to learn how the consensus process works to become an active participant in your occupy community.

D: Donations – they are vital to keeping this street-based movement going. Melanie Butler, our OWS organizer, strongly suggests donating flashlights and walkie-talkies for women’s security at night. You can also check the website and/or Facebook page of your local “occupation” for what is needed.

E: Economics is key to this populist movement. Move your money to a local credit union or a small community bank to help change the corrupt banking system. Make it fun, take your friends and do it as an action, talk it up, share it on Facebook, tweet about it or post it on your blog.

F: Facebook – share information and news, post your photos and help promote events and speakers of interest at your local occupation.

G: General Assemblies – GAs, gathering where issues are discussed and proposals are voted on, are the heart of the Occupy movement. Some use “the people’s mic”, some a megaphone, and some a combination. Listen, speak out, express yourself using hand signals, pay attention to who is NOT speaking up (often women), encourage quiet people to speak up, and learn, as C.J. Minster to facilitate a GA.

H: Hand gestures –they are an essential part of GAs

I: Inspire! Tell your friends, family, and anyone you meet why you’re involved in the movement and encourage them to join you next time you visit your local occupation.

J: Join a working group, such as direct action or facilitation, to share and build your skills, and get to know people on a deeper level. You can also help create safe spaces for marginalized groups, such as discussion groups and meetings, and places for sleeping and using the bathroom.

K: Know your rights! Educate yourself with this resource guide for understanding your rights as a demonstrator before, during, and after you take action

L: Learn something new every time you go to an “occupation” – 10 new names, a new slogan, song lyrics, etc.

M: Make____Not War photos are a fun activity and a great way to meet folks and help them express themselves! Directions to participate in this artistic response to war.

N: Nonviolence is a shared ethic of the Occupy movement. Donate books or pamphlets on nonviolence history, theory and practice, including CODEPINK’s “Stop the Next War Now”. Have a conversation about what nonviolence means to you; practice and train others in non-violent ways of de-escalating potentially hostile situations.

O: Observe closely. What do you appreciate, and what could be improved? Share your observations in emails, posts to your Facebook wall and/or blog, tweets, personal conversations with other codepinkers.

P: Pies are a treat; make one using a recipe from “Peace Never Tasted So Sweet” and bring it to the “occupation”, or have a pie-baking party with your local group and then bring down a bunch of pies.

Q: Questions, especially open-ended ones, are a great way to start a conversation with “occupiers.” What brings you here? Which of the issues is the most urgent to you? What have you been doing today? And of course, be ready to answer questions as well.

R: Record your experiences – write a blogpost , a local action report & post photos on our flickr page.

S: “Step Up, Step Back”: Encourage those who talk a lot to say less, and those who don’t talk much to speak up. If you tend to dominate the conversation, consider stepping back to let others have the floor; if you tend to shy away from participating in discussions, step up to take the floor.

T: Tweet your thoughts and photos. Use @occupywallst, @womenows, @occupy[yourcity] & #ows, #globalrevolution.

U: Umbrellas are going to be needed more and more as we go into the winter. Take up a “collection” from friends, decorate them with slogans, and donate them.

V: Videotape women and girls at your local “occupation” asking them the simple question, “Why are you here?” Upload your video(s) to youtube and include them in your local action report. Lisa Savage got some really interesting answers, watch her video here and here.

W: Women’s presence and voices are needed in the Occupy movement! Encourage women you know to join the conversation and participate in a Women’s group or start one. Call out sexism as necessary, and bring your womanly wisdom to the movement.

X: Xerox/photocopy flyers or other materials for your local Occupy folks.

Y: Youth – this movement is by you and for you. Encourage all the young people you know to join and lead in occupations, they are our future!

Z: Zero waste is what we are striving toward, help set up, and/or use the compost and recycle buckets.

Note: This list is based on actions that CODEPINKers from Augusta, Maine to Los Angeles, California have done or are doing!

If week one of Occupy Wall Street was about surviving, week two has been about finding our voice. Some of the organizing and facilitation processes we’ve developed to make our movement inclusive and participatory have proven not to be enough, and we are constantly adapting and regrouping to ensure that everyone’s voice in this broad and vibrant coalition is heard.

During Monday’s General Assembly I announce through the call-and-response system of people’s microphone that CODEPINK’s Medea Benjamin will be leading a media training session for women and gender queer/non-male identifying members of the demonstration:

This morning I watched // This morning I watched
News coverage of this protest // News coverage of this protest.
10 people were interviewed // 10 people were interviewed
1 of them // 1 of them
Was a woman // Was a woman
The 99% // The 99%
Is not 90% men // Is not 90% men

Reflecting briefly on the conversations I’ve shared since the occupation began – the countless sound, necessary suggestions and contributions that have been voiced amongst ourselves without making reaching the larger group or media – I add:

If you’ve ever thought // If you’ve ever thought
‘I have something to say’ // I have something to say
… ‘but it’s not that important’ // but it’s not that important
‘It can wait’ // It can wait
Or ‘someone else can say it better’ // Or someone else can say it better
Please join us // Please join us

The message is received enthusiastically. When we do our introductions in the training, we realize many people are not only finding it difficult to speak to press but also during the General Assembly (GA). CODEPINK members following from across the country via livestream have expressed similar concern that women’s participation in the GA seems limited to logistical report-backs from working groups that run the encampment at Liberty Plaza rather than more weighty discussions about our principles of solidarity and Declaration. As these important discussions have intensified, so has women’s insistence on meaningful inclusion and representation in the drafting of our “living documents.”

During the training Medea offers some suggestions on how to make sure everyone’s voices are heard – we tell her about the speak-easy caucus of the General Assembly, which is a safe space for women and non-male identifying members of the GA, and the group responsible for calling the Colbert Report out for doing a piece on Occupy Wall Street that featured interviews with three men and a shot of a topless woman from the demonstration, who apparently was not deemed worthy of interview. That evening a new group, the “Safer Spaces” Committee, will announce its formation to address the problem of sexual harassment:

Please keep in mind // Please keep in mind
Not everyone // Not everyone
Wants to hug you // Wants to hug you
You might need a shower // You might need a shower
If you want to dance with someone // If you want to dance with someone
Or talk to them // Or talk to them
You should find a way to ask them // You should find a way to ask them.

When we get to the practice portion of the training my partner, Anna, is shy and says she doesn’t want to try it. I ask her why she’s here. She freezes up. I tell her to imagine she’s on the phone with her best friend, someone close to her, who’s wondering what all this is about. Without so much as a pause or an “um”, Anna tells me she’s here because she’s been unemployed for two years and she’s tired of seeing media blaming young people for being jobless. Another young woman says she’s here because she grew up homeless and although she was able to escape that lifestyle (I later learn she’s earning a PhD), her family has not been so lucky. We immediately bring the livestream camera over to record these stories, which are more compelling and personal than any I’ve heard covered thus far.

—

Since the demonstration began two weeks ago, I’ve been coordinating with members of CODEPINK, the Granny Peace Brigade, and the Speak-Easy Caucus looking to take the demonstration to the “next level” by staying overnight, and wanting to generate a critical mass of trusted friends to create a safe encampment for the night. On Friday we gear up for our first Occupy Wall Street sleep-out. After last Friday’s was rained out, this time we are ready. At least most of us are – I still don’t have a sleeping bag.

I receive an email from Eve Ensler – she wants to pay a visit and is wondering if there’s anything we need that she can bring. Problem solved. I notify one of the founding members of the Speak-Easy caucus. Her eyes well up – “Omigosh! Are you serious? HERE?! When?!” She tells me about how her closest group of friends formed around a highschool production of the Vagina Monologues and still lovingly refer to each other as “The Vaginas.” When Ms. Ensler arrives she tells her “I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for you.”

Eve and Alicia – one of the V-girls – arrive at the encampment with bags of supplies – including a wonderful sleeping bag that I gratefully accept. Eve tours the ground, interviewing people, and says they will return tomorrow night with the rest of the V-girls – for now she just wants to take it all in. Her face glows with awe, praise, and curiosity: “A second wind is coming.”

CODEPINKers come and go from the square throughout the day and gather for the march against police brutality at 5:30. After the march more members stop by to offer support and delicious home-baked chocolate chip cookies. As night falls I go to the nearby fast-food restaurant that has become our bathroom. It’s packed with young women from Occupy Wall Street. One [Nicole, 20] watches me take out my toothbrush and nods knowingly. I ask her how long she’s been staying in the square – since last Saturday. She tells me she didn’t planning on staying, just came down one day to check out the scene, met some cool people, and didn’t want to leave. “You can’t capture that on camera, that sense of community. I’ve never felt so close to the people around me.” A woman who I recognize from the encampment’s medic committee reminds us that our cell phones will be the first thing taken by the police and instructs us to take down the National Lawyers’ Guild number in case of emergency. We obediently pen the number on our forearms in pink sharpie and wish each other luck.

As I’m consulting with the Safer Spaces committee – identifiable by their pink armbands – where to set up camp, it begins to rain. I run over to where the General Assembly is meeting and duck under a big red umbrella with Sara Beth, a member of the speak-easy caucus. We reminisce over how the umbrella originally brought us together in a moment that seems years ago but was probably last week, when I asked to trade my red umbrella for her pink one. The rain gets harder and louder. A young woman in a poncho tours the square with a cardboard sign shouting like a newsboy: “FREE HUGS!” People huddle under tarps and shout jokes across the square to keep spirits up: “Two fish are swimming in a river. One slams into a concrete wall. Dam!”

Alli, a CODEPINKer from DC, somehow finds us in the labyrinth of tarps and umbrellas creating a patchwork shelter throughout the square. She is down for the weekend to help out and to prepare for DC’s own occupation in Freedom Plaza beginning on October 6th. We discuss what to do if the rain continues and decide to stick it out. I duck from tarp to tarp trying to cover my belongings and rally together other speak-easies while Alli bravely bolts across the square to the Comfort Station to see if they have any extra ponchos. Eventually we seek refuge in the WikiLeaks truck, owned by fellow Bradley Manning supporter Clark Stoeckley. Referring to our Occupy Wall Street-induced evolution from twitter-following to friendship, I joke that I’ll thank him on twitter. There’s about 7 people in the van already, only one of whom is a woman. They welcome us in joking that it’ll make her feel better. This is not exactly the “safe-space” we were envisioning, but it is warm, cozy, and most importantly, dry.

At around 11 pm I receive a text from my partner asking where I am. I reply “still in Liberty”, expecting him to text back that I should come home before I catch a cold. Instead, he joins us about half an hour later wielding a huge Tupperware of freshly-baked brownies. More people stop by the truck as the night progresses, including members of the Security Committee, who leave us with one of their yellow walkie-talkies in case we need anything. Like many of the committees, they mention they are looking for more women members. A figure dressed in garbage bags drops off bottles of water and someone else pokes their head in asking if anyone would like a pair of clean, dry socks. A few of us hold back out of politeness before accepting – he has a whole bag of them. Wiggling our toes with glee in the too-large white tennis socks (“they feel like a hug!”) we all agree: they are the best socks we have ever worn in our lives. Alli returns from a bathroom run with an armload of hotdogs and falafels and reports: “ We have occupied McDonalds!” The venue is full of occupiers escaping the rain, playing guitars and singing “this little light of mine.” We keep a running tally of the number of people in the truck, joking that we should adopt the restaurant’s slogan: 17 served. Everything is funny to us. Max, the sock-bearing carpenter from upstate New York, says his next cardboard sign will read: “For the first time in my life I finally feel at home.”

At 5 am I return to the 24-hour fast food bathroom. It is as hot as a sauna, and we pack in, taking turns using the hand drier to ease some of the night’s saturation. Some are changing clothes, some cutting each other’s hair, some just sitting on the floor to get some warmth into their soaked bones. People tell each other they’re beautiful, reunite, hug, and compare horror stories of the rough night we just survived. One jokes that tonight we should all just sleep here in the bathroom where it’s safe and dry – “let the guys figure out their own thing.”

I arrived at sunset as the downpour ended.
Melanie is moving through the community as if it were her living room.
She has made friends and allies and nurtured relationships of mutual support.
And of course her headquarters is the Wiki-Leaks truck!

As she departs for a good night sleep and some dry clothes my son shows up with dinner just after I got my 30 seconds on the live feed.  We both agree it is shades of burning man.  Mostly because we feel that yummy sense of aliveness, community, support and love.

He offers himself fully to the task of call and response of the general assembly but after an hour wonders how everyone has the stamina.  Yet he comes up with a great idea to organize an early morning action to circle wall street with 5,000 people and is curious if we can make that happen.  He is insistant that Wall Street feel the effects of our presence.  What will their tweets read he wonders?  This is followed by an arrest of a young woman on her bike.   It is awesome to watch as those who are responsible shift from GA to monitoring the event at hand.  Cameras out, people up and like a dance the cameras move forward and those without withdraw.  The police are surrounded by those who are sharing the story in multiple forms globally.  Many in the crowd are telling stories of their recent arrests on the Brooklyn Bridge and the dry night of sleep they got in jail.  No one here is exercising power, instead they are taking responsibility and following through on it.  Beautiful to behold.

The night is full of long conversations about what this is, where it can go, what can be done as the cold moves in, how to be most effective and how to encourage others to join.  All bathed in the richness of the general assembly on one end and the non stop music and dancing on the other.  The General Assembly greeting table has a collection of our pink peace cranes as decorations and the guy from the music side came to complain that we are playing favorites and he wants his own.

The vinyl banners Kristen mothered into being were a big hit tonight, multiple requests to hold them for the cameras as they did their night stories and lots of opportunities to do photos with them.  I did meet a female corporal in the army who had come in solidarity but couldn’t hold the sign because she was in uniform.  But she likes all the messages.

The wiki-leaks truck leaves in the morning to join us in Washington on Thursday.  There is excitement in the square at the news of a push in DC.  Love and curiosity were the threads of my night.  Tomorrow more crane folding to make the welcoming table on Trinity Street feel supported.

Please join us in NYC or whereever you are.

I’m standing with Medea Benjamin, cofounder of CODEPINK, Ynestra King who organized the two women’s marches on the Pentagon in the early 1980ies, and the first eco-feminist conference, Women and Life on Earth, in 1980; and Ahmad and Ann Shirazi, an Iranian-Jewish couple, veterans of every antiwar,  and free Palestine march of this the last twenty years.  A few hundred feet away the core members of Occupy Wall St. are in the midst of their 15th General Meeting since their occupation began eight days ago.  And I’m thinking of Em Jo Basshe.  He was a progressive playwright who wrote a dynamic epic play about Jewish immigrants to the lower east side called The Centuries.  “Bread for the living. Shrouds for the dead,” are the opening lines.  His play was produced in 1927 by the anarchist New Playwrights Theater, a collective including John Howard Lawson and John Dos Passos, and funded by Jewish financier Otto Kahn.  (I have just benefited from George Soros funding for my new play, “Another Life,” about our torture program and post-9/11 madness.)  Basshe’s play had a cast of 35 actors playing the entire Lower East Side.   He later went to Hollywood to write films and then was black listed by HUAC and the McCarthyites.  He spent the final twenty years of his life in a depressive stupor on his living room couch.  His wife told me he “sat up” when the Free Speech Movement erupted in Berkeley in 1964.  Basshe was magically restored when he heard Mario Savio  fight for the right to shout “fuck you,” out loud.  The New Left had risen from the ashes of the Old.  And then he was content to die.

So we in our small group are speaking about the young.  Behind us, the General Meeting grinds on. They are using a “people’s microphone” in the plaza where no sound equipment is allowed.  A speaker says three words, which a core among the crowd repeats and so the rest of us can hear.  Everything takes twice as long. ‘I’m thinking of Athens,” says Medea, “how did they do it?”  I say, “Their only question was, ‘should we invade.’”  Ynestra says, “the microphone is a strategic invention.”  But we are happy in our little group of veteran protesters, though we lack the patience of the young for this General Assembly and its endless community-minded minutia.   The woman who announces the post-meeting meeting of the “non-male identified” occupiers of the square, follows this by saying, “you can be in a male body as long as you are not 100 % male identified,” and the man who tells us what the woman with pendulous bare breasts wants to say because she has taken a vow of silence, and the young women in hijabs, and the young (mostly) white men and women with their dreads and tattoos, all this would have been impossible but for the New Left, the Black Power and the Feminist movements that happened before these young ones were born.

Our New Left devolved into Weatherman fantasies of violent revolution, yet what remains forty years later are these new committed pacifists, reminding each other in their General Assembly to take their vitamins, stay hydrated and recycle.  They are gentle, non-hierarchical, non-doctrinaire, completely committed to non-violence.  There are egos to be seen, but, so far, so good, there are no internecine fights for dominance, no purges, no betrayals.  They paint signs with individualistic, often witty, always acute and encompassing sayings: “if you lost your house, Wall Street stole it from you,” and they have a bucket collecting money for their “adopt a puppy fund.” Yesterday, a score of them were brutally beaten and maced by New York City cops as they walked up Fifth Ave. obstructing traffic without a permit.  Today, they speak of a committee that is reaching out to local businesses to establish good working relationships. They say that Wall St. workers are coming surreptitiously to support them with funds.  Free pizzas are being delivered.  After the General Assembly, if it ever ends, there will be a collective meal.

I say to Ynestra, “Everything we fought for is here, now, today.”  The antimilitarism, the nonviolence, the feminism so accepted you simply see these young men and women working together as equals without a second thought, the anti-capitalist, pro-democratic socialist analysis, the anarchism, their concern for nature, and animals, for the immediate ecology of this place and the larger implications for the planet.

So, I feel like Em Jo Basshe, woken from a long dark sleep by the sudden emergence of these committed, radical young.  I wonder that they seem to have adopted as given the lessons we struggled so, often with such acrimony, to learn ourselves.    I marvel that from all our madness, they seem to have kept the good parts.  A gentle strength pervades their occupation.  “They are so sweet,” we say to one another standing in our elders’ tiny circle.  “Where did they come from?”   How, without a draft, did they get here, so resolutely antiwar?   Well, there are no jobs.  They went to school, graduated into the empty prospects of the decaying empire.  They looked around: whatever had been promised them was moot.  They target Wall St. because, of course, it is the brutality of unchecked, late free-market capitalist economy, brought even lower by the wars, that mars their future.  And they carry in the marrow of their bones, an Old Left, a New Left and whatever they have yet make of this, their one idealistic youthful energetic wish to change the world:  a New New Left.  A Newer Left.  At last. Rise from your stupor, your cynicism, your despair, as Basshe did, sit up and join them there.  They are our legacy, our children, and they are very much themselves.

As the 10^th anniversary of the US-led invasion of Afghanistan approaches, and as the deficit-cutting debate heats up, the rich and powerful in the US have taken an opportunity to throw themselves a massive pity party. Jon Stewart of The Daily Show has documented a small fragment of their grievances here. Something that he didn’t mention is that war profiteers, also known as “defense contractors,” have some grievances of their own: the so-called congressional super-committee, which has been tasked with finding $1.5 trillion in spending cuts in order to reduce the national deficit, might not reach an agreement on what to cut. If that happens, a procedure known as sequestration could take effect, triggering $1.2 trillion in cuts across the board—including $600 billion from the Pentagon budget.

War profiteers are in a panic over the prospect of losing $600 billion in funding, and have voiced their concerns:

Here’s what Marion Blakey, president of the Aerospace Industries Association (AIA), had to say about the matter:

Defense has been cut into the bone, and we cannot have that continue. As far as defense is concerned, the cuts have been taken that could be absorbed.

This is no joke, people: if defense spending is cut any further, we might not be able to afford to keep fighting the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq—or start any new ones. And we can’t have that, can we? Just listen to this dire warning from Jim Albaugh, president and CEO of Boeing:

If we had additional cuts of $600 billion … I would question whether or not we will have a fighting force that’s capable, or an industrial base left.

In other words, the war industry needs to be given billions of US taxpayer dollars each year, so that the US can remain in a state of perpetual war. And perpetual war is precisely what is required to continue lining the pockets of war profiteers!

Don’t believe me? Just ask industry lobbyists themselves. Actually, you don’t even need to ask them; just check out the website Second To None:

American leadership in aerospace and defense is being threatened by forces in Congress and the administration. The security of our troops, our technological future and our economic stability are all at risk. We must preserve jobs across the nation that keep our nation strong. Join us and act now before it is too late.

Well, thanks for the reminder, Second to None! If it hadn’t been for your slick website, I might have forgotten that terrorists want to destroy America, and that lining the pockets of war profiteers is the only thing standing between the United States of America and another 9/11.  It’s a good thing you’re not being too subtle about it, or else Congress might reduce your funding back to the level it was at in 2007!

Or not. Here’s what Senator Jon Kyl (R-AZ) had to say about the prospect of these horrific threats to war industry profit margins:

When we had our first meeting the chairman asked, “Well, what do we think about defense spending?” and I said, “I’m off of the committee if we’re gonna talk about further defense spending [cuts].”

Well, that’s a relief! Now that we know both parties on the super-committee have strong ties to the “defense” industry, you can definitely rest assured that you’ll still be able to profit from war, greed, and corruption, while the rest of us—you know, the American people you’re so passionate about “defending”—are suffering.

That is, unless the people come together to defend their healthcare, education, infrastructure, and job opportunities from devastating cuts, stand up to corporate greed, and demand that the super-committee bring our war dollars home!