“It’s always a horrible thing to actually shit in somebody’s cornflakes…if you do not disrupt people’s everyday activity they will continue to live the same way every day.”  - Mike Daisey at #OccupyBroadway from Saturday night on #OccupyWallStreet, theater, corporatism, subversion, the creation of change, denialism, the news business, Mexican wrestling….

“We actually need to begin drawing lines in the sand…There will be wounds…people’s feelings will be hurt.  But the alternatives will be far worse.”  

“Sometimes when people need to speak, they just need to be heard…sometimes when people do things, when they rise up, when they come places and gather together to talk, it might be because they actually have something to say, something that should be respected, something that should be accepted, even desired. Because otherwise you cannot know what the room is saying. If you do not listen to the audience, you are not a performer.  You d not deserve to wear the mask.  You should leave the ring.”

You could do far worse than to spend 25 minutes watching this.

A great new song, The Bottom 99, by Rhiannon Giddens of the Carolina Chocolate Drops.  She sang it as part of her Sonic New York show with Sxip Shirey and other members of the Luminescent Orchestrii (Sarah Alden, Rima Fand), the CCD’s (Adam matta) and The Wiyos (Joe bass) at Joe’s Pub, and then went down to Occupy Wall Street with Sxip and sang it again.

Rough lyric transcription here, courtesy of @kayemmo 

http://kmo.livejournal.com/516204.html

Oh, listen all you people

my heart is filled with trouble

I don’t know what is wrong my heart is filled with trouble

I’ve got trouble on my mind

for what I see around me is getting worse all the time

the balance of the world it seems

is almost dead and gone

common cause and decency

are severed one by one

the rich keep getting richer

and the poor get poorer too

the wealth of the many in the hands of the few

they act like towering princes

we’re at the their beck and call

a dozen cars, a private jetwith our backs against the wall

they live their flights of fantasy

while we struggle just to eat

instead of living simply

that we might simply be

don’t look to politicians

to even up the score

don’t look for world leaders to do any more

don’t look for corporations

to lend a helping hand

they’ve helped themselves enough

and now it’s time to take a stand

listen now my people

to what I have to say

I do not mean to trouble you

or bother you today

I only want to sing about

as all people want to see

if we want it any different

it’s up to you and me

How to Start a Movement. #OccupyWallStreet

“First, of course you know, a leader needs the guts to stand out and be ridiculed. But what he’s doing is so easy to follow. So here’s his first follower with a crucial role. He’s going to show everyone else how to follow….the first follower is actually an underestimated form of leadership in itself. It takes guts just to stand out like that….And here comes a second follower. Now it’s not a lone nut, it’s not two nuts, three is a crowd, and a crowd is news. So a movement must be public. It’s important, not just to show the leader, but the followers because you find that new followers emulate the followers, not the leader.”

“Leadership is over-glorified…If you really care about starting a movement, have the courage to follow and show others how to follow. And when you find a lone nut doing something great, have the guts to be the first one to stand up and join in. ”

Derek Silver at TED

The whole world is watching. Mass arrests from the Brooklyn Bridge protests today. #occupywallstreet