“Verily I say unto you, except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.’ – Mathew 18:3
[scrollGallery id=284]by Jeff Dietrich, Photos by by Jim Ruymen/newspix
It’s for the tear gas, she said, pushing a vinegar soaked rag into my hand. These are for the percussion grenades, she told me handing off a pair of foam rubber ear plugs as I pushed into a tight circle of young occupiers, sitting with locking arms around a single tent at the center of Occupy LA.Helicopters buzzed overhead and media cameras aimed their jarring klieg lights at us.
This was the last place I wanted to be on a Wednesday morning last month. At age 65, I was in the minority of this rag tag assembly of youthful rabble-rousers.
Though I have been arrested numerous times for acts of civil disobedience, I was afraid. I did not know what to expect. Would I be pepper sprayed, tear gassed, bean bag shot, bludgeoned with Billy clubs?
We sat for four hours, locked armed, squatted down and scrunched together. My old legs and back quivered until I was hoping for the cops to come soon and arrest me.
When they poured out unexpectedly from the south entrance of the City Hall, it was almost a relief. No percussion grenades, no tear gas. We were told our “escape routes” to the east and the west. Leave now and you won’t be arrested. I thought about escaping. But the people on either side of me pulled tightly on my elbows.
The perception of the occupy movement, and I don’t entirely disagree with it, is that it is just a coalition of unwashed, raffish punk anarchist, dope smokers, tree sitters, gypsy guitar players, dumpster divers and aggressive bicyclists who should just “getta job.”
I wish that they were better behaved, I wish they had more institutional support, I wish that they did not party so much, I wish they were a bit more mainstream.
I found their meetings of radical democracy tedious, unproductive, and ineffectual.
Despite all of that, I found their message compelling. You have to stand somewhere, and these are the only people standing up in public and speaking the true, but private discourse of the majority of Americans: the commonwealth has been robbed by both Democrats and Republicans paid by lobbyists to change the banking laws put in place after the Great Depression to protect us from having to give over the national treasury to bail out financial institutions “too big to fail.”.
I have been in jail many times. But for most of the kids, it was their first time. They complained about the food and the treatment. They talked about lawsuits. I thought jail was okay.
But here’s the thing. I have gotten used to it. Maybe I have lost my capacity for moral outrage. Maybe I am too old to be outraged.
We’re in the Christmas season, the time we come before the manger and the child Jesus, of whom the prophet Isaiah said: unto us a child is born. The prophet understood and the Gospels reaffirm that a child shall lead us.
You cannot enter into the Kingdom lest ye be like a child.
I go to court on Dec. 17 because I locked arms with the children. If I have to go back to jail, I will. If I have to be arrested with the children again, I will. I want to be led by the children because children never lose their capacity for moral outrage. And thus, they make a new world possible.
Former Manhattan Beach resident Jeff Dietrich heads the Los Angeles Catholic Worker kitchen on Skid Row inLos Angeles. He is the author of the recently published Broken and Shared: Food, Dignity and the Poor onLos Angeles’ Skid Row. 430 pages, $29.95. Marymount Institute Press,1 LMU Drive, Suite 3102,Los Angeles, CA. 90045. TsehaiPublishers.com.
