Occupying the Pizza Guy’s TP Rally

Occupy Reno showed up at end of AFP (Americans for Prosperity Plutocracy) rally on July 23 featuring guest speaker Herman Pizza Man Cain. Occupiers saw the event as an opportunity to protest the addiction to big money in politics. AFP is one of these wonderful new Super PACs with gobs of 1% money, in particular that of the Koch brothers. So many of our homemade signs were plays on themes around the names Koch and Cain, if you will.

Historically, I think the significance of this event is the marking of the first time that significant numbers of TPs and Occupiers met face to face in Reno. None knew what to expect but I think those who have the skills to critically evaluate will look back and realize there was a spark of energy from crossing charges between our two terminal posts. Although the jolt initially may have made us all step back, the memory of the shock lingers.

When we arrived many of the Tea Party (TP) types simply hurled insults and walked quickly away instead of having the courage of their convictions to stand their ground and engage in dialogue. One long haired guy who approached us looked totally out of place. He wore a tied dyed shirt and his buddy work one featuring the Communist Party hammer and sickle. Tie Dye told me my sign which featured the term “plutocracy” was ineffective: “You need to dumb it down a bit for this crowd,” he said.

One loud mouth radio DJ came over and yelled about being insulted by a sign referred to Cain as a Koch Whore. Seriously, most of us were also surprised by the sign, but thought it was pretty clever. And obviously provocative. So Mr. DJ in his shiny brown suit pulled out his camera and tried to interrogate us loudly about offending him as a large crowd of TPs looked over his shoulder. Really had the mob mentality. The courageous young man carrying the sign took the top of a small knoll beside the street and held his ground.

After a few minutes of watching the dynamics several of us closed ranks around him and took some of the heat off of him. We used a “diversity of tactics” from the standpoint of speaking/communicating styles to reach various ones in the group and to try to break off into dialogues. If you challenged him back his TP chorus start yelling defending him stating he was an American, and you know where that was supposed to turn. But I wasn’t going there with this unruly mob. So I told my comrade not to be concerned with this angry man with his shiny shoes and suit. Then the loud mouthed DJ turned his anger at me asking me why I didn’t like his suit. I told him what was wrong with it from an aesthetic point of view, but he tried to insinuate that I didn’t like suits, which is partly true, but again, they were trying to transition to one of their pro-business talking points.

My problem was the quality of his suit made him look like a slick used car salesman and a Koch "whore" should be able to do better, but obviously his pimp is not paying him well enough. But I didn’t get to make the “kill” point because one of my loving fellow Occupiers, speaking in caring, nurturing motherly tones, pointed out that I was a professional too and wore suits. Darn it, why did she have to “out” me? Eventually most of the TPs left once the two sides were no longer yelling. I thought transforming the conversation to clothing would help diffuse the anger and it had. But it was done in Occupier fashion, no one led, we held our group in solidarity.

Finally most of the TP freeloaders left with their bellies full of free Koch $ food, carrying their AFP/Koch swag. We were life with a group who were finally willing to engage in reasonable dialogue for the most part, although from time to time someone would invoke some crazy Faux news version of the fax. For example one told me matter of fact that Obama had been living off his Grandmother’s fortune for years. “You mean when he was growing up,” I asked. “No, until quite recently.” I told the man Obama’s grandmother was dead. He told me that Obama had two grandmothers and he was talking about the one who was American. I repeated she was dead. He said she left an immense estate. It was all in his book. I told him I had read both his books and it didn’t say that. He said he had the info in his care, and all of the sudden it felt really creepy, and I walked away.

Conclusions: It was clear from our experience that the TPs have way more crazy hangers on than Occupiers do (although admittedly we have had a few over the last several months). But we really did enjoy the opportunity to engaged the few who were willing to dialogue rationally with us. We know we share a lot of views regarding our inherent distrust with big government and governmental overreach, although we part ways regarding several key issues including the role of money and what parts of the government coffers should be cut.

Those who showed up to admire a pizza mogol and to get free stuff told us they think that money is free speech and the more the merrier. Occupiers will never share that mindset. Had we known there was free food we would have transported a bunch of homeless folks to the party. I think it would have been harder for the TPs to argue with us about minimum wage, which they want to eliminate, with hungry homeless people hanging around. One argued, why not send jobs overseas if you can get the job done for $1/hour? Their America is so self serving. 

Then I saw the AFP Koch staff packing up boxes and boxes of their free T shirts as they head for Winnemucca. We were still engaged with TPs while they licked their ice cream cones, it was hard to relate to the fact that they don’t know (or is it care?) that there are thousands of homeless people in our area. Occupy Reno is spending our spare hours feed hungry people and shopping thrift stores for blankets because it gets cold at night in Northern Nevada, even in the summer. I asked one about the t-shirts and he asked me if I thought it was a zero sum game. I didn’t really know what to say, because I realized he was now engaged in self gratifying dialogue, not the objective to help Americans, but rationalizing their actions and inactions to help themselves and their own addictions.