Are you going to take your stand with the drummers of the Occupy Wall Street movement?

There will come a time when every man, woman and child will have to answer this question: Will you stand with The Drummers of the Occupy Wall Street Movement?

Or are you going to stand with The Man, The Oppressors, The 1%, Those Who Aren't Palestinian Enough, and The Evil Rich? 

There will come a time when you will all have to answer this question.  We, the drummers, we're taking names and keeping score.   

Pick a side, dammit !!! 

Here's an email from the so-called Occupy Wall Street "movement", outlining their strategy to silence the voices of the people.  OWS is over after Tuesday:

Friends, mediation with the drummers has been called off. It has gone on for more than 2 weeks and it has reached a dead end. The drummers formed a working group called Pulse and agreed to 2 hrs/day at times during the mediation, and more recently that changed to 4 hrs/day. It’s my feeling that we may have a fighting chance with the community board if we could indeed limit drumming and loud instrumentation to 12-2 PM and 4-6 PM, however that isn’t what’s happening.

Last night the drumming was near continuous until 10:30 PM at night. Today it began again at 11 AM. The drummers are fighting among themselves, there is no cohesive group. There is one assemblage called Pulse that organized most of the drummers into a group and went to GA for formal recognition and with a proposal…

At this point we have lost the support of allies in the Community Board and the state senator and city electeds who have been fighting the city to stave off our eviction, get us toilets, etc. On Tuesday there is a Community Board vote, which will be packed with media cameras and community members with real grievances. We have sadly demonstrated to them that we are unable to collectively 1) keep our space and surrounding areas clean and sanitary, 2) keep the park safe, 3) deal with internal conflict and enforce the Good Neighbor Policy that was passed by the General Assembly…

In the meantime, there are other drummers who refuse to acknowledge OWS or the GA as a body they are interested in, and these drummers show up on site when they fell like it and drum when they feel like it. Over the weekend, it was for 10 or 11 hours straight, until late night.

So in the meantime, while we are grateful for the negotiations and positive relations with Pulse, we recognize that the issue of whether we’re evicted over drumming or not remains. For that reason we are asking for people to show up during quiet hour shifts, to ensure that drumming does not start....

And from one of the other messages, here are some Wall Street sympathizing pigs, enemies of The People, calling for more pawns to enforce the whims of the non-rhythmic, reactionary agenda:

We’re in serious need of bodies here. The drumming will happen daily from 12-2 and 4-6pm, that’s OK. But that means that we need folks in these shifts:


2-4 PM: people here to make sure drumming doesn’t start

5:45–8 PM: ppl here to make sure drumming stops at 6 PM sharp and doesn’t start again

8–10 PM: ppl here to make sure drumming doesn’t start

This is an all-call. Really really need help, tonight. There are some fabulous drummers here who have been in mediation with OWS and the community board for weeks. There are a small handful of drummers who have been violent, agro, and committed to playing as loud as they can, for as long as they can (until 11 PM this weekend).

Tomorrow night is the community board meeting, they are logging when they hear drumming and keeping a record. If we can show that we’ve made progress in implementing the Good Neighbor Policy that limits drumming then they won’t call for our eviction (they in fact have been bending over backwards to support and defend us). If we can’t get support here tonight at 6pm, or tomorrow, then we are facing an eviction vote at tomrorow’s meeting, in front of all the cameras, and we lose the electeds and allies who’ve gone to bat for us.

This is a final ditch effort as it’s been weeks of false promises and failed enforcement, so we may be close to the end of OWS over this issue this week, but we have a fighting chance!

And finally, we see the traitors in our midst....

Unfortunately there is one individual who is NOT a drummer but who claims to speak for the drummers who has been a deeply disruptive force, attacking the drumming rep during the GA and derailing his proposal, and disrupting the community board meeting, as well as the OWS community relations meeting. She has also created strife and divisions within the POC caucus, calling many members who are not ‘on her side’ “Uncle Tom”, “the 1%”, “Barbie” “not Palestinian enough” “Wall Street politicians” “not black enough” “sell-outs”, etc. People have been documenting her disruptions, and her campaign of misinformation, and instigations. She also has a documented history online of defamatory, divisive and disruptive behavior within the LGBT (esp. transgender) communities. Her disruptions have made it hard to have constructive conversations and productive resolutions to conflicts in a variety of forums in the past several days.


DRUMMERS OF THE WORLD, UNITE !  YOU HAVE NOTHING TO LOSE BUT YOUR CHAINS !!!

The Occupy Wall Street movement discriminates against drummers !!!

This irritates me more than it should. 
I am a drummer.  Not a great one, but I get by. 
I was in the drum lines at Ole Miss and Delta State. 
Here's a picture of me, way off in the background, thumping the skins at Jazz Cafe. 

Yes, I've heard all the jokes. 


What do you call a guy who hangs out with four musicians?  A drummer.
 
How can you tell a drummer is at your door?  The knocking speeds up. 

How many drummers does it take to change a light bulb?  None.  Thank God they have a machine for that now !!!


And now we have this freakin' outrage:

All occupiers are equal — but some occupiers are more equal than others. In wind-whipped Zuccotti Park, new divisions and hierarchies are threatening to upend Occupy Wall Street and its leaderless collective. . . .

Facilitators spearheaded a General Assembly proposal to limit the drumming to two hours a day. “The drumming is a major issue which has the potential to get us kicked out,” said Lauren Digion, a leader on the sanitation working group.

But the drums were fun. They brought in publicity and money. Many non-facilitators were infuriated by the decision and claimed that it had been forced through the General Assembly.

“They’re imposing a structure on the natural flow of music,” said Seth Harper, an 18-year-old from Georgia. “The GA decided to do it … they suppressed people’s opinions. I wanted to do introduce a different proposal, but a big black organizer chick with an Afro said I couldn’t.”

To Shane Engelerdt, a 19-year-old from Jersey City and self-described former “head drummer,” this amounted to a Jacobinic betrayal. “They are becoming the government we’re trying to protest,” he said. “They didn’t even give the drummers a say … Drumming is the heartbeat of this movement. Look around: This is dead, you need a pulse to keep something alive.”

The drummers claim that the finance working group even levied a percussion tax of sorts, taking up to half of the $150-300 a day that the drum circle was receiving in tips. “Now they have over $500,000 from all sorts of places,” said Engelerdt. “We’re like, what’s going on here? They’re like the banks we’re protesting.”

(The drummers are learning that if The Collective gives, then The Collective can also take away. - TWS)

All belongings and money in the park are supposed to be held in common, but property rights reared their capitalistic head when facilitators went to clean up the park, which was looking more like a shantytown than usual after several days of wind and rain. The local community board was due to send in an inspector, so the facilitators and cleaners started moving tarps, bags, and personal belongings into a big pile in order to clean the park.

But some refused to budge. A bearded man began to gather up a tarp and an occupier emerged from beneath, screaming: “You’re going to break my f***ing tent, get that s**t off!” Near the front of the park, two men in hoodies staged a meta-sit-in, fearful that their belongings would be lost or appropriated.

First they came for The Drummers, but I did not speak out, for I was not a Drummer.... 

My favorite drummer of all time

This is my favorite drummer of all time.  He gets cranking around the 1:00 mark.  By 1:30 you'll fear for his health. 

A warning about Christian Drum Circles

Here's a word of warning about Christian Drum Circles.

Repent now, while there's still time.

Picture of the (supposedly Pagan) drum circle came from here.