#occupypittsburgh

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My friend Wyatt was working all day, so he didn't get to go earlier, so we decided to go down a few hours ago. We went down and talked to people, and then we found signs and stood by the road with some other people holding our signs and cheering whenever cars honked in support. We met a woman named Judy who drove by and honked and then decided to park and come join us for a while. She took a picture of the two of us with our signs and tweeted it. You can find it if you look under the occupypittsburgh hash-tag. Met some cool people from Slippery Rock including a girl named Noel who had a septum piercing. They had a bunch of signs they'd made for a nineteenth amendment celebration thing a while ago but hadn't gotten to use, so they were waving around fiesty feminist signs while we tried to get people to honk. Going down there makes me so happy. When I came back earlier I was in a better mood than I have been in months. The whole atmosphere down there is so happy and cooperative and hopeful, it makes me so happy.

As I hope you would all infer from the fact that you'r reading this, I did not get arrested. Apparently the police force here was fairly supportive of the movement. I had wanted to make a sign, but I didn't have supplies, but within fifteen minutes of being there I had two bequeathed to me. One I gave to my friend Mica, the other, I kept. One side says "WE ARE THE 99%" and the other says "It's time for the American Spring," which is about what I would have put on a sign if I had made one. I wore my "FUCK POLICE BRUTALITY" Anti-Flag shirt and got tons of pictures taken of me. I got interviewed on camera for something and two reporters for news papers took my picture and asked me some questions. This older woman came up to me and asked if she could take some pictures of me in front of the giant OccupyPittsburgh banner. She told me to take care of myself because if I'm going to be a revolutionary, I need to be a healthy one. She also talked about a poem by this Chilean revolutionary that has a line along the line that reads "You can cut down the flowers, but you cannot stop the Spring" which was very apropo. Ran into my mythology teacher from freshman year. Apparently she actually went up to New York for the second day of Occupy Wall Street. The rally broke up around three-thirty, so everyone moved to the Mellon Green to begin the occupation. I hung out there for a while, listened to some people talk, and I'll probably go back down later tonight and tomorrow. I got some nifty communist paraphernalia at the rally too. I have a sticker with a red hammer/sickle design on a black background to go on my laptop probably, and I got buttons that say "Socialism or Barbarism," "Bolshevik," with a hammer and sickle, "Trotsky," with a picture of Trotsky, and I got Mica a button that says "Close the School of The Americas," the institution where the US trains future dictators. They had other buttons with other communist leaders, some "I [heart] Marx" ones, and some others. If anyone wants one, let me know and I'll see if they still have any when I go back down. There were a lot of groups, the communists included, who were talking about the need for an American Labour party that's actually concerned with workers and labour, seeing as the corporations own both major parties and the 99% of the rest of us could use a party of our own. So many awesome signs and things, I took a ton a pictures that I'll start inundating you with over the next few days.

I will occupy.