The story of Occupy With Aloha
Following the Yes Lab (http://yeslab.org) on Saturday, November 5, I was keen on participating in anti-APEC projects, some of which are recounted here. Hoping that an opportunity to work with the Yes Men directly would come my way, this is exactly what fell into my lap in the form of a voice message from Mike Bonnano, who asked if I were interested in and available to assist with a project during APEC's big weekend. After the alterna-APEC Forum to Festival (http://www.globoflo.com/2011/09/09/yes-men-keynote-speech/), I approached Mike and thanked him for his work. He asked for my contact information so we might stay in touch, and I was a bit surprised to receive his message about a possible big event for APEC's grand weekend, and I certainly wasn't about to pass up this chance. I eagerly returned his call and professed my willingness to contribute, even though I had no idea what the project was and/or entailed. Without knowing what I had signed myself up for, I continued to work on content for a parody APEC site and awaited Mike's next call. The next day, however, I got a call from Mike stating that plans for a big event were off. We talked for a bit about the website and twitter feed (@2011apechawaii), which were just beginning to garner media attention, and I wished Mike well and thanked him for his counsel on our project and alterna-APEC events in general. I certainly felt a bit disheartened at this missed chance, but our attempts to re-articulate the discourses surrounding APEC were going well—that is until they were abruptly ended. For details on the backstory of the short-lived 2011apechawaii.com, click "The Takedown" link on menu bar.
On Wednesday evening, I received a frantic call from Mike asking me if I could make some T-shirts. While this is certainly not my forte, I agreed to do it and pressed for a bit more information. Mike wanted to have a handful of shirts reading, “Occupy with World Leaders Dinner,” for various purposes. He also mentioned that he was put in touch with Makana (http://makanamusic.com), who had access to the secure zone during the world leaders dinner. After briefly discussing the pros and cons of iron-on transfers versus screen printing, I grabbed a marker from the junk drawer and ran down the street to Macy's to find some plain white t-shirts, but they were extraordinarily expensive and looked too formal, if not lame. Of course they were, I thought while driving to Goodwill—mass-produced and cheap is exactly the mode of production supported by APEC, and the last thing the shirt should condone, even if implicitly, is the endemic forms of poverty and inequality that Late Capitalism, which Fredric Jameson conceives of as “catastrophe and progress all together,” perpetuate (Jameson, 47). Clearing out all of the mildly unsoiled white shirts, five in total, at the Kaimuki Goodwill, I made my way home and started making the shirts. Using a permanent marker, I marked out the lettering, which was an arduous task as I could not actually write on the shirt since the fabric was too abrasive for the marker. So, I had to use more of a tattoo-style, which required me to dot each mark on the shirt. As I wanted to make sure that this is what Mike had in mind, I sent him a photo text of the shirt in progress.
Click here to get an "Occupy with Aloha" shirt!
This whole process was extremely time consuming, and after about two hours, I had just finished the first shirt and felt a bit buzzed from the potent stench of the marker. I ended up making two “Occupy the World Leaders Dinner” shirts that evening, but little did I know that Makana was not even aware that there was going to be a shirt. It became clear that the “Occupy” shirt was Mike's obviously brilliant idea, but he had not run this past Makana, and I guess I assumed that this was the point of making the shirt, but it clearly was not, at least not initially. When Mike asked if I could go over to Makana's home on Friday night for a meet and greet and to deliver the shirts, I hoped for the best and headed their way. I had heard Makana play at a local eatery a few years back and knew that he was a highly regarded local musician, and although he had played at the White House in years past, this show was shaping up to be much different than previous performances. I encountered a truly carnivalesque atmosphere over at Makana's place that evening, and there was great delight over the completion of the video for his now infamous song, which Rolling Stone recently dubbed the “Occupy Anthem.”
When I entered the full house, everyone seemed to be in high spirits, and the focus of the evening was Makana's song, which I got to hear and see for the first time. I was pretty blown away at the power of his lyrics, and the first thing that came to mind, for obvious reasons, was the Dylan-esque sound and style. The timing of his song and accompanying video, which he had just finished the day before, was certainly serendipitous, to say the least. There was a general sense that the meeting between Makana and the Yes Men was meant to be, and it was a fellow Yes Lab attendee who actually put them into contact with one another—one of the many perks of island life. A bit later into the evening and perhaps at an inopportune time, I unveiled the shirts and offered one to Makana to try on. He appeared slightly caught off guard at the shirt's bold message, but he also seemed open to the idea of wearing it during the event, even though he made no commitment to doing so. I drove home thinking that this intervention, and particularly Makana's song, offered an extraordinary opportunity to speak truth to power, to make the invisible visible, and to offer a counter-spectacle to the otherwise blase performances of sovereignty at the world leaders dinner. Feeling inspired after our gathering, I got to work on an “I Occupied APEC's World Leaders Dinner” shirt, which I thought my work well for post-intervention media opportunities, but it would actually be another shirt that would become the iconic image of his performance.
Mike rang me on Saturday morning and asked me if I would come over before Makana left to assist with things before the big event. Friday evening's jovial mood had turned into anxiety and a bit of angst come early Saturday afternoon, and it was clear that some of the tension stemmed from Makana's uneasiness with the “Occupy with World Leaders Dinner” T-shirt's message. I had been thinking that Makana's song and local roots didn't quite sit well with the brash message of the original shirt, and after a quick conversation with Mike before heading over to Makana's house, I sent him a text that read, “Right, what about a shirt that says something like “Occupy with Aloha!” He might be down for that as he is into doing it from a local perspective.” When I arrived, the tension was palpable, and as Makana contemplated singing his protest anthem in front of 21 world leaders, it became clear that the “Occupy with World Leaders Dinner Shirt” was actually an impediment that could have curtailed the spontaneinty of his brave act of resistance. To be honest, the only plan was that there was no plan, and it became clear that Makana would play the song only if the mood was right and moment presented itself.
As the dialogue around the possibility of his possible aintervention at the world leaders dinner and the shirt's message continued, I suggested a shirt that read “Occupy with Aloha” as a way of bridging Mike's desire for the Occupy movement to be present and Makana's desire that things be done in a respectful way, or with aloha, if the stars aligned. Everyone jumped on the idea and I hastily began making the shirt, which took all of ten minutes, on his lanai. As this was decided and carried out about thirty minutes before White House staffers picked him up, there was literally no time to do anything more than outline the text, and the smell of the marker was strong enough to merit a few minutes in the dryer before it was stuffed deep into his guitar case, perhaps never to see the light of day. When Makana and Budgie, his guitar tech, left, we had no guarantee how things were going to go, and Makana made it clear that he was going to feel things out and play it by ear, as the saying goes, especially the part about wearing the shirt since this would be an obvious and blatant affront to the otherwise stoic gathering of world leaders. If the secret service searched his gear, the shirt would have likely been confiscated. If they had nabbed Budgie's cell phone, there would have been no record of the event. If Makana was unable to change once he had passed through security, Occupy with Aloha might have never been known outside of the cabal of activists seeking to re-articulate the dicourses surrounding APEC. While I'm sure that Makana was feeling some butterflies during the time before his performance, we were equally on edge and waited patiently for some confirmation as to what actually happened inside the world leaders dinner. In the end, the shirt is a mere artifact of Makana's courageous spirit—he truly embodies occupy with aloha. The rest, as they say, is history (http://yeslab.org/APEC).
(photo credit: Jason Faris)
While this backstory is not crucial to understanding the ethos of the shirt's message, I think it is important in understanding how it emerged organically and how it signifies a complex and layered attempt to engage critical thought on APEC and larger questions about the socio-economics of our historical moment. I offer the following meditations on the shirt's message below not as the sole arbiter and/or owner of “Occupy with Aloha,” but rather as a participant in a growing movement of disease with our current state of affairs, especially the tyranny of neoliberalism and the accompanying practices that support it.
From my perspective, Occupy with Aloha means a variety of things. First and foremost, the phrase is obviously meant to declare solidarity with the ongoing Occupy movements across the world, especially the encampment at Thomas Square, which began the Saturday before APEC (http://deoccupyhonolulu.org). Whereas most signage focuses on the subject/object of one's occupation (e.g. Occupy Bismark, Occupy Boise, etc.), the phrasing “Occupy with Aloha” de-emphasizes the site of one's occupation and instead presences a means by which one can and might occupy. Aloha is often associated with the kitsch of Hawaiiana that has been perpetuated through Waikiki and other hyper-tourist sites of exchange, but the etymology of the term speaks to the recognition of one's embodied being-in-the-world from the Native Hawaiian perspective. In Hawaiian, alo means “presence” and hâ means “breath,” so aloha means something like, “I recognize your breath,” which was the greeting used by Native Hawaiians as they would embrace one another, stand nose to nose, and take a deep breath, which was and remains symbolic of the embodiment of worldview that aloha denotes. Aloha has been transliterated as “hello,” “goodbye,” and “love,” but it is fundamentally and essentially a consciousness of one's relational context with others and the world.
From this point of view, Occupy with Aloha speaks to the recognition and respect incumbent upon those seeking to promote social change from within, and if the means by which this change is carried out is not embodied with a sense of aloha, then the nature of the change itself is suspect. This ethos lies at the heart of the Occupy movement, which is a heterogenous and amorphous network of people seeking radical change through embodied practices—at the heart of Occupy is a struggle to embody alternative political ecologies, not just talk and/or write about them. These occupations are efforts to make dissent seen and heard, which is a dramatic step towards reasserting democratic politics. This initial step towards change, what Jacques Rancière terms dissensus, lies at the heart of democratic politics, since, “Politics revolves around what is seen and what can be said about it, around who has the ability to see and the talent to speak, around the properties of spaces and the possibilities of time” (Rancière, 13). Rancière's charge certainly came to mind when thinking about Makana's song and the possibility of intervening at the world leaders dinner, and I think the message of “Occupy with Aloha” speaks to how this can be done on a global stage while remaining sensitive to local sensibilities.
Second, “Occupy with Aloha” is a direct affront to APEC, especially the world leaders of its member nations. If APEC is going to persist as an entity, and I personally do not think that it should, then it should occupy these islands and the Asia-Pacific region with aloha by promoting policies that support local communities and work toward lessening economic disparity rather than buttressing capital markets built upon exploitation and greed. As roughly 60% of the world's economy flows through the Asia-Pacific region, it is clear that there is much more at stake than the health of the regional economy in the wake of APEC's proposals, especially the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which would operate as a sort of “NAFTA on steroids” for the region, which is to say the global economy, that would decimate tariffs and force standards on member countries that favors the imperialist and consumerist practices of larger nations (e.g. U.S.A.). APEC needs to realize that it is indeed an occupying force—one that harkens back to the colonial period and continues today—and the peoples of the Asia-Pacific region, who protest its meetings every year, are not willing to stand by as it rapes and pillages natural and human resources in the name of profits and growth.
Finally, “Occupy with Aloha” and the medium by which it was presented (Makana's T-shirt) suggests that social change is something that is so expressly serious that it should be approached with a smile on one's face and a slogan on one's (second-hand) shirt. This idea was exemplified by Makana whose dramatic performance was relegated to back ground music at the dinner. Even as his song clearly fell upon deaf ears—ironically for nearly 45 minutes—the message of his music and his embodiment of Occupy with Aloha reverberated throughout the world, and as the international media began to pick up the story, it became clear that his music and the T-shirt he wore galvanized and inspired people to speak out against injustice and inequality. In this sense, the universality of Occupy with Aloha stems from its inclusionary spirit (Occupy with Aloha) as a call to arms for those seeking change that comes from deep within one's sense of self and then spreads outward.
I offer a short anecdote I use in my Introduction to World Religions course to convey my final point. The Buddha went up to a hot dog vendor, who asked him, “What can I make you?” The Buddha responds, “Make me one with everything.” Looking whimsically at his reply, the hot dog vendor isn't sure how to take the Buddha's request. He ends up making him a veggie dog, and the Buddha pays him with a $20 bill. The Buddha takes a hearty bite and turns to walk away, but he realizes that he did not receive his change. When the Buddha enquires about this oversight, the hot dog vendor responds, “true change comes from within.” The Buddha smiles and walks away happily eating his veggie dog. So, one would expect that the Buddha would have the upper hand in this situation, but it becomes obvious that the hot dog vendor pulls a fast one of the embodiment of enlightenment—to which the Buddha simply smiles. The point, then, is that one should not be afraid to receive wisdom from places where it is not expected, and, perhaps most importantly, one should not be attached to the process by which one seeks to release one's self from attachments—narcissism isn't going to help anyone. This sentiment, in a similar form, was delivered to the Occupy Wall Street movement by Slavoj Žižek, who noted, “Don't fall in love with yourselves, with the nice time we are having here. Carnivals come cheap - the true test of their worth is what remains the day after, how our normal daily life will be changed. Fall in love with hard and patient work - we are the beginning, not the end” (Žižek)). What this play on words can teach us is to not think about enlightenment, or aloha, or even the change that Occupy in its various forms, wants to enliven as being something that can happen easily but rather a goal to which one must continuously aspire—a journey for which the journeying is itself the goal. Chalk it up to a learning experience and just enjoy the veggie dog!
As Occupy movements continue to face challenges in the form of police actions, evictions, and extra-legal measures enacted against democratic forms of protest (http://www.change.org/petitions/city-councilmembers-of-honolulu-hawaii-oppose-bill-54), it is clear, perhaps now more than ever, that finding creative and sustainable ways of fighting injustice is only the first step in formulating change in the everyday ebb and flow of life. Occupy with Aloha offers a guide for embodied agency through affective relationality and the presence one gives to others—as such, it is motto for falling in love with the process by which we might become aloha itself.
(photo credit: Jason Faris)
John A. Sweeney