Reading the New York Times account of the Occupy Wall Street movement at a church in England, and the discussion of Jesus and usury, the money changers, made me think of my senior year at Dartmouth, 1985 fall, when anti-Apartheid (human rights) activist built a shanytown, to simulate the blight that marginalized poor in South Africa experienced, under a morally-corrupt (by our isolated, privileged Ivy League middle class American and Jewish standards, 12,000 miles away, or universal). But there and then, many people including myself, felt the protests had made their point and we started to find the spectacle an annoyance. I even went so far as to place a classified, unsigned, that said “Bulldoze now.”
And I think of all of these things, the values, the tactics, the media role, in context of my interest in Lytton Plaza here, in Palo Alto, and how I think I am speaking for the disenfranchised — though I rarely speak to these people, and they don’t necessarily ask me to get involved — although my former coach Bob Pritchett, a one-time Gunn Hall of Famer for football, now reduced to a wheelchair and bedridden most days, asked me for $20. Sue Webb called me when the police started changing their enforcements of noise ordinances, and we met with Councilmember Yiaway Yeh. I spoke at Parks and Rec commission meetig recently and tried unsuccessfully to send a follow-up letter to Council (it only went to certain council members and one staff member; I thought it would be forwarded as part of the official record).

Lytton is indirectly named for, or at least references Bulwer-Lytton, the writer, for among his coinings is the term “the great unwashed” ironically enough.

I will provide the link to the Times article inspiring and informing this, or as Richard Serra says “to fold, to crease” et cetera.

Matthew Wald wrote about Dartmouth shanty as did Buckley

edit to add, December 15, 2011: I posted on site of Palo Alto Weekly, about proposed changes to Cogswell Plaza, similar to Lytton Plaza in that it looks like developers are whispering into the ears of staff and commissioners:

Why don’t we wait until the giant new building at the corner of Bryant and Lytton is finished, and see if those new people — office workers, I presume — use the park and therefore make the homeless and at risk people less noticeable?

I am afraid this is the opposite — that the developers of the new property are asking us regular folks to subsidize them — to roust the alleged vagrants such that the prospective new tenants don’t see the great unwashed sleeping or smoking or what not across the street from their palacial new prospective digs.

I hope the commissioners poll some ordinary residents and not just listen to the developers. I hope staff — whose salaries we citizens pay — do likewise.

This is the same potential problem as Lytton Plaza where a small group of people have a disproportionate influence over what is supposed to be a public asset. For example, there is a proposed ordinance affecting “amplified music” per se which is really an anti-vagrancy act designed to give public safety rationale to hassle the people at the Plaza; this topic is now part of a sub-commission of the Rec commission. Existing noise ordinance is sufficient; the new ordinance may conflict with First Amendment rights.

I worry that this problem is endemic and epidemic, that developers have way too much say over policy in Palo Alto. That they pack council and staff and commissions with their operatives. It is hard if not impossible to get on a commission or council without kowtowing to this small group of powerful people, one of whose offices perhaps coincidentally is located across from Cogswell.

Cogswell Plaza is named for a longtime editor of the Palo Alto Times, which was kitty-corner to the park, replaced by realtors and vcs; the diminution of the press here — and nationwide — is a real problem, no disrespect to Gennady et al but they are not the Times Tribune. The real estate interests affect what is reported and how. More so at the other paper.

And further, the plans presented would make it impossible to bring back the Brown Bag; again, why not wait and see. Maybe the developers of the new massive building could underwrite the programming, which would bring people to the park and displace the ones who some find offensive-looking. $150,000 would underwrite about six seasons of Brown Bag.

As I was writing this I was somehow hearing JC Brooks version of Wilco’s “I am Trying to Break Your Heart” in my head, and started to paste that here –although I think I pasted it somewhere below and before — but then switched to a song and performance I don’t think I know, but it fits topically, Norah Jones (with Sasha Dobson????) doing a Wilco piece called “Jesus…”