Yesterday my wife and I attended a Pensacola City Council meeting. I'd never been to City Hall before. I know, that's pretty sad for someone calling himself Citizen but I think that makes me like most everyone else I know who lives in Pensacola. Pensacola's city hall is bigger than I'd imagined it would be. It also looked different than I'd expected. I figured it'd look like some vaguely Roman or Greek structure with columns in the front and a clock near the top. Instead it's red brick and looks like a cross between a theater and high-rise public housing...albeit rather nice public housing. Once inside the council chambers I felt like I was in a room that was part theater, part church. Interesting that City Hall's exterior and interior remind me of a theater.
The reason I attended the City Council meeting was to lend support to a friend who gave a presentation on Manna Food Pantry's community gardening projects. Another time I will write about the glories of community gardens. At this point, suffice it to say that it's stupid to not have as many community gardens as possible.
After we sat down, a contingent of about a dozen or so young adults filed in. They ranged in appearance from the standard shorts and a t-shirt, to gutter punk, to Indiana Jones. (Seriously...dude had a sweet leather satchel!) I knew who they were as soon as I saw them: representatives from Occupy Pensacola. I thought they'd be rowdy and disruptive but they weren't at all. They were very calm and polite. They waited quietly as the meeting was called to order. I had no idea what they were doing there until the Council President announced that the meeting would start with about half an hour of time allotted for people to address the Council. I figured this was when the rowdy protesting and fierce diatribes would begin. Once again my preconceived notions were wrong. A few of the Occupiers spoke. They spoke calmly and they mostly spoke well. When the speakers said something the rest of their crew liked, instead of loudly cheering and applauding, they silently held their hands up and moved their fingers, doing the sign language sign for applause. (I learned that from one of the Occupiers, who held up a note on loose leaf paper which said, "It's sign language for applause. Thanks, man.) The Occupiers spoke about the rich, controlling 1% and the downtrodden, exploited 99%. They spoke about their rights to free speech and assembly. They spoke about how they represent a group that includes the City Council members themselves...that we are pawns in a game controlled by people who only see us as a means to accrue more power and wealth.
It was interesting that on the same night my friend was speaking about Manna Food Pantry and community gardens, Occupy Pensacola spoke about the overburdened masses and community action. It was a fortuitous synergy.
The civility of last night's council meeting and the civility of the protest as a whole says a lot about the protesters, our elected officials, and the police department. I hope the movement continues to be peaceful and that it leads to progress in all areas of our society, and I'm thankful that I live in a country where such a civil uprising is possible. What I saw at last night's City Council meeting was a thing of beauty.
