OCCUPY TAMPA FIZZLES AS OCCUPY WALL ST. SIZZLES

Ok.  what's next for Occupy Tampa?

Let's see, theres a General Assembly meeting over there by the palm tree right by the the three-day old  stack of half-eaten lasagna from Eddie and Sams.

Um.  We really should check and see if that guy arrested early this morning for taking a whiz on the sidewalk was one of ours...or one of those homeless guys who keep stealing our stuff.

Hmm.  Or, maybe, well, let's see if we can grab one of these passers by and ask them to spell check our signs. I mean, they look like they can read, or maybe not, they don't really even look at our signs anymore, except for the one that was upside down, oh yeah, that smart aleck in the Hugo Boss suit  noticed THAT one.

Or...I know!  A Limbo contest!!

And so it goes. 

No pepper spray.  Nobody going to the hospital with a cracked skull.  No national coverage when Occupy Tampers surge into the street and stop traffic. 

Well, all right.  They don't exactly surge.  You need more than nine people for a surge.  They kind of hang over the curb a little and hassle the people with the nicer, more expensive looking cars.

San Francisco  had Pete Seeger drop by.  Occupy Tampa can't even get a decent mariachi band.

Jeees.  Even the solidarity march on November 17th was kind of lousy.

There they were...all twenty or so, marching - actually kind of skipping l- single file down across from the Platt Street Publix, holding up signs -which blocked their vision - so it looked like they were heading straight for the construction blockage at the Platt Street  bridge...and then...ohmygawd...right into the water!!!

The above, witnessed by a Publix shopper who had just hopped out of his Porsche Carerra,  and looked at the Occupy marchers across the street, then at a nearby reporter who happened to be in the same parking lot eating at one of those bright umbrella topped tables, and who was staring at the same scene, and  the Porsche hopper outer said..."Oh, no...are you thinking what I'm thinking?"

And they, the reporter and the Porsche hopper outer,  were, of course, thinking the unthinkable.   Suicide by Hillsborough River muddy water.

 At last.  Finally!    Headlines!!

Brian Williams.  Geraldo Rivera.  Jim Lehrer.   Diane Sawyer.   The New York Times....yessssssssss!

But the happy marchers -skippers-  weren't heading for mass suicide, they were heading for a nearby park to regroup for the happy march -skip - back home to Curtis Hixon Park.

And then the same old routine. 

The same old routine of stacked Eddie and Sam's boxes.  abandoned running shoe next to a harmonica. Sleeping on the hard concrete.  Slipping away to the nearby library and discreetly  calling (everybody in the place heard it you dolt) begging your mom to send you the money to get home by Thanksgiving because you've had enough and don't even know why you're here, but you haven't eaten in two days, and somebody lifted your wallet and took your backpack...with all of your shorts and socks.  And you miss your cat.

Yup, it's hard out there for a Tampa Occupier.

Msmorganpowell
msmorganpowell@aol.com

TAMPA BAY'S WAR ON DRUGS GETS A BOOST FROM DEA EXHIBIT AT MOSI

Whether or not you believe there is an actual "War on Drugs," if you live in Tampa, get set for an eye-opening exhibit which could convince you that not only does such a war exist, but that the fallout of that war is all around us right here in the Tampa Bay area.

A DEA exhibit entitled "Target America, Opening Eyes To The Damage Drugs Cause," opens at the MOSI September 16, and will run through September 3, 2012.

Conceived by the DEA and launched at the DEA museum and visitors center at Arlington, Virginia in 2002, the exhibit has visited museums New York, Washington DC, Chicago, Los Angeles, Dallas and New Orleans and has created, if not an avalanche of  attention, well then, a stir in all of those cities.

As it should, being that this so called "War on Drugs" is not merely an abstraction, but in fact, an actual struggle being played out on nearly every street corner, in every neighborhood, in every town, city, hamlet and metropolis in this country  -  and abroad.

And the cost of that struggle, in dollars and in human lives has been enormous, and continues to rise.

One has only to read the papers every day to see yet another interdiction of drugs - especially in the State of Florida - and see the street values of the drugs and know that the interdiction has stopped merely a fraction of the drugs in transport to this country to know that the financial stakes are very high for the cartels who participate in the multi-billion dollar business of the production, transport and sale of those drugs.

One has only to read the papers every day to see yet another infraction of the law -many of them deadly - caused by a person who is under the influence of those drugs, either for personal use, or as a participant at the street level in the dispensing of them.

And one has only to read the misery in the lives of so many of the innocent victims - be they family, friends, or even a casual passer by -  whose lives are touched, indeed maimed by the use of illegal drugs to understand the true and horrid cost at the end of the complicated maze of the War on Drugs.

"Target America: Opening Eyes To The Damage Drugs Cause," brings all of that home, in a way no news story can by showing us the true fallout of the collateral damage of the drug war.

You have a year.  So go see this exhibit.  And take the children.

 The children who will  surely be exposed to this War on Drugs, in one way or another, and should be informed before they are forced into the fray.


MOSI  4801 E. Fowler Ave   Tampa  33617   813-987-6000    http://www.mosi.org/