A Rebel Comes of Age

Prologue

Ange’s skin crawled as Phillip placed the M16 in her arms. The gun was cold and unnaturally smooth. It smelled like burnt rubber. Then he left her alone with PJ, a tall, thin, forty-something with wavy, shoulder length black hair and a long, unkempt beard. The small unheated barn, with its dirt floor, was virtually empty except for a large utility table covered in scratches and stains. PJ had a laptop plugged into a socket that hung from the ceiling on a cord. He played her a video of a young woman disassembling an M16A2. The woman, who was white, had dark brown hair and wore a plain white tee shirt. Two men in uniform shirts stood on either side timing her. She looked up at them triumphantly as she set the last part on the table.

PJ was dressed in faded overalls fastened over a bulky gray cardigan and two sweatshirts. Ange could see them at the collar line—one gray and one dark blue.

You see that? He dragged out his vowels with a singsong intonation. Lacey said he was from Appalachia. Two minutes ten seconds.

He clicked replay and they watched the video again. Then he closed the laptop, shoved it aside, and replaced it with a glossy black and white poster depicting the M16 parts in the order they were to be removed.

Okay. You do it now.

Copying the woman in the video, Ange turned the weapon over to find the safety. Then removing the magazine to check the chamber, she removed the bolt carrier group. Laying the receiver and charging handle on the table, she broke the BCG down by removing the bolt retaining cotter pin, bolt and firing pin.

Well done. Now reassemble it.

She repeated the entire process three times. Then Phillip returned with a pair of ear protectors and safety glasses and took her to the firing area. A mixed race Haitian, he was slightly taller than PJ. He wore his hair in long dreadlocks, and Ange guessed he was somewhere in his early forties. Phillip’s face was long and narrow with deeply set eyes, a large hooked nose, thin lips, a sparse, untrimmed beard, and permanent creases on his forehead and around his eyes. Like many of Ange’s activist friends, he dressed in an assortment of free and secondhand clothes. Today he was wearing dark blue track pants, a mangy leather jacket that looked like it had been through the washing machine, and a woolen maroon cap that covered his forehead and ears.

Ange had hoped that PJ would take her for target practice. She didn’t like or trust Phillip. He didn’t seem to like teenagers very much. His desire to work with them puzzled her. She strongly sensed he had some ulterior agenda that had nothing to do with empowering the homeless youth of Bedford-Stuyvesant. She was also convinced it was his idea—not Fabio’s—that they use weapons to defend themselves against the impending eviction.

Occupy Homes, like Occupy Wall Street and other left-leaning movements, had always opted for nonviolent methods in confronting the police. Although Bank of America had yet to acknowledge the teenagers had taken over the abandoned Credit Union building, everyone knew it was only a matter of time before the bank obtained an eviction order.

Recruiting and training teenagers to shoot automatic weapons wasn’t normal, no matter how radical you were. Lacey said that military-style assault rifles were illegal in New York State, that PJ most likely belonged to some right wing militia. She gave no clue—and Ange didn’t ask—how she knew these things. Ange assumed the ex-boyfriend who taught Lacey to shoot was the source of information.

Lacey and Geneva were already outside in the firing area. They lay side by side aiming at multicolored concentric circles attached to straw bales. Phillip directed Ange to lie down next to them. Gritting her teeth, Ange did as she was told, determined to block out the churning nausea in her gut with sheer force of will. The sooner she learned to do this, the sooner she could end the firearms lessons and this whole sordid chapter of her life.

Part I: Playing at Revolution

Chapter 1

Ange and Fabio had left the Occupy Wall Street encampment in Zuccotti Park in mid-October. Ange, who was seventeen and a half, met the well-built, scruffy looking nineteen-year-old Puerto Rican during her second week there. Although he was a journeyman carpenter, all the carpentry jobs had dried up with the recession and he was doing minimum wage construction labor when he first joined the encampment on September eighteenth. His nose was his most distinctive feature. Because of an old fracture, it was nearly as wide at the bridge as the nostrils. He wore his curly black hair in a short ponytail and grew an untidy beard, like most of the overnight occupiers. Showers were hard to come by, even though a dozen nearby residents had opened their bathrooms to Occupy protestors. Women made similar grooming concessions. Because she had nowhere to wash or style her hair, Ange wore it in thin braids, which she fastened with colorful beads. An African American roommate at juvie had taught her to fix it that way. She also wore her black-framed, granny glasses instead of her contacts.

Ange had quit her job at Project Vote in Washington DC on September twenty-seventh to join Occupy Wall Street. Her first week in Liberty Plaza—which was the new name they gave Zuccotti Park—was the most exhilarating of her life. Most of the activists she had worked with previously were well over thirty. The excitement of being surrounded by thousands of like-minded young people was massively amplified by the sense that they were making history. After decades of apathy, Americans had finally woken up and were fighting back against the banks and corporations that were destroying their democracy.

It took about a week before the cold sleepless nights and long days spent doing nothing caught up with her. The protest in which they marched past the stock exchange dressed as corporate zombies had been wicked as. There was also a lot of enthusiasm for the Foley Square rally organized by the nurse and transit workers unions. The protest had been directed against Obama’s failure to prosecute a single bankster for the criminal activities that triggered the global economic crash.

Most days, however, there was literally nothing to do except help in the kitchen tent, play drums, listen to music, and sit through long, tedious General Assemblies and Working Group meetings. Although the occupation was supposedly horizontal and leaderless, the same self-appointed, older, mostly male facilitators conducted most of the General Assemblies. Male Occupy participants, who outnumbered women by five to one, also had an annoying habit of interrupting and talking over Ange and other women when they tried to speak. Yet what bothered her most was the sense that the really important decisions—about the website, who talked to the press, and what marches and rallies they engaged in—weren’t made in General Assembly or any of the Working Groups. They were made somewhere else, by some invisible, un-appointed leadership.

Ange and Fabio first met at a Facilitation Team meeting, which, much to her surprise, met in a twenty-story office building in lower Wall Street. The atrium, provided by the building owner free of charge, was a large, naturally lit space with a pink marble façade and floor length, gilt-framed mirrors. The main item of business that day was to appoint facilitators, from a small, pre-approved group, to present a proposal at General Assembly to limit drumming to two hours a day. Ange, who was friends with several of the drummers, asked whose idea this was. The man next to her cut her off by telling her she was off topic.

This isn’t okay, you know, she complained to the facilitator, a tall, scholarly-looking man in his mid-thirties. When there are so few women to begin with, I think men need to try harder to listen to them.

Agreeing with the man who cut her off, the facilitator informed Ange that the best way to address her concerns was to start a new subcommittee.

Fabio came up to her after they adjourned and offered to join her subcommittee. "I can’t believe it. Occupy Wall Street has only been going a month, and they already have their own little yuppie elite running it. I also want to know the name of the asshole banker who gave them this space. This is fucking obscene. I guess we’re only protesting against some Wall Street bankers. The ones that give us free office space are okay."

They spent the entire day together. Ange was instantly charmed by his intelligence, his deranged sense of humor, and his obvious dislike of Obama. They both felt utterly betrayed by the black president who had turned out to be even more pro-corporate and pro-war than George W. Bush. Like Ange, Fabio also refused to be taken in by all the hype about Occupy Wall Street being totally self-governed by its thousands of participants. The General Assemblies and human microphones the alternative media made such a big deal over were a total waste of time. There was nothing remotely democratic about a five hour meeting in which hundreds of protestors repeated, one sentence at a time, a decision that a bunch of un-appointed leaders had already made.

That first day Ange and Fabio mainly talked about their prior political experiences. Fabio’s father was active in the Puerto Rican independence movement and had taken him to his first protest march when he was nine. During Fabio’s apprenticeship with New York’s Department of Buildings, he joined Families United for Racial and Economic Equality. FUREE was a Brooklyn-based anti-gentrification and anti-eviction group affiliated with Take Back the Land, a national group that helped move homeless families into vacant, foreclosed homes. Ange talked about the ex-boyfriend who had persuaded her to join Socialist Action when she was fifteen, how this led to her decision to leave home to help organize the 2010 March on Washington. The latter had drawn 100,000 activists from around the country to protest the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Aware that the attraction was mutual, Ange expected Fabio to hit on her that night. It was an immense relief, in a way, when he didn’t. It was too easy to let men become the entire focus of her life, and she was determined not to let it happen again. Besides, the sleeping arrangements were too complicated. Fabio slept in a sleeping bag wrapped in an oversized garbage bag, while Ange shared a tent constructed from plastic sheeting with two other women.

Fabio left the encampments most mornings to do casual construction work, and Ange spent most of her days alone. She had expected more women to join the Liberty Plaza occupation after Occupy Wall Street went international on October fifteenth. This never happened. That Sunday four particularly obnoxious men shouted down a female facilitator at General Assembly, and Ange and an older woman named Jade made plans to hitchhike to California. A number of women had already left for a woman-only Occupy encampment near Los Angeles. She told Fabio of her plans the next morning.

He didn’t want her to go. We were just getting to know each other. Ange assumed her inner panic showed on her face because he laughed. Don’t worry. I’m not propositioning you. His expression became thoughtful. I want to show you something, he added suddenly. Get your gear. It’s not here. It’s in Brooklyn.

He paid her subway fare and they took the A train from Fulton Street to the Utica Avenue station in Bedford-Stuyvesant. From there it was a ten-minute walk to a one story commercial building squeezed between a two story family home and a much larger retail building with a glass storefront. The larger building on the right had the name Endeavor Real Estate emblazoned across the top in large gold letters. The small cinder block building next to it had a white sign, only slightly wider than the front entrance, which read Brooklyn Credit Union.

Fabio led her to the back of the smaller building via a narrow walkway that opened onto a sizable parking lot. The backdoor to the building was fastened shut with a chain and padlock. Fabio took a small key out of his pocket and unlocked it.

The building has been vacant since the Credit Union went bankrupt in 2009, he explained as he pulled the chain through some large metal eyelets welded to the door and the frame. I had to break the lock to get in. I put the chain and padlock on to keep vandals out.

She followed him through a narrow hallway to the lobby at the front of the building. I’m trying to put together a group of teenagers to occupy the building. He opened the Venetian blinds on two large display windows and bright sunlight flooded the room. I want to make it into a teen homeless shelter. The teenagers would run it themselves.

A large metal exterior door, painted a deep Prussian blue to match the blue and gray-flecked industrial carpet, was located halfway between the two windows. On the left side of the room were two glass cages that the Credit Union managers had used as their offices. At the back of the lobby was a four foot high customer service counter overlaid with blue vinyl. Fabio closed the blinds and led her back through the hallway to the staff room. It had a mini-kitchen with a sink, stove, and small refrigerator. He turned on the tap in the sink.

We’ve got water, but no electricity. Still, it could work. Another group has done something similar in Boston, he said. If you agree to join us, we just need one more person. I want to start with five.

The two of them left Liberty Plaza for Bed-Stuy on Monday, October 18. For the first four days, it was just the five of them. Fabio had scored sleeping bags and foam mats, as well as two butane camp stoves and two windup lanterns, from the seventh floor Wall Street office used for surplus camping gear that supporters sent Occupy Wall Street from all over the country. The lanterns were clear, polyethylene cylinders on heavy black polypropylene bases. Their wire handles reminded Ange of coal mining lanterns she had seen in the Museum of History and Industry.

In addition to Ange and Fabio, there was a vivacious and opinionated fifteen-year-old African American girl named Marissa, her shy, eighteen-year-old boyfriend Alistair, and a nineteen-year-old white man named Roman. Roman was the last to arrive. The others had already laid out their sleeping bags in the center of the lobby when he pounded on the backdoor around six thirty. After waiting for the newcomer to remove his heavy pack and roll out his bedding, they sat on their sleeping bags and held their first general assembly.

They didn’t call it that until later. All they did that first night was introduce themselves. Marissa, who went first, was a large, busty girl with dark chocolate skin who wore her hair like Ange in long thin braids fastened with beads. Her best feature was her large, black eyes, which were framed by feathery lashes. Like the others, she was dressed for the cold, in a heavy gray and powder-blue car coat that was several sizes too big for her and a pink muffler.

Marissa had been living on the streets for a year and a half. She was extremely vague about her reasons for running away, blaming unspecified problems at home. I couch surfed with different friends for a few months. When their parents started hassling me, I moved on. After I ran out of friends, I slept in doorways in old Fulton Street for three months. Then I met Alistair. It’s really hard for women on their own. I mean…getting hassled by drunks and that. It’s much safer as a couple. She grinned at her boyfriend suggestively. It’s also a helluva lot easier to keep warm.

Alistair was slightly taller than Fabio and had a lighter, café au lait complexion. He covered his hair with a blue and green knit cap and wore a dark brown, fleece-lined jacket, baggy jeans, and basketball shoes without laces. His shyness was almost painful to look at. He stared at a spot on the carpet in front of him.

I’ve been homeless for two years, he revealed hesitantly, his voice so soft that Ange had to lean forward to hear him. I’m here with her. He shrugged and tilted his head toward Marissa.

Roman went next. Ange was extremely surprised when the latecomer, who had a three-day-old beard, introduced himself as queer. She had never met anyone less gay-looking. He had just come from a day job and was dressed in threadbare jeans, a yellow fluorescent vest over a heavy red and black checked lumberjack shirt, and construction boots.

I’ve been homeless about a year. I support myself through day labor. Once we settle in, I have to get up at four to make it to Coney Island Avenue by six. Roman explained that he and twenty other day laborers stood at the corner of Coney Island and Ditmas every morning waiting for someone to drive by and offer them work. Mostly they want people to clean up their yards or haul rubbish. Occasionally they need a gang to pick fruit or work on construction sites.

At his turn, Fabio thanked everyone for helping him start the homeless shelter. Some teenagers already did something similar in Boston. As I understand, it took nearly a year to get it going. It was a long, frustrating process—mainly due to a few assholes in city government who didn’t want it to happen. What changed their mind eventually was the massive level of community support behind it.

Marissa asked how long he had been homeless. Not that long, he admitted. I’ve only been officially homeless since joining Occupy Wall Street in September. I’ve been really lucky to have steady work in construction. Although it never paid enough for me to get my own place, me and four friends found a large house over on Flatbush and shared the rent.

Ange, who went last, said that she, like Fabio, had only been officially homeless since joining the Occupy movement. I’ve been on my own since leaving home a year and a half ago. I’ve been really lucky, though, about finding jobs and cheap housing. Before I joined Occupy Wall Street, I worked as an organizer for Project Vote in Washington DC and lived in a Quaker hostel.

With introductions complete, Fabio explained that he wanted to make important decisions about running the shelter as a group. I’m also hoping we can use consensus rather than voting. That’s how they do it at Occupy Wall Street. When you decide stuff by voting, the majority often forces the minority to accept things they totally disagree with. Consensus doesn’t mean that everyone has to like all of our decisions. It means that we only make decisions everyone can live with.

You mean like finding a compromise? Roman asked.

Something like that. Consensus works best if a neutral person—they call it a facilitator—runs the meeting. It’s the facilitator’s job to make sure people stay on topic and that everyone gets heard. Everyone takes turns facilitating.

Alistair’s head shot up in alarm. Don’t sweat it, man, Fabio reassured. Ange and I have done it before. We’ll help you.

Chapter 2

For the first few weeks, everything was a new adventure. They were like five newlyweds playing house for the first time. In the morning, the first order of business was finding food and a place to shower. Fabio had already sussed out the Gathering Place, a homeless drop-in center on Church Avenue. The center served three meals a day and provided shower and laundry facilities. Ange and Fabio paid the subway fare for Marissa and Alistair, and they arrived just in time for a sit-down breakfast of eggs, sausages, toast, and a choice of hash browns or pancakes.

After breakfast and a quick shower, they began the long walk back to Bed-Stuy. They detoured to stop at a food bank on Fulton Street, where they each got a large shopping bag with a package of lentils or pinto beans, a jar of peanut butter and either raspberry or strawberry jam, a half pound of Monterey Jack cheese, a tub of margarine, two cans of carrots, corn, beets, or green beans, a loaf of bread, a box of granola bars, and a package of either spaghetti or macaroni. Roman was lucky enough to receive a package of Oreos, as well. He tore it open and shared with the others on the long hike back to the old Credit Union building.

Lunch that day consisted of peanut butter and jam sandwiches, which they ate standing over the sink in the staff room. Afterwards, Ange and Marissa went to the Salvation Army on Quincy Street to buy two large saucepans and five plates, mugs, forks, knives, and spoons, while Roman went to a small grocery store on Flatbush for an onion, salt, flour, instant coffee, and dish soap. At four he started to prepare their first home cooked meal on the camp stoves: macaroni and cheese with green beans, corn, and carrots. They sat in a circle on the lobby floor and ate by the light of one of the windup lanterns. After dinner, Marissa and Ange took the other lantern into the kitchen, where they boiled water to wash their new dishes. Meanwhile, Fabio and Roman used a whisk broom and dust pan they had found under the sink to sweep up crumbs.

Once they finished cleaning up, they returned to the lobby and Ange agreed to facilitate their second meeting.

"So, what do you want us to talk