WELCOME TO
MONTE RIO
A Bay Area
Occu-Venture c/o Dr. Ryan Bartek
The yellow brick road doesn't end in glory, but rather the fatal remains of rust belt sacrifice... I have traversed Gary (Indiana), Cuba (Missouri), the rottenest urban decay of three dozen postmodern metropolises.
As a
taxi driver, I scoured every inch of war-zone Detroit. But despite
these disjointed manifestations of grimness, it takes a final puzzle
piece to recognize the hydra in full. That loosened jigsaw, vague to
it's brother pieces, comes in the shape of a hamlet deep in the
mountainous Redwoods.
Monte Rio, California is
the creepiest city I've ever been to. Even the obscure depths of the
Deep South fail to compare, because at least there is a familiarity
with poverty & expected disappointment. That invisible lasso of
economic distress holding these realms in place is the byproduct of
many a “smoke-filled room” behind the curtain of Oz, so to speak.
When you overhear that
leathery 50+ year old woman at the Shell Station counter explaining
her rampant medical bills to the trucker that's buying $2 pipe
tobacco because that's all he can afford, close your eyes & drift
away to that movie scene where two dozen politi-scum converge about a
round table. Every man looks like Dick Cheney or Newt Gingrich –
fat, balding, shameless & white-haired.
Imagine that these
clandestine puppet-masters are scheming over a vast system of control
which has since ancient Rome kept a deliberate social hierarchy in
place. Where the poverty they've created & intentionally
sustained is the largest criminal conspiracy ever devised, and the
CIA is literally the coke/crack/meth cartel flooding the streets all
the while assisting an internal police state based on a for-profit
prison system now backed by military power & a vast Orwellian
apparatus that cannot be diffused.
But it's not a
smoke-filled room where this theoretical hidden hand is meeting, nor
is it some “one size fits all” Illuminati-like fraternity. The
closest thing we get to the “secret puppet-masters of the universe”
is this thing in Monte Rio, and it's not easy to grasp. No one is
quite sure what to make of Bohemian Grove, but everyone agrees that
the top 1% of the 1% dropping off the face of the planet for two
weeks to attend a clandestine all-male campground where they are
giving secret political speeches is bad news.
That they perform a
ceremony called “The Cremation of Care” while carrying lit
torches & wearing KKK-like outfits & then burning an effigy
(symbolizing “care”) inside a human coffin underneath a 40 foot
stone owl statue that looks like some HP Lovecraft Necronomicon
elder god is also really bad news. Extremely bad news. What do you do
with that, once you accept it's real? Once you realize this is what
half of our Congress in Washington DC does in their spare time? When
the House majority is literally a Grove majority? If you're like me,
you come straight to the source.
Monte Rio is a stage
prop. No place other then Hollywood gave me the same impression, when
you get there & it's the end of a carefully built sound stage,
like all reality is the finale of The
Truman Show.
Monte Rio does the same
for politics, for the media, for the military industrial complex. I
mean, it is literally a stage prop. There is an old school 1950's
hand painted sign as you pull into town square which reads “Welcome
to Monte Rio: Vacation Wonderland.” The “town square” is just a
dust bowl – a dirt patch the size of a small parking lot &
surrounded by a rusty old gas station, a decrepit movie theater &
a deli mart that was closed even on this sunny Saturday.
But then you walk past
this shell of a ghost town & you find a small trail that leads up
to the tiny crossroads of Railroad & Bohemian. Shooting down
Bohemian Avenue is a small bridge with “do not trespass/private
property” signs & dozens of surveillance cameras hidden in the
trees. You feel like you are staring into The Blair With Project
as you gaze down this corridor, or perhaps the intro of George A.
Romero's Tales From The Darkside with
that cheesy negative filmstrip image toaster effect.
We were out the car 5
minutes before two undercover cars circled past us. A car with punk
rock bumper stickers pulled up with some curious kids checking it
out, giving us a fearful look before zooming away really fast. We
hopped inside our vehicle & were soon trailed back to the main
street stage prop by the sheriff of Monte Rio and also a man on a
motorcycle with all black leather & a reflective, faceless biker
helmet...
Earlier in the day I had
met with The Bohemian Grove Action Network & some members of
Occupy Santa Rosa (the closest major city to The Grove). The
understanding I have of this Occupy Bohemian Grove protest now
looming on the horizon is one of a probable circus. Ever since the
call went out for a peaceful presence in July, the highly detailed
FAQ has circulated like wildfire. The zeitgeist is rolling &
everyone in Occupy is waking up to this hidden reality the same way
we all sort of fell into ALEC, Monsanto, Stratfor, HAARP &
Bilderberg.
From July 13th-30th,
it's going to be uncharted territory – no one is quite sure how
many will show up. Thankfully, I can report that the ground
organizers are going the full distance in assuming 10,000 people
might just show up. They are working on public campgrounds to store
people, port-a-pottys, community outreach. Unlike other major
occupations which have foolishly been declared without any real
physical planning, this one has a chunk of the legitimate needs &
support necessary to sustain itself. Or so it appears. But it doesn't
matter – Occupiers know how to handle & sustain themselves.
It was Saturday night,
and the next stop of my Bay Area Occu-Tour was the almighty Occupy
Oakland. Like everyone, I'd been watching their exploits on
livestream like a mythological phalanx ever since the job on Scott
Olson. Saturday nights, I'd been told, was their weekly “Fuck The
Police” march.
Amazed (but not
surprised) at this blatantly terrible courting of public opinion,
it was clear that the situation had deteriorated so badly that they
no longer had any sort of honeymoon with the public. Like all the
major Occupations, they were relentlessly infiltrated & attacked.
And when the going got tough, the jellyfish bailed -- leaving the few
dozen hardcore occupiers who refused to go home & then became a
daily target to vengeful predators with badges.
Oakland was a dead
scene though – no one was returning my texts & I couldn't
locate the enraged mob anywhere. Since sleeping on the street in
Oakland = waking up without your travel pack/wallet, I headed to
Berkeley for a safe crash spot beneath an oriental massage parlor...
I returned Sunday 4/16
to Oakland for GA. The park was down the street from the Obama
re-election HQ which was a bigger ghost town then Monte Rio itself.
It was pitch black inside, pathetic – cardboard cut-outs of the
smiling Obama family in the windows. It looked like a Blockbuster
Video that went out of business 5 years ago & no one had since
touched...
GA was interesting –
sunny, bright & planted with informants that people were
eyeballing as outsiders. The kid that started Occupy Phoenix had just
run away from Arizona; I was the first person he talked to having
just wandered into Oakland same as I. He said he made a Facebook page
in October and within 3 days thousands of people showed up. By the
end -- last week – it had devolved to him and two other kids. He
said there was no cohesion between the radicals & the Obama-bots
& the situation was unsustainable. Said he came to Oakland for
“the real shit.”
The spirit was strong –
their GA felt like one of Occupy Portland's at Shemanski Park in the
short-lived “Golden Age.” The most freakish topic was one woman
whose husband wanted custody of her son, so he told the judge she
brought her child to Occupy Oakland's GA. This was enough legal
precedence to kidnap her son from her. There was word circulating
that the courts are gearing up to steal kids & put them in foster
homes for Occupy related actions in smaller communities in the USA
where no one will be looking. Neo-McCarthyism via child hostages...
The most surreal moment
came at Occupy Oakland's stronghold – an info-shop called The
Holdout. There were about 50 people sitting in fold out chairs
listening to a panel of 5 speakers. The room was a true melting pot.
The presenters were passing around a clipboard filled with 100+
FBI/DHS documents highlighting official communications declaring
Occupiers internal terrorists. The entire 1984 game plan was now
clearly laid out before them.
It was the mind blowing
moment when I saw first hand all these 27-33 year old white
professionals from upper middle class families & educated
backgrounds come to the turgid conclusion that Alex Jones' most lucid
NWO fantasies are now for all intents the really real world &
that they're living in an absolute police state guided by Marshall
Law.
And these people were
bringing this horrible fact to their GA as if this was an issue that
could be solved by talking it out with the larger group the same way
we'd sort out a lack of toilet paper for the sanitation committee or
the engineering tent needs more generators or what have you. But
there was no solution, only shaky voices & frightened eyes. We
were now terrorists. There was no consensus to pass & there was
absolutely no going back...
I decided to go to
downtown San Francisco... Here I was in the most “progressive”
city in the USA & certainly one of the most political, but at 1am
that Sunday night/Monday morning I watched what was symbolically the
final deathblow after months of struggle. In the end, despite all the
big talk, Occupy SF was withered down to myself, a Buddhist from West
Virginia, a 19 year old 103lbs cancer patient & one brilliant
maniac named Gypsy that can only be described by casting Heath Ledger
in the role of Jeffrey “12 Monkeys” Goines...
Occupy SF had done the
impossible – solved homeless harassment by police for all of San
Francisco. Except, of course, for the one tiny patch of land in front
of The Federal Reserve they've perpetually occupied since September.
This is the only place the cops say they will enforce the no camping
ban – only because it's Occupy SF. Their menacing fold out table is
stacked with flyers & a bunch of sleeping bags are crammed into a
pile within this sacred 10x10 space. The police told us quite
directly (and for the first time) that the entire city of San
Francisco was open to sleep on the streets. We could go anywhere –
just not here. And if we dared to sleep here, in this
Occupy Eden, we would be arrested on the spot.
I read aloud my 2012
State of the CounterCulture Union Address over a bullhorn in front of
The Fed with the audience of OSF & two cops parked nearby. Gypsy
began yelling at the cops, daring them to come arrest him. He had
hellfire in his eyes – he'd finally reached that point beyond all
points. The cops finally were angered enough that when Gypsy tried to
sleep on the ground just to annoy them they called in the paddywagon
to arrest us all, ejecting us from the scene with bitter consequences
if we continued on. The 15 others hanging around scattered, leaving
us 4. We hauled our belongings down the street under an tavern awning
lest they steal all our possessions.
The cops said only one
person could stay in that spot, that they couldn't have a blanket or
any items, and they had to stand there from 1am-5am before anyone
else could enter that Occu-Territory. The cops sat in their cars &
watched as the skinny 19 year old female 103lbs cancer patient
refused to move, shaking from the cold in a thin hoodie, while her
boyfriend sobbed across the street because she would not be detoured.
In all of San Francisco, this was the last defense – me & three
“west coast street crazies.”
The next morning Gypsy
told me some scary stuff over coffee. He said that following the mass arrest in
Oakland on January 28th 600 people were arrested, and 193
disappeared. He said that even if the number of people is inflated,
there are dozens missing nonetheless: “Most of these people are
people that were just there for the march. Oakland police arrested
600 people and later that day [they] listed 40 some odd people in
jail. A couple days later the number had grown to over a hundred. By
the time it was said & done, 407 were said to be held on warrants
or released.”
“However for anyone
that was watching-- the prison buses used hold 50 prisoners a piece &
they used 12 buses and all were filled to capacity. My question is
what happened to the 193 other people? I've had people pop up –
'what happened to homeboy, cousin, brother, dad' on the internet and
in person. These people went to the January 28th
march and never returned. My fear is that these people haven fallen
to NDAA which allows them to indefinitely detain protesters in FEMA
camps.”
Stay tuned America --
shit's getting real...
Dr. Ryan Bartek :: 4/27/12
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