Just to keep the time line up to date: offered money as compensation for damages during the General Strike.  Roundly ignored.  Go to morning meeting, mild interest but mostly apprehension about what it means.  Go to General Assembly, get told No!  You start chaos!  Ok.  Post on internet.  Receive emails.  Have phone calls and email discussions and one really exciting in person meeting.

Here is what I am looking at:
“A few friends/local (small mom and pop) business owners and I have come together to put organize a “black friday” event/shopping day.  We are working to put together a map of local shops in the area and making it a fun day of shopping, food and music in Oakland.  I’ve reached out to someone at Occupy so that we can include this day as part of our initiative to boycott corporations and bring Oakland’s local economy in the black.  I can call on Thursday and discuss with you further if you would like.  We are hoping to also get vendors and folks that do not have a store front to join in.  A few business have opened up their doors to adding tables for local vendors to be able to participate in this.

I actually do not need a lot of money for this initiative because our only major cost is printing of flyers and posters.  I have found many people to volunteer their time, as I have, to help support our local economy.  I was trying to figure out who I can get these posters printed by and hoped to find a place that would donate that as well but have had no luck thus far.  Then I saw your email and figured I would send you a note in case you would be interested in supporting this effort.”
  

That is the kind of thing I want to fund.  It’s going to be a few hundred dollars at most.

Another person is in communication with me about a separate fund for repairing damage done to small businesses so they can petition for redress.  I’m willing to contribute to that too.  I’m less sure of the dollar amount.

But the big one?  The individuals who pushed the General Strike through want to buy an RV and make a mobile clinic.  They have doctors and nurses who have already volunteered to staff it.  It’s going to be a logistical nightmare and a fuckton of money beyond what I have.  I’m so excited I could pee my pants.  This is something real.  Medical care for people who can’t afford it?  Yes.  Yes.  Yes.  If my money can provide that, please dear god take it.  My medical care is covered.  Noah spends a fucking insane amount of money on my medical care.  (don’t ask.)  I’m not a special fucking snowflake.  Everyone should be able to have the support I have.  I won’t be able to ensure that everyone gets what I get, but they can get better than they have right now.  They should.

I’m not real enthusiastic about national healthcare, I’ll tell the truth.  But I’m fucking enthusiastic about people in a community saying, “Hey!  We want to help our neighbors get healthcare.”  Washington DC isn’t going to save us.  We have to do it for our selves.

When I wandered around the Strike on Wednesday my favorite sign was the one that said Occupy Your Heart.  I think a few different people made them.  That one appealed to me because it seems at the root of what needs to happen, in my opinion.  Occupy Wall Street/etc is about being upset about financial stuff.  That’s true.  But it’s also about our country’s desperate need for hope.  We thought Obama would fix everything.  Unfortunately he’s just one man.

What I saw on Wednesday changed my life because even though everyone didn’t understand exactly what they were doing, they were motivated to action.  What can we accomplish with this much emotion?  That many people showed up for the General Strike because they want hope for a better tomorrow.  They feel like their needs are not being heard nor met.

And this all started with some anarchists, near as I can tell.  Or at least people with different ideals than me. I don’t mind.  I’m grateful that the punk kids have had the balls to get this started while I hide at home.  I absolutely respect the fact that they have more courage than me.  I owe them a large debt of gratitude.  They have more nerve, and more anger.  I’m not sure if they have more vision.  I don’t understand much about the end goal of the destructive parts of the Occupy movement.  I’m waiting.

I’m more interested in the building side.  I don’t think I am the enemy of the anarchists.  I think I am the other side of their revolution.  They have things to say.  They have things they can accomplish.  I don’t agree with all of their methods, but I accept that revolutions have unintended consequences.  That is why I originally thought to just repair the damage.  Not because I want to shame the anarchists.  But because I accept a few broken windows as the cost of business and I want to be on the business end.

I am frankly terrified of what is going to happen in Oakland over the next couple of years as the city recoils in horror from the shock of the financial impact of the Occupy movement.  Millions already diverted.  This is going to hurt the city.  I’m sure that services will be cut.  I don’t know which and that scares me.  I worry about who is going to bear the brunt of the unintended consequences of this movement.  I wonder which innocent children will be affected.

I wonder and I feel deep guilt.  Because it won’t be my kids.  I’m not in the 1%, but I’m in the 5%.  My kids will be safe.  That isn’t true of everyone’s kids.  I feel so bad that some other woman’s children may suffer because I was one more freakin body at the General Strike.  Money is not an infinite resource.  The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of someone else’s money.

I believe in the principles of democracy in a small group setting.  I believe that my voice should be able to be matter.  Not more than other peoples, but just as much.  I was told that offering this money to the movement is a way of trying to gain power, and I guess it kind of is.  But a freaking small amount of power in exchange for me feeling like I did the best thing I could do.  Other people have time, energy, and manpower to spend on bettering the city.  I don’t.  I think those things are more valuable than the money I have, quite frankly.  That is what will get the work done.  The people who care.  Not the money.  But the money helps.  The money can make or break the movement because money appearing at the right time means that the right strategic things can happen.

I want someone to be building.  I don’t care who.  If you want to build, please come talk to me.  I believe in you Occupy Oakland.  You Occupied my heart.  You showed me how much power you have.  You showed me that you are mighty and influential.  How can we do things to help other women’s children be as safe as mine?  It’s not fair that so many children are unsafe.  Please, I want this Occupation to make the world a better place.  Not a place with less money to spread farther.

We have to build.

I was attacked by a pit bull when I was 5.  I’m not going to tell the whole story because it’s going in the book.  But suffice to say, I spent my entire life knowing that money was coming.  I dreamed about it.  I thought about what to do with it.  I wanted to make sure that I got the absolute maximum usefulness about it.  I preplanned how to pay for college, a house… I had financial planning till I was 30 done by about 12.

Then I married Noah.  And the whole game changed.  The monthly stipend was my money through our marriage.  I never felt bad about buying the random shit I wanted because it was my money any way.  Then I got the $35,000 and I couldn’t figure out what to do with it.  I haven’t been able to bring myself to just pay off the time share.  It feels like an insult to who I was and what that money meant to me.  That settlement changed my life.  It was a gift from the universe.  I didn’t earn it.  It’s not like it’s proof that I deserve to be where I am financially.

I feel like the only reason I survived was because I benefit from enormous privilege.  I have enormous survivors guilt.  Whenever someone tells me that I should have died I think about all the girls who did.  Did they die because they didn’t have the hope at 18 of getting out for sure no take backs?  Did I only have the strength to fight every day because I knew that no one could take my freedom away from me.  I was god damn financially independent with $1200 every month.  That was more than my mother often made throughout my life.  I knew how to be poor.  That was easy.  If I was poor for a reason because I had a goal post in sight of when it was no longer true… that’s easier.  If you have no hope of things improving, why should you bother having self restraint when you see something small you want?

This is a big part of my issues with my mother.  She has been robbing Peter to pay Paul for so long that she is incapable of managing money.  Poverty will do that to you.  I don’t even think it’s her fault.  But I can stand back and look at how she cycles and know it’s a bad idea.

At this point in time I have no plans to go make money.  Indefinitely I am dependent on Noah entirely.  Noah makes such an obscene amount of money that I feel staggered by it.  We could survive easily on less than half of it.  And it’s going to go up.  All of a sudden my money seems… so small.  Cheapened?  In the scheme of my life all of a sudden $20,000 isn’t very much money.  In three years we won’t be able to tell a difference in our life because of it being spent.  That’s kind of disgusting.

I feel kind of disgusting.  And yet, this is the American Dream, right?  Whenever people express bitterness that everyone can’t be in the same position as me I feel kind of bewildered.  I don’t think I’m happier at this income than I would be at half this income.  I do more stuff.  I travel.  I fund a very comfortable retirement.  But I’m not happier.  I don’t feel this magical I’ve arrived that I expected to feel.  I feel like a trespasser.  I feel guilty.  I feel like I have done something shameful.

I’ll say frankly that a lot of the reason I feel so ashamed is the response of disgust when I say that I want to donate $20,000 people look at me like I just took a shit on the sidewalk.  Yes.  I have that to give.  This is the very last money in the world that is mine and I want to do something with it I can feel proud of.

I feel really guilty when I admit out loud that I keep having the parable, “If you give a man a fish he will eat for a day.  If you teach a man to fish he will eat for a lifetime.”  Err, or some phrasing like that.  I think it would be wrong and short sighted of me to give the Occupy movement this money for things like blankets and food.  Local people with very little money to give are supplying those things.  It would improve the quality of the food and I honestly believe that’s not something I should be funding.  I am not going to feel like I have made the world a better place because I spent $20,000 on high price snacks for stoners in the park, sorry.

No really.  What the fuck is Occupy Oakland doing?  I want to know what concrete things people want to get started in the community.  What outreach?  What types of demands are being made of the city?  What do people want to have happen?  I can’t be one of the people out doing the work in the street and I know that.  That’s not something I have to give right now.  I would have another messy nervous breakdown and that’s fucking stupid.

But I’m really good at thinking through long-range planning.  And I have a very good idea of how money is most effective.  Ok.  I think I’m ready to write some emails now.  You were right, Noah.  I had to write about it.

I really hope Noah manages to hit the 1% like he thinks he will.  I will make a fucking good philanthropist.  Other people won’t agree with me, and that will be ok.  This is the hard part.  That people are going to disagree.  But people disagree with every powerful person.  You have to stick to your guns. I have a vision in my head of what it means to make the world a better place with money.  It doesn’t matter if other people agree with the specifics of it.  What matters is that I take action on making the world a better place.  That is what matters from everyone.

If I dilly dally and take too much advice I will never get the satisfaction of really attaining self-actualization.  If I want to take up the most space in the world I can, I can’t worry about the fact that other people occasionally have to bend for me.  That has to be ok.  The balance is in finding out how much space I can take up without pushing people too far.  I don’t want to shove people away.  But I do want to take up as much room as I can.  When I feel like I can’t take as much room as I want to, I feel small inside.  Like I’m stepping on all the dreams I had as a child.

Why the fuck can’t I shoot the moon?  I married a rich guy (I swear to fucking god it was on accident) and we are both ambitious people.  Why not?  Why can’t I play a whore for a few years to push Noah up the ladder.  That’s what builds him up the most from me.  I can do that.  Sure I’ll trade sexual favors for performance reviews.  If that makes you smile while you work like mad, why not?  What’s the problem?

And our needs are met.  If Noah never got another raise we would be fully on track to have a perfectly stable and comfortable life forever if he can work for another 10 years.  He’s 35.  I’m pretty sure that’s going to happen.  That means that everything from now on is extra.  We don’t need it.  Noah likes to say, “And what do we call things we don’t need?  A luxury!”  My entire life is about luxury.  I will be honest and say that I feel kind of embarrassed about the amount of luxury in my life.  But I’m trying to own it and be up front about it.  It’s complex.

I don’t know how to explain what I feel right now.  Watching the crowds stream into the port felt like a religious experience.  All those people cared so much.  And they pulled that off with very little money.  Actually, now they pulled that off partially with my money.  Because I paid for the buses.  I feel really good about that.  I feel like that is the first victory for this money.

I want this money to make a big impact.  I want it to be part of the big picture, not the stupid small details that will be handled one way or another.  I want to start learning what it means to be a big person.  I’m not there yet and I know it.  But I want it.  And that’s how you start.  I don’t have much influence with $20,000.  But I have enough.  I can decide which parts of Occupy Oakland I think will have the biggest long-term impact.  I can make a choice about something happening that is for the good of other people.  Yes, the argument can be made that absolutely every single part of the operation is Just As Important.  Whatever.  We disagree.  That’s fine.

Now how do I do this without being an obnoxious cunt.  Because it’s not my goal to make people pry this money out of my grasping fingers and that’s totally how I’m making it sound.  I don’t mean to.  Ok, here’s an example:

One person spoke about trying to have the actual dirt removed from the public areas and have it replaced with organic soil for growing food.  That’s an interesting idea.  It will require working with the city though, because if the city ignores that you did that and comes along and does business as usual next week… err… that was wasted fucking money.  Dead serious.  I’m not interested in funding something that make hippies feel good about themselves for a few weeks.  I don’t care if that sounds bitchy.  I want to know what agreements can be reached with the city for continued maintenance.  I want to know how that will be handled going forward.  And then that sounds like the kind of thing I would fucking love to pay for.  That aligns so perfectly with my value system it isn’t funny.

More blankets… not so much.

But the movement is just getting started.  Right now they are still focused on short-term logistics and they feel resentful of me having a different timeline.  I get that.  But it’s my money and I have to feel good about how it is spent.  When I feel good about how it is spent my response is, “Oh you spent your rent money on those buses?  If you walk with me back to my car I can give you a check for that.  I’m sorry I left my check book in my car.  That was kind of stupid of me.”

I don’t want to haggle forever.  I want to haggle until I am satisfied.  I want to feel like *I* receive the maximum joy from spending this.  Too much haggling means it isn’t fun any more.  I want to haggle just enough.  Ok.  That’s awesome.  I think I know what I want to do.  I want to send an email saying that at the next GA I would like someone neutral to say that this crazy lady wants to hear proposals for concrete things Occupy Oakland can start doing in the community in the next couple of weeks with $1,000-$5,000 start up capital on a given idea.  How would the money be spent?  What are the long-term implications of using the money this way?  How would it be maintained after Occupy moves out of the park (if that happens)?  I will accept them via email.  I need to have a form I want filled out.  Hmm.  Ok, what is that going to look like.

What need in the community do you see that you would like to fill:
How many people will be needed to see this through:
How much money do you think you will need?  How will you spend it?  Be specific:
How will this project be able to exist in six months?  A year?  Five years:
Do you believe this project is one that is likely to find funding in other places when I run out of money?  How do you plan to pursue that issue:

And I will decide which ones sound like things I want to fund and which ones are not well thought out.  I won’t be the most popular person there, but oh well.  I don’t want to be popular.  I want to be effective.