By Derek Beres

The answer in one word: creativity.

Yet nothing is so easy to understand. If you watch and read enough media outlets, you get the sense that American politics are divided into two extremes, with a hearty middle wondering which way the ship will tip. On one side, the Tea Party, responsible for everything from reviving and extremifying the right wing to pulling the puppet strings on John Boehner’s tender scapulas with issues like the payroll tax cut. On the other, modern day hippies armed with iPhones and laptops, errant citizens without jobs who should just go get one, upset and angered masses that have somehow turned the national conversation into percentage points and corporate domination.

Media entities have done a great job at dividing these two camps, though some intelligent thinkers have connected the dots between them: lower taxes for individuals and families earning respectable and not outlandish wages, less governmental interference, more personal freedom. Comparisons must end there. One movement represents change with the other vehemently opposing it. A better way to put it is to say that one wants movement and the other wants to retreat.

The Tea Party is predominantly comprised of individuals imagining a political past that never existed to begin with, which is why this base emits strong religious fervor. At least a portion is comprised of single-issue voters, in which the religion a political candidate practices can sway their vote. For them, inventing a spirituality to suit their needs is acceptable; the same holds true with their politics. And so their American Eden: a supposedly historical moment when everyone paid enough taxes, worked enough hours, and received enough social benefits to make life worthwhile. Schools taught, politicians led and workers worked.

This may have been the case for a fraction of our nation, and indeed may still be so depending on what industry employs you. Yet the factual validity of such a utopian society is impossible to find. I was born just after the era of Civil and Women’s Rights, and these battles are still being waged, progressed as we may pretend to be. Never has America served the total public, and with the way our politics are heading, the chances of such a reality are slimming. To recognize that the Tea Party emerged shortly after we elected our first African-American President is only to scratch the surface of the backward-looking mentality that dominates what is today called the right wing.

The political mind and the religious mind are not divided. They inform one another. If you believe one thing and live another, the fracture between belief and reality is not going to be healthy for you on an individual level, nor for your contribution to an emerging global culture. In Tea Party America, the divide is great. Dreaming up an invented American Eden is indicative of someone who seeks heaven in the future and a savior of the past. The constant distraction of these past and future havens ensures that such a mind is never actually present.

Which is where the loosely knitted Occupy movement diverges. Everything about it serves this moment: unfair tax structures, women’s rights, civil rights, immigrant rights, and a host of other issues that are being addressed. There might be bad lip reading youtube clips to keep us entertained, but organizational meetings entertaining the possibility of a new economic system are helping us realize that other ways of living are possible. Innovation evolves the foundation of thinking—it forces us to think clearer, think smarter, think better, and ideally, think in terms of everyone.

What is being sought in the Occupy circles is the type of change that creates a better society in and for the future, not an idealistic dream of sometime past. This engagement with the present is an actual act of creation, its dreamers erecting a sturdy foundation out of the scattered parts of the collective national mind. It is inclusive of every type of being that yearns for unity, not one critical and judgmental of those who hold divergent opinions from our own, be they religious, political and so forth.

It is a movement that endures pepper spraying, winter chills, public camping grounds and Fox News. Most importantly, it is creative in its applications of resistance. The protestors march along K Street and peacefully disrupt lunches and press conferences to make their message heard. They lie on the sidewalk and unroll red carpets for millionaire politicians to walk over them. They make videos and songs and speeches and poetry. They turn their frustrations into something beneficial and beautiful, even if it’s as simple as making us laugh. The absurdity of our politics has become so great that laughter is all we can truly offer our elected sheep parading in wolves’ clothing.

One thing you have never seen come out of any Tea Party rally is art. You see complaining and, if it’s raining outside, an empty field. Occupy is not about going to a rally for three hours with cardboard and magic markers and returning home. It’s a mental state, a way of being, one seeking creative solutions to previously unaddressed problems.

Occupy is a movement in which the doing is in the hands of the people. We should not be surprised that Tea Party-elected officials refuse to cut payroll taxes yet want to drain organizations like NPR and various arts funds: the creative process is a dangerous one to people who want to live in the past, even when their history never occurred. That doesn’t stop them—they simply invent one. It’s up to the rest of us to invent, and create, things that are worthy of who we are as compassionate and caring human beings. This is a process that draws us together, so that we will not further be torn apart.

Image by flickr user Casey Fox.

Words & Pic by Derek Beres

The 1985 “We Are the World” campaign successfully implanted the idea of feeding “starving Africans” into the American consciousness. Over the past quarter-century, feeding the peoples of the African continent has been a celebrity cause du jour, a GMO company’s marketing nightmare, and for a few non-profit organizations, a daily struggle. Hip-hop emcee 50 Cent recently became the latest icon to make a bold humanitarian declaration concerning this plight, tweeting that he’s going to feed one billion Africans over the next five years.

The initial revelation came to 50, whose real name is Curtis Jackson, after spending time in Morocco filming “Home of the Brave,” a 2006 Iraq-war themed movie starring Samuel Jackson. (Morocco’s burgeoning film industry specializes in desert locations for inspired Hollywood directors seeking lands that look Middle Eastern but aren’t actually in the Middle East.) Returning to headline the 2011 edition of Festival de Casablanca, Jackson found that he was perceived as something akin to a god—official estimates reported 100,000 attending his free outdoor performance. (Jackson himself tweeted 200,00.) Hundreds of signs stating “I Love 50 Cent” cluttered the throbbing sea of arms; one youth shouted, “50 Cent is my life!” as he jumped onto the hood of the rapper’s van when it tried to leave the festival grounds post-concert.

All this is to say that 50 Cent is possibly more popular in Africa than in his native country. On the flight home the following day, one member of Jackson’s entourage said that it was the second craziest show of his career. The first was a now-mythologized performance in Angola, in which Jackson’s chain was ripped off his neck in the middle of a song. There is little doubt that the music of 50 Cent feeds generations of fans in Africa. Can he turn that into ingestible sustenance?

A number of Jackson’s nearly five million Twitter followers ping-ponged his Africa tweet around the blogosphere, pasting the proclamation with thumbs up signs and “You go 50!” addendums. A few hours before his Casablanca gig, I asked him to be a bit more specific regarding the details. How would he go about funneling that type of money onto the continent? And what countries would he focus on? His reply was thoughtful, thought not exactly telling.

“All different territories,” he replied. “Obviously I’d have to have support in different areas to accomplish this over the next five years. Moving forward, I’ve developed what I call the SKs, or Street Kings, and I feel like I can be more of an inspiration and be more effective in different areas of my actual life, so I look forward to being able to impact and effect people in a strong way moving forward. And that would be one of my first steps towards actually accomplishing it. And when I develop anything, any project that I support, I’ll have created a way of a donating a portion of whatever I make towards feeding a billion people over the next five years.” He concluded by saying, “I did this on Twitter. To anyone who felt like it was a good idea, I asked them to retweet it.”

Re-reading this at home reminded me of listening to the Obama-Boehner-Reid-Cantor chess match—well, at this point, more like checkers—regarding the debt ceiling: big ideas with little implementation. A few years ago, while chatting with Ziggy Marley about the “Back to Africa” project that he was producing with his brothers, I ran into a similar issue. He kept throwing out popular bullet points, such as Africans needing more education and food. By the third time that I asked him what actual steps the Marleys were taking—building schools, writing curriculum, planting gardens—his voice raised two octaves. The last thing I wanted to do was piss off a Marley. Yet like politicians, artists need to be held accountable for their statements. His reply:

“If we could somehow use our resources, instead of people killing each other and selling it all over the black market, or the white market—let’s call it the white market—if we could stop doing that and actually have some control over what is in our ground, we could gain some more financial power in the world, and then start to better the educational system, the medicines, and the food supplies. There is no need for people to go hungry in Africa when there are all these financial resources. Let’s find one identity for the African continent, one passport for all the African people. Let’s start somewhere, it doesn’t have to be one great step. Let’s start simple. It don’t even have to be a big t’ing.”

No, but it has to be something. While his points are valid, he never answered my question. Visiting the Marley website, we find that the brothers did play a free show in Africa. There is also plenty of promotional material about the reality-based documentary regarding their travels, as well as marketing links for their Bob Marley-inspired coffee company and Snapple-like cold tea beverage.

I wish 50 Cent the best of luck in feeding one billion Africans, as long as we recognize the dangerous trap that that sentiment provokes, so brilliantly captured by Ghana-born rapper Blitz the Ambassador: “Africa has become synonymous with charity.” Jackson is one of the few American musicians with the clout and capital to pull something like this off. He just needs to understand that it will require many full-time jobs and a tremendously disciplined mindset for transitioning his idea into reality. Otherwise, it’s just one more tweet in the Twitterverse.