Occupy DC

I confess:  I drank the Kool-Aid.

For the past few weeks I've been volunteering 16-30 hours a week in the Occupy DC kitchen serving food, sorting donations, and doing clean-up duty after the kitchen closes at 10pm.  Adding what amounts to a second job to my life has been an exhausting and injury-filled process (sprained BOTH of my ankles Sunday).

And yet, it's so worth it.

So many awesome people with interesting lives and intelligent opinions exist -it's like the quintessential local coffeehouse - but with free coffee (admittedly, only when the generator's on).  Nobody is scared of initiating a conversation and the self-selected groups of people are certainly more diverse that anywhere else I've seen in DC.  Yeah, people drink, have sex, and occasionally smoke pot, but no more so than in my college dorm floor on any given weekend.  And the conversations tend to revolve around how best to incorporate democracy in a practical fashion, not what frat party will have the best (i.e. non-roofied) beer.  If this is anything like the 1960's counter-culture, no wonder hippies are so pissed that it went away. 

Be forewarned: Kool-aid is addicting.