How Des Moines' Occupy Iowa taught me how to "twinkle"

By Ann Schnoebelen

There were dreadlocked heads and tattooed arms, mom jeans and dentures, socialist worker party members and a “Don’t tread on me” flag. I could not figure this crowd out. In fact, the best adjective I can find to describe the environment at the Occupy Iowa event Sunday in Des Moines is surreal.

An absence of bullhorns meant the crowd was using the human microphone method in which one person speaks and the people around them repeat the message so those farther away can hear it. The result was eerie, with large numbers of people speaking in unison, uniformly mimicking voice inflections and emphasized words.

Adding to the oddity, was the mass “twinkling.” Instead of clapping or cheering, when people agreed with or supported something being said they raised both hands in the air and wiggled their fingers in a manner the “Bring It On” generation would instantly recognize as spirit fingers.

The group, which seemed to number around 300 people while I was there but was reported in the Des Moines Register to have grown to as large as 500, was actually holding a meeting under the warm Sunday afternoon sun. They were trying to reach a consensus about when their group would begin its “permanent occupation,” a lá the Occupy Wall Street movement in New York City.

On the lawn of the Iowa Capitol at least, causes and grievances seemed a little muddled, but everyone was upset about something. Complaints spelled out on signs ranged from criticism of corporate greed to injustice of student loans and social security. But when one man defined “occupation” as “a campout in public space where we democratically decide how to take back our lives from corporate control and challenge that power,” he received resounding cheers and fervent twinkles.

In the end, the group voted and decided they would begin that night, and others resolved to come back to join the three or four tents already set up on the capitol lawn. This morning, the Des Moines Register reported several protesters were arrested after ignoring police officers' warnings they were trespassing.

But in the hours earlier that afternoon, people were chalking the sidewalk with references to the First Amendment and a small band on a nearby street corner was accompanying a woman singing“For what it’s worth” by Buffalo Springfield.

To me, the lyrics could hardly have seemed more fitting:

“There's something happenin’ here, what it is ain’t exactly clear.”

While I couldn’t attach a label, an ideology, a candidate or really any sort of demographic to the Occupy Movement, it certainly is something that makes me stop and wonder what exactly is goin’ down. As I left the Iowa capitol that afternoon, a middle-aged woman on her cell phone may have answered my question. “There’s a revolution going on,” she was telling the person on the other end.

I had to stop myself from twinkling.