WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — Nestled within one of the swankiest zip codes in all the land stands Occupy Palm Beach.
A more accurate name for the encampment would actually be Occupy West Palm Beach, since it isn’t actually on the island of Palm Beach where Rush Limbaugh, Donald Trump and numerous other millionaires and billionaires reside. But the small collection of tents is just a couple blocks away from an assortment of million dollar yachts.
“You’ve got a $100 million dollar boat and a $15 dollar tent,” occupier Brian Huley told me, laughing with the boats visible in the background. “But it’s kind of what America’s turned into though. I can’t even tell the difference between Democrats and Republicans anymore.”
The activists I talked to Thursday at Occupy Palm Beach were friendly. Huley told me that they were a peaceful lot and weren’t trying to emulate the shenanigans of some of the other Occupy protests. In fact, he said, they have an “excellent relationship” with the city, “including the police.”
“We’re not trying to get into an Oakland situation or anything like that,” he explained.
There weren’t many people to be seen at the tents in the late afternoon, but Huley said that about 20 people reside there each night and the action picks up considerably on Saturdays when activities are scheduled. This Saturday should be particularly interesting with the occupiers planning to march up Worth Avenue, Palm Beach’s version of Rodeo Drive.
Huley says each occupier has different concerns, from homelessness to income inequality, but his particularly gripe is that he doesn’t believe corporations are paying their fair share.
There is a “difference between the way citizens and individuals are treated in this country compared to the way corporations are treated,” he said. “Giant corporations pay nothing in taxes. I’m pretty sure I get taxed at every pay check, how about you?” (RELATED: Full coverage of the Occupy protests)
Huley was a bit too subdued and normal for my tastes, so I jumped at the opportunity to talk to an occupier whose comments Huley told me I should take with a “grain of salt.” What fun is an occupy protest if you’re not talking to someone eccentric?
Occupier Garrison informed me that he was “head of security for the encampment,” but he couldn’t give me his last name because he deals in secret intelligence.
“A lot of people don’t know my last name because I do protection work,” he explained. “Since 1989 I lived and worked in over 400 cities, 6 countries.”
He was sporting a CIA pin so I asked him if he was part of America’s intelligence services? He said no, but that he has family members that are members of the CIA and FBI.
I began thinking to myself that Brian Huley was selling me a bill of goods. There didn’t seem to be anything abnormal about Garrison. Nothing at all.
Garrison told me that he was concerned about wage slavery.
“If anyone looks around in our country, it becomes fairly obvious that there are some things wrong in several different areas,” he explained. “It’s what is called legal theft or wage slavery or economic slavery.”
“What’s wage slavery?” I asked.
“That some things are so well set or so difficult set that even if you are a straight-up honest American citizen, it’s getting more and more difficult for you to stay above water financially,” he answered. “It is getting more and more difficult for you to meet your payments on your house, on your car.”
Being an informed inquisitor, having read about the practice of slavery once or twice before, I pressed further, asking what, precisely, he just sputtered out had to do with slavery.
“That by design — it’s called legal theft — by design it is getting more and more difficult for you as an ordinary citizen to be financially and economically free,” he responded.
I still wasn’t satisfied, but I let it be. I wanted to know what he would do if he was president to solve the problems he was so concerned about.
“There is no simple answer. This is not a simple problem. This is a very complex problem on many fronts,” he explained. “There are many components. So it is not going to be an overnight solution. It’s not going to be solved in four months or half a year.”
I concurred — our problems are surely complex. But what’s the first step you would take, I asked?
“To raise public awareness about the true facts about the current status, the current situation we find ourselves in,” he said, “and then to see if people will become involved… to see that things are done correctly for the benefit of more people, not just for the benefit of the few.”
The specificity blew me away. But the really good stuff was still to come. I asked Garrison what the Occupy Palm Beach folks thought of President Obama.
“Well I happen to be very factually based,” he explained, as if after talking to him for five minutes I hadn’t immediately gleaned that he was a factually-based person.
“I am an investigative researcher so I try to rely on things that are provably true. Or things that are provably wrong, provably false — at least you can differentiate. So you will get lots of opinions. You will get a lot of political viewpoints. I am kind of apolitical.”
Then, what do you think of Obama personally — in your non-biased, factually-based opinion, of course?
Garrison expressed sympathy for Obama’s plight, considering how big the task at hand. Also, he noted, “even [Obama] has pressure on him about what he can and cannot do as much as he would like to.”
Pressure? From whom?
“Well, now we are talking about things like the Committee of 300, we are talking about the Bilderbergers, we’re talking about the Illuminati?” he said
Things just got awesome, I thought. Who is more powerful, the Bilderbergers or the Illuminati, I asked?
“Well you work your way up a scale and the people who’ve been involved in politics and economics for a long, long time and some of the things they do are perfectly correct, perfectly right, but some of the things they do are to their advantage and to other people’s disadvantage,” he explained, answering a question that I didn’t ask. He made clear that not all of these people working “behind the scenes” were bad.
Here’s an interesting question that I never heard anyone answer: Can you be apart of the Illuminati and the Bilderbergers or is membership mutually exclusive?
“That’s a very delicate question,” he said. “A lot of the groups are very interrelated and know each other.”
Then it dawned on me. I was dealing with someone in the intelligence community, right? He probably knows members of the Illuminati!
“I’ve met people, yes,” Garrison said, giving a knowing glance, “because I’m also very personable about information. I don’t just divulge information because someone asked it.”
Huley told me that he thinks the encampment can last another year or longer. It’s hard to see how it can’t — so long as Garrison is standing guard, keeping it safe, secure and factually based.
