Bees on the Swarm

Credit to: CartoonStock.com.

Yesterday began as a generally mundane Friday. At a community teaching garden I volunteer at, things were going as usual: we were weeding and clearing the beds from last season to begin prepping for winter plants. As we worked, we started talking about the Occupy Wall Street Movement and how it has manifested itself in Santa Cruz. The teacher to the group was telling us about how she is involved in the General Assembly at Occupy Santa Cruz and how she feels about it all.

“It is important to make allies and connections locally” she said, because we need to be strong at a local level if we expect to be strong at a federal level. The situation we are in after all is, if not a global crisis, at the very least a national crisis. And then she said something incredibly poignant, something I think describes exactly the situation America is in:

“It’s not fair because we are all their worker bees who get to exploit us for our work. There are only a few people who get to control everything, and people are starting to notice.” She is right. We are all being treated like expendable worker bees, sustaining the mother hive and all busting our butts producing honey for the queen. 

Yes, this metaphor may be ever so incomplete, because we don’t have ONE queen. But, we do have ONE corporate body that we all refer to as “Washington.”

Credit to: RJ Matson, Roll Call, 10/6/2011

So what does this mean? To continue with the worker bee metaphor, think of it this way: stop making honey for the queen. Go rouge. Desist. The queen has all the honey she needs, and because as any surplus is not redistributed to the lower tiers of the colony, this honey is going to waste. It is being used to further fatten the queen of the hive, and only the most meager portions are being given back to the worker bees producing it. America is both the land of plenty and the land of scarce; it just depends on who you are in relation to the queen that determines where you are on this spectrum.

What are we worker bees to do? Maybe it is time to swarm. This isn't to I say condone or promote violence in anyway. Actually, even though the term swarm has a negative connotation, bees on a swarm mean no harm. Swarming bees are actually quite docile, and are just looking for a new home when the old hive becomes inadequate to accommodate their population. So, is it time to swarm? Is it time to make ourselves visible to Washington because our old way of life is no longer adequate?

The Occupy Movement is gaining global momentum, and at this part it is impossible to ignore, no matter what corporate media wants us to believe. It is widely supported because we really do live in a colony whose resources are being exploited by the insatiable greed of ultra-honey-hungry Washington. Yes, the label 1%ers and 99%ers may be gimmicky and cheesy- but in all honesty, it is true. This situation is in no way new to Americans. Remember, it was less than a century ago this nation found itself in an unstable economy that was made so way by risky business adventures by investment bankers.

Anonymus, 1929

Credit to: Chester Garde, January 1931

We worker bees have had enough. We work too hard to produce too much and are appreciated far too little. It is time to swarm. Just because regular worker bees like you and I don’t have a Lobby or Political Action Committee that is in bed financially and politically with Washington does not mean we don’t matter. It is time to show Washington how valuable we are and how powerful we are when we swarm.

SOLIDARITY!

-H. BOMB