Danny Valdes

Occupy Town Square, January 30, 2012, Washington Square Park

Photo: Stacy Lanyon

Like a lot of people, I had been waiting for something like this to happen for a long time. What was going on in the Middle East was very inspiring, and I think it ignited a lot of people’s imagination about what was possible, but the idea that it could happen in the United States was a really far off thing for me. I remember reading the call in Adbusters. I was like, “Oh wow, this might be something.” I started going to some of the planning meetings. Even the day of, I remember thinking, “There’s going to be a hundred people here. We’re going to get wiped off the map, and it’ll be like it never happened,” and it stuck around. 

I liked that we weren’t resorting to the traditional forms of doing activism. I remember the first couple of days here having the feeling that we were all doing something new. There was suddenly a horizon again. We were sailing, and we couldn’t see the horizon, and it was just foggy and cloudy, and then all of the sudden, this whole new realm of what was possible opened up. Since day one, I’ve been extremely drawn to the movement, so that’s what drew me here. Of course, there are the political and social issues as well. The corporate personhood debate is a really big thing for me, and I just love that Occupy touches on everything. There isn’t one single issue here, which is great. 

I think it’s important that the movement is outdoors and occupying a space. I think that central action is really, really what the center of the movement is about. Over the winter, we lost Zuccotti Park, and a lot of other occupations got torn down by their respective police forces, and I feel like the movement lost something there. There was something about being here with all these people on all kinds of degrees of humanity. It was just so beautiful. I don’t remember as many feelings of political empowerment as I remember feelings of total beauty between people I have never witnessed before. You go on a march and you feel empowered. There’s a high that goes with that, but it’s a totally different experience when you are living with people for a political reason. I think the act of doing that was the most brazen thing, in the most direct way, just two blocks away from where the nexus of a lot of our problems come from.

You mentioned a photo that you took of me earlier this year at an Occupy event with a sign that said, “Be a realist. Demand the impossible.” It’s from the French Situationist Movement from the sixties. They were very counter cultural, but they were all about revolution being fun. They didn't chant things. They made phrases and signs like that one. That for me sums it all up in a very kind of eloquent way that only the French can do. We are very often limited by our own imaginations, even in the realm of politics. People disassociate politics with imagination and politics with fun and politics with music and art. It’s seen as this very dry, complicated world that nobody really wants to dive into unless you have aspirations to run for office or something, and one thing that Occupy has done is it has removed that barrier. 

If we can live together in a public park and create a culture from scratch, which is what we did here, and do all these things and provide for each other and care for each other, anything is on the table. I think that’s an emotion that a lot of people experienced when they were here. That old phrase, “Another world is possible” suddenly became tangible as if you were seeing it in front of your face. Direct participation, all these different things that you had only talked about at your anarchist book reading club suddenly became manifest, and they became real. That essential spark, I think, is what is going to continue to push the movement forward.

I think that we need to not be afraid to demand things that the establishment calls impossible. There’s definitely a tendency toward weakening legislation or laws that can really address the social roots of problems because they are deemed impossible, or one side of the isle doesn't want to negotiate on certain terms, and I feel like a lot of people are just fed up with it. They realize that no matter what outcome comes out of this shit, we lose. It doesn't matter what it is. It doesn’t matter whether the blue side wins or the red side wins. Either way, we end up losing. I actually think that if McCain had won, Occupy Wall Street wouldn't have happened. So many people invested so much energy and time and hope and aspirations into Obama's election. So many things went into that, and in the end it was just the same recycled thing. He brought in Clinton people right at the outset. He still hasn't closed Guantanamo. The list goes on and on. That really shook a lot of people to their core. We’re taught as we’re growing up that the way you have a voice is to vote. You go and you vote. You vote, and that’s how you have your voice heard in society, but a lot of people are realizing that it doesn't matter who you vote for. They’re both just two heads of the same beast. We need an alternative to that model, and that’s what started happening here at Zuccotti. 

I think a lot of people were so disillusioned, and Occupy happened right at a crucial time when a lot of people were feeling this and felt that an investment at Liberty Square was better than an investment trying to tweak the system to make it work a little bit better for a small group of people, which is how we have done activism for a really long time. It was just like lobbying, playing their game and expecting to get different results. That’s not really realistic. That’s impossible. That’s the real impossibility there, but what we learned here is that nothing is impossible. As long as there is a  political will and people are willing to get arrested and put their bodies on the line and be in public space, there’s no such thing as impossible. 

The impossible thing is continuing with the status quo. That’s impossible. A lot of people don’t really recognize that yet. I don’t know how many floods it’s going to take or how many fucking tornadoes or earthquakes or financial crashes for people to finally realize that that’s the impossibility. The impossibility is continuing with the economic system the way that it is and the way that it has evolved over the past two hundred years. That’s why so many people, especially young people, are throwing themselves into this movement head first. I’m always so shocked by the amount of dedication I see with people here. You see the same people, total dedication. They are just living their lives around this movement. A lot of those people voted for Obama. A lot of those people campaigned for Obama, and they realized that the political system, no matter who gets into power, is rigged against us, and this is the alternative. 

Interview by Stacy Lanyon

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