Fight Back Bank of America March, March 15, 2012
Photo: Stacy Lanyon
I ran into one of the marches of Occupy Wall Street on
September 24th. At the beginning, I just couldn’t understand because
my first visuals of Occupy Wall Street without any warning was a bunch of cops
running and attacking people and beating them up. It was the closest to war I
have ever been. It was brutal. It was the same day that detective Bologna
pepper sprayed this girl in Union Square. I got drawn for the fact that it’s a
call to social justice. It’s that call that a lot of us in the movement have been waiting for all of our lives. A lot of us left everything behind. I
don’t know how to describe it. It’s much more than a political movement. It’s
much more social justice in a way because there are so many different political
ideas. It’s much more spiritual, and I
found that for a lot of us it’s just like a spiritual calling. It’s time to do the
right thing.
I’m very
sensitive to other people’s pain. At one point in the movement, I was so in
tune with everybody’s pain because it was one of our darkest moments, and we
were in the middle of winter trying to figure out where to go from there,
and at that point, I had developed other ideas. I had learned more about the
movement, and the main ideas I went into the movement to begin with like trying to change
the system changed into trying to make a new system in this new world. We have gone through
a lot of pain, and we know what being treated like you’re less than is in this
world, and for me knowing how it feels and seeing all this pain around me, I
wouldn’t feel right if I just turned my back knowing I could do something. I believe that if we don’t do something, humanity is just doomed. This is about trying to teach new ways of living,
sorta like teaching Dharma, like that truth way of living. It’s crazy, but it’s
crazy wisdom. They see us sleeping in the park and having a whole different
view of what private property is and what should be the boundaries. It’s just
great seeing that I’m not the only one who thinks like that. It’s time to change all this
pain and all this injustice.
It’s funny because I actually just got a new phone, and I
downloaded a book, and I would like to read this quote from the book directly because
this is kinda like the world I’d like to see. The name of the book is The Emerald
City of Oz, which was written by Lyman Frank Baum. It’s an offshoot of The Wizard of Oz, and it’s describing what the
Emerald City was supposed to look like. It’s very much what we are working
on here, the fact that people are working on the farms and trying to become
more sustainable and do it all for the community. It’s a great quote. It’s
says, “Everyone works half of the time and plays half of the time, and the people
enjoy the work as much as they enjoy the play because it’s good to be occupied
and have something to do.” It just describes so much the community that we’re
living in here. Everybody gives what they have. When you come to get what you
need, no one is charging you. As long as they see that you’re doing your best
for the community, you’re entitled to the goods of the community. It’s like a commonwealth. There is no leader. It’s where everybody tries to get on the
same page. It’s like a foot above democracy where you try and find the middle
ground in consensus. That’s the kind of world I’d like to see where everybody
can have what they need, enjoy what they do and not have to apologize for who they are, a world where you don’t have to apologize for being hungry or for
being different or for loving somebody. That’s the kind of world I want to see.
Interview by Stacy Lanyon
http://buildingcompassionthroughaction.blogspot.com/
https://www.facebook.com/stacylanyon
https://instagram.com/stacylanyon/
https://twitter.com/StacyLanyon
http://stacylanyon.com/
Interview by Stacy Lanyon
http://buildingcompassionthroughaction.blogspot.com/
https://www.facebook.com/stacylanyon
https://instagram.com/stacylanyon/
https://twitter.com/StacyLanyon
http://stacylanyon.com/