Thursday, April 26, 2012

Nicole Rose

Occupy Town Square, February 26, 2012, Tompkin's Square Park
Photo : Stacy Lanyon

My first experience with Occupy was actually my first date with my boyfriend John. We were on the Brooklyn Bridge. It was October 1st. It was incredible. We took the streets. It was amazing. People were merging from the pedestrian lane onto the lanes for motor vehicle traffic. There was a whole blockage of us and maybe eight cops, and the cops just kinda turned around and walked us onto the bridge, so we were kettled onto the bridge together for like 9 hours in the rain. We had our first kiss there, and it was this whole magical moment. I think that’s what gave it some of its magic. I felt the love because I experienced the love. It was cool. It was really, really awesome. I had always been politically active, but that’s what kept me coming back, experiencing the love for the first time out. 

Why is it so important? Why isn’t it so important? I know that my parents always cared about being able to provide a better future for me. They always wanted for me to have better than they had, and I think that that’s something that rings really true in myself. I want to make sure that I’m able to provide my kids a better life, and if the world that I bring them into is real fucked up, how am I going to be able to do that? I want to make a real change. I want to really make a change because everything is so wrong.

I hope it brings about a world where people really get back to community, especially being a New Yorker. We all run around like chickens with our heads chopped off. We don’t really pay attention to what’s going on with other people around us, and I think that’s what is really lacking here is that we all need to look at each other and see each other as equals, and we need to care about each other. If we want to make a real change, that’s what we need to do. We need to start looking at each other as people and looking at each other as individuals and not looking at each other as, “I’m better than you because I can do this, or I’m better than you because I have more of something than you do.” We are all human. We all bleed the same blood. It hurts me just as much as it hurts you or someone else when we are physically harmed.That's true on an emotional level too. I think that we really need to start caring about each other. That would make a big different if we all love each other a little bit more.

I also hope to see a separation of barriers between not just social classes but countries. I think we need to stop thinking about being such a regional community, and we need to be a global community. We are doing terrible things to the Earth. We need to start thinking about the long-term. What are we doing not only to ourselves as humans in our emotional state, but what are we doing to the Earth, the place that we live? Is it going to be sustainable ten generations down the line? Is it just going to be a smoldering bucket of nothing? I just want to make the world a better place for the generations to come. 

 Nicole also curates www.occupiedstories.com along with other NYC-based occupiers.

Interview by Stacy Lanyon
http://buildingcompassionthroughaction.blogspot.com/
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