Thursday, April 19, 2012

Oriana Cerrud

Occupying Wall Street, April 16, 2012, Wall Street
Photo: Stacy Lanyon

First of all, I was drawn by all of those happy spirits that were at Occupy Wall Street. It was very engaging and upbeat, the spirit of the whole movement. Everyone is very nice to me, and they accept me for who I am. At my school, I’m the only one who agrees with the whole Occupy Movement, and it’s kinda hard to be a high school student in my school. It’s a nice outlet to come to Occupy and see all these people who care about what I’m doing and agree with it because other people don’t.

I think that it is really important that people really know about this movement and how corrupt the police are. People say they are just following orders, and I really don’t believe that they are just following orders. They don’t have to beat people up. I was there when a female protestor was dragged on the floor topless for three blocks, and I thought that was horrendous. I’ve gone on a lot of police brutality marches, and at my school, we did a speech unit, and I did it on police brutality, of course. I mentioned a lot of the first-hand experiences I’ve had. I’ve never been brutalized by police, knock on wood, but I’ve seen other people who I really care about, who I know are the nicest people ever who have been brutalized by police. I just don’t understand. I think it’s really silly. That’s why I think it’s really important for people to know about what’s happening and hopefully take some action and join us in fighting against this. We are going to need a lot of numbers to make some change.

I hope this will help bring about a very peaceful world. I know there isn’t really a perfect world. There’s always going to be something wrong. I hope this will bring about a peaceful and caring environment for children to grow up in because they don’t deserve to grow up in the oppressive society that we are living in today. I hope for a world where people care about other people around them and not just themselves. I feel like a lot of people today just worry about themselves. I hope for a world where we worry about the majority of the people and not just the 1%. 


Interview by Stacy Lanyon
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