Spring Training, April 27, 2012, Wall Street
Photo: Stacy Lanyon
I’m a child of social struggle. I’ve always been into radical politics, and I’ve been waiting for something like this to happen, and once it happened, I had to come. I first heard about it on the internet. I was reading up about the Colorado labor wars. While they were striking, they camped out near the mines, so I had an idea that if we camped out on Wall Street, that would be really cool, and two days later, I found the call for Occupy Wall Street. I was like, “Oh, someone had my idea too,” and then I came here.
The world is going down a path of self-destruction right now, and the course of it needs to be changed. I’m not sure if that change is possible through Occupy Wall Street. Occupy Wall Street is certainly the agitator and educator of social change, but if the change will be accomplished through this movement, nobody knows yet.
The world that I hope Occupy will bring about is a world not unlike the one we lived in at Zuccotti Park - a gift economy, a strong community, a labor force of participatory and voluntary labor, labors of love, watching each other’s back and helping each other out. I’d like to see a more community based way of governance and living rather than the separated lives we live. As of right now, money gives us the convenience to be separate from other people and not get together, and it helps separate and weaken the power of the people.