Photo: Stacy Lanyon
My sister led me to Occupy Wall Street and not with any particular direction. She was interested in what was going on back in the very beginning of October. We came down to New York City for Rosh Hashanah, and she, my brother and I stole away from a family dinner and went down to Zuccotti. At the time, I was hitchhiking around the North East. I had a pretty free lifestyle, kind of a gap year. After seeing the general assembly, after really seeing the mic check and facilitation, I was taken by just how powerful the mic check was. I guess I wondered upon it, and then I stayed because of mic check.
These days, it’s pretty clear to point out that we’re not occupying Wall Street. We don’t have a permanent encampment out there. This atrium is on Wall Street, but it really lacks the symbolic potency that our Zuccotti Park encampment wielded. I feel occupying was important because it showed solidarity with the homeless and pride in homelessness and not having a space to yourself. I think that space, that is space itself, is the bundling of choices. When you’re in a space, you have a set of options based on the space you’re in. For instance, we are in the atrium right now, and if I’m to lie down on the floor right here, that option is bound with a guard coming over and pestering me until jailing me if I persist. I can’t put up signs in here or else certain things happen. I also can’t walk east right now because there is a wall in the way. In any space contains option directing factors. When we occupy a space, there is something distinctly good in unbundling those choices such as separating the option of being in Zuccotti Park from the option of sleep. Hell, if you’re in New York City, unless you’re in an apartment you are paying rent for, you don’t have the option to sleep. Choice is so heavily bundled right now that we lose freedom. You can’t say no to both going to jail and being woken up from your sleep. Most of us could not stay alive without working for a corporation. That is liberating space. That is inherently a protection of liberty. Liberating space as a defense of liberty is one drive to my activism.
Assembling is a critical source of power, which I employ as a major goal and strategy. People have all too little power. The power disequilibrium is far more offensive than the financial one. Having a space in which to come together, recognize the needs and abilities of each other, then addressing them, generates work and roles. Assembling in the way we did, I was able to find a niche for myself in comfort, working to redistribute clothes and blankets that people no longer needed to those who needed them. Were we not geographically unified, I could not have located those with the needs I could satisfy. We created work for each other, from food to information, the power to help one another. And then additionally our ability to coordinate, creating a proactive force to address and resist the greater world.
Occupy Wall Street is a way of networking power. Right now its effectiveness is questionable. We have poor communication in certain respects. Many relate to language. For instance, I transcendentally want individuals to have the ability to manifest their ideas. Though rather than speaking as a proponent of individuals goals, we ask if the person is helping the movement. What virtue is there in empowering that which is non human, or un living. We are a network of individuals who want things. This turn of phrase and the idea behind it impede our simple assistance of each other. On the larger scale, I would not enjoy a world run by the “occupy movement” but rather as humans are diverse, a world with a great many runnings, and no mandated and universal One. What of a world full of many different worlds in it with many different systems of food distribution and health care. What of diversity in the idea of nationality or enfranchisement or employment & education. What if family structures ranged from the style of spartans to Mormons to anything else. I see no reason to have One anything across the nation. Tell me any great system and I will offer solid reasons why it is not the best. Instead of choosing for the people, let there be greater diversity. A good way to reach better ones is to allow for people to select their preference. Let there be greater diversity. Let there be options. We are born into a space with pre-determined options. Even in america there is a stark lack, a lack of educations, of resource distribution, of values, of enfranchisements. There is a lack of choice.
Interview by Stacy Lanyon
http://buildingcompassionthroughaction.blogspot.com/
https://www.facebook.com/stacylanyon
https://instagram.com/stacylanyon/
https://twitter.com/StacyLanyon
http://stacylanyon.com/
These days, it’s pretty clear to point out that we’re not occupying Wall Street. We don’t have a permanent encampment out there. This atrium is on Wall Street, but it really lacks the symbolic potency that our Zuccotti Park encampment wielded. I feel occupying was important because it showed solidarity with the homeless and pride in homelessness and not having a space to yourself. I think that space, that is space itself, is the bundling of choices. When you’re in a space, you have a set of options based on the space you’re in. For instance, we are in the atrium right now, and if I’m to lie down on the floor right here, that option is bound with a guard coming over and pestering me until jailing me if I persist. I can’t put up signs in here or else certain things happen. I also can’t walk east right now because there is a wall in the way. In any space contains option directing factors. When we occupy a space, there is something distinctly good in unbundling those choices such as separating the option of being in Zuccotti Park from the option of sleep. Hell, if you’re in New York City, unless you’re in an apartment you are paying rent for, you don’t have the option to sleep. Choice is so heavily bundled right now that we lose freedom. You can’t say no to both going to jail and being woken up from your sleep. Most of us could not stay alive without working for a corporation. That is liberating space. That is inherently a protection of liberty. Liberating space as a defense of liberty is one drive to my activism.
Assembling is a critical source of power, which I employ as a major goal and strategy. People have all too little power. The power disequilibrium is far more offensive than the financial one. Having a space in which to come together, recognize the needs and abilities of each other, then addressing them, generates work and roles. Assembling in the way we did, I was able to find a niche for myself in comfort, working to redistribute clothes and blankets that people no longer needed to those who needed them. Were we not geographically unified, I could not have located those with the needs I could satisfy. We created work for each other, from food to information, the power to help one another. And then additionally our ability to coordinate, creating a proactive force to address and resist the greater world.
Occupy Wall Street is a way of networking power. Right now its effectiveness is questionable. We have poor communication in certain respects. Many relate to language. For instance, I transcendentally want individuals to have the ability to manifest their ideas. Though rather than speaking as a proponent of individuals goals, we ask if the person is helping the movement. What virtue is there in empowering that which is non human, or un living. We are a network of individuals who want things. This turn of phrase and the idea behind it impede our simple assistance of each other. On the larger scale, I would not enjoy a world run by the “occupy movement” but rather as humans are diverse, a world with a great many runnings, and no mandated and universal One. What of a world full of many different worlds in it with many different systems of food distribution and health care. What of diversity in the idea of nationality or enfranchisement or employment & education. What if family structures ranged from the style of spartans to Mormons to anything else. I see no reason to have One anything across the nation. Tell me any great system and I will offer solid reasons why it is not the best. Instead of choosing for the people, let there be greater diversity. A good way to reach better ones is to allow for people to select their preference. Let there be greater diversity. Let there be options. We are born into a space with pre-determined options. Even in america there is a stark lack, a lack of educations, of resource distribution, of values, of enfranchisements. There is a lack of choice.
Interview by Stacy Lanyon
http://buildingcompassionthroughaction.blogspot.com/
https://www.facebook.com/stacylanyon
https://instagram.com/stacylanyon/
https://twitter.com/StacyLanyon
http://stacylanyon.com/