Photo: Stacy Lanyon
What drew me to Occupy Wall Street originally was nothing. I
didn’t even know about it when it happened. I found the Occupation completely
by accident one day walking by. I heard the drum circle, and I immediately
became drawn in and fascinated and curious, and after that day of watching the
drum circle for hours and really being inspired by the energy of this eclectic
group of people, I kept coming back every day. The first day I came was day
seven, and by the beginning of October, I had decided to occupy full-time. I
packed up a suitcase. I came down. I was really inspired by the first general
assembly I ever saw with all the hand signals. It was just an incredible thing that
I had no idea was happening in the city, and I felt like that was the reason I had
just moved back to New York was to find that. I feel like it was meant to be. I
just dove in head first and never looked back.
I think it’s important because we are slowly and painfully
losing touch with what’s important in our lives. I think that this
is important because this is an attempt to remind and inform and demand the
question of what is really important. Does life really have to be this way? Do
we have to be slaves? Can you admit you’re a slave? There are so many questions
that people don’t ask because they get so distracted in their daily lives.
People just want to go back to their televisions and want to be able to shop
and want to be able to buy their crappy food and work their jobs and not have
to question or confront anything around them that doesn’t pertain directly to
their individual life, and that’s a problem.
I think that when we have disconnected ourselves so much from each other that we can pass somebody dying on the street and not lift a finger, not blink an eye, it's a real problem. Are we that paralyzed with fear? I think this is important because there are people here that kinda got out just in the nick of time. I think a lot of us, if we hadn’t come to the movement, would have become slaves to the man, lived very unfulfilling lives and probably never reached our full potential in anything. I think there’s so much talent here that hasn’t even begun to be tapped into, even in myself. I think this is important because there has been an elephant in the room this whole time, and everyone is too afraid to say anything, and somebody has got to come in with the guts and say, “Hey, this is not okay.” We have sat by and allowed this to happen. We have helped it happen, but we can forgive ourselves and move forward. I want to see people not be afraid to say, “We fucked up, but are we still capable of fixing it and mending it in every way, in our lives, in our outlook on life, in our treatment of each other, in our definition of success?"
Yes, this occupation is a protest on Wall Street because Wall Street symbolizes the greed and the corruption and the lust after profit over people, but for me Occupy has become much deeper than that. It’s a personal journey about really looking in toward yourself, and you can’t ever expect that revolution until you have that revolution within yourself and you let go of the hang-ups and the bad habits and the ways that we perpetuate the same problems that will never allow us to have a true revolution. I think this is everything, and it’s going to mean everything to everyone eventually. I believe that it’s going to have that much of an impact. It’ll probably take years, but I think what’s so important about the community here is that we are developing a system within the system to become resilient and to deal and to cope and to start to heal from everything, and that’s what's going to get us through what is going to be even tougher times. What’s going to get us through is this community, and all we want is for people to be a part of it because they need it. They don’t have it out there. We’re making it here. It’s not perfect, but it’s a hell of a lot better than the alternative.
I think that when we have disconnected ourselves so much from each other that we can pass somebody dying on the street and not lift a finger, not blink an eye, it's a real problem. Are we that paralyzed with fear? I think this is important because there are people here that kinda got out just in the nick of time. I think a lot of us, if we hadn’t come to the movement, would have become slaves to the man, lived very unfulfilling lives and probably never reached our full potential in anything. I think there’s so much talent here that hasn’t even begun to be tapped into, even in myself. I think this is important because there has been an elephant in the room this whole time, and everyone is too afraid to say anything, and somebody has got to come in with the guts and say, “Hey, this is not okay.” We have sat by and allowed this to happen. We have helped it happen, but we can forgive ourselves and move forward. I want to see people not be afraid to say, “We fucked up, but are we still capable of fixing it and mending it in every way, in our lives, in our outlook on life, in our treatment of each other, in our definition of success?"
Yes, this occupation is a protest on Wall Street because Wall Street symbolizes the greed and the corruption and the lust after profit over people, but for me Occupy has become much deeper than that. It’s a personal journey about really looking in toward yourself, and you can’t ever expect that revolution until you have that revolution within yourself and you let go of the hang-ups and the bad habits and the ways that we perpetuate the same problems that will never allow us to have a true revolution. I think this is everything, and it’s going to mean everything to everyone eventually. I believe that it’s going to have that much of an impact. It’ll probably take years, but I think what’s so important about the community here is that we are developing a system within the system to become resilient and to deal and to cope and to start to heal from everything, and that’s what's going to get us through what is going to be even tougher times. What’s going to get us through is this community, and all we want is for people to be a part of it because they need it. They don’t have it out there. We’re making it here. It’s not perfect, but it’s a hell of a lot better than the alternative.
The world that I foresee is a world that breaks down walls,
that breaks down barriers and that helps cut though this strange, thick cloud
of fear that we live in, in our society. We are paralyzed to make decisions
because of fear. We are paralyzed to fight for our rights because of fear. Fear controls our priorities, and in the harder times that are coming,
I want to see people realize the bigger picture and the bigger common ground
that we have with each other, and it’s that we’re all human and that we all
bleed red and that we are all hurting, and we’re all searching for happiness
and beauty. That’s all humans want is to have a sense of beauty and happiness
and fulfillment.
I want to see us realize that it’s not important to have material possessions, that it’s not important to a have a bank account, that your status in society means nothing. There is no such thing as status. We make this up. Just like the pieces of paper in our wallet only have value when we say they have value, if we decided that people had value, they would. If we decided that money was not important, it wouldn’t be. If we made a commitment to each other to put our common bonds over the treasury bonds, if we decided to put the relationship between our hearts and our minds over the relationship between our jobs and our assets, we begin to see what life is really about, the meaning of life. What is the meaning of life? I believe it’s about the legacy you leave behind in others' memories and others' hearts. It’s not about how many things you are able to hoard or collect in a vault somewhere. You can’t take any of that with you. When you’re on your death bed, are you going to be proud of the life you lived and the people you touched? Or did you touch no one at all?
Life is too short for this, and I think that’s what people need to realize is that life is too short to live this way, and there is a way out. There is an alternative. Another world is truly possible, but we have to use our imaginations, which are usually stifled by the media, and they’re stifled in the education system. We are told to abandon our imagination, and we really need to tap back into that and really start to see the world we’ve never seen. I don’t love America. I love the idea of what America is yet to be but still could be. We're going to need to be willing to forgive the horrible crimes we’ve committed to each other over the years in this world and move forward. We need to move forward and help each other heal. I want this to be a healing process. I want the next ten years to be an opportunity for people to grieve and to feel hope again. I want apathy to be a word that is dead and left behind in the English language. I want it to be a distant memory. I want hope to be the fuel. That’s what keeps me going.
Interview by Stacy Lanyon
http://buildingcompassionthroughaction.blogspot.com/
https://www.facebook.com/stacylanyon
https://instagram.com/stacylanyon/
https://twitter.com/StacyLanyon
http://stacylanyon.com/
I want to see us realize that it’s not important to have material possessions, that it’s not important to a have a bank account, that your status in society means nothing. There is no such thing as status. We make this up. Just like the pieces of paper in our wallet only have value when we say they have value, if we decided that people had value, they would. If we decided that money was not important, it wouldn’t be. If we made a commitment to each other to put our common bonds over the treasury bonds, if we decided to put the relationship between our hearts and our minds over the relationship between our jobs and our assets, we begin to see what life is really about, the meaning of life. What is the meaning of life? I believe it’s about the legacy you leave behind in others' memories and others' hearts. It’s not about how many things you are able to hoard or collect in a vault somewhere. You can’t take any of that with you. When you’re on your death bed, are you going to be proud of the life you lived and the people you touched? Or did you touch no one at all?
Life is too short for this, and I think that’s what people need to realize is that life is too short to live this way, and there is a way out. There is an alternative. Another world is truly possible, but we have to use our imaginations, which are usually stifled by the media, and they’re stifled in the education system. We are told to abandon our imagination, and we really need to tap back into that and really start to see the world we’ve never seen. I don’t love America. I love the idea of what America is yet to be but still could be. We're going to need to be willing to forgive the horrible crimes we’ve committed to each other over the years in this world and move forward. We need to move forward and help each other heal. I want this to be a healing process. I want the next ten years to be an opportunity for people to grieve and to feel hope again. I want apathy to be a word that is dead and left behind in the English language. I want it to be a distant memory. I want hope to be the fuel. That’s what keeps me going.
Interview by Stacy Lanyon
http://buildingcompassionthroughaction.blogspot.com/
https://www.facebook.com/stacylanyon
https://instagram.com/stacylanyon/
https://twitter.com/StacyLanyon
http://stacylanyon.com/