Photo: Stacy Lanyon
I’m an old radical that “burnt out” sometime in the ‘80s, when the country was taking its big swing to the right. I got re-radicalized in 2004 during the Republican convention and realized that just showing up for these mass marches of 20,000 was not going to do it. At that time, I saw a number of the communities that were doing direct actions -- Times Up, The Reverend Billy Group, Code Pink, the New York freegans. There were a lot more things going on that were directly breaking people’s frame to wake them up and have them think about the fact that another world is possible.
I wasn’t sure that Occupy Wall Street would work. I wished them well, but I didn’t come on the first day. On the second day, I came and looked for people because I heard it was still going on. I didn’t find them. But maybe two or three days later, I had more precise directions to this park and found people. I had been working with committed activists for a while, but the fact that people were willing to do it twenty-four hours a day, that people were willing to physically sleep here, that they were setting up an autonomous zone that didn’t need services from outside, that didn’t need corporations, I found that really riveting, and it was something that I was willing to throw myself into, even if it was going to be short term.
I think what makes this important is that there is spontaneity combined with clear commitment, people really going for it. There are so many young people who are not completely lulled into consumer culture, that a lot of us are saying, “Hell no! This is really important. We’re willing to go out and try stuff. We’re willing to fall down, make mistakes, re-evaluate and come back with new tactics and new ideas.” That is incredibly important and to me is a model of a living revolution.
Our country and our world have gotten to a very, very dangerous place with the concentration of wealth, with global heating, with the rampant consumer culture that our economy is driven by that depends on people who can ill afford to buy it, with the level of debt people are in, the amount of power the corporations have, the fact that our so-called democratic system is quite blatantly, at this point, not democratic. It puts us at a tipping point. We could be headed toward a police state, or we could be heading toward a real break from what’s going on. Only a real break from the path that we’re on stands any chance of us not ending up in ecological destruction, not ending up in a police state, not ending up in a much more oppressive situation here in the US than we are already in. I know a lot has been said about the shrinking circles. A lot of people in the world are already outside of the circle of comfort. I think this moment, this crystalizing moment, came about when a lot of Americans fell out of that comfort circle and started to realize, “Hey, this doesn’t even work for me, and I’m the most privileged."
I think these are ideas that just about anyone can grasp. The tactics and ideas are not new, but they are new to a lot of people. I would like to say a little about anarchism on that. I think that people’s imaginations have been captured by the idea of direct democracy, by the idea of people’s assembly, by the idea of direct mutual aid and these alternative structures. A lot of these ideas are absolutely classic to anarchist thinking and practice for 150 years. The term ‘direct action’ was the anarchists’ way of saying, “Well now, you’re not really going to do much by trying to reform by elections and by petitioning. But if you get out and actually create the kind of world that you want, you are taking back control of your own lives. If you create structures for direct democracy rather than a permanent hierarchy, if you set up community agreements rather than laws and prisons, you’re going to end with a society that is actively fighting oppression on all of the different levels from economic to ecological to racism, sexism, classism.
One thing I found absolutely fantastic coming here to Liberty Park is that there are older anarchists that generally don’t say the ‘A’ word, just like maybe gay people in the 1950s wouldn’t say the ‘G’ word. I think it’s very exciting for us to say, “We do not have to hide the fact that this is what this philosophy is called, this is what this concept of government, this concept of social organization is called.” Misconceptions of the word anarchism have been around for almost as long as anarchism itself. Anarchism has irked every kind of government. No government wants a group of people saying, “You know what, government, per se, is not needed. A police state, per se, is not needed. We don’t need prisons.” No government is going to be welcoming to that. We’re profoundly anti-oppression, and use of violence against human beings or animals or the planet is in opposition to what anarchism is about.
What I’m hoping for is a world where there is direct democracy, where there is a lot more local involvement, where people are involved in creating their own communities in ways that serve them and satisfy them. I want to see a world and individual communities where mutual aid is a super important factor, where we’re looking out for each other, a world where we won’t necessarily even need health insurance because we as a community will pitch in when people need help, that we’ll form guilds and associations that will support each other in non-monetary ways.
I think we need to see a formal dissolution of the corporations. Whether that leads to an end of all of capitalism is another question, but we need to see the breaking up of the large corporations that are, essentially, ruling the world. I would love to see the centralized government of the country and even of states become more and more unnecessary as local communities build their own self-government and their own internalized meeting of people’s needs, and that those people can work in federation with neighboring communities to meet needs. I don’t know that we’ll get there, but I think it’s important to aim there.
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 wasn’t sure that Occupy Wall Street would work. I wished them well, but I didn’t come on the first day. On the second day, I came and looked for people because I heard it was still going on. I didn’t find them. But maybe two or three days later, I had more precise directions to this park and found people. I had been working with committed activists for a while, but the fact that people were willing to do it twenty-four hours a day, that people were willing to physically sleep here, that they were setting up an autonomous zone that didn’t need services from outside, that didn’t need corporations, I found that really riveting, and it was something that I was willing to throw myself into, even if it was going to be short term.
I think what makes this important is that there is spontaneity combined with clear commitment, people really going for it. There are so many young people who are not completely lulled into consumer culture, that a lot of us are saying, “Hell no! This is really important. We’re willing to go out and try stuff. We’re willing to fall down, make mistakes, re-evaluate and come back with new tactics and new ideas.” That is incredibly important and to me is a model of a living revolution.
Our country and our world have gotten to a very, very dangerous place with the concentration of wealth, with global heating, with the rampant consumer culture that our economy is driven by that depends on people who can ill afford to buy it, with the level of debt people are in, the amount of power the corporations have, the fact that our so-called democratic system is quite blatantly, at this point, not democratic. It puts us at a tipping point. We could be headed toward a police state, or we could be heading toward a real break from what’s going on. Only a real break from the path that we’re on stands any chance of us not ending up in ecological destruction, not ending up in a police state, not ending up in a much more oppressive situation here in the US than we are already in. I know a lot has been said about the shrinking circles. A lot of people in the world are already outside of the circle of comfort. I think this moment, this crystalizing moment, came about when a lot of Americans fell out of that comfort circle and started to realize, “Hey, this doesn’t even work for me, and I’m the most privileged."
I think these are ideas that just about anyone can grasp. The tactics and ideas are not new, but they are new to a lot of people. I would like to say a little about anarchism on that. I think that people’s imaginations have been captured by the idea of direct democracy, by the idea of people’s assembly, by the idea of direct mutual aid and these alternative structures. A lot of these ideas are absolutely classic to anarchist thinking and practice for 150 years. The term ‘direct action’ was the anarchists’ way of saying, “Well now, you’re not really going to do much by trying to reform by elections and by petitioning. But if you get out and actually create the kind of world that you want, you are taking back control of your own lives. If you create structures for direct democracy rather than a permanent hierarchy, if you set up community agreements rather than laws and prisons, you’re going to end with a society that is actively fighting oppression on all of the different levels from economic to ecological to racism, sexism, classism.
One thing I found absolutely fantastic coming here to Liberty Park is that there are older anarchists that generally don’t say the ‘A’ word, just like maybe gay people in the 1950s wouldn’t say the ‘G’ word. I think it’s very exciting for us to say, “We do not have to hide the fact that this is what this philosophy is called, this is what this concept of government, this concept of social organization is called.” Misconceptions of the word anarchism have been around for almost as long as anarchism itself. Anarchism has irked every kind of government. No government wants a group of people saying, “You know what, government, per se, is not needed. A police state, per se, is not needed. We don’t need prisons.” No government is going to be welcoming to that. We’re profoundly anti-oppression, and use of violence against human beings or animals or the planet is in opposition to what anarchism is about.
What I’m hoping for is a world where there is direct democracy, where there is a lot more local involvement, where people are involved in creating their own communities in ways that serve them and satisfy them. I want to see a world and individual communities where mutual aid is a super important factor, where we’re looking out for each other, a world where we won’t necessarily even need health insurance because we as a community will pitch in when people need help, that we’ll form guilds and associations that will support each other in non-monetary ways.
I think we need to see a formal dissolution of the corporations. Whether that leads to an end of all of capitalism is another question, but we need to see the breaking up of the large corporations that are, essentially, ruling the world. I would love to see the centralized government of the country and even of states become more and more unnecessary as local communities build their own self-government and their own internalized meeting of people’s needs, and that those people can work in federation with neighboring communities to meet needs. I don’t know that we’ll get there, but I think it’s important to aim there.
Interview by Stacy Lanyon
http://buildingcompassionthroughaction.blogspot.com/
https://www.facebook.com/stacylanyon
https://instagram.com/stacylanyon/
https://twitter.com/StacyLanyon
http://stacylanyon.com/