Photo: Stacy Lanyon
I was actually a member of the New York City activist scene
long before Occupy Wall Street began. I was a member of the United National
Anti-War Committee (UNAC). I came up with the Jersey City Peace Movement, which was an umbrella organization for UNAC. For UNAC, I demonstrated
and helped organize demonstrations for them for a good year and a half. We knew
something was going on with Wall Street before it actually happened. We knew
there was going to be a staged protest on September 17th, 2011. We
discussed that during an anti-war rally we had on 9/11, and I said, “of
course I’m going to be at the staged protest.” Wall Street is the main culprit behind
all of these illegal wars. They’re the ones who make a profit off of the death
and suffering of millions of Middle Eastern people and the death and suffering
of all of our soldiers who are going overseas to fight and die to make some
white collar wealthy. That’s how I found out about Occupy Wall Street, and I came
September 17th, and I’ve been here ever since.
Every generation goes through their defining moments. Those
who were born in the 20s and 30s had World War II. Those who were born in the
40s and 50s had the Civil Rights struggle and the draft protest. Those who were
born in the 60s and 70s, I don’t know. I can think of one moment, and that was
during Rodney King. We have 16 trillion dollars in debt. 9/11 happened. The Patriot
Act happened, and my parent’s generation didn’t’ do anything about it. You had
all these repressions of freedom going on, and my parent’s generation didn’t do
anything about it, and here we come now, after the bubble burst, after Bear Stearns
and Lehman Brothers, we realize that everything that we were told was a lie.
America is not as great as it was, and there are more poor and suffering people
than is actually recognized, and I feel this movement is important because if
we do nothing now, we’re going down a very dark part into, essentially, tyranny.
There’s a question where people say, “What are you going to
do with Occupy? I mean, what is standing around with signs going to do? You’re
just standing around with signs. You’re not doing anything.” We’re getting
people’s attention. If we’re going to make any change happen, we have to break
apathy. Apathy is the greatest villain that there is right now. The people in
the New York Stock Exchange and the people with all the wealth want the masses
to be apathetic because if they’re apathetic, then they won’t question what’s
going on, and if they don’t question what’s going on, the politicians and the
bankers can get away with virtually anything they want, so our main mission is
to break this apathy. To break this apathy, we need to hold signs. We need to
do direct actions. We need to affect people in a way, which gets people to wake
up. After that happens, then we can get into the discussion of how we want to
shape the world. I want to see, hopefully, a world one day where war is not
something to be made a profit off of. I want to see a world where it’s illegal
to be a weapons developer. I want to see a world where we have renewable energy,
where we don’t have to rely on oil and people who aren’t westernized. That’s
the world I want to see. I don’t know how long it’s going to take, but the
first step to realizing that is to wake up these people who are apathetic.
You can view Michael's livestream at www.ustream.tv/channel/ThePellaReport.
Interview by Stacy Lanyon
http://buildingcompassionthroughaction.blogspot.com/
https://www.facebook.com/stacylanyon
https://instagram.com/stacylanyon/
https://twitter.com/StacyLanyon
http://stacylanyon.com/
You can view Michael's livestream at www.ustream.tv/channel/ThePellaReport.
Interview by Stacy Lanyon
http://buildingcompassionthroughaction.blogspot.com/
https://www.facebook.com/stacylanyon
https://instagram.com/stacylanyon/
https://twitter.com/StacyLanyon
http://stacylanyon.com/