Tuesday, June 5, 2012

Jose

Global Day of Action, May 15, 2012, Times Square
Photo: Stacy Lanyon

I come from Boston. Occupy Boston is still going. I came to New York because I wanted to have experience with where everything first started. I heard about Occupy through the news. It was kind of unbelievable to me. This kind of experience was just a dream that it would happen in the United States. I think watching these people organizing and making it possible for a community to occupy a specific place without any permits or without any plans was amazing. I think this is making history. It’s nothing related to the 60s. It’s really challenging the system.

I think one of the biggest challenges for us as humans is that we have to rethink the future. You see this behavior of big, big financial corporations making it more impossible for humans to live. People who used to work 40 hours twenty or thirty years ago were able to survive off of it. The money that people make now working 40 hours a week is not even enough to make rent. It is even worse if they have kids. I think it’s really important to fight to make the financial power assessable in a fair way and to make rules the same for everybody. It shouldn't benefit just the ones with big money, leaving the ones that have no access at all to improve their lives.

I’m hoping for a world where there is no racism. This is a very important thing for me. I want a world where the immigrants are not suffering around the world because where they come from there are no jobs or little opportunity for a better chance of life. I want a world where the nations are not investing so much money on weapons instead of education. My hope is that we as humans can stop being bullies and see each other as part of a family. Otherwise, we are just preparing ourselves to kill ourselves in the end. 

 Interview by Stacy Lanyon
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