Photo: Stacy Lanyon
I was working at the time Occupy started. I participated in all of the major marches, but because I was working full-time teaching, I was only able to come a few days a week. I would describe the park as mostly positive chaos. For me, the most encouraging thing that I saw was the kind of experience with a street level direct democracy, which was very different than other movements that I’ve participated in. There was a commitment to horizontal organization. I’ve been active since I was a sophomore in high school.
Obviously, there were a lot of things that a new mass movement had in the way
of attracting me. I was a little critical
of it at first, partially because of the puffery that was surrounding it like,“The revolution begins on September 17th," or calling actions general
strikes when they weren’t really general strikes. More recently, and
now that it’s no longer the kind of mass movement that it was before, I came
around again and started going to events.
It’s so important because other kinds of movements haven’t
really challenged the base of corporate power. I think that Occupy Wall Street
moves in the direction of challenging the very nature of capitalism as an
economic system. You’ve got to understand that I’m an economist. I’m a radical
economist. I have been for many decades, so that’s the kind of perspective I
bring. Obviously, I have been active in different kinds of political
movements over the years. Part of it has to do with the insights in terms of economic
relationships that exist today. There is a bit of a misnomer of the 99% versus
the 1%. We could talk about what the actual numbers are, but putting that
aside, I think it really speaks to a kind of huge inequality and class division
within our society.
A lot of the issues that Occupy Wall Street raises are things that I teach, pretty much every day. In a way, this is taking what goes on in a classroom into the streets. I teach economics and related topics at a couple of colleges in New York City, and I’m a part-time employee. This problem of having millions of people within the economy who are designated as part-time employees, who are able to be hired and fired at will, who have no job security, who have no pensions, who have hardly any rights is something that really mushroomed into a huge trend beginning in the 1970s. Now, for more and more people, even the prospect of being able to get a full-time job is something that is beyond the abilities of the system. Colleges are able to offer faculty full-time positions, but there are these benefits that come along for them to hiring a part-time employee - being able to pay them less, not offer them benefits. Sometimes when I tell people this, they are shocked. They see my occupation as a very prestigious occupation and are shocked to realize the ways in which so many people in that occupation struggle.
It’s not the banks. It’s not any given president. It’s not a particular politician. It’s rather the very nature of the system itself, and it’s my belief that as people come to terms and struggle against different kinds of conditions, they begin to realize that. They begin to realize the systemic nature of conditions. Capitalism is a system that rests upon exploitation. It rests upon inequality. It generates instability. It generates precisely the kind of outcomes that people are protesting against. What’s surprising, really, isn’t that you had Occupy Wall Street. What’s surprising is only that it took so long before something like this really blew up and went out into the streets because it’s really been simmering for a very long period of time.
I think it can still be rejuvenated. I set-up a meeting for a friend of mine, a fellow radical economist in Greece, who’s the economic adviser to Syriza, the Coalition of the Radical Left. He contacted me and said that Alexis Tsipras, who is the head of Syriza, is going to be in New York, and that he wanted to have a meeting with Occupy Wall Street activists, so I asked around. Nothing seemed to be happening on the days that he was here, so I set up a little meeting with him. When we started talking, Tsipras mentioned that they were inspired by Occupy Wall Street. That was something that had a big affect on them. They followed the developments very closely, and he wanted us to know that. Because we didn’t have a whole lot of people in this delegation, I said, “What you should know is that although you’re not seeing huge protests right now, it could come back at any moment because the people who are active in Occupy Wall Street haven’t gone anywhere. It’s not like they stopped being political. It’s not like they became demoralized. At any moment, something could happen that could bring tens of thousands of people or more back on the streets." He was very encouraged by that. A lot of people in other countries were waiting for something like this, were waiting to see what would happen in the United States. They have been waiting, really, for entire generations for the American people to finally do something. That’s an important point to realize.
I’ve heard this from a lot of people, “What happened to Occupy Wall Street?” They act like it should have a tombstone over it, and there should be a date on the stone from when Occupy Wall Street died. It’s not dead. At most, it’s gone into a little bit of a slumber. I’ve got my own kind of take on how it grew. As I went to different protests, what I could see is kind of a correlation in terms of what was happening. It started out small, and then the police did the pepper spray thing, and then it got huge. Then, it got a little bit smaller. Then, they started pepper spraying in different parts of the country. Then, it got bigger again. In a way, I think that part of its growth was fueled by the police and by the government, very ironically, of course. There’s a lot of simmering resentment among many different kinds of communities about the way in which the police have treated them. People could relate to that. The other thing of course is that it was different from the anti-Vietnam war movement I participated in when I was a teenager. Now we have the whole social media thing where you can quickly get large numbers of people knowledgeable about events and involved.
It’s not the banks. It’s not any given president. It’s not a particular politician. It’s rather the very nature of the system itself, and it’s my belief that as people come to terms and struggle against different kinds of conditions, they begin to realize that. They begin to realize the systemic nature of conditions. Capitalism is a system that rests upon exploitation. It rests upon inequality. It generates instability. It generates precisely the kind of outcomes that people are protesting against. What’s surprising, really, isn’t that you had Occupy Wall Street. What’s surprising is only that it took so long before something like this really blew up and went out into the streets because it’s really been simmering for a very long period of time.
I think it can still be rejuvenated. I set-up a meeting for a friend of mine, a fellow radical economist in Greece, who’s the economic adviser to Syriza, the Coalition of the Radical Left. He contacted me and said that Alexis Tsipras, who is the head of Syriza, is going to be in New York, and that he wanted to have a meeting with Occupy Wall Street activists, so I asked around. Nothing seemed to be happening on the days that he was here, so I set up a little meeting with him. When we started talking, Tsipras mentioned that they were inspired by Occupy Wall Street. That was something that had a big affect on them. They followed the developments very closely, and he wanted us to know that. Because we didn’t have a whole lot of people in this delegation, I said, “What you should know is that although you’re not seeing huge protests right now, it could come back at any moment because the people who are active in Occupy Wall Street haven’t gone anywhere. It’s not like they stopped being political. It’s not like they became demoralized. At any moment, something could happen that could bring tens of thousands of people or more back on the streets." He was very encouraged by that. A lot of people in other countries were waiting for something like this, were waiting to see what would happen in the United States. They have been waiting, really, for entire generations for the American people to finally do something. That’s an important point to realize.
I’ve heard this from a lot of people, “What happened to Occupy Wall Street?” They act like it should have a tombstone over it, and there should be a date on the stone from when Occupy Wall Street died. It’s not dead. At most, it’s gone into a little bit of a slumber. I’ve got my own kind of take on how it grew. As I went to different protests, what I could see is kind of a correlation in terms of what was happening. It started out small, and then the police did the pepper spray thing, and then it got huge. Then, it got a little bit smaller. Then, they started pepper spraying in different parts of the country. Then, it got bigger again. In a way, I think that part of its growth was fueled by the police and by the government, very ironically, of course. There’s a lot of simmering resentment among many different kinds of communities about the way in which the police have treated them. People could relate to that. The other thing of course is that it was different from the anti-Vietnam war movement I participated in when I was a teenager. Now we have the whole social media thing where you can quickly get large numbers of people knowledgeable about events and involved.
I hope it will bring about a non-capitalist society. I don’t
expect that to be able to happen anytime soon. The way I see it, Occupy
is part of what is going to be a very long and intense struggle. It’s not
something that’s going to be resolved overnight. There might be some victories
that we get along the way. We might be able to do something about taking care of
some people’s immediate needs and changing a little bit of the existing income
distribution or something like that. In other words, reforms are possible, but
over the long term, I see this as escalating as more and more people are forced
to struggle. I mentioned before about being an economist. If you look at wages,
real wages of people over the last thirty-five years, it’s been constant for
like 60% of the people. Think about that. That’s like a lifetime almost, and
people’s standard of living hasn’t increased at all during that whole period of
time. In a lot of ways, people are worse off now than they were in 1968. I just
read an article the other day that said something like 40% of the people are
earning less in real terms than if they had gotten the minimum wage in 1969.
I think, ultimately, it’s people’s material conditions that is going to be able to cause them to be able to rise up and be able to organize and demand change. As an educator, I’m somewhat critical of the idea that you can get in front of a group of people and teach or give a speech and that it turns on a light in people's heads to where they say, “Oh, now my life is different, and I’m going to change society." I don’t think it’s that. I think, on the other hand, when people’s material condition changes, so that they’re ready to hear something, then when people and movements come along to tell them what they are ready to hear, then they begin to act. That, in a sense, is what fueled Occupy Wall Street, that Occupy Wall Street came at the right moment in time and said what large numbers of people were ready to hear.
I think, ultimately, it’s people’s material conditions that is going to be able to cause them to be able to rise up and be able to organize and demand change. As an educator, I’m somewhat critical of the idea that you can get in front of a group of people and teach or give a speech and that it turns on a light in people's heads to where they say, “Oh, now my life is different, and I’m going to change society." I don’t think it’s that. I think, on the other hand, when people’s material condition changes, so that they’re ready to hear something, then when people and movements come along to tell them what they are ready to hear, then they begin to act. That, in a sense, is what fueled Occupy Wall Street, that Occupy Wall Street came at the right moment in time and said what large numbers of people were ready to hear.
You ask me what kind of world, the first questions is what
world? Look at the kind of dangers that the current system
represents to the environment. That’s a real question, whether or not there
will be a world. And if there will be a world, will that be the kind of world
that we’d even want to live in? In a sense, I think we are fighting, quite
literally, for our own survival and for the survival of a lot of life forms on
this planet that aren’t able to fight for themselves. I’d like to see a classless society eventually, a society
that doesn’t have racism and doesn’t have sexism, that has genuine equality,
where people’s capacities aren’t thwarted by the existing kinds of
relationships, so their real potential will be able to come out as human
beings. I don’t think there will ever be a point in time
where you won’t have fighting over something. Even if it won’t be a class
society, you’ll still have fighting against going back to what we had before. I
think that if you’re going to have change, you need to make sure that the change becomes
permanent and deepens. People are going to have to confront it on an ongoing
basis.
Interview by Stacy Lanyon
http://buildingcompassionthroughaction.blogspot.com/
https://www.facebook.com/stacylanyon
https://instagram.com/stacylanyon/
https://twitter.com/StacyLanyon
http://stacylanyon.com/
Interview by Stacy Lanyon
http://buildingcompassionthroughaction.blogspot.com/
https://www.facebook.com/stacylanyon
https://instagram.com/stacylanyon/
https://twitter.com/StacyLanyon
http://stacylanyon.com/