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Photo: Stacy Lanyon
I guess the first experience I had with Occupy was in
Mid-October of 2011. I came back from being on tour, and I heard a little bit
about it on Facebook. When I’m not working with the band, I’m looking out for
my daughter, so I wasn’t paying much attention. I didn’t really know what was
going on. One day, I thought, “I’m going to go and see what this is all
about.” I think it was October 17th when I took my daughter down
there in a stroller. There was a huge crowd in the park. I was just pushing the
stroller around listening to what people were talking about, and I was
intrigued by it. It was this really good atmosphere, and there was really good
energy there. A lot of different people were voicing their opinions on a lot of
different subjects. At that point, I hadn’t connected all of the dots that Wall
Street was the problem with the influence they have over the corruption in the
democracy here. I guess it was a little bit of a learning experience. Whenever
I came back, I would learn a little bit more. It was educational. I visited the
park maybe two or three times a week for an hour or so with my daughter. There
was something about it. There was also a lot of creative force there. There was
really good energy.
I went on a few of the small spontaneous marches there.
Then, I started paying attention to the websites and found out about stuff that way. The
first big action that I was able to go to was N17. A couple days before that,
when the park got raided, I was in Brazil, and I was watching it through the
livestreams. I just couldn’t believe it. I had also watched a video of one of the
first times they were in Times Square, and I really had no perception of what
the NYPD did until then. Not having lived in a neighborhood where they were very
oppressive, I hadn’t really seen that before, so I was quite shocked. That was
a learning experience as well. I have absolutely no respect for that
institution anymore. They are just the muscle for the corporations that pay for
the politicians that enact their policies.
N17 was the first time I went on any of the big marches with
my daughter. After seeing some of the videos, you think that maybe it’s not a
good place to bring a kid, but I always felt safe. I never felt threatened at
all. I never felt that she was in any danger, certainly not with the occupiers.
If anything, I was concerned about the cops. I would be careful. I would stick
to the back of the march. I was keeping my eye on what the cops were doing all
the time, not anyone in the crowd. I guess after you go on a number of marches,
you become quite comfortable with it. My daughter enjoyed it as well, the music
and the drumming and stuff. I would just push her in a stroller with a
tambourine, and she would enjoy that. We did that quite regularly. Later in the
year, I found a parents group, Parents for Occupy Wall Street. They had some
actions that they did. That started the chalkupying. The kids would really
enjoy that. They could get involved. Recently, I started going to the puppet
guild meetings. I’m into art and building stuff, and it seemed like a natural
place to plug in.
I moved to the states eight or nine years ago. It was during Bush’s last term. When I first got here, I became
really obsessed with American politics. I came from Northern Ireland, and our
politics there are completely different. I got sucked into the democrats
because I’m from a socialist background back home. Then, once Obama won, I
realized very quickly that although all of the rhetoric by Obama sounded good,
it wasn’t actually what was happening. I was expecting to see Cheney and Bush pulled up
on war crimes, and that never happened. It’s the lesser of two evils, but with
the lesser still being pretty fuckin’ evil. After a while, I became completely
disillusioned by it all. I felt that it was just shit no matter what way you
looked at it, especially when you realized that the democracy has just been
bought. From what I could see, one of Occupy Wall Street’s main grievances was
getting the money out of politics. That made a lot of sense to me.
Politicians are owned by corporations, and the media is all corporately owned,
and they’ve got their own agenda. The whole thing is corrupt, and you realize
that whatever your issue is that all of our grievances are connected and that
it all leads back to Wall Street. Whenever I saw energy push back
against that, it felt like something great was happening. I think it’s important so the powers that be know that
people aren’t going to take it lying down. They really put so many resources
into trying to suppress and destroy the movement. So many people are unaware of what’s going on
or don’t want to know what’s going on because they don’t think they have the
time in their lives to be able to do anything, or they’re scared for their job.
Everybody’s terrified that if they become unemployed that they won't have health coverage or be able to pay the rent.
If you had originally told me about horizontal direct
democracy, I wouldn’t have known what you meant. Certainly, if someone said the
word anarchist, I’d think of the stereotype. I’ve become more educated about
that. I’ve heard the word anarcho-curious before. I guess I would put myself
under that banner. It wouldn’t appear to be a very easy process, reaching
consensus on stuff, but whenever our decisions get made as a group, it’s very
powerful. I never really had any concept of general assemblies until Occupy. The general assemblies were held in the
evenings, and I would be at home with my daughter, so I would follow them on twitter or on livestream. Then, on rare occasions I would
get to come out. That was a really
exciting thing to watch, the whole direct democracy in real time. I call myself
anarcho-curious because it’s really hard to envision a huge country being able
to operate under lots of small groups working in horizontal direct democracy.
It’s a romantic idea. I don’t know how plausible it is. It’s something to
aspire towards.
There’s work to be done on getting the money out of politics.
That would be one of the main things. We’ve got to overturn Citizen’s United.
We’ve got to regulate capitalism because capitalism is just going to destroy
the world. It’s destroying our ability to sustain ourselves on this planet when the corporations are just left to their own devices. It’s all about
sustainability. You’ve got to have a society that’s sustainable. You can’t have
non-stop growth on a finite planet. It’s just not possible.
Corporations aren’t tied to countries anymore. They’re multi-national. They don’t care about any flag at all. They just care about getting a lot of money. Borders don’t apply to them like they do to people. Personally, I don’t see a point in borders at all. Borders and their States exist to control the people, while these corporations are running a global rampage, doing whatever they want. They're essentially uncontrollable. Our elected politicians enable them. I don't like the reality of borders. They're inhumane and pit people against each other. I reject the notion that I'm supposed to identify or am in affinity with others just because we share the same zip code, GPS location or passport. People connect through sharing values, communal experience and working through life's trials together. Flag waving nationalism is just another malignant method of controlling the masses of an ignorant population. We can do better than submission to dumbed down identities, which make it easier for us to be controlled.
Corporations aren’t tied to countries anymore. They’re multi-national. They don’t care about any flag at all. They just care about getting a lot of money. Borders don’t apply to them like they do to people. Personally, I don’t see a point in borders at all. Borders and their States exist to control the people, while these corporations are running a global rampage, doing whatever they want. They're essentially uncontrollable. Our elected politicians enable them. I don't like the reality of borders. They're inhumane and pit people against each other. I reject the notion that I'm supposed to identify or am in affinity with others just because we share the same zip code, GPS location or passport. People connect through sharing values, communal experience and working through life's trials together. Flag waving nationalism is just another malignant method of controlling the masses of an ignorant population. We can do better than submission to dumbed down identities, which make it easier for us to be controlled.
I think about what kind of world I want my kid to have in
the future, being a father. I want to know that she is going to have
representation, one vote for every person, that she is going to count. It’s
kind of an illusion that you have a choice because both parties are just
puppets, so I’d want to see new parties emerge that refuse any kind of
corporate donations. There’s got to be something new evolve out of this
disaster.
As far as global warming goes, I can’t believe that when I moved here
that there are still so many people in this country that are denying that it’s
even happening or that it’s man made. It’s
pretty easy to get despondent whenever you see no action happening on global
warming. You almost resign yourself to the fact that the human race as a whole
is just going over the edge of a cliff and seemingly don’t’ care, like the
heard is just running towards the edge of the cliff. I see Occupy as the people
on the edges, trying to run along the stampede going, “Hey, you’ve got to move
this way over here,” but the body collective, the
mass, is still just charging straight ahead, and we are the ones being called
crazy when we are trying to redirect this giant momentum going in the wrong
direction.
I think our immediate concern is just being able to survive
as a species for the next couple hundred years, so we’ve got to invest in
sustainable technology, sustainable energy. We’ve got to get off the big agro-industrial complex. We’ve got to move away from that to more local farming. We’ve got to
have buildings which are able to sustain the people that live in them. I’m into
the sustainable building concepts where you’ve got everything from the water to
the sewage to the heating to the electricity provided by the
system in the house itself. A lot of people here are working on stuff like that. One thing that is really inspiring is the whole concept of mutual aid over charity. It's good to see that in practice, especially after Hurricane Sandy. Our building was evicted for two months because of flood damage. We were lucky we had family we could stay with, but many people weren't do fortunate. It was awesome to see how people rallied to help each other. Occupy stepped it up in a big way with Occupy Sandy.
I want to live in a world where there's equality for all people, no matter their gender, sexual orientation, skin color, age, disabilities or where they were born. Imagine a world where we didn't live under the financial burdens of systemic debt, where education and healthcare are human rights and not exploited for profit, a world with a lower cost of living. We could work less, consume less shit we don't need. We'd have more time just to enjoy life. We’d have more free time to do whatever we’re interested in, you could spend more time with you family. We'd reclaim the commons and there’d be more sports, more arts, community gardens and more social, cultural gatherings. There’d be more street theater, music and people coming together not to exploit these things but to just participate in them and build healthy sustainable communities. Obviously, there is still going to be work, but it doesn't have to be exploitative or oppressive. Work should be rewarding and have purpose other than a means to a wage. Imagine all corporations were worker owned co-ops and the hoarding of resources seen as immoral. I see the world we are working for with more music, more arts, more culture, more free time for everybody to take a walk or go swimming or do whatever you want, with no more shitty food. We'd have good, healthy, more humane food, and we'd eat together more often.
Interview by Stacy Lanyon