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Photo: Stacy Lanyon
I’m here because I feel that it’s my civic duty to be here.
I’m here because I have to be. I have also felt the discomfort that many
Americans are feeling, and I think what’s been so great about Occupy is the
coming together of all of these different philosophies that are leading against this gross inequality. I didn’t make the first day, but I was immediately supportive. I was actually just thinking about it today because we’re here
on Wall Street. The first time that I went to Zuccotti, I was drawn to the joy
and the harmony that I felt between all different kinds of activists from all
different walks of activism, and that’s what was so beautiful and fantastic and
exciting to me, that we could begin to work together on all of our
different objectives and goals. That’s what has led me to continue to come back.
I first went to the park on the second week. I never slept
there, but I did house people who were tired of sleeping on the floor, and that
was my way of contributing to the camping out. I would just frequent there. I
met people. I went and saw musicians, and I spent time there. I just
celebrated and participated. I was part of the first big protest in Times Square. It was a place to refuel and get excited. People were doing creative
things, and people were doing collaborative things. It was a great place to
rally yourself and feel good. I was thinking about it today, and I was all, “Ah,
I really miss it.” It’s such a changed memory, this place and Zuccotti Park.
When I get off of the subway, I miss it. I feel this difference in the space
and in my energy here. I wish it were still here. I wish there was this
home, this safe space that there was for a little over two months.
Everybody knows that there is struggle,
that there is struggle on the planet. You know there’s struggle. I just came back from a trip to Ghana and was talking a lot about West Africa and the
issues there. For example, many of the roads in Accra are horrible and dangerous to drive on. I would ask people I met, “How do we fix the problems with the roads?” And
they were like, “Well you know, the government is corrupt. The president keeps
all of the money to himself. He doesn’t care about the people.” It’s everywhere
you go, globally. “Well yeah you know, the government is fucked up, and that’s
just how it is. It’s not fair.” If you know in yourself that there is a lack of justice globally, at some point, you have
to do something about it. The way that I have to live is I have to work towards a change. I
can’t live thinking, “Well, the government is fucked up, and that’s the way it
is.” The only reason that's happening is that we are not fighting back. We have to take responsibility for ourselves and for each other. There are people
who don’t have time to Occupy because they are working tons of jobs. I’m lucky
when I can get off work to be here. It’s so important to take care of each
other and to do this as a movement that has such global ripples and waves. I truly believe in our responsibility towards each
other. For me, Occupy is part of my responsibility as a person on this
planet. That’s very important to me.
I like being an idealist. This is the only way I know how to
live. I can’t live resigned to the outcome of me and my fellow artist friends
not having a future. I can’t live my life resigned to the fact that most of the
country is struggling. I can’t live my life knowing that there are people all
the way up here and everybody else down here, and because there are some people
up here, everybody else has to be down here. That is not how I choose to live.
I choose to live believing in this world where everyone has enough food, a job
that they like, where they are treated with dignity
and respect, a world where they have enough hours to support their families but also
enough time to relax and enjoy life, to be able to do things like cook, to do things that they like
to do. I want a world where we can all pursue what we like to do because it
makes us happy, and not the thing that we have to do because it might make us
enough money to get by.
I want a world where kids can go to school without worrying about guns, where parents aren’t freaking out about guns, where women don’t have to worry about the safety of their bodies when they’re out at any time of day or night. I really want a world where we as humans are equal to each other, where the government is a government that works with us, that respects us, that knows us, that sees us. I want a world where people see each other not for how much they make or whether or not they’re on welfare. I want a world where people can see each other as people and respect each other as people and trust each other a little bit more, where we believe in each other and believe that together another world is possible.
I’m really interested in this concept of happiness, of what makes us happy. What if we can all pursue the thing that we want and find our own path? I see so many people throw in the towel on their dreams and their aspirations and anything that they could become. I just feel like everything is just so stifling. When I was in kindergarten, they taught us about a ladder, this ladder of success. It’s really funny when you think about a ladder because only one person can fit on the ladder at a time, so to get to the top, you are going to have to push other people down. We’re trained to be selfish straight away, and we also read Lord of the Flies when we’re kids, which tells you that, if left to your own devises, you would kill somebody else. You would throw somebody under a bus if left to your own devises. Thank god there’s a government to control you. That’s what that book is saying. We don’t read something like The Grapes of Wrath, which says that at the end of the day, this woman is going to give her breast milk to this starving man because, at the end of the day, we’re going to give whatever we have to help somebody else. I believe that humans are good. I believe in the Steinbeck analogy that that is what we could become given the chance.
I think that we are trained to not believe in this stuff. We’re trained to look out for ourselves, think of ourselves first, put ourselves first. Then, it doesn’t work out, and we’re just filled with this endless unhappiness, with this loneliness. I think everybody really suffers from it. The system separates us with all of these divisions of race and class and whatever. The more separate we are, the harder it is to find this end of our loneliness, this peace, this pursuit of real joy, which I think is just so hard for most people to achieve. I saw someone write on their Facebook, “I’m so mad. I saw someone get a shake with their EBT card.” So nobody is allowed to have any fun? You can get a shake, but they’re not allowed to? It’s this thing where we all don’t trust anybody, and we think people are ripping us off. I want and I believe that we can come to a point where we will be able to take care of each other so much better than we are able to do right now, and I don’t even really blame the people that are mad at each other for these stupid things. I wish for everyone to be at Occupy, so they can do this, but I know that not everybody can, and many choose not to, because maybe they don't understand. But that’s why we have to keep trying and believing and working towards a place where we really can be there for each other on a sincere level.
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 want a world where kids can go to school without worrying about guns, where parents aren’t freaking out about guns, where women don’t have to worry about the safety of their bodies when they’re out at any time of day or night. I really want a world where we as humans are equal to each other, where the government is a government that works with us, that respects us, that knows us, that sees us. I want a world where people see each other not for how much they make or whether or not they’re on welfare. I want a world where people can see each other as people and respect each other as people and trust each other a little bit more, where we believe in each other and believe that together another world is possible.
I’m really interested in this concept of happiness, of what makes us happy. What if we can all pursue the thing that we want and find our own path? I see so many people throw in the towel on their dreams and their aspirations and anything that they could become. I just feel like everything is just so stifling. When I was in kindergarten, they taught us about a ladder, this ladder of success. It’s really funny when you think about a ladder because only one person can fit on the ladder at a time, so to get to the top, you are going to have to push other people down. We’re trained to be selfish straight away, and we also read Lord of the Flies when we’re kids, which tells you that, if left to your own devises, you would kill somebody else. You would throw somebody under a bus if left to your own devises. Thank god there’s a government to control you. That’s what that book is saying. We don’t read something like The Grapes of Wrath, which says that at the end of the day, this woman is going to give her breast milk to this starving man because, at the end of the day, we’re going to give whatever we have to help somebody else. I believe that humans are good. I believe in the Steinbeck analogy that that is what we could become given the chance.
I think that we are trained to not believe in this stuff. We’re trained to look out for ourselves, think of ourselves first, put ourselves first. Then, it doesn’t work out, and we’re just filled with this endless unhappiness, with this loneliness. I think everybody really suffers from it. The system separates us with all of these divisions of race and class and whatever. The more separate we are, the harder it is to find this end of our loneliness, this peace, this pursuit of real joy, which I think is just so hard for most people to achieve. I saw someone write on their Facebook, “I’m so mad. I saw someone get a shake with their EBT card.” So nobody is allowed to have any fun? You can get a shake, but they’re not allowed to? It’s this thing where we all don’t trust anybody, and we think people are ripping us off. I want and I believe that we can come to a point where we will be able to take care of each other so much better than we are able to do right now, and I don’t even really blame the people that are mad at each other for these stupid things. I wish for everyone to be at Occupy, so they can do this, but I know that not everybody can, and many choose not to, because maybe they don't understand. But that’s why we have to keep trying and believing and working towards a place where we really can be there for each other on a sincere level.
Interview by Stacy Lanyon
http://buildingcompassionthroughaction.blogspot.com/
https://www.facebook.com/stacylanyon
https://instagram.com/stacylanyon/
https://twitter.com/StacyLanyon
http://stacylanyon.com/