Photo: Stacy Lanyon
I Just knew that something in this country needed to
happen, and I had really just got involved in Twitter. There was something about
the feeling or the vibration of the tweets coming out about it. I do believe that behind the government are the corporations. I think that’s
the primary target. We’ve got to target these corporations from buying out the
entire planet. They’re obviously putting politicians in place. When you’ve got corporations making choices for the rest of the population based on their profit
margins, it’s the worst possible crime. That’s why so many people are
dying, and the planet is suffering at an unprecedented rate. That drew me here. I
was in Connecticut. I was close by, and I just knew instantly that I had to
come.
I came down on September 17th. I had agreed
with the person who had given me a ride to New York to go to this animal rights protest up by Bloomburg’s house, and she said she'd take me to Occupy Wall Street. It was dark when I arrived. At first, I was afraid to enter the park. My first
impression was just that of being overwhelmed by the sense of camaraderie, the sense of “Wow,
this is really happening.” I had an early premonition of, “This is going to be
big.” My first tweet from OWS was “Concrete never felt so
good.” It did. It felt so good sleeping with everybody.
There are so many different variables that entered the equation so quickly and changed each day, especially for the first ten days. Occupy Wall Street was founded and established in the first ten days. Beyond what anyone wants to say about social media, about Adbusters or who made the call or what, what made Occupy work was a small group of very determined people on the ground, people who were willing to put their lives on the line to make sure that square stayed occupied. That will never leave me, those first ten days. A lot of people came and then left after the weekend. Prominent people in the world and in the social media movement actually tried to tell people to go home, tried to tell them that it had accomplished what it had needed to, and it hadn’t because it hadn’t gone viral globally on a level where it wasn’t just a story. When I go into my mind and I think about the first ten days and how the table was set and how it actually spread, what caused it, and all the things that happened there, it’s amazing that it actually did spread.
There are so many different variables that entered the equation so quickly and changed each day, especially for the first ten days. Occupy Wall Street was founded and established in the first ten days. Beyond what anyone wants to say about social media, about Adbusters or who made the call or what, what made Occupy work was a small group of very determined people on the ground, people who were willing to put their lives on the line to make sure that square stayed occupied. That will never leave me, those first ten days. A lot of people came and then left after the weekend. Prominent people in the world and in the social media movement actually tried to tell people to go home, tried to tell them that it had accomplished what it had needed to, and it hadn’t because it hadn’t gone viral globally on a level where it wasn’t just a story. When I go into my mind and I think about the first ten days and how the table was set and how it actually spread, what caused it, and all the things that happened there, it’s amazing that it actually did spread.
It’s so important because time is running out. Ever since
the sixties, Americans specifically were
starting to become conscious that something about the processes of this country
were undermining the future of the human race. At this point in time, we have
hit a day and age, we’ve hit the time where those consequences aren’t avoidable
anymore. We’re at a crossroads for the human race. This is not, “Let’s work on
this for a couple more years.” No! We are down to the wire. It’s essential that
people unite. I am a big proponent of people gathering in the streets. I love the
theme of actually occupying, but I feel like it’s just as important for people
to get involved with the different issues. Like Mickey Z said, “Isolating the issues and separating them
is dangerous.” Because it makes people think something is happening. When you
get people together, you know something is happening. If the
actual principles and reasons that brought us together aren’t carried forward,
we’re going to drop the ball again, and there are no laurels to rest on. This
is life or death for the future of humanity.
I hope it will bring about a world of fairness, a world
where there are less rules, more respect for each other. I hope it will bring
about a world where countries communicate, where people aren’t tied to the whipping post as far as jail, and people aren’t tied to the grindstone and forced to work. We’ve
been manipulated mentally from birth. We’ve been manipulated to think that we’re
supposed to work jobs, and that we’re supposed to hold down this work ethic.
That’s actually a misnomer based on a society that needs these capitalistic
goods, this trade system, and all the profits and all of the energy is
escaping. I also want to see a world where people talk to their neighbors,
where people stop excluding themselves. You have people on Twitter
communicating across the world, but they don’t even know their neighbor or the
person in the apartment next to them. There’s this kinship that’s been lost because
of the fear and the necessity for survival in the world, and I would love to
see people be confident with themselves and confident in the world they live in
enough to communicate and love each other on a much broader spectrum.
Personally, what I see is a high-efficiency electric
drive system where basically all of our mechanical systems are converted away
from fossil fuels. What I see is a world that
succeeds in liberating itself. I see a clean planet, a very creative planet where
the creativity returns, where compassion returns and where
people feel comfortable with themselves. I guess I would end with saying that, at some point, this world is
going to awaken. Each human is going to awaken to the fact that we are all an
entity. We are all an organism that extends into infinity and can only be
defined as existence itself. It’s a mathematical equation that has been subdued
for way too long, yet is existing every second we live, every second we talk to each other.
Every particle is part of a great existence, and it does take some thought, and
it does take some time to discern what that means and how it’s actually true,
but ultimately this world will awaken and every person will walk and know that
every other person they meet are themselves, and that we all are here with each
other in the Universe.
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/