Photo: Stacy Lanyon
I was involved with a lot of activism before Occupy. I was
specifically trying to stay away from more broad Occupy things to stay in
school. Then, Hurricane Sandy hit, and that didn’t work out. I started doing
broader Occupy things. Before that, I was specifically organizing students. I
did go to the Liberty Square, but I never slept out. I didn’t get to spend that much time
there. Every time I was there, it was more just walking around to see what was
happening. I didn’t know that many people out there. It was just like, “Oh, they have the little
bike powering thing. That’s exciting. Let’s take photos.” At one time, I had an
assignment for school, and I went there to interview people to ask random
questions.
For Occupy Sandy, I got involved the night of the storm. I
was online, and I was seeing that people who I had worked with on Free University
were riding out to Red Hook to help. I was sitting in an apartment deep in Bay Ridge with no bike and no car, and there was no public transportation. The
storm wasn’t even over yet. I had no way to go anywhere, so I contacted one of
my friends who was helping with recovery, and right away got hooked up with the
people who run recovers.org and was running their Red Hook website, which for a
while was the only running website, so the Red Hook website was used for
everywhere else. Whenever someone needed to call to either get support or offer
support, offer to volunteer, offer money, offer supplies of any sort, the calls
would go through me. For over 48 hours, I was sitting on a couch not eating or
sleeping, just answering calls. Then, after the two days, I was able to go answer
calls at St. Jacobi church, which acted as the hub for Occupy Sandy recovery
efforts. From there, I started training other people to do it as well. From the beginning, Occupy Sandy was the first recovery
group out anywhere, and now we are pretty much the last. Groups like FEMA offer
support to homeowners. They offer money to people who own homes that have been
destroyed. A lot of people who rent homes, their landlords got the money, and they
just changed the locks, so now we are doing a lot of the legal support for
these families.
A lot of things came out of Occupy Sandy. I’m currently working
with the Media Collective, which is a group of photographers, live streamers, live
tweeters, bloggers. We travel and go around the country to report on these
things and support each other in this. Right now we’re planning a trip to
Chicago for a three day march for the Chicago Teachers Union. Another thing that's happening is that there are people starting
relief kitchens. I’m also working with something called The People’s Network
that was created out of one of the past hubs of Occupy Sandy.
The People’s Network is in Clinton Hill. The fathers at the church have been involved in activism, and
they were involved in Occupy Faith. They had wanted involvement from Occupy
before Occupy Sandy hit. Occupy Sandy and a fire that was proved to be arson
during the recovery efforts really sped things forward. Once repairs are done, Occupy
will have a permanent people’s kitchen there, a permanent food pantry. We’re
moving the People’s Library from Zuccotti into there, or what’s left of it. There’s
going to be a school run out of there and multiple other projects. The team
itself that’s creating the People’s Network right now, our goal is to at some
point get ourselves replaced by members of the community of Clinton Hill and
move on to create these spaces all around the country.
Over the past two years, activism in New York
has been growing. Things like the Cooper Union occupation really has brought attention to the issue of education and debt. When Mayday happens, we usually get a few big bumps, and groups start
to form. Out of this past Mayday, we formed the New York Student block. We
planned an event today in a couple hours, posted it on Facebook, and in a
couple hours got a ton of people out. I also work with Free University. We
set-up public spaces as universities, having professors come out of their
classes with their students, or when they are not working just come and set-up
classes that are accessible to anyone. It’s a form of protest in two ways. It
both shows how it could be done, how free education could be run and that it’s
possible. Also, the classes themselves are very radical in their ideas.
There's an awareness that’s growing, not just what we’re putting out there through the media we are creating, but us as individuals each have grown a lot since just the idea of Occupy and the idea of being able to take over a space, the idea of being able to gather thousands of people into a space and be heard by the news, by politicians, by the 1% or whatever else. It’s really changed the entire frame of thinking. As far as power structures, it’s not even necessarily that the current structure is the worst ever. It’s that we can always grow from it. It’s not that corruption is at its worst. We always develop, and we can always get better.
I definitely don’t imagine struggles going away at any point. It’s just the constant change towards the better, and I do think that most change has been towards the better, even if certain things look scarier at times. We’re constantly growing and changing and growing to a point where the struggles will seem better to us looking back on history. Our current struggles will constantly be lessened. I don’t think I can even frame what I want to see in the
world. It’s more of a constant change, constant growth in the world. The
thought that has really been getting to me over the past two months is that the problem
with the systems that we have, more than anything else, is the lack of fun and the
lack relaxation and friendship and enjoying life. I hope for there to be more
of it, for people to have closer friendships and to be able to spend time doing
the things they enjoy, whatever that may be. I want people to have more time for self-care and health and being able to take care of
yourself and those you love and not having to worry about unnecessary things,
like fitting into a social structure that isn’t supporting you in any way.
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/