Photo: Stacy Lanyon
What drew me was the idea of people from different
backgrounds coming together for different causes and to make change. I heard about Occupy
via Facebook from a friend of mine. I couldn’t make it on the first day, but
when I first came down, I absolutely loved it. It was after the Troy Davis demonstration that ended up at
Zuccotti Park. I saw the People’s Assembly, and I hung around for a while.
People were doing blocks and twinkles and consensus, and it kind of reminded me
of activism in college. When I did go down to the park, which was usually
before work. I would bring down gallons of water and food. I experienced a
definite change. It was a lot of education. It was an open forum where people
expressed their ideas about politics, economics, religion. There was meditation. A few
groups that I definitely connected to were Occupy Homes, health care and stuff around tuition and student debt.
This is so important because the whole world is 'fucked up
and bullshit.' A lot of people are too busy following that American dream,
overworked and underpaid. People need to come back and connect with the real issues, the issues of
capitalism. It’s a way to keep people on the bottom. Capitalism cannot continue
if there are no poor people. You’ve got this idea where the one percent are
telling the middle class to blame the poor people. Usually when the poor people
or lower class or middle class rise up, the 1 percent feel threatened, so they try and create divisions. At
the end of the day, they control the media and the newspaper and everything.
They don’t shine the correct light on exactly where we are coming from and going through.
I do not want to bring about a perfect world because
perfection is not logical. It’s about people having individual knowledge of who they are outside of the barrio of capitalism and government. I would like us to have
internal education about who we are. I would like to see a
society where no matter where you come from you
could get the full opportunity that they speak of when referring to the
American dream. If you grow up in the
lower class, you don’t get the same opportunity as someone who is well off. I
want to live in a world where someone doesn’t need to drop out of college because
they don’t want to worry about tuition charges fifty years from now. Everyone
should be able to go to college if they want and not have a financial burden.
The world I'm working for will be a global community where you don’t have to
worry about going to jail if you go to Cuba on vacation. You wouldn’t have to
worry about getting deported if you’re coming from Mexico. The whole
immigration things need to be eliminated. The imaginary line that we put on earth, that imaginary
line is not in the oceans. The fish don’t get asked for their passports. No
nation. You would be able to go wherever you want. If a person
comes from Mexico or from Africa, they should have access to
everything that we have access to because, at the end of the day, we are all
human beings. I don’t like the notion just because someone is from a different part of the world they should be treated differently.
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/