Photo: Stacy Lanyon
A lot of things drew me to Occupy. First of all, I have a lot of student debt, about $145,000. I studied art, and I’ve been here since 2002. I had been reading a lot of critical theory in the last ten years, so I was paying attention to what was happening in the world, and I was watching what was happening in Iran in 2009, Tunisia and Egypt in 2011, and also Madison, Wisconsin the winter before Occupy. I was really frustrated with the way things were happening in the states. At first, when Obama was elected, I naively had a lot of hope. By 2010, when he compromised with congress about the Bush tax cuts without a fight, and when the war in Afghanistan escalated, my disillusionment became calcified and malignant.
My wife and I actually live downtown about seven blocks north of Zuccotti Park in a rare rent controlled unit that’s really cheap. We showed up on the first day of the occupation at Zuccotti. Right away, we were plugged into what was happening at the park. We got involved with the kitchen at first, bringing food to the kitchen until it took off and became its own mechanism. We also worked with sanitation a lot. I wanted to get involved with Direct Action and Facilitation more, but they were holding all of the meetings at 2 o’clock or 4 o’clock in the afternoon. I could never make it to the meetings because of work, so I would just show up at the general assembly every night and be there all through the weekends.
I didn’t really start getting involved with a working group until mid-October. It was around the struggles with the lock-out of the Sotheby’s art handlers. It’s a big auction house for art works on the Upper East Side, and their art handlers were unionized with the Teamsters and had a contract. Basically, they went into negotiations and did not accept Sotheby's terms, which of course favored Sotheby's and denied benefits for the art handlers, so they were locked out. Because the labor laws here in New York State are so restrictive, they couldn’t do much to get attention on their cause, so some people in the Arts and Labor Working Group formed around that and started bringing a lot of attention to their struggle. That started while the occupation was still in the park, but it lasted after the occupation to the following winter and into the spring. They finally got a contract that wasn’t exactly what they had wanted but was better than what Sotheby's had originally offered. It was basically around labor issues within the culture industry that I started taking something from Occupy and bringing that back to my own community, trying to organize there and make it better.
My wife and I actually live downtown about seven blocks north of Zuccotti Park in a rare rent controlled unit that’s really cheap. We showed up on the first day of the occupation at Zuccotti. Right away, we were plugged into what was happening at the park. We got involved with the kitchen at first, bringing food to the kitchen until it took off and became its own mechanism. We also worked with sanitation a lot. I wanted to get involved with Direct Action and Facilitation more, but they were holding all of the meetings at 2 o’clock or 4 o’clock in the afternoon. I could never make it to the meetings because of work, so I would just show up at the general assembly every night and be there all through the weekends.
I didn’t really start getting involved with a working group until mid-October. It was around the struggles with the lock-out of the Sotheby’s art handlers. It’s a big auction house for art works on the Upper East Side, and their art handlers were unionized with the Teamsters and had a contract. Basically, they went into negotiations and did not accept Sotheby's terms, which of course favored Sotheby's and denied benefits for the art handlers, so they were locked out. Because the labor laws here in New York State are so restrictive, they couldn’t do much to get attention on their cause, so some people in the Arts and Labor Working Group formed around that and started bringing a lot of attention to their struggle. That started while the occupation was still in the park, but it lasted after the occupation to the following winter and into the spring. They finally got a contract that wasn’t exactly what they had wanted but was better than what Sotheby's had originally offered. It was basically around labor issues within the culture industry that I started taking something from Occupy and bringing that back to my own community, trying to organize there and make it better.
I guess what struck me about the park was that before the park, I started to feel pretty alienated and alone with my frustrations, with how the State and the finances work here. Coming to the park, it was great to find so many people in one place who were as angry and upset and worried about the future as I was, but who were also finding bonds in that, building friendships around that. I was really drawn at first to the negative disassociation with the State and banking system. Almost at the same time, I was really drawn to this community and the mutual aid that was forming around the park that I hadn’t experienced much of in the United States before that.
With Strike Debt, I was involved with that from the very beginning. It was very powerful to me at first because debt was my big personal issue, which drew me out to Occupy in the first place. With Strike Debt, I was relieved that almost a year later, people were starting to address this very specific issue that affects all of us. It was really powerful. We started having these meetings discussing debt. Then, it naturally evolved into these speak-outs where people would stand up and talk about their debt and their problems with struggling with debt. It was a coming out process that was emotional and supportive.
Before that, I had never really shared how much debt I was in so openly. There was a lot of shame about that. It was really powerful to be able to stand up and talk about my debt and have people listen and know what I was going through, and also being there to hear other people speak of their own experiences of being in debt. I felt, along with others I spoke with who participated in these speak-outs, that it was transformative. The shame and loneliness we all experience with debt, and which also keeps us much more manageable as citizens, was replaced with solidarity, encouragement and anger. I started organizing with Strike Debt. We were trying to build a national outreach organizing effort, where we were mapping out the United States and trying to coordinate expanding Strike Debt into other cities. Some tensions came up in the group. A secret leadership started to emerge that wasn’t either functional or made explicit. I stepped away the last couple of months, but I think I’m going to go back pretty soon. As I understand, things are much better now.
Before that, I had never really shared how much debt I was in so openly. There was a lot of shame about that. It was really powerful to be able to stand up and talk about my debt and have people listen and know what I was going through, and also being there to hear other people speak of their own experiences of being in debt. I felt, along with others I spoke with who participated in these speak-outs, that it was transformative. The shame and loneliness we all experience with debt, and which also keeps us much more manageable as citizens, was replaced with solidarity, encouragement and anger. I started organizing with Strike Debt. We were trying to build a national outreach organizing effort, where we were mapping out the United States and trying to coordinate expanding Strike Debt into other cities. Some tensions came up in the group. A secret leadership started to emerge that wasn’t either functional or made explicit. I stepped away the last couple of months, but I think I’m going to go back pretty soon. As I understand, things are much better now.
It’s important for a lot of reasons. In the fall of 2011, I think it was important in a different way than it is now. In 2011, it felt like this rupture that was happening in the United States. I actually believed for a moment, maybe around October 15th, when everybody was up at Times Square, that it was actually going to tip toward a Tahrir Square kind of thing on a national scale. It seemed like it was happening that way. Then, it changed. Also, early on in that moment, the police violence brought more people out of their homes. It outraged them and brought them out in the street and together. Then after a certain moment, it started to slow down people coming out. I think it had a lot to do with scaring people off.
I feel like the momentum of Occupy is very different now. I think it’s still urgent that communities organize themselves, whether it’s under the umbrella of Occupy or something else. I see that that’s actually happening. That’s something I think that Occupy did. It got into people’s imaginations. We’re starting to see the fast food worker’s strike. People are finally coming out into the streets and saying no to what they’re upset about. I think that’s important. As far as Occupy proper, I always regarded Occupy as a verb, like, “We’re going to the park to occupy this space.” It was this big thing that happened, and I don’t think we’re in that moment anymore, but I still think it’s very important. I just think getting organized and radicalized and being vocal about what’s upsetting you and making community is really important, and I think Occupy provided one way of doing that. I think now there are so many doors available to do that, which many people either didn't see before, or simply didn't have the will to walk through.
I think it’s so important that people get more and more involved in their communities on all of these different levels, and I don’t know if Occupy is necessarily the one way to do it. I keep thinking back to when Žižek talked in the park. He said that we shouldn’t fall in love with ourselves. It was a really good talk. I interpreted it to mean that we shouldn’t get complacent about what’s happening here. This moment, we’ll either have to push it and build it or change the course a little bit. I feel like we’re at this moment now where we’re either changing the course or the course is changing for us. For another rupture like that to occur, I think it’s going to take more crisis, either economic and/or environmental. I see people still struggling with Hurricane Sandy, not just here in New York, but with the tornado that just happened in Oklahoma. I see people realizing that the State is not going to be there to help them as much as they thought it was. That’s an opportunity for people to find each other and organize. I think that’s happening in the States, but it’s going to take crisis upon crisis to pull masses out again. When it happens again, I hope it’s going to be bigger and more powerful than it was in 2011. I hope against evidence that it won’t be as violent with the State repression of it.
There’s so much wrong with the world. I don’t think as Americans we have any influence or navigation of how the State operates anymore. Maybe on the local level we have some effect on the very most local politics, but as far as the state level or the national level, we’re just completely removed from what happens. I actually gave a talk in Denmark last week about Occupy, and a 19-year-old student asked, “I don’t mean to be harsh, but isn’t it kind of like the United States isn’t even a democracy anymore? Isn’t it like a dictatorship?” I told her that yes it is something like that. We’ve seen little glimpses of it with how the police are. There is so much surveillance, and there is so little to work with when we are upset and want to change something. I think people in America feel powerless, and that powerlessness leads them to want to turn off and watch TV and put comfort above all else.
I feel like the momentum of Occupy is very different now. I think it’s still urgent that communities organize themselves, whether it’s under the umbrella of Occupy or something else. I see that that’s actually happening. That’s something I think that Occupy did. It got into people’s imaginations. We’re starting to see the fast food worker’s strike. People are finally coming out into the streets and saying no to what they’re upset about. I think that’s important. As far as Occupy proper, I always regarded Occupy as a verb, like, “We’re going to the park to occupy this space.” It was this big thing that happened, and I don’t think we’re in that moment anymore, but I still think it’s very important. I just think getting organized and radicalized and being vocal about what’s upsetting you and making community is really important, and I think Occupy provided one way of doing that. I think now there are so many doors available to do that, which many people either didn't see before, or simply didn't have the will to walk through.
I think it’s so important that people get more and more involved in their communities on all of these different levels, and I don’t know if Occupy is necessarily the one way to do it. I keep thinking back to when Žižek talked in the park. He said that we shouldn’t fall in love with ourselves. It was a really good talk. I interpreted it to mean that we shouldn’t get complacent about what’s happening here. This moment, we’ll either have to push it and build it or change the course a little bit. I feel like we’re at this moment now where we’re either changing the course or the course is changing for us. For another rupture like that to occur, I think it’s going to take more crisis, either economic and/or environmental. I see people still struggling with Hurricane Sandy, not just here in New York, but with the tornado that just happened in Oklahoma. I see people realizing that the State is not going to be there to help them as much as they thought it was. That’s an opportunity for people to find each other and organize. I think that’s happening in the States, but it’s going to take crisis upon crisis to pull masses out again. When it happens again, I hope it’s going to be bigger and more powerful than it was in 2011. I hope against evidence that it won’t be as violent with the State repression of it.
There’s so much wrong with the world. I don’t think as Americans we have any influence or navigation of how the State operates anymore. Maybe on the local level we have some effect on the very most local politics, but as far as the state level or the national level, we’re just completely removed from what happens. I actually gave a talk in Denmark last week about Occupy, and a 19-year-old student asked, “I don’t mean to be harsh, but isn’t it kind of like the United States isn’t even a democracy anymore? Isn’t it like a dictatorship?” I told her that yes it is something like that. We’ve seen little glimpses of it with how the police are. There is so much surveillance, and there is so little to work with when we are upset and want to change something. I think people in America feel powerless, and that powerlessness leads them to want to turn off and watch TV and put comfort above all else.
It’s also the economic injustice is so incredibly bad. I think a lot of us in 2008 thought Obama was going to take some steps to regulate it. I didn’t think he was going to fix it, but I thought he would take some steps, and it’s actually gotten worse. Then, these wars are just not ending. We have over 100 guys in Guantanamo who are on hunger strike, and then there are these drone strikes. We have a shooting in Connecticut that kills twenty some children, which is absolutely horrible. Then, the president comes on TV and cries about that and doesn’t address the fact that he’s killed over 140 Pakistani and Yemeni children. I think there is something so immoral and imbalanced about that.
There is so much that’s wrong. Myself, I have $145,000 in debt, and I’m married. My wife and I would like to have a baby, but we can’t think about doing that right now because we live in a world where you need money to survive and make a decent life for somebody, and we don’t have money. It would be ideal if we could create a better world where you don’t need money to survive, but we’re far from that. That’s another thing that’s important. It shouldn’t only be about what is wrong and what we’re so upset about, but it should also be about getting in touch with what’s good about people and building communities based on that and creating networks of mutual aid and care that isn’t inherent to our experience growing up in America. I was just in Northern Europe, and the trains operate on time, and there’s not litter on the ground, not because people are paid to clean it up, but it’s because people just don’t throw litter on the ground because they care about the world that they live in. Then, there’s socialized medicine and free education. Things are not working well here. It’s very dysfunctional and thoroughly corrupt to the core. With us or without us, I think things are going to fall apart anyway, so it’s good that we’re getting practice of making a different way of living.
I’ve noticed on TV and in film, there is so much focus on zombies and this apocalyptic scenario. It’s so popular in popular culture right now, and I think it’s because most people can’t imagine a world outside of the way things are right now. We are so disconnected with the way things are that we have these fantasies about these apocalyptic scenarios. I wonder, what if the apocalypse isn’t zombies walking around the street eating people? What if it’s something beautiful like gardening all over the world? What if it’s a world without electricity dependent on fossil fuels? I think both scenarios are equally fantastical in a lot of ways. I don’t know, it seems like if there is some cataclysmic event, it could bring about some really dark things, but I’m hoping for the other, for something better.
I think we need a world where it’s less competitive and more cooperative. I do think we need to live in a more communized kind of way, where we’re working for the common good of each other, where in helping your neighbor out, there is something inherently beneficial in that for yourself. Liberals and folks who, more honestly, identify as being on the right, tend to dismiss communism for its failures, and the violence in its wake, while comfortably ignoring the abject failures and horrific violence in the wake of capitalism and "western democracy." It's as if we have to be in a perpetual imperialist war and destroy the environment, while letting people starve, go without medical treatment and education, or have Stalinist famines and labor camps. That's not what I have in mind when I think about communism.
I have a hard time envisioning what the world I want to see looks like on a global scale or a national scale, or rather how we get there from here. I’ve seen it on small scales. I’ve seen it not just in Occupy, but in little communes where people buy a piece of land and share it together. I’ve seen it work on a micro level. I have a hard time envisioning it on the macro level. I should work on that more because the dark and apocalyptic vision is so clear and out there already in the fantasy land of popular culture. There are enough AIDS drugs in the world right now to ensure that nobody dies of it, but people are still dying everyday on a massive scale in Africa. We have all of this potentially beneficial technology in medicine there and ready to be used, but people don’t have access to it. I think healthcare is so important and an essential component to what a better world looks like.
I have a hard time envisioning what the world I want to see looks like on a global scale or a national scale, or rather how we get there from here. I’ve seen it on small scales. I’ve seen it not just in Occupy, but in little communes where people buy a piece of land and share it together. I’ve seen it work on a micro level. I have a hard time envisioning it on the macro level. I should work on that more because the dark and apocalyptic vision is so clear and out there already in the fantasy land of popular culture. There are enough AIDS drugs in the world right now to ensure that nobody dies of it, but people are still dying everyday on a massive scale in Africa. We have all of this potentially beneficial technology in medicine there and ready to be used, but people don’t have access to it. I think healthcare is so important and an essential component to what a better world looks like.
I think we’ll always be focused on survival, but I think we’ll be doing it in a much more efficient and beneficial way and in a way that isn’t excluding people, like in the global south or in parts of town, which aren't so privileged. It will be integrated on a global scale and a local scale. I just imagine things being a lot greener and a lot less spectacular as far as advertising and electricity and media. I just imagine a slower, quieter, softer world, that’s not as competitive. I like thinking about all of this architecture we’re around being toppled and something more integrated with the planet coming in its place, or using what’s in existence without using too much power to make everything run.
I just got back from Denmark. I had been there before. There’s a squat/ commune in Copenhagen called Christiania that’s about forty years old. Squatters took over part of the city a long time ago, and they just maintained it. People live in these apartments that were empty, but there’s not any electricity pumping through them. Maybe there’s a little bit where they have bicycle generators to keep a lamp going or to make dinner. From what I've been told, it’s not presently the most ideal situation because there’s also a really heavy hash trade going on in there that’s influenced by outside forces, but for the longest time, people have just maintained this community with their own work and their own resistance against the State. For like forty years, they’ve made it work out. Recently, there's been some tension between the State and the commune.
I don’t know if tent cities like we saw in Zuccotti Park are really sustainable either. As human beings come together, we do need to have some kind of infrastructure with plumming and running water, but I think it could be done in a much more quieter and less spectacular way, not even being more in touch with nature, but less of trying to be so separate and protected from it. It’s not so much getting back to nature but less technological dependence. I’d like to see a world where people aren’t staring at their cell phones everywhere they go. I think that alienates us. I’d like to see us be more in touch with each other on a daily basis.
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/