Photo: Stacy Lanyon
Growing up in Brooklyn, I grew up in the struggle. As long
as I can remember, I’ve been struggling to pay the rent, pay the bills, keep
the lights on. You look around, and you realize that everyone else is
struggling too. Unfortunately, a lot of people who struggle seem to have this fantasy that they
can vote for someone, and that will improve their situation. I used to think
that way too. Then, I started paying attention. If you look at these politicians you vote for, they all come from the
financial industry. They all come from big business. They all come from
corporate America. Their biggest donors are from corporate America, and their
interest is the opposite of yours. Their interest is to keep you down, to keep
you desperate, so that you’ll work for five dollars an hour, work part-time
seasonal jobs, just scraping by. That’s pretty much how they want your life to
be. If you look at the progressive changes of the past, like Roosevelt’s New Deal,
Johnson’s Great Society, they had serious protest movements, serious
resistance in the streets in order to force the change. I’m hoping we can bring
back something like that. Even if we can’t get the complete anarchist new
world. Even if we can’t reorganize society, at least we could help reform it,
make it more people friendly.
I first heard of Occupy when the girls got pepper sprayed in
September 2011. I was supposed to go to the march on the Brooklyn Bridge, but
it was my day off. I work hard. I was tired, so I didn’t make it down, but the
next day I heard about the 700 arrests, and I had to come. I’ve been involved ever
since. There was just an energy. Life was so different inside the park. It was
like you completely left the system when you went inside the park. You went to
a place that was freer, more open. People cooperated, worked together. I’m a
paramedic, so I’m trying to use my skills to help the movement. I’m just trying
to provide a safer environment for the protesters.
It’s important because things are not working out for none
of us. Our entire lives, society, the country, the economy are all going down
the drain. Our situation is just getting worse and worse. People on the top,
the financial elite, that’s exactly what they want. That’s exactly what they’re
working for. If you look, everything they do is designed to try and keep us
down, designed to try and keep wages low, designed to lessen our power and our
rights, so I’m trying to just start a new way of thinking where we can actually
organize and challenge them.
I work in health care, so I see the difference between
people who have money and don’t have money, the difference in the care they
get. I’ve seen the old folk’s home for poor people. They’re really miserable
places. You see the rooms they give in hospitals for people who have the fancy
insurance plans with the nice views and friendlier staff. You really see in
health care how your life is not as important as their money. You see how
everything is weighed according to their profits, not according to your
interests. It’s really sad. You also see the oppression that goes on in low
income neighborhoods. You see the policing. You really see how there is so much stacked against people who are
really struggling to move up in life. The system is really not working for people anymore. I think it’s time we work
on building a new one and not rely on someone to build it for us.
I want to see a more democratic society, where we can figure
out what’s best for us, as opposed to other people with other interests on top
trying to figure out what’s best for us, which is really what’s best for them.
I want people being involved with decision making, people just coming
together to decide what we really need, without having some structure somewhere
else deciding for us, instead of having other structures subjugate us. I see
that bringing more equality, a more just society, more opportunities, a
happier, easier life. I think in a society structured more like Zuccotti Park,
people will be able to free their talents and creativity. They’ll be less
bogged down with survival and more free to explore any talent they might have.
If they want to study medicine, they could. They don’t have to come up with
100.000 or 200,000 to do it. If they have the will, they could just do it. They
don’t have to have all of these structures holding them down.
I think it will change everything. People who are inclined for certain fields, they could release their creative energies and focus on them and contribute more to society. It would look like freedom, free people coming together and making collective decisions. We would no longer be slave to capital. We would no longer have to fit in a mold. It would change relationships, make them less about subjugation, make people communicate on an equal level, without people looking down on other people because of social class, where people are free to explore their talents and creativity. We don't know what a person could do having that kind of opportunity to really look inside themselves.
In a more just and equal society, nobody would need to steal from each other. I look around at this park and look at these trees, and I’m like, “These could all be apple trees and pear trees, and you could just walk through the park and collect free resources." The reason these are not apple trees and not pear trees is because someone else needs to get rich off of you. They need to have their own little market cornered and have you dependent. In a more free society, similar to what we had in Zuccotti, everybody would be more independent. They won’t be made as cogs in someone else’s machine. Everyone would be free to pursue their own interests, to add to the world.
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 think it will change everything. People who are inclined for certain fields, they could release their creative energies and focus on them and contribute more to society. It would look like freedom, free people coming together and making collective decisions. We would no longer be slave to capital. We would no longer have to fit in a mold. It would change relationships, make them less about subjugation, make people communicate on an equal level, without people looking down on other people because of social class, where people are free to explore their talents and creativity. We don't know what a person could do having that kind of opportunity to really look inside themselves.
In a more just and equal society, nobody would need to steal from each other. I look around at this park and look at these trees, and I’m like, “These could all be apple trees and pear trees, and you could just walk through the park and collect free resources." The reason these are not apple trees and not pear trees is because someone else needs to get rich off of you. They need to have their own little market cornered and have you dependent. In a more free society, similar to what we had in Zuccotti, everybody would be more independent. They won’t be made as cogs in someone else’s machine. Everyone would be free to pursue their own interests, to add to the world.
Interview by Stacy Lanyon
http://buildingcompassionthroughaction.blogspot.com/
https://www.facebook.com/stacylanyon
https://instagram.com/stacylanyon/
https://twitter.com/StacyLanyon
http://stacylanyon.com/