Photo: Stacy Lanyon
My relationship with Reverend Billy’s Stop Shopping Choir
draws me to a lot of exciting things as an artist and activist. It’s
interesting that I’m subscribed to Adbusters, but the email about Occupy
somehow mysteriously ended up in my spam folder. When everyone was talking
about Occupy, I was like, “What? Why did I miss that memo?” I have always been a lifetime activist, as long as I can remember. I remember being
five years old and raising a stink because of the flesh colored crayon in the
big box of Crayola’s. I was a little girl in Detroit. Almost everyone
around me was not that color that they labeled as flesh. It wasn’t
out of anger. It was just out of awareness, and what you would think is common
sense, “But wait a minute, that’s not my flesh color.” The way that I see the
world has always been an awareness of what’s fair or what I consider common
sense.
As black women being in the cross hairs of so many different types of subjugation, we do tend to speak out more or notice things more because we’re dealing with several different isms. That’s why we’re often labeled and dismissed as angry black women, even when I express it as sweetly or calmly or matter of factly as I think I am to you right now. Why do I have to be labeled as angry? What about the fact that there are legitimate things to be angry about? So Occupy Wall Street was a no brainer to me. I felt like, "Yes! Finally let’s get into the streets!" Participating in Occupy was a way that we could all come together and meet in real time, in the flesh, and literally, physically occupy with an idea. That was really exciting.
As black women being in the cross hairs of so many different types of subjugation, we do tend to speak out more or notice things more because we’re dealing with several different isms. That’s why we’re often labeled and dismissed as angry black women, even when I express it as sweetly or calmly or matter of factly as I think I am to you right now. Why do I have to be labeled as angry? What about the fact that there are legitimate things to be angry about? So Occupy Wall Street was a no brainer to me. I felt like, "Yes! Finally let’s get into the streets!" Participating in Occupy was a way that we could all come together and meet in real time, in the flesh, and literally, physically occupy with an idea. That was really exciting.
What I regret is that I didn’t get to spend more time at the Occupation. It
was just the timing of my life at the moment. I was going through a transition
that disrupted a lot of where I thought my life was going. On the other hand, I
think it was really cool that that happened because when I did
participate, when I was down at Zuccotti Park, the intensity that I gave it—knowing that it was going to be temporary for me—made it that much more
memorable and poignant. I made a point of contributing as much as I could with my limited time and ability. I personally donated two to three bags of books
to the library. I printed out all of these little tags that said "Occupy Wall
Street Library," so that we
could have a system, so that we could create some order and identity to our
movement.
That’s all the more reason that I was so deeply, personally wounded and offended when I learned that they dumped our whole library into dumpsters. To me, that is an affront to more than just Occupy Wall Street. You are disrespecting people’s desire for an access to knowledge, to educate themselves, to share information. It’s grander than this one incident. Bloomberg is attempting to sell off the Carnegie libraries to his crony developers. They’re trying to turn them into luxury condos and hotels. They’re trying to do it to the 42nd Street library. They’re doing it to the Brooklyn Heights library, and there are quite a few others that are lined up on the auction box. They want to turn this world into a big luxury high-rise. They don’t care if they destroy everything interesting because they’re not interesting people. Their experience is buying rather than creating. They probably even bought their way into whatever jobs that they have by virtue of who they knew and what they already had.
What’s considered interesting to them is so far removed from what real people find interesting unless they have been indoctrinated by the mainstream media that tells people that they have to be more like the 1% to be somebody or be interesting rather than being a regular working class hero, like that John Lennon song. That should be the national anthem! Or how about Ray Charles, who wanted to turn "America the Beautiful" into our national anthem, a song that really talks about the physical beauty of this country in its entirety. It’s not about war. It’s not about bombs. Of course, they wouldn’t want that to be the anthem because what are they doing to this country? What are they doing to creation? They’re fracking and raping and pillaging with pipelines and tar sands mountain top removal, and they keep us blind on purpose.
Everybody, as far as I’m concerned, is a child slave to the 1%. We’re all property. Property and people are just a dollar tag to them. What are we worth? Because I have a personal legacy coming from the people who were treated like chattel slaves, I’m hypersensitive to the way that affects everyone else. The older I get, and the harder I work, I feel less ashamed. In fact, I don’t think any of us should be ashamed of our ancestors. I’m proud to say that I am the descendant of enslaved Africans because we survived, because we are resourceful, because my work ethic runs circles around the average person, and yet I understand that as the saying goes that my parents passed onto me, that was passed onto them, "We have to work twice as hard to get half as much." I’ve always lived in this world view where I’m trapped between these two ideologies of what I’m capable of versus what they say I’m capable of receiving.
In order to receive that ideal, there’s some compromise that you have to make with your consciousness if you want to be rich or famous or whatever the benchmark of success is in this country. It’s usually riches or fame, preferably both. I’m not that motivated to be famous like I thought I was when I was younger. We are all trained to want to be famous. There’s a great documentary called Starsuckers that talks about how we are indoctrinated to want to aspire to be like the people in the tabloids. Because of the activist life that I lead, if something should happen that makes me a bigger name or a bigger player on the world stage, of course they’ll try and demonize me. Of course they’ll try and scandalize me, but the thing that makes me more powerful is that I own everything that I’ve done without apology, and that’s what I think true freedom is. I’m living my life on my terms, and not their expectations.
That’s all the more reason that I was so deeply, personally wounded and offended when I learned that they dumped our whole library into dumpsters. To me, that is an affront to more than just Occupy Wall Street. You are disrespecting people’s desire for an access to knowledge, to educate themselves, to share information. It’s grander than this one incident. Bloomberg is attempting to sell off the Carnegie libraries to his crony developers. They’re trying to turn them into luxury condos and hotels. They’re trying to do it to the 42nd Street library. They’re doing it to the Brooklyn Heights library, and there are quite a few others that are lined up on the auction box. They want to turn this world into a big luxury high-rise. They don’t care if they destroy everything interesting because they’re not interesting people. Their experience is buying rather than creating. They probably even bought their way into whatever jobs that they have by virtue of who they knew and what they already had.
What’s considered interesting to them is so far removed from what real people find interesting unless they have been indoctrinated by the mainstream media that tells people that they have to be more like the 1% to be somebody or be interesting rather than being a regular working class hero, like that John Lennon song. That should be the national anthem! Or how about Ray Charles, who wanted to turn "America the Beautiful" into our national anthem, a song that really talks about the physical beauty of this country in its entirety. It’s not about war. It’s not about bombs. Of course, they wouldn’t want that to be the anthem because what are they doing to this country? What are they doing to creation? They’re fracking and raping and pillaging with pipelines and tar sands mountain top removal, and they keep us blind on purpose.
Everybody, as far as I’m concerned, is a child slave to the 1%. We’re all property. Property and people are just a dollar tag to them. What are we worth? Because I have a personal legacy coming from the people who were treated like chattel slaves, I’m hypersensitive to the way that affects everyone else. The older I get, and the harder I work, I feel less ashamed. In fact, I don’t think any of us should be ashamed of our ancestors. I’m proud to say that I am the descendant of enslaved Africans because we survived, because we are resourceful, because my work ethic runs circles around the average person, and yet I understand that as the saying goes that my parents passed onto me, that was passed onto them, "We have to work twice as hard to get half as much." I’ve always lived in this world view where I’m trapped between these two ideologies of what I’m capable of versus what they say I’m capable of receiving.
In order to receive that ideal, there’s some compromise that you have to make with your consciousness if you want to be rich or famous or whatever the benchmark of success is in this country. It’s usually riches or fame, preferably both. I’m not that motivated to be famous like I thought I was when I was younger. We are all trained to want to be famous. There’s a great documentary called Starsuckers that talks about how we are indoctrinated to want to aspire to be like the people in the tabloids. Because of the activist life that I lead, if something should happen that makes me a bigger name or a bigger player on the world stage, of course they’ll try and demonize me. Of course they’ll try and scandalize me, but the thing that makes me more powerful is that I own everything that I’ve done without apology, and that’s what I think true freedom is. I’m living my life on my terms, and not their expectations.
I felt like Zuccotti Park was a big, beautiful analogy of the American dream at its most basic sense. When I went back
home to San Antonio for my hiatus, I participated in a performance in which my
monologue was being a tour guide of Liberty Square for the people who weren’t
physically there. I explained that it has everything that anyone wants. "There’s
a place to eat, a place to sleep, a place to get comfort when you need it, a
place to express yourself, a place to be entertained, a place to get
information, a place where you can learn, a place to document and share media
and stories, casual conversations here and there. You could participate as
fully or as little as you want, and then most importantly, there is a place
where people can congregate and make decisions collectively."
Everything was transparent at Occupy. Maybe an individual somewhere had an agenda, but I don’t think that interfered with the bigger picture, and if there was someone with a nefarious agenda, it was probably an agent provocateur. I've got a great story. One day I was there, and some man was holding a sign that was anti-semitic. It was probably an agent provocateur. Someone did a mic-check: “We have a situation. We have this sign. How do we handle it?” There was a huddle, and we were like, “We can ask him to go away, but we’re not about censoring because that’s what people do to us.” One guy says, “How about I hold a sign next to him that says ‘Agent Provocateur’ with an arrow.” I said, "Yeah, but also people are recording audio as well. With all of this documentation that’s going on, how do we collectively express our disassociation with this message?”
Then I started thinking about what we do with the choir. We use music. You have to use humor. So I said, “Why don’t we do a sing along? You all follow me.” So we go over there, and I start singing, “Kumbaya, my Lord, we love Jews. Kumbaya, my Lord, we love Jews...” and we just kept singing it and singing it. People were cracking up, and he went away. People deferred their attention from him to us, and the dude went away. I found that really powerful that I was able to come up with a solution on the fly that was gentle, that was loving, that was even whimsical and funny. I felt like that was an analogy for the way we can handle a lot of the problems in the world, which is why being in the choir feels so right and natural for me. We’re totally out there, but we’re on it. We’re really onto something.
Everything was transparent at Occupy. Maybe an individual somewhere had an agenda, but I don’t think that interfered with the bigger picture, and if there was someone with a nefarious agenda, it was probably an agent provocateur. I've got a great story. One day I was there, and some man was holding a sign that was anti-semitic. It was probably an agent provocateur. Someone did a mic-check: “We have a situation. We have this sign. How do we handle it?” There was a huddle, and we were like, “We can ask him to go away, but we’re not about censoring because that’s what people do to us.” One guy says, “How about I hold a sign next to him that says ‘Agent Provocateur’ with an arrow.” I said, "Yeah, but also people are recording audio as well. With all of this documentation that’s going on, how do we collectively express our disassociation with this message?”
Then I started thinking about what we do with the choir. We use music. You have to use humor. So I said, “Why don’t we do a sing along? You all follow me.” So we go over there, and I start singing, “Kumbaya, my Lord, we love Jews. Kumbaya, my Lord, we love Jews...” and we just kept singing it and singing it. People were cracking up, and he went away. People deferred their attention from him to us, and the dude went away. I found that really powerful that I was able to come up with a solution on the fly that was gentle, that was loving, that was even whimsical and funny. I felt like that was an analogy for the way we can handle a lot of the problems in the world, which is why being in the choir feels so right and natural for me. We’re totally out there, but we’re on it. We’re really onto something.
I think the reason why it's so important to do this really depends on
the individual because there are so many battles to be fought right now. I feel
like for all the money and ammo and bullets and bullshit that goes on
overseas, it's nothing compared to the social, cultural, political,
environmental attack that everyday people in America and elsewhere don’t even know that they’re
under. It’s guerrilla warfare. They’re hiding in the bushes waiting for you to tripwire, so they can annihilate you. That’s how it
feels right now with this widening chasm between the rich and the poor. In some ways, it doesn’t feel that
much different to me because when you come from a community of color, a working
class community of color, it’s pretty much the same.
Now, the squeeze is being felt by people who thought they were safe, people who thought they were protected, people who thought they had privilege by virtue of their ancestry, the color of their skin, the color of their eyes, the texture of their hair, the job title they had, the gated community they lived in, or whatever. People are realizing that it’s really a binary in this country. Either you’re for or against. Either you’re in or you’re out. Either you’re rich or you’re poor, and there are people who are really traumatized because they’re finding out for the first time in their lives, “Oh, I’m poor?” “My education won’t save me?” “My whiteness won’t save me?” “My maleness won’t save me?” “My fill in the blank won’t save me?” So what we need is more solidarity across the isms. There are more of us than them, and the thing about it is I’d really love it if it wasn’t an us and them. The world needs to be a we.
I have a friend who’s a 1%er. He works in what is considered to be to be the evil empire. Even though he comes from working class roots, he’s lived that elite lifestyle for so long that I think that he’s disconnected, and even then when he grew up with that middle America existence, he still didn’t realize the privilege he had. We went to see a movie together called Inequality for All, and we talked about it afterwards over cocktails. He talked about how things were so much better in the fifties. I had to remind him that even in the fifties when there was a vibrant middle class that my community was deliberately shut out. I asked him, "If we couldn’t even have that then, where do you expect us to be now?We’re obviously resourceful and intelligent people, but the way that we’re judged and perceived simply because of who our ancestors were makes a big difference in the opportunities that are available to us," and he realized that he really could not say anything to that, so his entire argument became null and void, and then he changed the subject. There’s a lot of uncomfortable things that people don’t want to talk about. We’ve been living in this discomfort for far too long.
When I asked him, “What about the minimum wage? It should be raised.” He said, “Well yeah, but what you don’t understand is that, exponentially, when you give everybody a raise, it cost the company a lot of money.” I’m like, “Well, okay, isn't that the point of having a company, so that the people that work there can survive? What about the CEO taking less, so that people can have a little bit more?” Then, he started going on with, “Well, what about the stock holders?” It’s the system, and he’s complicit with the system. He’s not a bad person, but he’s in the system. It’s good that we’re in each other’s lives. I point out these realities to him. He teases me about my activist arrests, which makes me realize that I wear all of my arrests with pride. If my ancestors had been afraid to get arrested, I wouldn’t be able to stand here and get arrested.
Now, the squeeze is being felt by people who thought they were safe, people who thought they were protected, people who thought they had privilege by virtue of their ancestry, the color of their skin, the color of their eyes, the texture of their hair, the job title they had, the gated community they lived in, or whatever. People are realizing that it’s really a binary in this country. Either you’re for or against. Either you’re in or you’re out. Either you’re rich or you’re poor, and there are people who are really traumatized because they’re finding out for the first time in their lives, “Oh, I’m poor?” “My education won’t save me?” “My whiteness won’t save me?” “My maleness won’t save me?” “My fill in the blank won’t save me?” So what we need is more solidarity across the isms. There are more of us than them, and the thing about it is I’d really love it if it wasn’t an us and them. The world needs to be a we.
I have a friend who’s a 1%er. He works in what is considered to be to be the evil empire. Even though he comes from working class roots, he’s lived that elite lifestyle for so long that I think that he’s disconnected, and even then when he grew up with that middle America existence, he still didn’t realize the privilege he had. We went to see a movie together called Inequality for All, and we talked about it afterwards over cocktails. He talked about how things were so much better in the fifties. I had to remind him that even in the fifties when there was a vibrant middle class that my community was deliberately shut out. I asked him, "If we couldn’t even have that then, where do you expect us to be now?We’re obviously resourceful and intelligent people, but the way that we’re judged and perceived simply because of who our ancestors were makes a big difference in the opportunities that are available to us," and he realized that he really could not say anything to that, so his entire argument became null and void, and then he changed the subject. There’s a lot of uncomfortable things that people don’t want to talk about. We’ve been living in this discomfort for far too long.
When I asked him, “What about the minimum wage? It should be raised.” He said, “Well yeah, but what you don’t understand is that, exponentially, when you give everybody a raise, it cost the company a lot of money.” I’m like, “Well, okay, isn't that the point of having a company, so that the people that work there can survive? What about the CEO taking less, so that people can have a little bit more?” Then, he started going on with, “Well, what about the stock holders?” It’s the system, and he’s complicit with the system. He’s not a bad person, but he’s in the system. It’s good that we’re in each other’s lives. I point out these realities to him. He teases me about my activist arrests, which makes me realize that I wear all of my arrests with pride. If my ancestors had been afraid to get arrested, I wouldn’t be able to stand here and get arrested.
I hope to bring about a world where people are not afraid to
challenge what they’ve been taught and how they’ve been raised. I grew up under the fear of the Cold
War. It’s interesting how it was so palpable and so real, and yet now it feels
so distant. I don’t think the crisis that we’re in now is any less
urgent than the perceived one during the Cold War. I feel like the Cold War was
manufactured, and everybody bought into it. The urgency of the state of our
environment first and our economy second is incredibly urgent, and there is so
much denial.
I’d like to see a world where everybody just cleaned up after themselves. My father was a combat medic in Vietnam. My mother cleaned for a living. I have no shame in what either of my parents did. They cleaned the world, and they saved lives. I am the daughter of two very altruistic people, so it’s in my DNA to be a selfless person. I’d like to see a world where people find out what their personal mission is, outside of themselves and their own four walls and their own family. I want people to give more than they take, produce more than they consume. If people just want to have that simple life, I don’t think that there should be anything wrong with that. They’re no less valor in that. Just be a good simple person, and realize that all life on earth is really valuable. All life on earth shouldn't be in jeopardy because of the greed of a few.
I’d like to see a world where everybody just cleaned up after themselves. My father was a combat medic in Vietnam. My mother cleaned for a living. I have no shame in what either of my parents did. They cleaned the world, and they saved lives. I am the daughter of two very altruistic people, so it’s in my DNA to be a selfless person. I’d like to see a world where people find out what their personal mission is, outside of themselves and their own four walls and their own family. I want people to give more than they take, produce more than they consume. If people just want to have that simple life, I don’t think that there should be anything wrong with that. They’re no less valor in that. Just be a good simple person, and realize that all life on earth is really valuable. All life on earth shouldn't be in jeopardy because of the greed of a few.
Imagine people crying more tears of joy than
sadness. I’m a softy. I walk around the world wide-open to the point where it hurts sometimes because I want to give so much. Imagine
a world where everybody just wants to help each other, where everybody’s
needs are met. I’m crying now because it’s not easy for me to not cry. Ever
since I was a kid, my family called me a cry baby and a chatterbox. Tears of
joy are really beautiful and sacred, and it’s an honor when they come through.
The only time I feel embarrassed about it is when it ruins my eye make-up...Imagine a world where everybody creates the life that they want, where there is no one who sees us merely as dollar signs and tools, but where we all see each other as whole human beings, no matter what role we play in the world. People would
probably need a lot less medication. There would be so much more color and art
in the world. We would be creating new cultures, while we honor the original
ones at the same time. Imagine love transcending boundaries of age and color
and gender and knowing that when you see people together, no matter what, there
is love there, even among strangers.
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/