Photo: Stacy Lanyon
My brother had been going to the park since the first or
second day, and he said, “You have to go to Zuccotti Park.” I could tell from
the tone of his voice that there was an urgency there. We’re pretty simpatico,
my brother and I, so I got down there almost as soon as he told me to. What
drew me was this atmosphere, this kind of newness that was evident when I got
there. People were having conversations. A new community developed there. You would
read people’s signs, and the signs covered such a range of different issues.
Maybe the most touching was a family of five. They each had a sign, and the
father’s sign said, “I just lost my job with no benefits.” Then, the wife had a sign
that said, “How am I going to feed my children?” Then, the kids had signs like,
“We’re hungry. Where’s our next meal coming from?” So you saw the desperation.
There was such a mix of joy and pain. There was hope. One of the coolest things to see at Zuccotti for me was families with young kids because that brought hope that the next generation was going to get it and carry on the spirit that was there. One of the first groups of people I ran into was an orthodox Jewish man who had brought his three daughters, and they were like three, five and seven. I asked him why he brought his daughters. He didn’t answer. He asked his older daughter, “Why are we here?” She said, “Because a few people have a lot, but a lot of people don’t have very much or have nothing.” That was very touching. That was my first day there. Then, I just felt compelled to go back again and again. I liked the feeling of hope.
Although I didn’t sleep over at the park, I would go down whenever I could. It was so inspiring to see all of the young people active in creating that. It just really blew my mind to see that. I’m forty-six, and I was never really involved with protesting or activism. I feel like I was late to the game. I also ran into a number of older people who had been doing activism their whole lives, and just to see the hope in their eyes was priceless. People would say, “I’ve been waiting for this.” When people in their fifties or sixties looked at these kids in their twenties so active in this, that hope really became palpable. I think hope is the main thing that I took away. Zuccotti was an amazing place, and I think two years later a lot of people are still feeling that loss and trying to figure out where we go from there.
I think that we’re really at such an important time, not just in American history, but in world history. I think there’s an awakening that’s taking place. It’s important because there’s a shift in mentality that has to take place. I think we have to shift away from materialism and shallowness and commercialism. One interesting idea for me is the idea of patriotism—who’s patriotic and who isn’t. I’m tired of false patriotism. I’ll give you an example of the hypocrisy that takes place. I work at a school with a couple of guys who are staunch republicans. They were ragging on Obamacare and the welfare system recently. The hypocrisy is that they both manage to manipulate the system. They’re both in a strong union, and they’ve gone out on disability. They’ve got lawsuits pending against the school. They’re talking about abuse of the welfare system, and they’re doing the same thing. I’m tired of people that wrap themselves in the flag and wrap themselves in religion. Then, someone like me isn't considered patriotic because I imagine something different, because I imagine that a better world is possible.
There was such a mix of joy and pain. There was hope. One of the coolest things to see at Zuccotti for me was families with young kids because that brought hope that the next generation was going to get it and carry on the spirit that was there. One of the first groups of people I ran into was an orthodox Jewish man who had brought his three daughters, and they were like three, five and seven. I asked him why he brought his daughters. He didn’t answer. He asked his older daughter, “Why are we here?” She said, “Because a few people have a lot, but a lot of people don’t have very much or have nothing.” That was very touching. That was my first day there. Then, I just felt compelled to go back again and again. I liked the feeling of hope.
Although I didn’t sleep over at the park, I would go down whenever I could. It was so inspiring to see all of the young people active in creating that. It just really blew my mind to see that. I’m forty-six, and I was never really involved with protesting or activism. I feel like I was late to the game. I also ran into a number of older people who had been doing activism their whole lives, and just to see the hope in their eyes was priceless. People would say, “I’ve been waiting for this.” When people in their fifties or sixties looked at these kids in their twenties so active in this, that hope really became palpable. I think hope is the main thing that I took away. Zuccotti was an amazing place, and I think two years later a lot of people are still feeling that loss and trying to figure out where we go from there.
I think that we’re really at such an important time, not just in American history, but in world history. I think there’s an awakening that’s taking place. It’s important because there’s a shift in mentality that has to take place. I think we have to shift away from materialism and shallowness and commercialism. One interesting idea for me is the idea of patriotism—who’s patriotic and who isn’t. I’m tired of false patriotism. I’ll give you an example of the hypocrisy that takes place. I work at a school with a couple of guys who are staunch republicans. They were ragging on Obamacare and the welfare system recently. The hypocrisy is that they both manage to manipulate the system. They’re both in a strong union, and they’ve gone out on disability. They’ve got lawsuits pending against the school. They’re talking about abuse of the welfare system, and they’re doing the same thing. I’m tired of people that wrap themselves in the flag and wrap themselves in religion. Then, someone like me isn't considered patriotic because I imagine something different, because I imagine that a better world is possible.
The first word that comes to mind when I think about what’s
wrong with the world is greed. It makes me think of the song If It's Magic by Stevie Wonder. The last line says "For there's enough for everyone.” I think that sums
it up. There’s enough for everyone. How come everyone isn’t getting nourished?
How come everyone doesn’t get a chance to thrive? I guess we’re just trying to
address that imbalance and trying to level it. It’s a very daunting task. No
matter where you go on earth, I think that’s what the problem is. I think it’s greed
and people not thinking outside of their circle.
If you’re a billionaire, your son or your daughter is going to inherit your business. They’re going to be billionaires. They’re going to keep the same policies, the same ideas. From generation to generation, that will continue until something interrupts it. I don’t think we can be hyper-critical of them. They live in an entirely different world. As F. Scott Fitzgerald said at the very beginning of the Great Gatsby, “Let me tell you about the very rich. They are very different from you and me.” I think their wealth becomes their identity. I remember working with a guy. He grew up on one of the Caribbean islands. His father was very influential in the government, and he was very rich. Then, the government was overthrown, and he ended up having to work at Home Depot. I remember him saying to me, “There is nothing as brutal as being as wealthy as I was and now being lower-middle class.” He was working full-time at Home Depot, and he was working full-time at UPS. He would go from one to the other. He’d work sixteen hours a day. He was running like a hamster on a wheel trying to get back to that. There was nothing worse in his eyes than taking a drop in strata.
I think for people who are filthy rich it’s not even good enough to stay at that level. If they’re a millionaire, they want to be a billionaire. I think for a lot of them it goes from money to power. This idea that we need to keep getting more has been ingrained into us. We have to keep acquiring. We have to work constantly chasing that. It’s an unquenchable hunger. One of the most valuable things that I’ve learned is to stop watching TV. When you unplug from what they're feeding us, you free yourself from that oppressive influence. It's gotten so oppressive that you can't even escape it when you go to a sports game. If you go to a MET game, the camera has always got to find a service member and put them up on the big screen. You have to sing God Bless America. There's advertising everywhere you look. It’s ridiculous. It’s just the wrapping up of God and country and materialism. I just want to watch a baseball game. It feels like you can’t really do that anymore. They’re doing a great job cramming all that stuff in our heads.
I work at a United Nations school. A lot of the kids are very wealthy, and that’s how they identify. I have students come up to me and ask what kind of phone I have, what kind of car I drive. That might be the first question out of their mouth. They don’t seem to understand that they're a child of a wealthy ambassador, and I’m a security guard. They expect me to be driving a Mercedes-Benz. They don’t comprehend disparity of wealth. What I hear a lot when I speak to some of the teachers there and even some of the parents is that they grew up in a bubble, and they don’t realize what the hell is going on. The school is near Jamaica, Queens. It’s a great example of how in Queens two communities can be juxtaposed, and one can be affluent, and you walk a few blocks, and you’re in a lower middle class neighborhood.
I remember one of the girls. Her mother was the vice president of the UN. This girl was in eighth grade. She had lived a sheltered existence. She had never gone on the subway. One of her classmates had a birthday party, so she and a bunch of her classmates went into the city to a restaurant for this birthday party. I saw her the next morning, and she said, “Oh my god, it was so ghetto down there. I thought I was going to get mugged.” The girl was from Africa, which kind of added a little irony to it because she was talking about African Americans from her neighborhood, who lived a handful of blocks from where she lived. After she graduated, she moved back to Africa, which has wealth disparity just like we do. She probably lived a sheltered existence over there as well. This is just one example of the cluelessness that can exist. It’s a huge part of the problem. People aren’t aware. These kids aren’t aware. They don’t understand that the lives that they lead are the exception, not the rule. They have food drives sometimes, but it’s done in a disconnected way. They’ll bring in canned goods, and that’s where the involvement ends. They don’t get a chance to look into the faces of who is getting the food. They don’t make that human connection.
The world I want to see is one with more heightened awareness. I wish people would not be so lazy in seeking their information. Don’t go to the corner store and pick up the Daily News and think, “This is the world.” It really isn’t anything close to the world. What's going on with Kim Kardashian or Jay-Z is not what's going on in the world. Getting involved with Occupy has opened my eyes to this type of celebrity culture. That thing they run in People magazine that says they are just like us, that kills me. I think they want us to believe that that could be us, that we could be multi-millionaires. But why is that the goal? One of the things that I really dug at the park was that when a “celebrity” would show up, there was just a collective shrug. It wasn’t like, “Oh let me get your autograph.” It was like, “Okay, we’re all hanging out. We’re all equal here.” I just want an elevated consciousness for everybody.
My brother said that he felt like he had learned more in one year than he had all through college. In this age of technology, you can choose the way you educate yourself, whether it’s formal education or whether you seek education online. Hopefully, people will choose to spurn the way we have educated ourselves in the past. A great example is Columbus Day. We’ve been educated to think of Columbus as a hero. If you go outside the text books, you find out that he was a scumbag. That’s an example of how you can seek your own truth. The history books don't always hold the truth. They elevate people like Columbus and make the near eradication of the Native Americans seem like a heroic Manifest Destiny.
I’m forty-six years old. I wish this would have happened twenty-five years ago. I just have so much hope for the younger generations. I’m a single guy with no kids, and I feel like I have a stake in this. It always baffles me when married people who have kids aren’t getting involved. Don't people realize that this past generation is the only one that didn’t exceed the previous one? Don’t they realize that the trend is going to continue like that? Even for more selfish reasons like that, why wouldn’t they get involved? I feel like there are so many worthy causes out there. People have got to jump into something. Something’s got to compel them. One of the most valuable things that Occupy did is forge relationships. Margaret Mead said, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” First, you get together with like-minded people. It starts little, and then you feel compelled to do all of these different things. You look around and see that other people are doing it too, and you just hope for the ripple effect. You do what you can do.
If you’re a billionaire, your son or your daughter is going to inherit your business. They’re going to be billionaires. They’re going to keep the same policies, the same ideas. From generation to generation, that will continue until something interrupts it. I don’t think we can be hyper-critical of them. They live in an entirely different world. As F. Scott Fitzgerald said at the very beginning of the Great Gatsby, “Let me tell you about the very rich. They are very different from you and me.” I think their wealth becomes their identity. I remember working with a guy. He grew up on one of the Caribbean islands. His father was very influential in the government, and he was very rich. Then, the government was overthrown, and he ended up having to work at Home Depot. I remember him saying to me, “There is nothing as brutal as being as wealthy as I was and now being lower-middle class.” He was working full-time at Home Depot, and he was working full-time at UPS. He would go from one to the other. He’d work sixteen hours a day. He was running like a hamster on a wheel trying to get back to that. There was nothing worse in his eyes than taking a drop in strata.
I think for people who are filthy rich it’s not even good enough to stay at that level. If they’re a millionaire, they want to be a billionaire. I think for a lot of them it goes from money to power. This idea that we need to keep getting more has been ingrained into us. We have to keep acquiring. We have to work constantly chasing that. It’s an unquenchable hunger. One of the most valuable things that I’ve learned is to stop watching TV. When you unplug from what they're feeding us, you free yourself from that oppressive influence. It's gotten so oppressive that you can't even escape it when you go to a sports game. If you go to a MET game, the camera has always got to find a service member and put them up on the big screen. You have to sing God Bless America. There's advertising everywhere you look. It’s ridiculous. It’s just the wrapping up of God and country and materialism. I just want to watch a baseball game. It feels like you can’t really do that anymore. They’re doing a great job cramming all that stuff in our heads.
I work at a United Nations school. A lot of the kids are very wealthy, and that’s how they identify. I have students come up to me and ask what kind of phone I have, what kind of car I drive. That might be the first question out of their mouth. They don’t seem to understand that they're a child of a wealthy ambassador, and I’m a security guard. They expect me to be driving a Mercedes-Benz. They don’t comprehend disparity of wealth. What I hear a lot when I speak to some of the teachers there and even some of the parents is that they grew up in a bubble, and they don’t realize what the hell is going on. The school is near Jamaica, Queens. It’s a great example of how in Queens two communities can be juxtaposed, and one can be affluent, and you walk a few blocks, and you’re in a lower middle class neighborhood.
I remember one of the girls. Her mother was the vice president of the UN. This girl was in eighth grade. She had lived a sheltered existence. She had never gone on the subway. One of her classmates had a birthday party, so she and a bunch of her classmates went into the city to a restaurant for this birthday party. I saw her the next morning, and she said, “Oh my god, it was so ghetto down there. I thought I was going to get mugged.” The girl was from Africa, which kind of added a little irony to it because she was talking about African Americans from her neighborhood, who lived a handful of blocks from where she lived. After she graduated, she moved back to Africa, which has wealth disparity just like we do. She probably lived a sheltered existence over there as well. This is just one example of the cluelessness that can exist. It’s a huge part of the problem. People aren’t aware. These kids aren’t aware. They don’t understand that the lives that they lead are the exception, not the rule. They have food drives sometimes, but it’s done in a disconnected way. They’ll bring in canned goods, and that’s where the involvement ends. They don’t get a chance to look into the faces of who is getting the food. They don’t make that human connection.
The world I want to see is one with more heightened awareness. I wish people would not be so lazy in seeking their information. Don’t go to the corner store and pick up the Daily News and think, “This is the world.” It really isn’t anything close to the world. What's going on with Kim Kardashian or Jay-Z is not what's going on in the world. Getting involved with Occupy has opened my eyes to this type of celebrity culture. That thing they run in People magazine that says they are just like us, that kills me. I think they want us to believe that that could be us, that we could be multi-millionaires. But why is that the goal? One of the things that I really dug at the park was that when a “celebrity” would show up, there was just a collective shrug. It wasn’t like, “Oh let me get your autograph.” It was like, “Okay, we’re all hanging out. We’re all equal here.” I just want an elevated consciousness for everybody.
My brother said that he felt like he had learned more in one year than he had all through college. In this age of technology, you can choose the way you educate yourself, whether it’s formal education or whether you seek education online. Hopefully, people will choose to spurn the way we have educated ourselves in the past. A great example is Columbus Day. We’ve been educated to think of Columbus as a hero. If you go outside the text books, you find out that he was a scumbag. That’s an example of how you can seek your own truth. The history books don't always hold the truth. They elevate people like Columbus and make the near eradication of the Native Americans seem like a heroic Manifest Destiny.
I’m forty-six years old. I wish this would have happened twenty-five years ago. I just have so much hope for the younger generations. I’m a single guy with no kids, and I feel like I have a stake in this. It always baffles me when married people who have kids aren’t getting involved. Don't people realize that this past generation is the only one that didn’t exceed the previous one? Don’t they realize that the trend is going to continue like that? Even for more selfish reasons like that, why wouldn’t they get involved? I feel like there are so many worthy causes out there. People have got to jump into something. Something’s got to compel them. One of the most valuable things that Occupy did is forge relationships. Margaret Mead said, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” First, you get together with like-minded people. It starts little, and then you feel compelled to do all of these different things. You look around and see that other people are doing it too, and you just hope for the ripple effect. You do what you can do.
In the long term, I really hope for a true revolution. I just hope for a waking up. I think in America we’re taught to
think of things as winning and losing. I think it’s so much more complex than
that. On a micro level, I hope to be a better person and
hope to meet like-minded people. I hope to have more time to do activist related stuff. Since becoming involved, I always have regrets. I wish I had been able to make this action or that march. We just have to do our best. On a macro level, I hope we are able to influence policy. I voted for Obama the first time around, and I was highly
disappointed. I haven’t voted since then. I don’t really have plans to. If I do
vote, it’s going to be for a far out 3rd party, 4th
party, 5th party candidate. I think that’s what people are trying to
figure out.“Do we get involved with
politics?” “Do we trust the whole process?” “Is there really democracy?” "What do we want to create for the future?" I want the opposite of greed. I want us to relax and realize that we're going to be alright if we're not constantly getting more.
The implications of where that can lead us are awesome. Thinking about that just blows my mind. When we build places for community like the community center we are working to build in Astoria, we have a chance for connection, a chance to shed all the superficiality. People will have a chance to see outside of their box. If you’re in a box, you’re not making connections. I think the elite don’t want us to make connections. George Carlin is one of my heroes. He would do rants about the elite, but then he would also do things about the commonality of human beings. We need to look at that. He said he didn't hate people. He loved individuals, but he hated groups. He hated the mob mentality. I think coming together will give us the opportunity to strengthen ourselves not only as individuals, but as groups.
Interview by Stacy Lanyon
http://buildingcompassionthroughaction.blogspot.com/
https://www.facebook.com/stacylanyon
https://instagram.com/stacylanyon/
https://twitter.com/StacyLanyon
http://stacylanyon.com/
The implications of where that can lead us are awesome. Thinking about that just blows my mind. When we build places for community like the community center we are working to build in Astoria, we have a chance for connection, a chance to shed all the superficiality. People will have a chance to see outside of their box. If you’re in a box, you’re not making connections. I think the elite don’t want us to make connections. George Carlin is one of my heroes. He would do rants about the elite, but then he would also do things about the commonality of human beings. We need to look at that. He said he didn't hate people. He loved individuals, but he hated groups. He hated the mob mentality. I think coming together will give us the opportunity to strengthen ourselves not only as individuals, but as groups.
Interview by Stacy Lanyon
http://buildingcompassionthroughaction.blogspot.com/
https://www.facebook.com/stacylanyon
https://instagram.com/stacylanyon/
https://twitter.com/StacyLanyon
http://stacylanyon.com/