Tuesday, April 1, 2014

Fetzer Mills Jr.

Liberty Square, October 17, 2011
Photo: Jerry Ashton

I had been following Occupy Wall Street since when it started from Ripley, Tennessee, where I live and where I am right now. I was really excited about the movement, about what I was seeing, particularly about the inequality. That’s something I’ve been concerned about for years. I’ve always been saying, “Americas aren’t willing to stand up for themselves,” so I was excited and proud to see what was going on in Zuccotti Park. I was checking in pretty much every day, several times a day. I was watching different YouTube channels and things on Facebook. Then, I saw the pepper spray incident where the three young women were pepper sprayed. There was no need for that. I got really, really angry when I saw that. I served in the military, and I served in the Middle East. I saw repressive regimes over there. I saw police treating their citizens that way, and that wasn’t something I ever expected to see in this country. When I saw that happening, I got angry. 

I started thinking about going up to New York at that point. I didn’t know if I could afford it. I had to fly. My wife is an attorney here, and she had a lot of clients who were going bankrupt for reasons beyond their control, like losing their job or having no health insurance. We saw the Brooklyn Bridge march. We watched that over and over again, and I was livid. She said, “Go to New York. Get up there and go to Zuccotti Park.” That was around October 6th or 7th. The next day, I got a flight out and stayed until about the middle of November. I left a few days before they raided Zuccotti Park and shut it down. I have a lot of friends who live in New York, so I was crashing at a friend’s apartment uptown, but I was spending a lot of time at the park. I would spend twenty-four hours straight down there. Then, I'd go up and crash for a few hours and then go back down to the park.

I was really impressed at the numbers of people who were at Zuccotti Park and the numbers of people who were supporting them. I felt like Occupy was going to catch fire. It was capturing people’s imagination. I’m an old guy. I’m fifty-three, so I would have been fifty-one then. I wore a suit or a coat and tie every time I’d go down there. I’m a veteran. I’ve got a southern accent. A lot of mid-level Wall Street workers would come to the park, and they’d see me in my coat and tie, and they’d come over and talk to me. They felt I was approachable. So many of them said things to me like, “You guys have got to do this. I work on Wall Street. You’re right about what’s going on.” 

I still think the idea is out there. We wouldn’t be having this conversation if that idea of Occupy weren’t still alive. There are an awful lot of people working on it still. I look at Zuccotti Park and the actual occupation as a catalyst, and I think as income inequality grows, people are going to be turning to people who have experience with this. I think it was a very valuable educational experience for a lot of people who might not have thought at all about a lot of the issues that we brought up in Zuccotti Park. We’ve seen Occupy Sandy. We’ve seen Occupy Strike Debt. We’ve seen just so many good things coming out of Occupy Wall Street. This movement is not dead. It’s still alive. People who were dedicated are still active and involved in it. We have a network. We’re connected with each other. We keep up with each other. We wouldn’t have that without the occupation of Zuccotti Park.

What I really liked about the park was the fact that we were a self-supporting community. People came together to provide what was needed. We had the kitchen there. We weren’t just feeding the occupiers. We were feeding a lot of homeless people too. They were getting three hot meals a day. We weren’t questioning people. We weren’t saying, “Hey, do you have an ID? Are you entitled to this?” No. If you were hungry and needed a meal, you’d get a meal at the kitchen. No questions asked. We had volunteer medics there, so we could treat minor injuries. There were doctors and nurses and EMT’s all volunteering. We had the library there. That was a really good small library. If someone was talking about something they’ve read at a general assembly or in a small meeting, they could run down to the library and find a copy of that book and read exactly what they were talking about. 

Nobody was getting paid for that. The conditions were miserable. It got cold down there. It got wet down there. It snowed, but the people were still there. For me, that told me that there were a number of Americans that were willing to fight for things, to put in time, to sacrifice things. Some of those days and nights when it was raining or cold out there, it wasn’t fun, but we didn’t leave. If it was raining, they threw tarps over the library. The kitchen never shut down. They kept serving. The medics, doctors, nurses, they never left. People gave their time. It was people really coming together for the right cause. It was really great to see nobody trying to make a profit for once. We were under siege. We were in the weather. Those type of conditions bring out both the best and the worst in people. I saw an awful lot of people that it brought out the best in. That was very inspiring to me.

We had an Occupy in Memphis that was up for I think over a year after Zuccotti Park got closed down. I went down there and talked with people. It’s the Deep South, so we have a very conservative streak down there, but with the police, there was a very different attitude. They’d have people who would try and harass the protesters. Sometimes teenagers would show up, or rednecks. The Memphis police would arrest and run off the people who were harassing the occupiers. There was at least one county commissioner and some city council members that joined. They didn’t just show up and make a speech and leave. They spent a few weeks down there or days. They’d come back. 

The message was very similar. I think that the one in Memphis was much more concerned with homeless people. Memphis has a huge homeless population. I would say that most of the occupiers in Memphis were homeless people. There were people who were not homeless. It was inspiring  the see people donating tents. People were donating food. I know some of the people who were involved with that. There’s a charter air company, and they make their living from gamblers flying all over the country to go gambling at different places. If the gamblers get a big win, they might get a $1000 tip per trip. What the pilots were doing was pulling their tips and using it to buy clothes, to buy things for the occupation in Memphis. 

Generally, you’d expect pilots to be very conservative just because a lot of them are veterans, but I think the occupation in Memphis wasn’t seen as a liberal or conservative thing. It was seen as an economic issue, which is what Zuccotti Park was. I wish that had come across more in the national media that it was about economics. It was about poor people. It was about people not having enough. In Memphis, I think it was seen as more of an economic thing. It didn’t get a lot of coverage, not even in Ripley, and I think that’s because of who owns the media companies. There probably were 50 to 100 peope doing the occupation, but they would have general assemblies, and hundreds of people would show up to the general assemblies. That showed me that Occupy's message can penetrate the Deep South. 

I would dearly love to see more activism in the Deep South. Protest is not something that’s been real for me in the south since the Civil Rights Movement. Also, the deep south is kind of the heart of everything that’s wrong with America. We basically have a feudal economic system down here. With a military background, I believe in running at the enemy strong or at least getting behind their lines, so I’d like to see some labor organizing and a few other things down here in the South because I think it would create panic among them. They feel like they’ve got the South under control. They use these classic divide and conquer tactics. They divide people along issues of religion, divide people along issues of race. I think Occupy’s message is a unifying message rather than a dividing message, which is what they use to keep control down here, so I would love to see Occupy activists down here or people out of New York who are experienced come down here and, at least, have some trainings.

I served in the military because the cold war was going on. There was a genuine threat. There’s a misnomer. When people said it was democracy versus communism, well that’s comparing oranges to apples. Communism is an economic system. Democracy is a political system. It’s possible to have a communist system that’s democratic, and that’s the way it should be. That’s not what it was. The correct way to frame it would have been capitalism versus communism or democracy versus totalitarianism. Well, I have this fear of totalitarianism. It’s a genuine fear of mine. I was born in 1960. That wasn’t that long after World War II ended. I had two uncles that fought in World War II, a grandfather that fought in World War II.  I grew up thinking about Nazi Germany. I didn’t want to live in a place where I couldn’t read what I wanted to read or say what I wanted to say. I think that was why I enlisted. I think we’re very much in danger of becoming a totalitarian state in this country. I see a concentration of power in the wealthy. Essentially, I’m a democrat, but that’s a matter of voting for the bad guys against the worse guys.  I feel that both parties are owned lock, stock and barrel by Wall Street. 

Look at health care right now. Everyone who was in the military were Americans, and there were people in there who weren’t American citizens but were going to get it when they got discharged, but they didn’t leave anyone on the battlefield. If you got sick in the navy, somebody took care of you. I want that for every single American, not just people who served in the army. I’m a veteran too, so I don’t have to get my health care through private insurance. It’s free for me, totally free. I’ve studied the VA. The VA is probably the most cost efficient and one of the most well rounded medical systems in the world, not just in the United States. They can negotiate their drug prices. They buy their own machines. If they have an MRI machine, they own it. They’re not making a profit by charging you four thousand dollars for an MRI like a private hospital is. I’d like to see a single payer system set-up with hospitals like the VA available for every single American and everybody who comes to this country. If you go to Europe and have a heart attack, they’re not going to leave you on the sidewalk, and they’re not going to bankrupt you just because you’re not a citizen of that country. That very well might happen to you in this country. It will even happen to you if you’re a citizen of this country. 

I don’t like leaving insurance in private hands because they’ve got a track record of showing that they cannot be trusted to carry out their end of the deal. I’ll give you an example. I have a condition called Wilson’s Disease. It’s genetic. I was born with it. I wasn’t diagnosed with it until I was thirty-six. It’s a liver disease. It’s very, very rare. Medication costs about two thousand dollars a month. My wife and I were just starting out when I was diagnosed. We had moved out to Ripley from North Carolina. My wife was just getting her law practice going. We weren’t even making twenty thousand dollars a year. As soon as I got Wilson’s disease, health insurance for both of us jumped. I was on her group policy. Supposedly, with a group policy, you don’t get your premiums jacked up because you get sick. Well, they jacked our combined premiums up from something like three hundred dollars a month to like thirteen hundred dollars a month. I was so sick that I wasn’t able to work. I felt that the insurance company negated on their agreement. They claimed I had a pre-existing condition because I was born with it. 

What they were attempting to do was drive me off of that insurance policy, so they didn’t have to pay for the medication. Medication was about two thousand a month. Health insurance was thirteen hundred a month. My wife was making about twenty thousand a year. We would have either had to go into bankruptcy, or I would have died, one of the two. The way I look at it, those people were willing to kill me to make a buck. Well, that’s no different than someone walking to a liquor store and blowing away a clerk to grab money out of the cash register. Anything you go though in your life is important to your life. I don’t think that my activism would be as strong if I hadn’t experienced it personally. Nobody should have to go bankrupt because of health insurance. That’s an important issue for me. I hadn't signed up with the VA, and I went and signed up with the VA after that happened. The VA gives me my medicine for free, and I get check-ups. I feel like I have very good health care with the VA, but that’s because I’m a veteran. What would happen to somebody in my situation had they not served in the military? Do they die? It’s just wrong. It’s quite simply morally wrong to deny someone health care because they can’t afford it.

It’s a bit of irony, but I remember Fox News and even main stream media saying that we we’re uncivilized and a bunch of animals. I think Occupy is bringing civilization back to the US. I think what’s uncivilized is not treating people when they’re sick or trying to make money off people because they’re sick or injured. What I think is uncivilized is denying people a decent education. They have much better public education in all European countries. I think education should be free. I think everybody should be able to get the best education that they want. If your passion is restoring cars, you should be able to go to a community college or technical school and learn how to do that. If your passion is physics, you should be able to get a PhD without going three hundred thousand dollars into debt with egregious interest rates. Education is important. It gives you a reason to live. It gives you confidence in yourself. It teaches you how to think critically. Sometimes just reading teaches you how to think critically. One of the most appalling things that I have ever seen was when Texas and Louisiana tried to pass laws that they could not teach critical thinking in the public schools. What is an education if you can’t think critically? They wanted robots. 

I believe in a mixed economy. I think there are some things that aren’t vital, and they don’t need government control. If you come up with a greeting card, you should be able to make money doing that, but you should also have to pay the people who work for you a decent living wage. If it’s a power company, something vital, I don't think it needs to be in private hands. Health care does not need to be in private hands. Anything that’s vital to the functioning of our society, the well-being of our society has no business in private hands because they’re going to try to make a buck off of it. They’re going to try and charge as much as they can. 

We have a locally owned utility company here in Ripley. Some local politicians decided that they wanted to sell off Ripley Power and Light to a private entity. They had to put it to a referendum, and it got beat pretty handily. We have very poor people in this county. This is one of the poorest counties in this country, literally. When private entities take over power, the rates skyrocket. If they had done that, I think we would have had a lot of people around here without electricity. That’s not a hallmark of a civilized country, where you have people living in houses without electricity. Water is something else that shouldn’t be in private hands because water is vital, and we have a growing population. Because of global warming, we have large areas that are becoming desert and aren’t going to get a whole lot better. That’s a world resource right there. I don’t think private companies ought to be able to build damns or own damns or own water rights. I think water needs to be a communal resource. Power needs to be a communal resource. These are things that are necessary to live, and they should not be in private hands.

I’d say politically I’m an egalitarian. I’m not really a democrat. I’m not a republican. I’m definitely not an anarchist. I’m an egalitarian. I would like to see it bring about a world where everybody has equality of opportunity. It doesn’t mean that everyone is going to take advantage of that opportunity, but I think that every single person in this country and everybody in this world ought to have the opportunity to make the most of themselves if that’s what they want. When I was growing up, they used to say that America was the type of country where anyone could grow up and become president. Well, that wasn’t exactly true when I was growing up. You pretty much had to be from a wealthy family. You had to be white. You had to be male, which excluded way over half of the population. I’d like to see the United States be a place where literally any child could grow up to be president or whatever they want to be.

The world I want to see doesn’t look a whole lot different than what I thought the world was going to be like when I was sixteen-years-old. I grew up in the segregated south. They did not integrate the schools until I was in the fourth grade. Restaurants were still segregated. There was still black drinking fountains and white drinking fountains. Blacks had to sit in the balcony at movie theaters. At the doctor’s office, there were white waiting rooms and black waiting rooms. Everything was segregated. I saw things change very, very rapidly for the better. I saw the races getting more equal. I saw tremendous advances for women. This was back in the sixties, seventies and eighties. I’ve seen this concerted effort to roll back those things. I don’t want that to happen. I imagined that when I was fifty-three years old, women and men would be looked at equally, that blacks and whites would be looked at equally, that everybody would have this equality of opportunity that I mentioned. That hasn’t happened, and that’s been disappointing to me because I saw all this progress being made. 

I can pinpoint the minute it started being rolled back. It was 1982 when Ronald Reagan got elected president, and it’s been going in reverse under every president we’ve had since then. Clinton was better I’d say than the Bushes, but he was basically a republican. He allowed Glass-Steagall to be undone. He could have vetoed it when they voted to get rid of it. He signed the Defense of Marriage Act. That’s something else that I didn’t mention, but another group that’s persecuted is gays. I wanted to see a world without prejudice against anyone, and that hasn’t happened, but that’s what I would like to see. I don’t think it will happen in my lifetime, but I think we can make progress toward it. Nothing happens overnight. That’s one of the things that makes me so excited to see people like you and other people still actively involved in Occupy, in spreading the message, in keeping the word out and doing things because it’s so important. It’s taken a generation to get us from where we were in 1982 to now. It’s going to take another generation to undo it. You young people are the future, and you’ve got to stay involved.

Interview by Stacy Lanyon
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