Photo: Jed Brandt
I got involved with Occupy in July of 2011. It’s been a lot of work, but it’s been a very rewarding experience.
This is going to sound really silly. I’m not being totally serious, so take this with a
grain of salt. Take everything I say with a grain of salt. I was playing World
Warcraft earlier in 2011. I had a job before that. I was trying to work on this telecom company, and
I got burnt out. I was hanging around playing video games all day. I was broke.
I was living in West Philly, and I just played World Warcraft. I just love that
game. That was all I did. I had this guild. We were playing three
nights a week for like five hours a night. It was great. It was fun. Then one day, my
guild fell apart. This had been my world for a few months back in early 2011. You can’t even play the game without a guild. You have to
band together. You have to form groups. If you don’t have a guild, you don’t
have a game anymore. I was upset. My whole world had been taken from me, and I
was so angry that I decided that I wanted to overthrow the government.
I had always been into radical politics. I identified as an anarchist. I was watching my news feed and saw the call to Occupy Wall Street from Adbusters. It was inspired by Arab Spring. It was just like, “Hey, the banksters got away with it. What are we going to do? Let’s go down and occupy.” I saw that twenty minutes after it was posted to the internet, and I immediately spotted the opportunity. I was like, “Wow, this is a great idea,” so I just started posting it everywhere on the internet, and everybody loved it. It was absolutely brilliant. Keep in mind, it was a time when people were very jaded and cynical about politics. After a decade long failed anti-war movement, people were sad, but this was bringing them hope and energy. It was such a great idea that I couldn’t help but ask, “Who is organizing this?”
It was just some random Canadian magazine that was saying, “Hey, let’s occupy Wall Street guys. Let’s go!” I was like, “Is anyone going to handle the logistics?” I asked around and found out that nobody was bottom-lining this thing. I was like, “Okay, it might as well be me,” and I was crazy and reckless enough to actually think that I could pull it off. I helped. I didn’t do all the work. Right after that, I started building the website occupywallst.org. I got a group together of volunteers. Eventually, we helped New Yorkers against Budget Cuts form their first general assembly on Bowling Green. We just did a lot of the support work behind the scenes that nobody else wanted to do. That was our contribution at the beginning.
I had always been into radical politics. I identified as an anarchist. I was watching my news feed and saw the call to Occupy Wall Street from Adbusters. It was inspired by Arab Spring. It was just like, “Hey, the banksters got away with it. What are we going to do? Let’s go down and occupy.” I saw that twenty minutes after it was posted to the internet, and I immediately spotted the opportunity. I was like, “Wow, this is a great idea,” so I just started posting it everywhere on the internet, and everybody loved it. It was absolutely brilliant. Keep in mind, it was a time when people were very jaded and cynical about politics. After a decade long failed anti-war movement, people were sad, but this was bringing them hope and energy. It was such a great idea that I couldn’t help but ask, “Who is organizing this?”
It was just some random Canadian magazine that was saying, “Hey, let’s occupy Wall Street guys. Let’s go!” I was like, “Is anyone going to handle the logistics?” I asked around and found out that nobody was bottom-lining this thing. I was like, “Okay, it might as well be me,” and I was crazy and reckless enough to actually think that I could pull it off. I helped. I didn’t do all the work. Right after that, I started building the website occupywallst.org. I got a group together of volunteers. Eventually, we helped New Yorkers against Budget Cuts form their first general assembly on Bowling Green. We just did a lot of the support work behind the scenes that nobody else wanted to do. That was our contribution at the beginning.
I didn’t really participate in the Tompkins Square Park meetings. I came
up from Philadelphia for the first two meetings. The first general assembly on August
2nd was really good. We waited for the Worker’s World Party to go
away, and then we had our meeting on the grass. We sat down and started having
our working groups. I sat down with what was called the Internet Working Group. Someone from that group went around and told people I was an FBI Fed, and
she spread all these lies about me. When I came back for the next GA, everybody
had just suddenly turned on me, but I never stopped supporting them. At that
point, I stopped going to meetings. I thought that if people were going to be
cruel to me that I just wasn’t going to go.
I cared very much about retribution against the banksters and the people who are absolutely pillaging the entire country and contributing no social utility. Many of these finance firms, they do absolutely nothing for society. They only take. They never give. I just wanted to see somebody do something about that, and if these GA people were offering retribution, I was going to be there to support them. Me and this team I founded called St.org and the Occupy Solidarity Network, we just kept running the phone lines and kept the website online. We kept running the social media handles. We just kept supporting them. We even raised half a million dollars and just handed it over to them because we didn’t have the capacity to deal with it ourselves. All this time, I never even went to the GA’s because people would just scream at me. People called me an authoritarian. You have to make difficult choices when you run a website. You can’t please everyone, and a lot of the time, people would come to me and say, “Hey, can you tweet this, or can you post an article,” and sometimes I would say no, and when I would say no, those people would be very angry.
The website was getting half a million visitors a day, and I was literally living out of the park. It was such a hard, strenuous process, especially with the people who were less than kind to us because they saw us as a threat. We always tried to be the people who did the right thing. We had no interest in controlling people. I never wanted to be a leader. I would make a terrible leader. I’m a computer geek. My role was sort of like the anti-leader. I fought all of the people who tried to be the leaders. People would come along and say that they were going to start an Occupy party, and all of the sudden they would start up a website, and I would post on the website that it wasn’t us. I was just trying to defend the movement, so people could have their thing in the park.
I cared very much about retribution against the banksters and the people who are absolutely pillaging the entire country and contributing no social utility. Many of these finance firms, they do absolutely nothing for society. They only take. They never give. I just wanted to see somebody do something about that, and if these GA people were offering retribution, I was going to be there to support them. Me and this team I founded called St.org and the Occupy Solidarity Network, we just kept running the phone lines and kept the website online. We kept running the social media handles. We just kept supporting them. We even raised half a million dollars and just handed it over to them because we didn’t have the capacity to deal with it ourselves. All this time, I never even went to the GA’s because people would just scream at me. People called me an authoritarian. You have to make difficult choices when you run a website. You can’t please everyone, and a lot of the time, people would come to me and say, “Hey, can you tweet this, or can you post an article,” and sometimes I would say no, and when I would say no, those people would be very angry.
The website was getting half a million visitors a day, and I was literally living out of the park. It was such a hard, strenuous process, especially with the people who were less than kind to us because they saw us as a threat. We always tried to be the people who did the right thing. We had no interest in controlling people. I never wanted to be a leader. I would make a terrible leader. I’m a computer geek. My role was sort of like the anti-leader. I fought all of the people who tried to be the leaders. People would come along and say that they were going to start an Occupy party, and all of the sudden they would start up a website, and I would post on the website that it wasn’t us. I was just trying to defend the movement, so people could have their thing in the park.
Originally, to be quite honest, I wanted an insurrection. If
I had things my way, I would have had riots on Wall Street. I would have had
tents pitched in the middle of the trading floor of the stock exchange. I would
have some of these financial executives who are most responsible for the crash
dragged out into the street, hanged, drawn and quartered. Thankfully, it’s
no up to me because what happened was much more beautiful. Something much more beautiful
happened than people being murdered because that’s not pretty. When I came
there and I saw the people who actually made up the occupation, I realized that
my pipe dream wasn’t happening.
I thought the occupation would last two days tops. I was trying not to get my hopes up. I told people for a couple of months, just gloating trying to get people on board, “Hey, I’m starting a revolution. Do you want in?” But I had to set my personal expectations lower. I was living in Washington DC by the time the occupation started, so I would pack a backpack and take the bus up from DC. I got in at nighttime on September 17th because I was holding the website down, making sure it could hold the traffic before I hopped on the bus where I wouldn’t have internet access. When I got up here, I saw something more beautiful than I had originally envisioned. Rather than seeing people hurling molotov cocktails at the stock exchange, I saw a community, and I thought the community was beautiful. I saw people who were young and idealistic. They had a vision for a better world, and they were in Zuccotti Park creating it. They were building that community.
I thought the occupation would last two days tops. I was trying not to get my hopes up. I told people for a couple of months, just gloating trying to get people on board, “Hey, I’m starting a revolution. Do you want in?” But I had to set my personal expectations lower. I was living in Washington DC by the time the occupation started, so I would pack a backpack and take the bus up from DC. I got in at nighttime on September 17th because I was holding the website down, making sure it could hold the traffic before I hopped on the bus where I wouldn’t have internet access. When I got up here, I saw something more beautiful than I had originally envisioned. Rather than seeing people hurling molotov cocktails at the stock exchange, I saw a community, and I thought the community was beautiful. I saw people who were young and idealistic. They had a vision for a better world, and they were in Zuccotti Park creating it. They were building that community.
It continued throughout the occupation. They formed every working group you could imagine. There was a cigarette rolling working group. It just blew my mind. I thought it was the most incredible thing ever. People who were thrown away by this rotten society just came into the streets and started building a better world with their own hands. It was the most genuine form of politics. It wasn't like begging a politician to change things. It was actually going out there and doing it. It was peaceful and happy and fun. At that point, I realized that I just had to look after those people and do everything I could to empower that vision, get people to Occupy space and build a better world because we don’t have to ask permission to do that.
During the occupation, our group was known as St.org. We did a lot more than just the
website. When I originally founded the website, I just wanted to focus on the logistics. We tried to organize things
like buses. We weren’t really good at it. We presented an image to the public
that was important. We sought no attention in those early days. We just
empowered everybody else, and it was beautiful. We wanted people to feel powerful. When the
occupation started, that's when our role as the website of the movement shifted
as well. We were no longer about the logistics of organizing the occupation.
The occupation was happening. We then became a loud speaker to the world. We
changed our mission to slightly more journalistic, even though we weren’t
journalists. We had no idea how to be journalists. Because we knew we couldn’t
do that, we decided that we were going to use our media power and amplify the
voices on the ground. I would look at the board that had the schedule posted, and I’d write it down and put it into a Google calendar. I would present clear, concise, easy to decipher information that the outside
world could comprehend, so they could come down and get involved.
I think there are too many things wrong with the world to be able to count. I don’t even know where to begin. For one thing, Wall Street has really got to go. People love to focus on the broader picture. We ask ourselves, “How do we build a better society?” I say before we even think about that, before we think about building Utopia, how about we get some justice going on?" These people on Wall Street have a culture where they just pillage society. They get away with it, too. They have so much power, and no one stands up to them. Even the US regime won’t hold these Wall Street people accountable. They are absolute crooks. I think activism needs to move away from being all about messaging and emails. We've got to go out into the streets and actually do things. We have to bring justice to Wall Street. I don’t know if that’s going to be going to prison. I don’t know if that’s going to be dragging them out for a public spanking, but something has to be done.
I think there are too many things wrong with the world to be able to count. I don’t even know where to begin. For one thing, Wall Street has really got to go. People love to focus on the broader picture. We ask ourselves, “How do we build a better society?” I say before we even think about that, before we think about building Utopia, how about we get some justice going on?" These people on Wall Street have a culture where they just pillage society. They get away with it, too. They have so much power, and no one stands up to them. Even the US regime won’t hold these Wall Street people accountable. They are absolute crooks. I think activism needs to move away from being all about messaging and emails. We've got to go out into the streets and actually do things. We have to bring justice to Wall Street. I don’t know if that’s going to be going to prison. I don’t know if that’s going to be dragging them out for a public spanking, but something has to be done.
These Wall Street guys have a very specific culture. In
many ways, it’s inspired by Ayn Rand. I think a lot of rich people read
Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, and they’re like, “Wow, I can be a rich
bastard and not feel bad. I don’t have to give back to the poor? Fuck the poor.”
It gave these guys the book they could point to and say, “I’m not a bad guy because
this woman says so.” I don’t know if she is the one that inspired it, but they
act like nobility. They think they’re better than everybody else, but they’re
cruel. They don’t try and help society in any way. They just exploit it. They use
their intelligence, they use their fancy financial instruments, they use all of
these clever games that they invented just to fuck everybody, so they can have
a better life, so they can have more money and a private jet.
These guys now own all the land. My grandmother is on a reverse mortgage. That’s when Wall Street says, “Yeah, you can keep your house until you die, and then we get it.” That’s an option when someone has taken out so many home equity loans that they don’t have any equity left. This destroys communities. There are enough vacant homes in this country for every homeless person and more. Communities fall apart. It affects everyone. When your neighbor takes out a home equity loan and they get under water because of a predatory loan, when they lose their house, the rest of the neighborhood hurts because it brings down value, and then suddenly everyone is suffering. Our communities are falling apart, and these guys have put themselves in a position where they own it all. It broke the spine of this country in so many ways. People feel helpless. They don’t feel powerful. If people felt powerful, they would have dragged these guys out of their glass towers long ago, but they don’t feel like they have any power over these guys. They feel like it’s a losing battle, like they’re helpless. They’ve made this country feel helpless, and I’m trying to put some strength back into everyone.
I got cancer back in 2012, and I didn’t have health insurance. I didn’t have money. I was homeless. My family isn’t particularly wealthy. I was going around the city, and no one would give me treatment. They wouldn’t even give me a diagnosis so I could demand treatment. That’s how cruel the system is. We let people who have cancer die. It doesn’t matter what they do. It doesn’t matter how hard they’ve worked to make the world a better place. The system, the beast is so monstrous that it will devour us all. After getting bounced around like a football to these various different medical associations, I started looking for a job that I didn’t want to do. I said, “Okay, I have to sell out.” I decided to sell out to the one company I don’t hate, and that turned out to be a tech company. I got the best health insurance in the world, and I got better. I got treatments and surgery. It was a close call. I was really afraid.
These guys now own all the land. My grandmother is on a reverse mortgage. That’s when Wall Street says, “Yeah, you can keep your house until you die, and then we get it.” That’s an option when someone has taken out so many home equity loans that they don’t have any equity left. This destroys communities. There are enough vacant homes in this country for every homeless person and more. Communities fall apart. It affects everyone. When your neighbor takes out a home equity loan and they get under water because of a predatory loan, when they lose their house, the rest of the neighborhood hurts because it brings down value, and then suddenly everyone is suffering. Our communities are falling apart, and these guys have put themselves in a position where they own it all. It broke the spine of this country in so many ways. People feel helpless. They don’t feel powerful. If people felt powerful, they would have dragged these guys out of their glass towers long ago, but they don’t feel like they have any power over these guys. They feel like it’s a losing battle, like they’re helpless. They’ve made this country feel helpless, and I’m trying to put some strength back into everyone.
I got cancer back in 2012, and I didn’t have health insurance. I didn’t have money. I was homeless. My family isn’t particularly wealthy. I was going around the city, and no one would give me treatment. They wouldn’t even give me a diagnosis so I could demand treatment. That’s how cruel the system is. We let people who have cancer die. It doesn’t matter what they do. It doesn’t matter how hard they’ve worked to make the world a better place. The system, the beast is so monstrous that it will devour us all. After getting bounced around like a football to these various different medical associations, I started looking for a job that I didn’t want to do. I said, “Okay, I have to sell out.” I decided to sell out to the one company I don’t hate, and that turned out to be a tech company. I got the best health insurance in the world, and I got better. I got treatments and surgery. It was a close call. I was really afraid.
I’d like to see a world where everybody doesn't have to want for the basic material necessities of survival. I want a
world where everyone can have their own bedroom. Each individual deserves their
own bedroom that’s dignified and safe. It doesn’t have to be a
palace. I’m just talking about the bare necessities. You can’t even sleep in a park in this country without the cops harassing
you. I remember back in the Occupy days, I’d nod off, and they’d poke me or
beat up my friends. If we can solve the material necessities, things will be so
much better. I don’t even care what you call the system, if everyone has a
room, food and medicine to stay healthy and safe and functional, then we will
finally live in a free society. After that, I say let everyone live as they please
and do whatever they want. Let them follow their passions. They should be able to travel freely all
over the world without a passport or a precondition of corporate servitude, without being forced to be a wage slave because the Keynesian economists think
that we have to have lots of worker bees, so that we can have a big economy
full of consumers. I don’t want any of that. I just want human beings to just
live as human beings. This is a sorry state that we’re in. It’s so
cruel and oppressive. It really is. I just want that to end.
Right now, the biggest companies—the NSA, IBM,
Facebook, Google—they’re all in a race to build what’s called the super intelligence—artificial
general intelligence—because the first person who creates a truly great AI
system wins. A Google vice president predicts that by the year 2045 computer technology
and software and machine learning will have advanced to the point where
computers are smarter than all of the human brains put together. That means
that we will no longer really have a purpose in terms of work. We can’t invent
anything anymore because the machines will have invented it. There is no point
in cleaning because a robot will have done it. At that point, I think humanity is going to face a crisis. I think
once the super intelligence merges, and this is assuming that it’s actually
friendly and doesn’t destroy the universe, if it lets us
continue to function, we’re going to face a crisis. We’re not going to know
what to do because we’ve bred and trained ourselves for thousands
of years to be workers who don’t care about art, who don’t care about love. We
just go to the factory, be a wage slave, marry ourselves to a corporation and do
nothing but our career.
When that goes away, when there is no longer any reason to have a career, when there is no longer any reason to sit around inventing things and building new technologies, all labor will be obsolete. People will wonder what to do. At that point, it will be the artists who truly shine, the people we throw away in our current society. I think the artists, the writers, the poets, they’re going to come out, and they’re going to be the ones that society truly values. I think for all the people who don’t want to be part of the Borg and meld with technology and all that stuff, they are going to invent new lifestyles for themselves, find new faiths and traditions.
All sorts of things could happen. I think there will be an entire multiverse of visions that different groups and different individuals will have. Everybody will have their own Zuccotti Park. I think everybody should have one where they just take whatever crazy, radical visions that they have and make it happen within a small community. I think that’s what’s going to happen in the future. You’re going to see micro-communities. People are going to try and reconnect with their roots and live a life of meaning, a life where they define what meaning is rather than a book or a corporation, where people are going to live by their own schedule, where people aren’t going to have needs that aren’t being met, where people aren’t struggling for food because you can just get food anywhere. I think we’ll find new ways to invent meaning.
Interview by Stacy Lanyon
http://buildingcompassionthroughaction.blogspot.com/
https://www.facebook.com/stacylanyon
https://instagram.com/stacylanyon/
https://twitter.com/StacyLanyon
http://stacylanyon.com/
When that goes away, when there is no longer any reason to have a career, when there is no longer any reason to sit around inventing things and building new technologies, all labor will be obsolete. People will wonder what to do. At that point, it will be the artists who truly shine, the people we throw away in our current society. I think the artists, the writers, the poets, they’re going to come out, and they’re going to be the ones that society truly values. I think for all the people who don’t want to be part of the Borg and meld with technology and all that stuff, they are going to invent new lifestyles for themselves, find new faiths and traditions.
All sorts of things could happen. I think there will be an entire multiverse of visions that different groups and different individuals will have. Everybody will have their own Zuccotti Park. I think everybody should have one where they just take whatever crazy, radical visions that they have and make it happen within a small community. I think that’s what’s going to happen in the future. You’re going to see micro-communities. People are going to try and reconnect with their roots and live a life of meaning, a life where they define what meaning is rather than a book or a corporation, where people are going to live by their own schedule, where people aren’t going to have needs that aren’t being met, where people aren’t struggling for food because you can just get food anywhere. I think we’ll find new ways to invent meaning.
Interview by Stacy Lanyon
http://buildingcompassionthroughaction.blogspot.com/
https://www.facebook.com/stacylanyon
https://instagram.com/stacylanyon/
https://twitter.com/StacyLanyon
http://stacylanyon.com/