Why We Occupy
October 24
Terry
Why I occupy I can explain.
Can you give me just, like, any kind of a name, nickname, or—
CommonTerry.
Okay.
That’s my tree name.
Okay, tree name.
I believe—well, I know—that the Earth is sick. You can feel it. Thirty thousand children starve to death every day on Earth. I also know that desperate, hungry people work cheap, and Wall Street profits from that. And it could end so easily. It could end so easily. We need a world based on compassion, and not a world based on greed.
I occupy because this is a demonstration of compassion. I cook food and I do outreach—trying to recruit people into the movement. I do my work and I don’t even participate in G.A. We need to get people fed. We need to clean up. We need to get people to join us. And then we can worry about the kind of democracy we have. We can’t make demands because we’re not everybody yet. Not everybody’s with us yet.
So my demand is: “Step up!” I go out in the streets. I tell people “Step up!” because I think they’ve already woken up. They might not have rubbed the crud out of their eyes; or maybe they just choose to, like, not see. I call those people not-sees. That’s N-O-T S-E-E.
Yeah.
And I think the day’s going to come—soon—when a billionaire’s going to flip to our side.
That would be helpful.
Then people are like, “Whoa, a billionaire has flipped! A billionaire bought those people a building. A billionaire went and gave a quarter of her money to save Somalia, and then put the rest to G.A.” People decide, “Oh, my! Maybe I should join Occupy!”
And in the future, after the Revolution, how cool you will be. It’ll be like, “What day did you start occupying?” And I’ll be October fifth. And people will be like, “Oh, wow! You’re really cool! October fifth!”
[Laughs.]
Because most people will be: “Oh, I started occupying a week before the Revolution.”
Right.
That will be what most people say, because there’ll be this hockey stick: [makes slap shot sound]. It’ll be very sudden. But you can see now that it looks like exponential growth. It looks like zero, zero, zero for a long time. It isn’t, but looks like zero for a long time. But now you can start to feel it. The curve is starting to move up a little bit.
What are you feeling? What’s the change that’s coming?
People are stepping up. More people. I’m talking about the number of people stepping up is now starting to be perceptively geometric. Exponential. I mean, still at the fairly flat stage, but it’s happening. I can feel it happening.
And we have no choice but to make it quick and nonviolent and compassionate. We have no choice, because even if the compassionate world starts next week, and we start living based on compassion and love and caring and not on greed, and we stop driving cars because we realize, “Oh, yeah, that’s causing asthma. That’s running over squirrels. That’s running over children. It’s causing more deaths in a month than 9/11. Gee, why aren’t we having a war against car driving?” Et cetera. I can go on and on about different things we do that destroy the Earth. That we do, not just the billionaire’s do.
Right, right, sure, because they’re not the only ones doing it.
Right, of course. Especially in America. The rest of the world looks at us as the ten percent. Almost all of us, unless you’ve been homeless a long time—they’re not in the ten percent—but we’re all in the ten percent here. Like, I work part-time, ten hours a week, and I’m definitely in the ten percent of the world’s population.
Half the world’s people don’t have running water. Half the world’s people don’t have electricity. They don’t have phones. They certainly don’t have Internet access. Their children die of diarrhea. Five thousand children die of diarrhea every single day, and that would cost much less to fix than the Iraq war. Much, much, much less. But the powers that be don’t want that. They want people suffering.
We import food from Africa. We import coffee from Africa. You know, we here are drinking coffee from Africa while African children are starving to death. I’m Irish, so that really bugs me. It really bugs me that Ireland imports food from nations with starvation. We sell their leaders arms to keep the poor down, and then we say, “Oh, you’ve collected debts. You owe us debts.” And they’re paying for arms that were used to keep them down!
The interest payments on debts in the poor part of the world, across the board, total, is greater than all aid going to the poor world. So money flow is actually—people don’t realize this—money flow is not from us to them; it’s from them to us, from them to our bankers, to our rich people. It trickles down for us, you know. That’s why we’re in the top ten percent. You live in Manhattan, you get more trickle-down than people in Kansas, but . . .
We need to wake up and realize that America is not the all-great, all . . . like, everybody waving American flags here? I want to see more Earth flags here, personally.
Do you have an Earth flag?
I do not have any flag, but I love the Australian guy with the Earth flag and all the other flags.
I didn’t see that guy.
He has a display of, like, light blue sort of flags with rainbowy colors on them. All different flags. Very beautiful.
I’ve got to look out for that.
He has a big, long smock. He wears a, like, gas mask.
Oh, the gas mask? That sort of freaked me out a little, I’ve got to be honest. The minute I see a gas mask, I’m like, “Should I be running? Is there gas?”
No, that’s like . . .
It’s his political thing.
He’s saying, “Look! The world is poisoned! Wake up! We are poisoning the world!” So even if we change next week, my point is that we’re going to have a lot of work to do. And shit is going to be hitting the fan, anyway.
Well, it’s objectively the case that shit has been hitting the fan.
Oh, it’s going to be much worse. Even if we get together this week, it’s going to be much worse. We don’t realize it yet, but Fukushima is the worst disaster of all time, by far the worst disaster of all time. I’m sure they know that in Fukushima. They’re just, like . . .
“Let’s not talk about it.”
Yeah, don’t want people to think about it. Do you know how you spell Fukushima? F-U-K . . . U-S . . . fuck us . . .
[Laughs.]
H-I-M-A . . . hi, Ma! So my theory is: Mother Earth looked at the human race and was like, “Don’t they realize all those nuclear plants are going to melt down some day? That something could happen where they all melt down at once?” If there’s some solar flare or something and all electricity gets kicked out, all the nuclear plants could melt down at once. Maybe some of them will be saved because people were really on the ball at that nuclear plant, but other ones won’t be, and we’ll have Fukushimas all over, all at once.
That’s a terrifying image.
So Mother Earth said, “You know, I’m going to make one of those nuclear plants melt down right now, because they’re all going to melt down eventually. So let’s show the people who are benefitting from it now, with their Sony products and their cameras and their high-tech equipment that we’ve all bought with Fukushima power. I’m going to kick the human race in the nuclear nuts!”
And the human race went, “Fuck us!” And then we look, and we see that it’s Mother Earth, and we go, “I give up!”
That’s my cartoon. I can’t draw those, so . . . not very well.
You’ve got to get someone to draw that.
I know. This one would be really hard. I have another one I got somebody to start drawing, but that one I could sort of do.
The one I can’t do—that takes some skill to draw—is: “How do you succeed in the corporate world?” You go to school; you cheat. You get high grades. You don’t get caught. Do not get caught.
Right, you can’t get caught.
You get a high-paid job because you got high grades, and then instead of climbing the rungs of the corporate ladder like you’re supposed to, you back-stab your way up from behind your co-employees, stabbing them in the back. And the C.E.O. on top of the corporate ladder looks down and says, “That’s a real go-getter!”
[Laughs.]
And that’s my cartoon for that. That one would really take skill. The new, young guy in a suit, stabbing other people in suits, and clearly just, like, lifting himself up. And another knife, ready to stab. And other people down there falling off the corporate ladder, dead. And another guy, a little bit below, like, “Ugh!” blood coming out of his mouth. And the C.E.O. on top with the nicest possible suit, sitting up there in his leather chair and being like, “Hmm.”
Seriously, get somebody to draw that and we’ll put it in.
I had someone, like, start it. She started it. I’ll talk to more cartoonists. She looked too sweet to draw that, though. The guy I had drawing was like, “Oh, yeah!” He’s like, “Dark humor, awesome.”
I have all kinds of jokes. I’m all about jokes.
I like jokes, too.
How about this one: You know we see “Eat the rich!” signs?
Yeah.
The people with the “Eat the rich!” signs think this is really funny because, well, they have “Eat the rich!” signs, right?
Right, sure. Yeah.
Other people don’t think it’s so funny because they think the “Eat the rich!” sign is bad. I think the “Eat the rich!” sign is funny.
“Eat the rich!” is funny. It’s objectively funny.
Yeah, it’s funny. It’s not . . . literal.
Right, right.
So I say, “Yeah, parenthetically . . . eat the rich—parenthetically—who shop at Whole Foods.”
Heh.
And the “Eat the rich!” people think that’s just hilarious, because you don’t want to eat the rich person who doesn’t shop at Whole Foods! You could die! But a nice, free-range . . .
[Laughs.]
The free-range rich! Who live in the suburbs, with trees around their mansions.
But people in the city do the Whole Foods thing, too.
Yeah, but I want one that lives in the suburbs.
Right. Clean air—
Clean air, shops at Whole Foods, sure. Unpolluted, nice, healthy rich person. [Laughs.]
Now my rich friend who puts me up when I go to Boston—if he ever hears this, he’ll be like, “Terry, were you thinking of me?” And I’ll be like, “Yes. Yes, Chuck, I was.”
[Laughs.] Does he use Whole Foods?
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I visit them, and their Whole Foods budget is, like, more than I spend . . .
I went to the first Whole Foods.
Where was that, California?
Austin, Texas. Cheap!
Really? Because it’s not cheap now.
There was only one. It was cool! It wasn’t so corporate yet.
That’s interesting. It was, like, just an organic store?
It was . . . it was unique. It was the only thing like it. There was no co-op in Austin at the time. This is in the eighties—a long time ago. Fantastic store.
Is that where you’re from originally?
No. I lived there, though. I lived there for three years, when I was a yuppie.
You were a yuppie? Really?
I used to be. I used to be a software engineer.
What flipped you?
Well, you know, when I was young, I wasn’t what I call an in-activist. I did some activism when I was a yuppie. I worked for Jesse Jackson for President in ’84 and ’88. When I was really young, I worked for Mo Udall in ’76, running in the primaries against Jimmy Carter. In 1980, for our high school, I ran with the proto-Green Party campaign. You know: I was a liberal.
This guy is too mean! [Points.]
Who, that singing guy?
We need the women talking to guys, being like, “Be nice!” I’m not trying to censor what he says, but just be nice about it.
Which guy? The guy singing there?
No, that guy right there in the purple. He’s too mean. And there’s other people who—there’s other white men that are too mean. It’s all white men.
Is it?
It’s all white men.
Wait, point out to me who you’re talking about.
The guy with the purple thing on his head.
Oh, yeah.
But he’s not the meanest one at all. Usually, he’s nice, so . . . but we have to be. We have no choice. My sign is, “Let’s be nice!” I’m making them, and I’m also trying to get the shirt people to start making them.
I agree. I talked to the Catholic Workers about that, actually.
I hear someone said that before me, though.
Yeah.
That’s a joke. I think every teacher says that. I hold it up, and kids look at it, and I go, “This is for the adults.”
[Laughs.]
It’s for the white men. I have, actually, a movement now: I’m trying to get all the white men over thirty-five to shut up. Shut up and clean dishes.
How’s that going?
Well, you know progressive stack? The idea of a progressive stack?
Uh-uh.
That’s in a direct general assembly, and you want to speak next. You get the stack person to say, “Oh, I’m next to speak.” Three other people on the stack? I become the fourth person. They say they prioritize it by people who have been oppressed—traditionally oppressed minorities.
Well, I just say, “Get the white man to shut up.” No progressive stack, just racist.
[Laughs.]
White men shut up, because, like, we fucked things up. We are part of the privileged class who fucked things up, even if you were homeless and stuff. It should not be a rule, but something that white men decide to do, that becomes the cool thing for white men to do.
To shut up.
To shut up and do the dishes, and let the kids run things, and, like, the sixty-year-old black women, and the . . . you know, the people who have not had a voice their whole lives. Let them run things, because we fucked things up. And I don’t mean me—I fucked things up—although I did. I mean, I was a yuppie. I flew planes all over the world. I’ve gone skiing many times. Now I live in poverty, but I’ve got a huge carbon footprint debt from my life before I flipped, which happened when I got beaten by a police officer, by the way. That’s what flipped me. That’s what made me an activist.
When did that happen?
Um, 1989. I was beaten in a party at Halloween, actually. The twenty-second anniversary of my becoming a hard-core activist is coming up.
Halloween. I was at a party. We had parties across the street from a cop—state police—and he had his Boston cop friends come and raid the party. Someone spilled a beer on one of them—some cute girl spilled a beer on one of them—and they turned around and dragged the ugly six-foot-four guy down the stairs and beat the hell out of him, and started beating other people. Thirteen people got arrested, and spent a month in jail for assault and battery of a police officer. Actually, seventeen people got arrested. Four pled out, and thirteen went to trial.
And then they manipulated us into waiving our right to a jury trial. I got convinced to go along with that, but I shouldn’t have. They’re pissed off at me to this day that I fought that. But they should have listened to me, because a jury trial we could’ve won. In a judge trial, the judge was just going to find us guilty no matter what. And they gave us thirty days in jail. Thirty days in jail!
And then my third day in jail, hepatitis A hit me that I’d contracted in Nicaragua.
I had that when I was in seventh grade, and that’s horrible.
It hits you hard and fast, right? Brutal.
That’s bad stuff.
I was in Nicaragua for the election when the Sandinistas lost power. I contracted it there, came to trial, lost, went to jail. Third day in jail, it hit me.
So you were sick . . . with hepatitis . . . in jail.
In jail.
That’s terrifying.
And you know how hard it is to eat?
Yeah, you can’t eat.
But you can eat. No, you can eat. I could eat applesauce.
I couldn’t really eat anything.
I could only eat applesauce, and not very much, but they wouldn’t serve me applesauce every day. They were like, “Oh, we serve a big can. I’m not going to just open one for you.” I’m like, “Yeah, but I’m freaking dying!”
I can’t believe they didn’t send you to the infirmary.
After a week, they sent me to the hospital—once I turned yellow. They didn’t believe me at first. They just thought I was lying. Because you’re in jail, they think you’re lying. And I’m like, “I’m sick, nigger! I’m sick! I’ve never been sick like this!” And I was really sick in Nicaragua, too. But, “I’ve never been sick like this!” In Nicaragua, I knew it was, like, a flu or a bug, you know? It’s a stomach thing. And this—I was like, “What the fuck is this?” I never felt anything like it.
Yeah.
I don’t know about you, but my stomach felt like it was wrapped around a brick.
Yes, it was the worst feeling.
And then my liver started puffing out.
It was puffing out. Totally.
My stomach felt terrible. My liver was puffing out. I could only eat the applesauce. Nothing else they fed me could I possibly eat, and then I only ate a few bites of it. So twice a week, for two weeks, I had a couple bites of applesauce. Then they put me in the infirmary, and that was the fucking worst thing ever.
Really?
I would’ve way preferred to just be back in the cell, because in the infirmary, I didn’t get to talk to anybody. No one did my laundry. I wasn’t allowed to take a shower. I was in medical isolation. I was in the medical isolation cell. No one would touch my laundry. I had two pairs of clothes, and I just kept alternating them for, like, ten days, whatever it was. It was, like, ten days I was there. And there was a big window outside my cell where guys would line up for the drugs, and they could stare at me. It was freaking disturbing.
I had a huge cell, though. I had a gargantuan cell with pipes, and I would play on the pipes like a monkey when they were staring at me, which I couldn’t do very well because I was really tired.
Right, because you’re weak.
I slept, like, twelve hours a day for six months after that. My mommy came and picked me up a couple of days after I got out of jail. Brought me home and took care of me for three months in Ohio.
Yeah, that’s the way.
My mom and my sister. But I was much, much sicker before that. By that time I was okay, but I was still really tired.
You’re tired for a really long time.
Very long time. And I couldn’t drink alcohol for years and years. Years and years. And I just recently started drinking again for the second time. I started drinking once, then started getting hangovers, stopped. I started drinking again, and now, finally, my liver is at the point where I can drink again. And even then, if I drink too much, I get terrible hangovers. But at least it’s only a one-day terrible hangover. When I first started drinking again when I shouldn’t have, I would get four-day hangovers. Now I’m just kind of like a normal person who has a somewhat destroyed liver. Not too bad. Your liver comes back! It’s amazing! It’s an amazing organ.
I don’t think my liver really had long-term—
But you were young.
Yeah, I was young.
Makes a big difference. And you weren’t in jail.
I was not in jail. I was at home. My mom took care of me, too.
In jail made it much worse. I mean, I had visions. My body was eating myself alive. I looked like I was in Auschwitz at the end of it. I didn’t weigh myself in jail, but I weighed, when I got out, a hundred and thirty-five. So I had been down to about a hundred twenty-five, and I went in at a hundred eighty-five, so I’d lost a third of my weight in jail. I just looked horrible. My body was just eating the muscle alive.
They said, “Oh, you have a heart murmur.” But then I got brought back another time and the doctor said, “Oh, that’s just a flow murmur.” That’s your body working so hard that it sounds like a heart murmur. It’s just your body going, “Ba-boom! Ba-boom! Ba-boom!” trying to cure you, trying to cure you.
And then I had two friends die of hepatitis B and C a couple of years after that. I knew all about hepatitis when they got it. They were hemophiliacs; that’s why they got it. They already had AIDS, but they didn’t die of the AIDS. It wasn’t for any reason because of the AIDS. It was because they got blood transfusions. They got dirty blood. They both were hemophiliacs. Brothers.
You turn orange before you die if you have hepatitis and you die from it. You got yellow, orange, yellow, yellow, orange, orange, dark orange, dead. And that’s, like, the shit in your blood, because your liver takes the shit out of your blood. That’s the shit in your blood, and you stink when you have hepatitis. I know I stank. I know I stank.
You do stink. You’re sweating out. The whole thing’s disgusting.
It’s very gross. And painful.
[The baby screeches.]
Oh, no! You’re very mad!
Babies like to grab hair. That’s also evolutionary. Like, grabbing onto the hair to ride the back. You’ve got to talk to a baby, though. You’ve got to interview your baby.
I know. We actually use this [recorder] for that, too.
Well, hopefully a little of that got into my interview.
Yeah, I think it did.
Let me just ask you: You said your name was CommonTerry?
CommonTerry.
It’s your tree name?
Yeah.
What does that mean?
Oh, that’s a line used at the Berkeley Tree-Sit. We had an occupation at U.C. Berkeley in December 2006 until . . . September whatever it was, 2008. Six hundred sixty-six days, ironically.
And you stayed up?
I wasn’t living in the tree, but I’m, like, spoken-word guy. I’m the guy on the ground. I was the town crier, as it were, of the Tree-Sit, who explains why. People always were like, “Why are you trying to protect forty-two trees? Why do you care about forty-two trees?” And my line was, “Well, if you can’t save trees in Berkeley, where are you going to save any trees?”
Right.
We need to stop cutting down. What we need is to plant trees! Now! Massive campaign to plant trees, not cut down trees. Like, New York City brags about how many trees they plant. Well, that’s good, but it has to be done worldwide and massively.
And what’s there needs to be protected.
And what’s there can’t be cut down, absolutely. Zero. Unless they’re invasive. If they’re invasive, that’s different. But then you replace invasives with trees that provide food.
We need to do a lot more fruit-tree planting. I don’t understand why we don’t plant more fruit trees everywhere. That’s because cities are like, “Ah, it’ll fall off the tree and get rotten.” Well, that’s—okay, good point. Let’s not let it fall off the tree and get rotten, but . . .
I live in Berkeley, and there’s food trees everywhere. Some of it does get wasted, it’s true . . .
But people eat it, in general?
But people eat it for sure. You just pick it off the tree. There’s, like, plums everywhere. When it’s plum season? Oh, my God!
I live in Bay Ridge. A lot of people planted fig trees there.
I’m amazed you can grow figs here.
I don’t know how they taste.
I was in Palestine and I ate figs there. They were freaking delicious. I thought they were a Mediterranean fruit, but . . .
I mean, there are tons of trees, so I don’t know.
They must just be small. Probably they don’t get very big.
Probably. There are even peach trees. That can’t be good.
Peach trees work if you’re south of the real bad winter line. Southern Ohio you can grow peaches, but Northern Ohio you can’t.
Interesting.
It’s getting warmer. The peach line’s going north. There’ll be years when your peaches get wiped out, though. In California, even, there’s years where the peaches don’t do as well. But that’s the thing: If there’s a frost at the wrong time, your peaches get wiped out. Or if it’s too cold too early in the year, you won’t get very good peaches.
Right.
But yeah, it’s amazing: global warming will allow us to grow more things, but then when it kicks in fast, it’s going to be a disaster. People are going to be starving.
It depends where you are, I guess, in the world.
Yes. Luckily, my family is from the Great Lakes, and there’s going to be plenty of water there for a long time. They have a huge aquifer underground.
[The baby babbles.]
Yeah.
Indeed.
I know.
I agree with the children. My line for, like, you know how they say, “No leaders, no spokesperson?” I say we need, like, a six-year-old girl spokesperson.
I love that.
Super cute.
They talk a lot, though.
Yeah, I know.
They talk a lot.
You have to train them how to say, “I don’t know.” Like, when they don’t know.
I don’t think you’d get that.
Well, a lot of times kids will do this: “I don’t know,” and then say what they know. You have to train them to pause, and then think about it, and then if you still don’t know, say, “I don’t know.” They would be adorable at a press conference. Can you see it at a press conference?
That would be magical.
And if they don’t know, train them to be able to say, “You know, I’m not as highly educated as I should be.” Teach them a few facts, you know?
Xìnbù: Hànwèi rénlèi hépíng zìyóu mínzhǔ!
Terry: This here is the longest-lasting sign of the demonstration.
Terry: This sign—he’s re-lettered it. It was fading . . .
Xìnbù: Hànwèi rénlèi hépíng zìyóu mínzhǔ! Rèn zhòng dào yuǎn.
Yeah.
Terry: It’s a great sign.
It is a great sign.
Terry: [To Xìnbù.] Unite! All people!
Xìnbù: My name is Xìnbù. Xìnbù.
Terry: Qíbù.
Xìnbù: Yeah.
Terry: Want to interview him?
Sure.
Terry: [To Xìnbù.] You want to interview?
Wait, can you just tell me—you said you haven’t been here from the beginning?
Well, no. I wasn’t here from the beginning, but I’ve known about it since long before it started. I mean, I’m one of the few hard-core, long-time activists here. There’s very few of us here, and it’s great! It’s great. I just step back, and I do my outreach, and I just go try to bring my people in. I do outreach, and I cook on Fridays for the Friday meal. And I clean once in a while. I’ve got to do more dishes. I haven’t done enough dishes.
But a couple of my friends from Berkeley are, you know, main organizers here.
Did you guys come from Berkeley with this?
No, we’re just . . . one guy from Berkeley was coming out here to work with the War Resisters League when this started, and so he was already here from day one because he was already here. He had graduated at Berkeley. And then another guy from Berkeley involved in the Tree-Sit was a brand-new activist when the Tree-Sit was ending. He was only in the Tree-Sit for, like, three months. My friend John. You should find him and talk to him. I don’t even know his full activist history, but I’m pretty sure he was not an activist at all, and he was certainly not one of the main organizers at Berkeley. But he came here for this. He knew this was happening, and he came across.
I don’t know his story about how he came across the country, if he was already traveling or whatnot. I was already traveling. I usually stay in California for years at a time, and I leave once in a while for the summer—so I can experience summer again, because we don’t really have summer there. And then I house-sat for my parents, and they left to Russia on the fifteenth. Yeah, right at the same time this started, they went to Russia. I was house-sitting for them, and I fattened up.
Psychologically or literally?
No, literally, because I’m gluten-intolerant, so I can’t eat much here. Like, all the time, I just can’t eat here. I came out here on the morning of the fifth, so yeah, I’ll have to say 10/5. But it was perfect, because that’s when the weather got great.
Yeah, totally.
The day I got here, the weather got great. So I was like, “Good timing!” And I brought my energy in, like, I’m like, “Voom!” I had my energy. I helped really lift people’s spirits again.
Has that been an issue? Are people getting bummed out?
No, no. I wouldn’t say bummed out at all, no.
I mean, it seems like—how could you be?
No. You’re up here, but I try to lift it higher, you know?
Right.
You can always go higher.
Right, right.
My friend John, who I told you about?
Yeah.
Who was a brand-new activist at the Berkeley Tree-Sit? The first step I took into the plaza at one o’clock on the morning of the fifth—the night before the big rally—first step I take into the plaza, John jumps out of a working group and goes, “Terry’s here!”
Awesome.
I’m like, “You’re here, man. What are you doing here?”
You didn’t know he was going to be here?
No! He was a—I didn’t think of that guy as a hard-core activist.
Really? That’s interesting.
Although he was at the Tree-Sit, so he was. And when the Tree-Sit ended, I kept doing my activism, and then he would sit and listen to me. He was, like, one of my people who’d sit and listen to me doing public speaking at Berkeley. So I’m really psyched! And, like, he works so hard—much harder than me. I think outreach is easy. I know it’s hard for most people.
Right. Well, it depends on your personality.
It’s hard for most people. Most people can’t even start to do outreach. They can’t lift themselves out of this park. They’re intimidated by it.
I get that, I get that.
They can do outreach here, but the people coming here—they’re already here.
Right, they’re already on board.
Well, they might not be on board—there needs to be outreach going on here, I don’t deny that. Everybody—every single person here—should do outreach, and you should do it a lot, when you don’t have anything else to do. If you’re one of the people who just sweeps all the time, obviously I respect that. I totally respect that.
That’s Michael, right? Every time I see him, he’s busting his ass.
He’s hard-core. The Sanitation people are hard-core. I respect that. I tremendously respect that. Like, I only do sanitation when somebody spills stuff by my camp. And then I clean it up because it’s my camp. I do sanitation where I live, but . . . I don’t really do sanitation at all. I do outreach. I train people to do outreach, if they want it. I encourage them to do outreach, give them lines. And I recruit. It’s not that hard to go out and get people interested in coming to Occupy Wall Street.
[The baby screams.]
This is her thing. Don’t take it personally.
[To the baby.] Are you getting bored?
Maybe a little bit above you, huh?
[Terry distracts the baby by waving his hands in the air.]
A little bit older, they go, “What is that?”
It’s sort of magical, but at least someone’s paying attention!
Jesse Jackson taught me this.
Really? To do to kids? Mesmerize them?
No, no, just . . . that’s a way to wave. It’s finger dexterity when you speak and talk.
Just to sort of communicate energy?
You can feel the magical energies around you. Jedi mind tricks.
[To the baby.] “You will not use death sticks! You will reconsider your life!”
I’m finding that incredibly relaxing, actually.
When I speak, I’m doing Jedi mind tricks. I used to have a photographer in Boston follow me around. Not to take my picture, but to take pictures of people reacting to me, because I say some really . . . before, when everybody was still asleep. Now people are starting to wake up; I’m a little bit nicer now. I used to be really brutal.
What did you say?
Well, I mean, like what I said to you. “We’re importing food from nations with starvation.”
Why is that brutal? That’s the fucking truth.
It’s brutally true. Brutal truth.
Yes, I guess people don’t like that.
“You’re driving a car, you’re killing your own children!” That’s not very nice.
Sure, I guess that’s not the nicest.
It’s nice to the children, but not nice to the person I’m saying it to.
Right, it’s not conciliatory. It’s not like, “Yeah, we’re all fine.”
It’s not like, “Oh, it’s okay that you’re killing the planet. Let’s all just get together and we’ll kill the planet, then we’ll be nice to each other before we die.” That’s not nice. To me, that is not nice.
I call it nice-ism.
You’re into nice-ism in general.
I am a nice-ist. I’m not the nicest nice-ist. Far from it.
[Laughs.]
Far from it. The guy who’s sweeping all day and doesn’t complain and doesn’t yell at anybody—he’s a nice-ist.
That guy’s fucking awesome. He’s a total nice-ist.
The guy over here who does dishes all the time—he’s a nice-ist. When I show my sign, all women agree with it. And I explain nice-ism and what nice-ism is—nice-o-anarchism, if you want. It’s an anarchist belief, but it’s to differentiate myself from the mean-o-anarchists who want to burn all the buildings down and live in the woods. I’m not into that at all, although I like living in the woods. I’m okay with that part of it. Like, I admire Ted Kaczynski, not because he killed people, but because he actually lived in the woods.
Because he got off the grid.
And he got off the grid. He made enough money at Berkeley. From a very young age, he was a hard-core environmentalist. That man is going to be a hero in the future, not because he killed people, which we’re against, but because he shocked people. He was shocking. He didn’t kill very many people; he wasn’t doing mass murder. And I’m certainly not for that at all, but he was desperate. He was like, “Oh, my God!” People were so asleep then. So asleep, and refusing to wake up.
And it’s only because people don’t have jobs that people are waking up. How many people would take a job, go destroying the Earth, and quit this movement in an instant? I worry about that. ❖
Steve
Tell me a little bit about yourself.
Well, I’m a long-time activist. I got involved in the anti-globalization movement. That was really inspiring because everyone came together. You had convergent spaces—I don’t know if you know about that—in D.C. So I got involved in that, but that movement pretty much just came to an end after 9/11. We were on the defensive, trying to stop this war and that war, and failing to stop them even.
And things just got worse over the years. It was really looking grim. I got so burned out, I stopped even doing political activism. I tried doing Green Party stuff. We were playing their game, up against their money. We were losing again, and everybody was getting burned out. All the old methods were failing, and I didn’t want to waste my energy on stuff that wasn’t working. I withdrew, like a lot of people.
So this was just, like, a spark, you know? This thing came out of nowhere. It didn’t really come out of nowhere because it happened in Tunisia and Egypt, but just like that, one little thing happened and everybody congealed around it and started it. I guess the potential was always there, you know? Everybody, at any moment, everybody could come out and just do this.
So you’ve been here for two weeks?
Oh, two weeks, yeah. I was here for six days and I went away for five days, so . . . yeah, it’s been about two weeks.
And how are you finding the experience here?
It’s pretty good. I mean, there’s problems. Like, if you work. I think I finally have a secure sleeping situation, but up until today, I had this problem where I’d go off in a working group—and I’ll work until nine in the evening sometimes, ten in the evening—and come back, and you know, my sleeping space is taken by someone else. So it was, like, the more you work—kind of like a reverse incentive—the more you work, the more someone who isn’t working can take your sleeping spot.
Actually, it was Terry who got me connected with some people who, you know . . . and now I have a secure spot. I don’t have to worry about that anymore, so that’s good. And I don’t know, things are coming together. I feel like I’m starting to get more involved in the community, more connected. Just the last couple days, I feel like I’ve gone through another step in development of getting into the community.
For the first couple days, I just spun around. I didn’t know what I was doing. Then I got into a working group and I got more focused on that. And it’s just developing, slowly developing. I guess the longer it goes, the more connected I’ll feel. Hopefully it’ll go long enough.
It’s hard to figure out how to get connected. The first couple days that I came down here, I just sort of wandered around.
Well, yeah. And it’s even harder because we can’t talk to each other. The G.A. is too big, and the Web site doesn’t really work. They’re getting a new one. There’s a different Web site called N-Y-C-G-A. I think it’s called N-Y-C-G-A dot net or dot com or something, but anyway, that’s an actual Web site. Didn’t occur to me until the other day how odd it was that in this day of, you know, everything is about computers, this group were doing all these things so, so right, but yet we actually didn’t have a way to communicate online, really. We didn’t have a Web site. We did but we didn’t, which is even worse, because then we have one that wasn’t really working because it wasn’t really us. Occupy Wall Street Web site isn’t really us. It’s run by someone.
Adbusters?
I don’t really understand what it is, but N-Y-C-G-A I just heard about yesterday, and that’s going to actually function. People are getting on board real fast. We’re making up for lost time every day. It’s developing really fast. The working groups are up on it now, and everything’s happening, so hopefully, that’ll make things easier, somewhat.
When did you first hear about the movement?
I heard about it before it started. My friend told me it was going to happen—my friend in Boston. I’m from Pittsburgh. My friend in Boston told me they were going to do it, and I thought, “Well, that sounds good, but . . .” You know, it just sounds like . . . who knows? It’s just some other attempt, you know? But when they pepper-sprayed those three girls, I said, “Oh, I have to! I should go!” But I kind of lost my enthusiasm over the next couple days.
Then when they arrested the seven hundred people on the bridge, I said, “Now I really have to go!” And I did.
Did you feel like it was maybe more real because of that?
It was just kind of like, “Well, if they’re going to arrest seven hundred people . . .” It’s like a chess game. If someone moves, you have to make your move. That was their move; they arrested seven hundred people. That’s them saying, “You can bring a big crowd, and we’re just going to arrest them.” The next response is, “Okay, well, now it’s going to be a bigger crowd. Are you going to arrest them? Now it’s going to be three thousand people. Are you going to arrest all of us?” And then if they do, then hopefully it will be next time ten thousand people.
So if you give up at that moment . . . it’s a crucial moment. It’s an opportunity, actually. It’s a good opportunity. As a matter of fact, it played into our hands perfectly. It really turned out really great that they arrested seven hundred people. But if you don’t take that opportunity, then it’s a huge defeat. It just ups the ante. It’s either a big victory or a big defeat, so at that point, I had to stop what I was doing; but I wasn’t doing anything anyway, so it was good. ❖
Ben
My name’s Ben, and I’m from California. Graduated college two years ago, and now I’m out here occupying because this is where I see we need to go. Corporations destroyed the environment, destroyed everybody’s ability to use the land—the great wealth—for themselves. It’s just been so centralized.
How did you get involved in coming out here?
I heard about it two months before it started. The Adbusters thing—I saw that. There was a whole bunch of discussion on this reddit dot com. I was on there—on the Web forum—discussing what was going to happen, and organization things. And I had been traveling around the East Coast, just by buses, checking out the different cities beforehand. So I was like, “Oh, I know I’m going to be there.”
Were you an activist before this?
No. I went down to the Keystone X.L. Pipeline Protest in D.C.—that was just before Labor Day weekend. Then I went to Shale Gas Outrage in Philadelphia, against hydrofracking. But before that, I was definitely not really an activist. So it’s been, like, these last couple of months.
I guess there was one more thing before that. I went to this May Day rally in San Francisco, and we marched probably twenty blocks with a few thousand people. I signed up on all these email lists. And then, so all summer I was getting these emails about different events and things. I would get an email every couple weeks, and then at some point, it was just, like, “Tar Sands is coming up in a week! Get out here! We’re doing it!” And so I was like, “Yeah, I’ve got to be out there for that,” because it seemed like it was that important.
How has your experience of the actual occupation been?
This one here?
Yes.
Yeah, it’s been great! Everybody’s so nice! I mean, I can’t even walk halfway across the park without getting stopped every fifteen feet, especially if I’m carrying my fracking sign! [Laughs.]
Are you involved in any particular committees?
No, I haven’t joined any groups yet. I don’t know . . . I’ve been here since Wednesday, but I’m going down to D.C. for a couple days, so I feel like I’m kind of moving around. Once I get more settled in, I think that’s something I’d like to do, because I definitely feel like that’s the way to get involved. ❖
Balance
I’m a person who goes to India and helps with the “Free Tibet” cause. I got upset after 9/11, because I didn’t think nobody was going to ever get to this point where we’d have a revolution.
This isn’t occupation, this is revolution—a revolution of consciousness, a revolution that people want change. They don’t know exactly what it is they want to change to. There’s many architectural designs.
If you look up a movie on YouTube called Zeitgeist, you’re going to see a whole thing, and they’re even doing it in Dubai. M.I.T. is doing the Venus Project in Dubai. But most of us know: with G.M.O.’s, with chemical seeding above our planet that’s affecting your baby and you, and NASA said, “Yes, it’s not a conspiracy. We are doing this. We are doing this. We’re doing it for your protection.”
They want to take nutrients off the market, too. They don’t want you to have vitamins. There’s always a big deal in Congress about this.
So some of us are saying, “Okay, how far is it going to go?” And, “Why should we keep producing babies if we’re just bringing them into a world where there’s no work, but there’s sickness, and there’s disease, and new types of cancers, and new kinds of tuberculins?” My ex was a C.C.U. nurse. She says, “Viruses just keep changing. No one can get a handle on it.”
And these big guys know—the chemical companies: the DuPonts, the Dows, the Monsantos—all these people know how to genetically modify chemicals. Just think of how many ideas the human populace is going to come up with, in our type of life in America where we have the ability to think, and go to schools to help us to think critically. And don’t you think that the government knows that they’re going to affect some of the populace like that?
So before the government comes in on all of us activists against dumping toxic waste into the Colorado River and cutting down redwood trees—which is illegal but the government lets it because there’s money involved—and all this stuff, some of us are saying, “Enough is enough! I’m willing to go up against the wall! I’m willing to go to an internment camp! I’m willing to do whatever it is to stand up and be counted at this time!” I think that’s what’s motivating most people.
But also this idea of 11-11-11 and December twenty-first, 2012. All the prophecies—the Hopi, the Lakota Sioux, the Huna from Hawaii, the Vedas—all talked about the twenty-six-thousand-year cycle, where the Earth is going to go through tsunamis, earthquakes, flooding, the whole thing.
It seems like that’s happening already.
No, no. It’s happening, but some of it is made by the government. The government has a machine that can create some of that stuff, too.
But when that happens—when the planets line up, which they do every twenty-six thousand years—that means a huge pull. That’s why, in the Bible, it says it’s not good to be married or having babies at this time. You’re going to be more, “Oh, where’s the baby?” and all that stuff. It’s better to think critically: to show consideration and love towards all those that are compassionate about things, and to not enable the ones of us that are neurotic and hurting right now, because we don’t have time.
We need time to get stronger, to become warriors, to get ready for whatever it is. We need time to get through the conspiracies and get to the real constructive stuff—the things we can do to make a real conscious change, whatever destruction happens, if there is destruction. We hope that there isn’t, or that it’s limited, but I believe there is going to be a huge amount of destruction on Planet Earth.
So that’s why I’m occupying.
Can you tell me a little bit about yourself?
I’m a divorcé. I’ve had two children and two grandchildren, and I didn’t make a good . . . I couldn’t live in a square box. It was hard. I wasn’t into making money, so of course, women don’t want to stay with someone that doesn’t provide the American conspicuous lifestyle of shopping at Walmart every week, and “Where’s the credit card?” and “Can I have a hundred dollars?” and all this stuff. I wasn’t into that.
And so they found out—after they were in lust or passion with me or whatever they saw—they realized they’ve got to find a guy that’s going to bow down to the system and be stressful and pissed off about his job, but still bring home the paycheck to give to mama.
The majority of people are like that. And they say, “Okay, well, China . . .” Before, we said, “No, no, no! We don’t want China involved with our stuff.” But now they own Walmart! Now they own all of our manufacturing—R.E.I. and all this stuff. They make everything! Our sleeping bags, our military gear, everything! And they’re doing such human rights violations . . . it’s atrocities. So it must be that America doesn’t care, because maybe America is going to start doing human rights violations, too!
You said you go to India?
I go to India just because . . . there, the life is: I can live on a hundred dollars a month. And also, I can be with babas that don’t care about money, that are living naked up in the wilderness. And you learn so much from these people who believe that none of this really matters. What matters is the letting go—surrender—of the soul, of consciousness. Not to a Jesus, not to an Allah, but to the . . . just the is-ness. But you find it only when you go within, only when you go within. It’s not from books. It’s not from moderators. It’s not from the television set. And so that was a possibility.
Yoga yokes body, mind, and spirit. That’s the whole purpose. It’s not a religion, it’s a philosophy. Hinduism is a philosophy.
In America, we have empirical religion. We have all these different groups. None of them really agree with each other, but they’re all making money from their parishioners.
I went to India to get away from the idea of money and malls. But now, America is coming to them. Starbucks, McDonald’s, Domino’s Pizza—it’s all coming to them. ❖
Recai
I show you my name sign if you want, because I’m Turkish from Turkey, so my name is kind of . . .
I can spell it out.
Yeah, spelling is easier. My name is here: R-E-C-A-I. I’m from Turkey, and I’m here because of my two injustices I endured, one in Turkey, one in here. In Turkey, I was blacklisted by the C.I.A. / Turkish kontrgerilla [counter-guerrilla] military takeovers in 1980. I was blacklisted as a political dissident.
I was in the high school, and then I studied political science. I entered the foreign ministry as career diplomat to become ambassador, but because of my blacklisting—
What was the reason they gave for blacklisting you?
It’s secret. They don’t give reasons. Because of your political opinions. Because of your political standing. They blacklist you, and they never have to explain to you anything. They have to keep it secret from you because that’s the power of blacklisting. When it’s a secret, they can hit you sneakily. Otherwise, when it is open, then there is no reason to blacklist. They lose the power. There’s no ground to blacklist anybody.
It’s against human rights. It’s a crime against humanity.
The civil war they created—C.I.A. and Turkish kontrgerilla together created, before 1980, a military takeover—was a war crime. And then after the military takeover . . . military takeover itself is unconstitutional and a crime, and the tortures and killings and disappearances and everything . . . imprisoning people and canceling so many people’s citizenships and stuff like this . . . firing them and blacklisting millions of people—all crimes against human rights, crimes against humanity.
In the foreign ministry, they fire me six times. The real reason was the high school blacklisting, but they always find some stupid excuse, like, “You printed your opinion on the flyer,” or, “We saw you without a tie,” because you know, they have to find something. If they can’t find it, then they find, like, something wrong with your eyebrows.
That’s their constitution—that’s 1982 constitution—is military constitution, which was installed right after the military takeover. And then it’s still in force in Turkey. That’s the country we are talking about. They cannot, still, change that constitution. The legal framework—the human rights, according to that military constitution—is nothing. And it is, still, in Turkey.
They forced me to move . . . run away from my country with my own will. I couldn’t get anything, any future. I couldn’t work in any place there, or all over. They have control, military government.
I’m here [at Occupy Wall Street] because I’m not a citizen. I couldn’t go to college, like, masters or anything. So what I did is: I start driving. And then finally, I bought my bus—motor coach—and I drove for Tropicana Casino in Atlantic City. As driver, I was their slave. I worked for them like a driver, and they gave me thirty-thousand-dollar checks. Bad checks didn’t clear, and then I lost everything. I’m bankrupt. I lost my car. I’m losing my house. And I’m not paying anybody any bills for the last one year. So actually, on two fronts, in Turkey and in United States, I’m burned. You know, that’s capitalism, and C.I.A., and here, one-percent Tropicana.
That’s why I’m here and I’m part of the protest, because this is all about changing the system, fighting the one percent, and get rid of the capitalism. Actually, if you have a minute, I’ll tell you what’s going to happen. This capitalist system—this world—is like putting a million people in a small room which can fit only fifty people. If you put a million people in a small room which is only for fifty people, what’s going to happen? Layers and layers of people on top of each other. That’s capitalism in this world, which cannot sustain. This is going to destroy our planet because our planet cannot sustain this kind of seven billion population, and everybody has right and wants luxury, you know? Everybody has right and wants luxury, like luxury houses, luxury cars. You can’t say only rich can have them and the poor don’t have them, cannot have them. That’s not fair.
So as you see, capitalism is, like, broke. Capitalism cannot bring any solution. This system is down. That’s why we are here, and this is really important because it’s not like the past protests—like in Woodstock, which was out in the wild and far away from people; it was all disconnected from the world. This is right in the middle of the biggest city, right in the Wall Street, right in the global financial center, and this is all connected with the world. This is, like, global moment—global Occupy Wall Street—over maybe eighty, eighty-three countries. This is all connected, and they are all protesting together. So this is very different from the past, okay? We count very good moment. Very good strong moment. ❖
- 捍卫人类和平自由民主! [Protect humanity’s peace, freedom, democracy!] ↑
- 尘芥! [Dust!] ↑
- 任重道远. [A long way to go.] ↑
- 信步. [“Be the march.”] ↑
- Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones, directed by George Lucas (Beverly Hills: Twentieth Century Fox, 2002). ↑
- N.Y.P.D. Deputy Inspector Anthony Bologna was videotaped using pepper spray on immobile protesters during a march to Union Square that took place on September 24. ↑
- More than 700 protesters were arrested on the Brooklyn Bridge on October 1. ↑
- The Keystone X.L. Pipeline Protest began on August 20. ↑
- Shale Gas Outrage took place on September 7–8. ↑
- Zeitgeist: The Movie, directed by Peter Joseph (New York: Gentle Machine Productions, 2007). ↑
- The 2012 phenomenon predicts cataclysmic events for December 21. ↑
- In Milankovitch theory, Earth completes one precessional cycle every 26,000 years. ↑