Why We Occupy
October 28
Andrew
Maybe some background?
Oh, boy . . .
If you want.
I’ve got a lot of background, so you may have to help. I’m from Kent, Washington.
Washington State?
Yeah, State. Work experience: I worked a year at a corrections facility, two and a half years as an army medic.
Where did you serve?
A few different units. That’s a whole other thing in itself.
Last year or so, I was working E.M.S. out in Washington, and working at a free clinic as well, on the side. Right now I’m independently employed just running auctions.
Are you sleeping in this area?
I am, actually. My tent is usually here. I share it with a dude from Australia; he’s a friend of mine. We’re packed up for cleaning right now. Normally, this is, like, a neighborhood of tents going on here.
How would you describe your neighborhood?
My neighborhood? Most of us work at the Empathy table or for N.V.C., the Nonviolent Communications. Also, a lot of us are in the Community Watch at night. Community Watch—we take volunteers from the community who want to stay up and make sure it’s a safe, livable area for everyone. But some of us are more dedicated to the Community Watch, like myself.
So what do you do in the Community Watch? You walk around?
Stay up, walk around, do a little outreach. If we see someone is cold, we’ll run over to Comfort and grab them a blanket, you know? Try and keep noise down for people who are sleeping. Just try and make it a generally nice, safe community, and enjoyable for everybody.
I also work for Nonviolent Communications.
You’re mediating?
Yes, mediation. Also, because of my past medical experience—a lot of it is trauma experience—while I’m not one of the medics for the Medical tent, if there’s any serious trauma issues or any overflow, I run over there to help out.
Are you seeing a lot of trauma?
Oh, no, no, no. There’s really not that much trauma here. Mostly it’s just regular sickness and stuff like that. There hasn’t been anything serious. Not like the Oakland incident, thankfully.
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Most of the people who live in this area communicate with each other very well. We’ve become friends. It’s like our own little family here. We agreed to face our area towards each other. When the weather was nicer, we were actually sleeping out in the open air, sleeping bag-by-sleeping bag, in rows. This tiny space—we fit eighteen to twenty-five people here, on certain nights.
That’s awesome. Do you guys know each other from before?
No, not really. Some do, but I don’t know any of these people from before I got here, and . . . let’s see, I found out about Occupy . . . I live out in the mountains, so I don’t get much media. When I did hear about it, I spent a little while researching it, and within six hours of finding out, I was actually out my front door. On my way here, I spent a week and a half stopping at many of the different Occupy movements in the major cities in the northern U.S. states: Seattle, Portland, Chicago, Denver, Detroit, Cleveland, Grand Rapids, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh.
How would you describe the differences between them?
Well, the different movements have their own little areas and their own tactics. Most of them are concerned about topics and situations that are going on in that area. While each one has it’s own personality, this one . . . because it’s considered the heartbeat, it’s such a huge mess. You’re seeing all of them here at the same time! You’ve got Republicans, Democrats, people who are liberal, conservative. You even have the anarchists and the communists, but they’re their own thing. [Laughs.] And of course, other people stop by. This is the heartbeat. You’re going to see everything out here. But overall, the whole purpose is to spread awareness of the social and economic injustices out there. We’re all bound under that unifying goal, more or less.
I asked you about where you sleep because this area seems to be the good-vibe area.
Well, it’s the Empathy table and Nonviolent Communication, so a lot of us who work here, yeah, we’re already good at talking to each other, and it is a pretty good-vibe area. We try to keep happy and, you know, keep each other entertained, because if you don’t have an outlet for stress, you’re just going to go nuts.
Especially because you’ve taken on a certain amount of responsibility for the collective good vibes.
Oh, yeah. Definitely.
So what kinds of things are you mediating?
Personal issues, general concerns. You know, just people who are having a bad day and want to talk. I know Claire, who sleeps here—she’s actually a schoolteacher who occupies here—she was talking to someone the other day, and yesterday he actually came up to her to say that he’d started reconnecting with his parents and talking to them, after not talking to them for, like, three years!
My God!
And now they’re back together again.
That’s one hell of a mediation!
It’s stuff like that: from being severed away from your family, to just being a little upset about a problem and wanting to vent. Whenever somebody wants to vent, I usually take it because I don’t get mad when people yell. Yeah, it’s a whole lot of different things. People who, we think, need more support and help than others, we’ll send them to Outreach. Or we have a couple of the Protest Chaplains who like to sleep here at night. They’re really close to us.
Religious folks?
Yeah, who’ll talk to them about religious matters. We also have people with a mental health background who help out with the support group over at the Medical tent, if we need to refer people to them sometimes. So that’s pretty much what goes on around here.
Some people are talking about going on strike against those who aren’t pulling their weight. So far, the mediators have been like, “Fuck that! That’s horrible!” Are you with the—?
No. I’m not with that at all. Just like you said, we shouldn’t be turning against each other. We should be building a stronger community. No, I’m against ostracizing anybody, except for the ones who are being violent, of course, and definitely detrimental to the overall cause.
So what do you think needs to happen to improve that dynamic?
That’s definitely, definitely difficult to answer. You take into account such a huge, diverse group that we have here, and of course, a lot of people without means or support tend to flock to here because of what we can provide. We’re here for them, too, and we should definitely be supporting them, not turning them away. The problems you see here—it’s kind of to the point where it’s become a microcosm of the issues we’re trying to address in the outside world. So we definitely should not be shunning the people who may have a bad lifestyle or don’t help out, unless they’re being violent or aggressive towards other people, you know what I mean?
So far, have you seen any problems that you couldn’t talk through, or is it, mostly, you get somewhere?
For the most part, we do our best to get somewhere, but every once in a while, you’ll come across somebody who’s actually got a severe mental issue, or people are intentionally out here trying to instigate altercations between other people. We usually try to calm down the other people and get them away from the instigators. There are situations we can’t handle, but we do our best to when we can. For the most part, we’re more conflict de-escalation and prevention, not stopping. There are other people for that. Like, if somebody’s out here fighting people, me personally, I’m going to get a cop to come in here. I support law. We try to handle situations to the best we can, but when we can’t, we refer them to people who know what they’re doing.
I was up this morning when the fire marshals were coming through. It was actually pretty funny because there were some people going around, “We’re getting raided! We’re getting raided!” It wasn’t a raid; it was a safety patrol. But I’m a volunteer fire marshal back home, and I can understand their concerns with the generators. They weren’t exactly set up according to fire safety regulations, and we didn’t have an emergency spill cleanup thing set up. There’s a lot of flammable materials near them, so what they did . . . I was speaking to one of the chief fire marshals—I can’t remember his name; you know, it’s hundreds of faces—but they confiscated them, then got names of people who could go and get them back once we provide a safe, designated area for the generators that sticks to fire safety regulations.
How would you do that in this situation?
I don’t know the fire safety regs for New York City. I only know back home, but I’m very sure it’s possible. Get a container for the generators. Get a bag of sawdust—even kitty litter—to dry-sweep any spills. Keep them away from any nylon fabric or any other flammable materials. Those are basics. It’s just designating a safe area that sticks to fire safety regs. Once we can have that set up and have one of the Fire Department fire marshals check it out, we can get our generators back. Of course, again, you come into that issue where it’s lack of communication, or people who are actually so against the Man, if you will, who don’t really want to work with that, but it is possible for us to get our generators back. We just need to work towards that.
Well, that’s good, because you’re going to need them for winter.
Oh, yeah, definitely. ❖
Michael
Could you tell me a little bit about what your job is, besides just holding it all together?
Mom, dad, doctor . . . director, sometimes. I wear lots of hats. I’m in Comfort wearing lots of hats . . . and coats and shoes and bags. And I’m having fun. I’m absolutely having fun wearing all those hats.
Tell me about your day. What are you actually up to?
Well, I get up when everybody else gets up, which is, like, seven o’clock in the morning.
[Michael takes a donation of clothing.]
See, there’s one perfect example, you know? You’re given these donations, and you just, like . . . you put it on, and you don’t know. [Dons a hat.] Sometimes it makes you work fast . . .
Oh, I love it! That looks really good.
And then sometimes it just makes you work very slow.
[Laughs.]
Let me look at the label . . . three ninety-nine . . . oh, from the Salvation Army! I’ve stolen things from them!
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You get to use all your skills. I said something earlier today—I was talking to myself . . . talking to God, really—going over to Trinity to use the restroom, and really to smoke a little pot, which I do regularly.
Okay, sure. You don’t mind that going in?
No, I don’t care. Please, please put this in! Put this in the book, put this in the media, put this everywhere! Listen, it’s kept me sane. It’s helped me deal with my shit because it forces me to face my fears head-on. I could lie to you or I could tell you the truth, and it makes me answer that question within sixty seconds. I have to, I have to, I have to. If I don’t, I feel like I’ll die! That’s what guilt does. It’s Jewish. It’s crazy.
I hear that.
Anyway, I was saying to myself, “You see, this is how you learn.” See, the kids that are graduating today—getting M.B.A.’s and doctorates and all that—even they can’t find a job. This is where you learn. You get to use every single skill you’ve ever learned in your life, from every person in your life—good, bad, and indifferent—in this place. Honestly!
In the place at large, not just the Comfort station.
In the place at large.
So you wake up when everybody wakes up . . .
I wake up when everybody wakes up. I try to start my day by cleaning because that centers me. That puts me where stuff is supposed to get done, you know what I mean? Just . . . it’s basic. Everybody cleans up their own stuff—mentally, spiritually, emotionally, economically. Clean up your own junk, okay? So I like to do that. I go around spot-sweeping. I like to do that. I listen when the media comes up. I like to listen, and see what the kids are saying.
What are they saying?
Well, they can say whatever they want to, but they’ve got to be intelligent. They’ve got to be articulate. And when I say intelligent, I mean: Know what’s going on in the park. Don’t be talking about stuff like, “That’s what happened at the baseball game.” Say what’s happening in the park. You can say whatever you want, but it has to pertain to the park, and this occupation, and what’s going on.
Secondly, that they’re articulate. Pronounce your T’s and your duhs and your plosives and all that. That’s important. I mean, listen: You should have learned those things in grammar school. Unfortunately, you didn’t, but there are people out here who you can learn from. Open up your mind, you know? And that’s it.
Somebody taught me that, a long time ago. But he had AIDS, and I wouldn’t listen to him because he had AIDS. He was gay, like me. He was artistic, like me. He was fantastic, like me. But because he told me that he had A-I-D-S—not H-I-V, but A-I-D-S—and he was D-Y-I-N-G-ing, that scared the hell out of me.
But you know what? I fucked him. I mean, I took him for everything. His heart, his soul, his kindness, his grace, everything.
So this is the kind of guilt you’re talking about working through.
This is the kind of guilt I’m talking about. When I say, “I’m channeling my ex-husband right now,” he’s sending me messages, and he’s telling me, “Listen, don’t get cunty just because I left you a little bit of money.” That’s my therapy. That’s what happens when I sweep and smoke and sweep and smoke and sweep and smoke, yeah.
Well, that seems like a good way to address that. You’ve got to find a way. Guilt is really hard to deal with.
Guilt and grief. I was talking to one of the kids earlier today. I was saying, “Have you ever seen those Muslim women when somebody dies? How they grieve!” They roll around in the sand and they slap themselves. We don’t do that. I mean, what did the mayor say after these towers fell? He said, “Go shopping.” We never took that time to grieve. We never took that time to grieve, because when you grieve, you learn about yourself. You learn what’s going on inside, and why these things would happen. Not just slap a label on it and say, “Muslim. That’s why it happened.” No! So much more, so much more was behind that, as with everything in life. Peeling back those layers, you know what I mean? “We’re Americans! We’re Americans!” is what he said. No, no, he didn’t say that. He said, “We’re New Yorkers.” He said, “We’re New Yorkers. Go to Broadway. Go see a show.”
Well, there hasn’t been a good show on Broadway since fucking 1970! Since Company! And for a hundred dollars . . . ! I know I’m getting off-topic, but—actually, no! This is not off-topic! A hundred dollars to see a shitty show! Honestly! It’s all homogenized. There’s no original scripts. ❖