Why We Occupy

November 4

Laura II

I want to hear about your experience of facilitating.

What encouraged it is that I want to go back to my homeland, Canada, and help the Occupys there. In particular, Edmonton reached out to us for support, so I was thinking, “Well, hey, I kind of miss Canada.” If I involve myself in how this works—see how the kinks are going in the original, big movement—then I can bring that knowledge, that bit of expertise, up there. Not to run the show, obviously, but to have an idea of how it’s working somewhere else, in a place where they’ve tried to evict and we’re still here, and where we deal with a lot of problems.

It’s a different environment. Edmonton’s going to be smaller. Like, this is Manhattan . . .

I didn’t know they were occupying up there.

All the Canadian cities—all the major ones—they’re all occupying.

So that was my motivation for getting involved in Facilitation. I just went to one of the meetings. They’re talking about whatever, and during the meetings, they ask if you want to facilitate. I hadn’t done the training. I was like, “I know the hand signals, but . . .”

It’s two facilitators, and they try to have it so there’s at least one traditionally marginalized voice there. So, like, women or colored or whatever. And they really try. If it’s two white guys, they’re like, “Oh, we’re really trying to avoid this,” which is great. Every night at the G.A. as well, they have this . . . what do you call it? “Step up, step back.” So the step up is: If you’re a traditionally marginalized voice, we encourage you to step up.

In society, we’re subconsciously taught—from ages before we can remember—how to act. One of the most general examples is between men and women. Boys are taught to be aggressive and assertive, to get out there and do things. They’re more inclined to take risks, to put their necks on the line. And then women are encouraged to keep it back—just think, observe. They’re both good qualities, but it ends up in a dysfunctional power dynamic. So this is encouraging all those women and other minorities to overcome that. We’re saying, “Get up and put your voice out there!” We’re encouraging those people to come to the Facilitation meetings. Well, we encourage everyone to come to the Facilitation meetings and become a facilitator.

The training is really interesting. I’ll tell you a little bit. It’s all about direct democracy and consensus, which is a totally different form of democratic process. Generally, what goes on in the world is “majority rules.” To give you an example, let’s say you have ten people and six of them want something. They convene and decide whatever, and then there’s four people who might just be totally fucked over. Whereas consensus can be frustrating—it’s a little lengthy and it goes back and forth—but everyone has a chance to have their voice heard. Everyone might not get their way, and you can reach a point . . . like, it happened last night where you’re trying to put through a budget, and there’s a thing called blocking—have you ever been to a meeting?

I have.

Let’s say someone blocks, and it’s, like, one person out of twenty. They are not removing the block ever. There’s nothing that can satisfy them. They feel really passionate against it. If it’s just that one out of twenty, it’s “almost consensus.” Sometimes there’s that one person or a couple of people, which sucks! It would be great if we could overcome that, but in reality, some things need to go through. You could argue forever about it, but what we’ve decided to adopt is a ninety-ten. If there’s ninety percent consensus, then it’ll still go through. If not, it’s either tabled, or . . . or just, like, forgotten about. It just doesn’t go through.

It’s much more inclusive than majority rules. This whole political ideology is different to what the norm is. I think it’s really great that they’re trying to teach it. So it’s not just about facilitating, it’s about trying to give power to this other way of having society talk with each other. It’s a lot more like a dialogue, and it’s a lot less argumentative.

And it’s still got kinks. I don’t know how to argue for why ninety-ten is still okay if someone’s really upset about something, but that’s what they’ve decided to adopt, and I think that’s definitely a lot better than fifty-one percent.

So that’s the Facilitation meetings, and it’s really informative. Not super in-depth, but a crash course in this political science ideology.

Do you know where this consensus stuff originally came from?

No, but the guy that was teaching it had, like, three degrees in political science. I believe that lots of societies—egalitarian societies—have gone on that basis. When there’s enough resources for all the people, there’s a shift from the dominant hierarchies to an egalitarian society.

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Okay, so I got the facilitation training, and I was just going to start out as a timekeeper. We met up here, and at that point, they only had one facilitator: a white male, not a traditionally marginalized voice. So they’re looking around, and they’re like, “Well, what are we going to do?” I was like, “Well, I would really love to. I know that I don’t have experience, but it’s not too complicated. And we’re a team, so if I’m not living up to what I’m doing, this other guy’s done it before.”

I think that’s a good argument for why [affirmative action] works. Most people would say, “What if some white male with good criteria comes in, but a woman who doesn’t have the same criteria gets picked?” What it does is, like, I did fine, right? There’s a job to do, and I’ll learn. Maybe someone else could have done it better, but . . .

It’s a systemic problem. Obviously, if some people are taught to be a certain way their entire lives, they’re going to be somewhat better at it. And so if you go on the basis of who’s a little bit better, then they’re just going to still constantly be on top. You can, on principle, recognize that a woman could do it, but if they’re never given the chance . . .

I read an article about it recently. It was about Norway or Sweden or something. They have a much higher percentage of women or minorities that have to make up a board of directors. Over time that it’s been in place, the percentage has gone up. And they’ve got, like, really great companies. In Canada and the States, it’s a much lower percentage, and people still argue about it for the same old reason: “What about the qualifications?” But you need to give them the chance. Maybe it’ll be a little shaky at first, but we’ll probably all be okay. It’ll force those companies to look harder for the minority people that do qualify. And if they are a little less qualified, it gives them the opportunity to get the experience they need so that they can be as qualified.

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Maybe you could talk a little bit about how you got down here.

I came down to New York to visit my friends in September, before the occupation had started. I didn’t know about it. I’d maybe seen, like, “Coming up!” but it wasn’t something that was in my conscious mind at the time. Then it started happening. My friend goes to school here, so he knew it was a big deal. I was doing the tourist thing, checking out the MoMA and the Guggenheim, blah, blah, blah. But my friend is doing an exchange term here. So he’s like, “What do you think of this?” I was like, “That looks interesting.” We visited it in the first week, and we thought it was pretty cool.

Then I went home for a bit and I read more about it. I had another friend—also from Canada—who was occupying. I was talking to her, and she was like, “How are you not occupying?” You know, making me feel bad. I’m just like, “Oh, I don’t know.” So I decided to come back down. My friends said that after Thanksgiving, I could come crash on their floor again. So I was like, “Oh, what a great opportunity to hang out in New York for free some more.” So I came back down, and I was going to check it out right away, but then I got sick. But after I got better, I came down to check it out some more.

I’d seen it in the first week, and then a couple of weeks later. Anyone who saw that transition . . . it started out as this amorphous mass of people and things going on. There was a little bit of organization, but not too much. Like, there was a table for taking donations, and an area for making signs, and groups of people who were interested in similar things. I remember people saying there were meetings for Arts and Culture, and meetings for this and that, but there weren’t tents or tarps set up, or really solid space. It was a lot more loose at that point.

Then I came back, and it looked almost like this. Less tents, but there was the library. There was the whole Info thing where there’s a bunch of computers and cameras. Everything looks like this is turning into a really solid space of information and things going on.

My friend was working in the medic tent, by the way.

Had she been a medic before, or was that a new thing for her?

She’s a massage therapist, so I imagine that’s what she was doing. I don’t know if she’s still here, actually. I haven’t seen her in a while.

So okay, where was I? I came back, and it looked super cool. Particularly, the library caught my eye, obviously. I was just like, “Wow, this place is so great! They even have this library!” I came over and I was checking out the books, and I was like, “Oh, these look really cool.” Just one of those new faces: “What’s going on? How does this work?” I asked people, and they’re like, “Yeah, just take books.”

When I tell people that now, they’re so amazed. I was the same way. I was like, “You can just take them? That’s incredible!” I took some books and started reading them, and I came back down to volunteer. I realized that this is something I really want to support—more than monetarily. I’d given a bit of money before, but I think you need volunteers as well as money. I came down, and they just put me to work. Then I just . . . I don’t know, I guess I sort of fell in love a little bit. I kept coming back, and now I’m sleeping here! [Laughs.]

That does seem to be a lot of people’s story.

I wouldn’t be here if I could still stay at my friends’. They had to move into a smaller place, so that’s when I moved to a tent. Actually, I’m more comfortable. Their place was really shitty. There was mold and I’m mold-sensitive, and occasionally they’d come home drunk. So I’m getting better sleep here, as much as I complained before!

Are you planning on staying for the winter?

I’m thinking that maybe I will go up to the Edmonton occupation and help out there, seeing that they are asking for support. I can kind of act as a liaison. Maybe we can start more of this web effect between the different occupations. Globally, that’s really important because a lot of the same problems are showing up.

I recommend Shock Doctrine, by Naomi Klein. She goes through the whole history. It’s been going on for decades—arguably longer, depending on what you want to focus on. She picks specific events and people that have, through the past several decades, shown a pattern that points to a systematic way of being that our society has adopted. It’s been going from country to country. It was going to other countries first, and then has been more slowly put in place here.

Well, let me tell you a little bit about what her whole theory is. If there’s an economic system that creates disparity, people usually can see that. So a politician wants to put it in place, but the people are like, “No! That’s going to suck for us! We know that’s not good! We don’t want that!” But then if there’s some sort of disaster or something, whether it’s economic or geological or whatever, and the general population is kind of in a state of shock, it’s a lot easier to put those in. She analogizes it to electroshock therapy, which is all about the tabula rasa: Cause such shock and terror and trauma to the mind that you erase all the bad things done to it in the past—all the things that are wrong with it—and then you can put in the proper way of being. It’s the same thing. It’s like shock therapy, but for economics.

Okay, so your economic system is flawed because it’s not unfettered capitalism. You’re too fucked up to accept it, so we’re going to shock your country, which they did first in Chile, she says, and then to Argentina and the Southern Cone, and Central and South America. It’s like Poland, and like England with Thatcher. Same thing here with Bush and 9/11. It’s basically about the nation being in a state of shock, where even if they kind of recognize it, they’re too scared to look out for their own well-being. It causes terror, and it splits people up about what they’re going to do, and how to fix it.

[To passer-by.] Are those donations?

Passer-by: Yeah.

Laura: There’s a donation bin right there. [Points.] Thank you!

That’s exciting [the donation].

I know. We’ve gotten really good books so far today. A guy brought a bunch of books by Derrick Jensen. Do you know him? He’s a writer, but, like, advocating eco-terrorism. His new book I haven’t read. It’s called Deep Green Resistance, I think. Something like that. But I read his book called Endgame, which is about the problem of civilization. I won’t go into him too. I’m only halfway through Shock Doctrine. Why did I start talking about her?

You were talking about how it’s global.

Oh, yeah. It’s a global movement, and I see things in the government in Canada right now that are really scary—that a lot of Canadians are worried about—which is why Adbusters, I’m sure, put it out there. Have you looked at the guy who runs Adbusters and what he says about the whole thing?

No, we’re just talking to people who are actually in the park. He’s not occupying, is he?

I don’t think so, but they put the call out. It’s so funny: They put out a picture—in Canada—that says, “Hey, go to downtown Manhattan, and bring your tent,” and look at what we have.

There is an Occupy Vancouver, of course, but it’s not as strong in Canada. I think population has an effect. There’s just not as many people, so it doesn’t hit the same. But we haven’t had any violence. In Vancouver, the mayor’s talking about, like, they’re not going to try going in by force, and they’re not going to try and set deadlines. They never wanted to tell them to put their tents down. It’s a bit different in Canada because it’s so much colder and snowier.

Well, Vancouver doesn’t really get snow. It’s a rain forest climate, actually. It snows, like, once or twice a year, and the entire city shuts down. And we all make fun of Vancouver for that because they’re like, “Oh, we got some snow!”

Well, we’re like that here, you know? We get very upset when there’s, like, an inch.

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Is this your first political activity?

I think probably my first thing was when I was, like, twelve or thirteen. We boycotted Esso . . . I think it was about the type of gas they were selling, or how they were extracting it. Anyway, it was for environmental reasons. This was, like, twelve years ago. I was there because of my family. My aunt is head of the New Brunswick Environmental Network, so she’s, like, the staunch environmentalist, feminist, vegetarian type. She would get us involved in these kind of things.

And then when I was thirteen, there was this group called Climate Change Caravan, which was about raising awareness. They biked from B.C. all the way to the East Coast, Nova Scotia. And because of Gandhi, they did it vegetarian, and entirely realized on donations. It took about four months, I think, in total. I didn’t go on the whole thing, but we joined them for one week. I biked from Ottawa to Quebec City.

That’s wonderful. You went with your family?

Yeah, that was with my aunt, my mom, my aunt’s boyfriend, and a whole bunch of . . . mostly university students and hippie types. I’ll say “quote, unquote” because, like, I don’t really have a problem with the word too much. I call myself a hippie. I love people on the planet.

I don’t see it as a negative thing, either, but I think we’re in the minority with that.

Words—the ones that aren’t politically correct—can convey so much. That’s the annoying thing with political correctness, though I recognize the need for it in some ways. Language, I think, does have a very subconscious kind of effect. My mom’s a counselor, and a big part of therapy is telling people to rework how they think about situations.

People don’t look too different walking down the street. The difference between someone who’s depressed and someone who’s not has a lot to do with the thoughts in their head. You’re walking along, and you’re like, “Oh, I have to work! My life sucks! I can’t do anything! I’m not good at my job!” and they might just look perfectly fine. Lots of people think like that. Other people are just like, “Oh, it’s great out!” whether it’s sunny or whatever. I mean, that’s super simplistic.

But it’s absolutely true that your attitude is important, and the language you use.

Yeah, the language and how you think about it. My mother talked about the difference between the word “wish” and the word “hope.” Like, “Oh, I wish I had a better car,” as opposed to, “Oh, I hope that something good happens to me.” It’s a fine line, where if you really look at language—the exact meaning of words, what they relate to and how they fit—it’s so subtle, but it can make such a big difference.

I think it’s important. So I do totally agree with people who are like, “Yeah, we should try and use as the general pronoun.” Actually, a lot of books that use “she” are written by psychologists, who are very aware of that. If you ever read any psychology books, it’ll all of a sudden be like, “Hey, they’re saying and they’re not talking about a specific she.” And so what that does: If you’re a woman, you identify a whole lot more with this general sense of, “You are part of the greater group.” You could think of yourself as the “he.” ❖

Sebastian

This interview was conducted at Charlotte’s Place.

There’s a lot of people who thought they were liberal before they were tested. There’s a lot of people coming here who would probably argue until the nth degree that we should have more social care in society, but they’re now probably the same people who are wandering around going, “We have to get rid of the parasitical element of our community!” There’s a huge number of us—who are much less vocal—who are trying to make a new society which is going to be better than the society out there. A society that can actually serve the needs of people who have had very, very hard times, and are basically coming here because we have support for them.

I’m pushing to formalize our social care. “Is this a soup kitchen, or is this for occupiers?” Well, what’s the difference? If you feel like you want to be here, and you’re part of the underclass that is rebelling against this supposed one percent, wouldn’t you be welcome? Why wouldn’t we want to do every effort to support you? Why wouldn’t we have a Drugs and Alcohol Counseling? Why wouldn’t we have all the things that we desire in the world?

There’s so many mentally ill people here. That’s because there’s so many mentally ill people who’ve been left in the streets. People are saying, “Oh, the police are bringing ex-cons and homeless people here.” Well, if I was a conscientious policeman, I would do the same thing. Where else would you take them? The society hasn’t got no room for them. It’s completely left them behind.

As an occupier, I can help care for them. I’m happy to do so. And this is a continuous balance against the people who are walking around saying, “We have to get rid of these people!” That’s why I say it’s a microcosm of society outside. We’re acceleratedly learning all the lessons of what society has meant. There are those who think we need to police, and those who think we just need to get to know people better and understand them better. Outreach or policing, you know? It just depends which way you look at it.

One of us is always up in the nighttime to protect our stuff from theft, because we’re in the middle of New York, and why wouldn’t there be theft? But instead of taking that position of defense, we take a position of getting to know everyone who comes through the park. You know, making time to talk to people, and you meet some incredibly interesting people wandering through the park at four in the morning. Some of them are in need, but a lot of them are just curious. They get out of work at four in the morning. They may be talking a bit loud because they had a couple of drinks, but they’re not bad people.

You might say about a person: “Oh, they’re a heroin addict!” The fact that they’re a heroin addict is one reaction against their particular position. It’s a way of coping with their position. When a homeless guy pulls a knife, it’s generally because he’s lived in an insecure environment his entire life, and feels threatened very easily. It’s because of insecurity. A homeless person pulling a knife is a very different emotional thing than an educated person from college pulling a knife, do you know what I mean? Judgment is a really, really poor tool to use; compassion is a very, very powerful tool to use.

Maybe more difficult, though.

Yeah. Well, you’re not encouraged to use it, I guess.

I notice, though, that Nonviolent Communication seems to be invested in some of these ideas.

I’m not a fan of Nonviolent Communication. I think it can be so easily misused as a kind of passive-aggressive—

Really?

Absolutely.

Although isn’t that your tent area?

No, they put their table up in our tent area. People come to us about it all the time, and I’ll act as if I’m one of them because I want an excuse to talk to people and play with people. But most people who are from the Nonviolent Communication team are . . . basically, like, they come a couple of hours—if that—a day. They just left their table there, and a few of us have taken it over. They’re there sometimes, but . . .

The nonviolent communicators have a very clear understanding in how to patronize. But P.C.-ness is not part of street life, do you know what I mean? So the minute they come across someone who’s violently communicating . . . nonviolent communication shouldn’t be an opportunity to correct people. It should be a way of communicating on a higher level with people, regardless of their interaction with you.

I haven’t had very many good experiences with Nonviolent Communication. It’s an offshoot of P.C.-ness, and P.C.-ness is the enemy of honesty, as far as I’m concerned. And it gives one social group advantages over another. So say you went to college, and you can understand very easily the tenets of nonviolent communication. It’s very easy for you to sit in front of someone who’s from a street gang and go, “Oh, you see, what you’re saying is wrong. You know why? Because you’re not communicating in the right way.” It shouldn’t be about that.

In its purest essence, like all utopian things, nonviolent communication is incredibly helpful. The tenets of nonviolent communication talk about the fact that you must always try and understand where someone is coming from. The empathy angle of nonviolent communication is incredibly important, but it’s very, very easy to put the empathy to one side, and be technically nonviolent-communicating. P.C.-ness, if you use it as a technical exercise, has no humanity or compassion in it. It actually is violent and not at all communication. So nonviolent communication has to be put in context. There’s certain tenets that go over the top of it. And they are in the training, but they are fundamental, and if you move them out even slightly . . .

For instance, you have to try and understand that what someone says to you may not indicate their intention. Cultural differences are massive in communication, massive. When someone says something like, “You people,” or even uses what you would consider a racial slur or something like that, it doesn’t necessarily mean that those are hateful or hurtful intentions in themselves. People are just raised that way. People just hear that language, and they speak that way. The more rules you learn about what’s good and bad communication, the more your judgment can be inspired, you know what I mean? The more you know how right to communicate, the more you can judge someone who doesn’t communicate right, and that would actually put you in a less compassionate standpoint. So like all tools, they need to be used very, very responsibly.

I’m fascinated, because I’m having a continuous misunderstanding of the area you’re in. You’re not really a working group.

No, we’re just a highly rebellious group of people who consider that living in a certain way is appropriate and good, and living in another way isn’t. For instance, they started a Community Watch program in the park, but in our area we decided to opt out of that. We don’t consider that wearing a badge and all this stuff is going to improve our relationship with our community. So we actually do the same duties as the Community Watch, but we hang around in our neighborhood and welcome people to our neighborhood. We try and keep it positive and friendly so our neighborhood is somewhere people can come. The fact that we have got the Nonviolent Communication—the coaching area—is actually kind of ironic and applicable.

One person who’s been fundamental to getting our area working who you should talk to is Joey.

Yeah, I’ve talked to him a lot, but he doesn’t want to go on tape.

Right, okay. Well, Joey’s from Cincinnati. He’s from the street gangs of Cincinnati. He’s got, like, stab scars on him and stuff. But he’s an incredibly kind and—you know, if someone who’s vulnerable comes to our camp, like a woman with a child, or a homeless person . . . he was the person who invited Mohammad to come and live with us. On the front end, he’s the most, “Yeah, whatever!” aggressive kind of character. He’s actually got the best heart. And if some hipster comes along who wants play the guitar and hang out in the area, he’ll be less welcoming to them. In his own way, he’s controlling the diversity of our camp by looking after people who need looking after, see what I mean? He’s been a real linchpin of keeping things positive.

And then there’s Stacy, who’s an incredibly practical person in our area, who wouldn’t have necessarily the same kind of reaction to someone who was, like, a homeless drug addict or something. She wouldn’t necessarily be as kind as Joey or understanding as Joey, but she’s much better at making sure things are in order and clean. She’s a worker. And we all play a role in keeping it going.

But I’d say Joey is fundamental. He’s both tough enough and loving enough to make something positive out here. You can’t just be loving. There’s a saying: “Without courage there can be no other virtue.” And I really, really, really—I don’t know who said it, but I really live by that. I think that if you’re afraid, forget any other virtue you might think you’re going to inhabit; you’re not going to inhabit it. You have to have courage. The ones who are afraid—who are insecure on the streets because they have never interacted with street people—they are the least virtuous among us, in my opinion, because fear is not something that leads to virtue.

You’re area seems so cohesive, but you all just met there?

Well, it’s cohesive because . . . I don’t know. There’s, like . . . I think Joey really did it, I have to say. You know, the first time I lay down next to Joey, he was in pain because he got arrested on the Brooklyn Bridge. He had this bruise, and I had some painkillers that someone had given me at Medical. At that time they didn’t have any doctors, so they couldn’t give out painkillers very easily. This doctor had come by, so I’d taken the opportunity to get some.

I gave them to Joey. Our first interaction was one of giving; me and Joey, both recognizing in each other that we come from a position of giving. And before two minutes, we were thick as thieves. Then it was like, “Well, who else is in need? Who else needs giving to?” And this has been natural for us both, and other members of the area.

We have a homeless guy living with us now who—you know, he has the issues that a lot of homeless people have. If you are judgmental and you are unable to cope with that, you won’t stay in our area. Diversity is always healthy in an area. It always keeps people who are bigoted and self-interested away.

How long have you actually been occupying?

Just over a month. Me and my wife came here together. I’ve been here since, like, soon after I heard of it. From the beginning it was a media blackout, so no one heard about it. My wife heard about it through social media probably ten, twelve days in, something like that.

What made you guys decide that you wanted to come down?

Well, we wanted to come because we support the movement. Social justice is something that is really close to our hearts. We think about it all the time. My wife—the day George Bush managed to change the law so that corporations could give as much money as they wanted to government campaigns and lobbyists—she cried that day. She’s politically aware. I’m more socially aware. Together, this is the movement that we’ve been waiting for for many, many years.

As far as what made us come here rather than Occupy Portland, we saw a video of the girls being pepper-sprayed by the police. But my reaction to that was slightly different. I watched it from every angle, and I saw a girl screaming in the face of a police officer that he was a fascist. It felt like she was repeatedly, abusively screaming in this guy’s face. And then shortly after that, she ducks out of the picture—I don’t know if she gets arrested—and these other girls who’ve been quite peacefully standing there get sprayed in the face with pepper spray.

It was a very clear indication to me of what situations are like when there’s hatred and violence and everything negative in the world. And I considered that this would be a good place for me, as a Christian, to come, and somewhere where I might be needed. As arrogant or as conceited as that sounds, I felt like I could be positive here. And so I came here to bring peace. And I’ve done pretty well, although I do get kind of angry sometimes. [Laughs.]

Would you tell me a little bit about how your faith relates to your participation in the movement?

Anyone can see that in our society, all the sinful characteristics of a personality—greed, vanity, pride, independence—are encouraged a hundred percent from the top to the bottom. I don’t know how you can sit back while people suffer and call yourself a Christian. It doesn’t make any sense. If there’s a movement for social justice, and as a Christian you’re not involved, I just don’t understand where you’re coming from. And I would have to say, I believe that you didn’t read the Bible.

What is the reaction from the religious establishment?

I would prefer that my church was more actively involved, but my church are very, very, very considerate about not being political. While this movement is seen as a political movement, they can’t be officially involved, they feel like. Other churches in New York feel the same way. Whether my church is right or wrong, I don’t judge. I love my church and I trust them, and I take their leadership and their understanding.

They’ve been supportive of me financially. There’s someone on the phone I can reach to talk through things. I’ve got a support pastorally here by a really wonderful guy, who’s really insightful and understanding. He runs international projects, so he understands cultural differences. He spent a lot of time in Vietnam, and he’s just a really good person to talk to—very loving, very understanding, very measured, very considered. They’re an incredibly wise church, and I love them, so . . . It’s called Imago Dei in Portland, Oregon.

I don’t know much about churches. Is it Catholic?

No, it’s nondenominational, but I’d say its ethics are post-evan\-gel\-ical. The evangelical movement is about going out into the community and making sure Jesus’s message is spread. The post-evan\-gel\-ical movement found that to be not satisfying. The post-evangelical movement is more about going out into the community and being Jesus’s hands and feet. It’s not about preaching, it’s about doing.

So this is very much in line with the way my church operates. I’m a record producer full-time, but I volunteer on the weekends as a homeless ministry when I’m in Portland, and I volunteer in underprivileged schools and all that sort of stuff. Being part of my church means being active in the community. It means going to people and teaching them about Jesus not by talking, but by doing and supporting and guiding.

Here in the park, I don’t think I’ve ever felt closer to God. I just feel like I’m doing exactly what I should be doing. There’s so many opportunities to reach out to people. Like, loads of Christians see my “I hold the fruits of the Holy Spirit” sign, which is the way the Apostle Paul said you can recognize a real Christian from a fake Christian. Real Christians produce these wonderful fruits in their lives compared to people who use the name of Jesus, but then produce all sorts of misery and suffering in the world. So he was warning against that, and that’s the early, early church—like, the first ever Christian churches—and he was warning about the same thing we suffer under now, back then. The fruits of the Spirit was his way of showing you how you can recognize them, and they’re all opposite to the American characteristics. They’re all, like, meekness rather than pridefulness, long-suffering rather than immediate gratification. There’s always love and joy and peace, and it goes on. It’s the famous wedding speech. It goes on saying, “The greatest of all these is love,” and all that stuff. It’s from Galatians.

Because of that sign, Christians come and talk to me. I’ve helped Christians relate themselves to the movement a great deal. On top of that, we attract loads and loads of people in need, like homeless people, so I’ve had a hands-on opportunity to work with people as a caring, compassionate person, and just be supportive to them and take care of their needs and all that, which is deeply satisfying.

And then there’s also the opportunity to be the balance against the people who consider that anyone who has a different lifestyle to them is in some way a parasite on the camp who needs to be ejected.

For me, if you’re a heroin addict, it’s not fun. You don’t choose to do it out of some sort of, like, “Oh, I’ve got a list of options: work in a bank, go to college for another four years and get my doctorate, or go become a heroin addict.” There’s a reaction against pain and isolation, and just being in a situation where you’re deeply unsatisfied spiritually, emotionally, physically, whatever it is that leads you to that kind of decision-making. The only answer to that is to care for someone, and be compassionate, and improve their living situation unto a time when they feel ready to live a different life. If that’s what they want. If not, then you don’t judge. That’s not your job, to judge people.

But there’s a lot of people who just aren’t understanding enough. They’ve had certain privileges in their life which left them blind to what it’s like to live without privileges, whether they’re a white male from a good background, or whether they’ve had all sorts of disciplined upbringing. People grow up in a culture where language of judgment is supported. I don’t think you can wander into a park and shout out at the top of your voice, “We have to get rid of the parasitical element in this community!” unless you’ve heard that somewhere before—in the right-wing press, or in your family, or wherever.

Maybe people act like a liberal while they’re at college, and then they come out of college and revert back to whatever understanding they have about the world. But the idea that this is a left-wing, liberal camp is ridiculous. There’s a huge element of people who are just as un-socialist and uncaring as the outside world.

I am not personally a socialist or a conservative or a Republican. I have more in common with libertarians because I believe that any power structure, when allowed to become too powerful, is going to create evil in the world. There is no un-corrupt power structure, and the best thing you can do with power structures is to bring them down and get rid of them.

That goes for the church, too. Community church should be—like, you can have links and support networks throughout the country, but there should be no centralized power base in a church, which is probably why I’m Christian and not Catholic. Power corrupts.

What I think the church should do is—basically, I don’t think it’s about what the church does. It’s about what individual Christians do. And I think that that is the problem of this whole world. People want a list of demands of things we want someone else to do, whereas everyone in the park is well aware: It’s not about what someone else does, it’s about what you do as an individual. I want individual Christians to respond to this society the way they should, which is to reject it, and to start to build a new society where we actually do care for the people that Jesus teaches us to care for.

When I saw how you guys were taking care of Mohammad, it just really blew my mind. And Joey told me about the doctor who didn’t want to take off Mohammad’s shoes.

I watched a nurse clean Mohammad’s feet. He had trench foot. I mean, have you ever seen trench foot?

I’ve never seen it, no.

Trench foot is . . . it smells of death. It’s dead, rotting flesh. So I saw this nurse—this dear, dear nurse—clean his feet, and I was blown away. And then a couple of days later, I found this other situation where I was like, “Okay, now it’s my turn to step up.”

And you did.

And I did. I don’t know . . . you have to go there. As a Christian, you have to go there. It’s actually biblically required for you to wash your brother’s feet. Jesus does it in the Last Supper. He goes around and washes everyone’s feet, and everyone’s really upset with him, like, “You’re our lord! Don’t do that! Don’t do that!” And he’s like, “I’m showing you how to be someone’s lord. I’m showing you that it’s actually opposite to what you imagined, that in fact, the greatest among you will be the humblest, the smallest among you will be the most prideful and arrogant.” He teaches that economy. When you start to take that seriously as a Christian is when you start to really understand Christianity. There is nothing else in it.

The whole capturing of Christianity as being something that’s about moral values is ridiculous. Jesus would go up to somebody who has a terrible history and a terrible past, and he just loves them without any judgment whatsoever. He’s our teacher, and we should follow his ways of being. And that’s a hard thing to do, so they distract themselves in every way possible so that they don’t actually have to respond to the way he really wants for us.

Mohammad’s feet are getting much better, by the way. He’s still got a really big problem with his little toe, but the remainder of his feet were really swollen, and they’ve gone down now. A lot of the sores have healed, so he’s in a much better situation. And this is his fifth sober day. He’s laughing and hanging out.

He had a bit of misery and suffering involved in those couple of days. When you detox, you have all sorts of problems with diarrhea. You have to get the right medicines so that your brain doesn’t get damaged and stuff like that. It was a serious business, but we couldn’t get him to trust enough to be taken off to hospital. He was like, “But I’m happy here! While I’m here with you guys, I don’t want to drink. But if I go off somewhere else, I’m afraid I’ll want to drink!” So we just said, “Well, let’s do your little detox here, then, shall we? Why not?”

He’s been living on the streets. For us, the camp is chaotic; it’s just stressful to the ultimate. To him, it’s the comfiest, most secure community that he’s been in in many, many, many, many years.

I actually saw him one of the first days I was interviewing people, at the food table. He was cursing them out. Now I see him looking so much happier and so much better.

When I first met him, he used to shout at people all the time. He’s gotten used to that as a way of life. He’s been so abused. He’s had years of life where he’s been woken up in the middle of the night by a bright light in his eyes, and a policeman kicking him and saying, “Get up! Get up!” In the middle of sleep, day in and day out. Drinking, every day, half a liter of vodka in order to get rid of pain he’s got in his shoulder.

Last night, he said it was the first time he’s slept without pain. We’ve made him comfortable, and his body is relaxing. He had injuries from his time in the Soviet war, you know? If you’re living under that kind of pressure to hit out and to shout out . . . behavior is always a reflection of what’s going on in someone’s heart. It’s not like he’s a bad person.

He’d shout at someone—anti-Semitic things, things that in some places he’d learned to put his satisfaction of hatred. Or he’d shout at the police, whatever, trying to protect his territory. I’d say to him, “Well, that is unacceptable! If you want to do that, then you’re back out there. If you want to stay with us in here, that’s not how we roll.” Just strong communal pressure. “If you enjoy the fruits of this community, you won’t abuse people, because we believe in peace and love, and that’s not how we act.” After a few days of saying that to him . . . now he’s remembering who he was. He says, “I’ve always been a very kind person.” He tells stories about his childhood and his mother. He’s back in connection with who he is when being able to not have stress. Any one of us can be an asshole when we’re under stress.

I know that very well.

I know that, too. No one is beyond that. If people could have even a day or two walking in the shoes of someone who’s homeless—and I’m not talking about meeting them and serving them soup and then saying goodbye, but actually living with them—it’s incredibly, incredibly distressing. Most people would be a wreck in a couple of days.

Me and Joey were having a laugh one night because it was so cold, and Joey went off to get a bottle of whiskey for us. He had a terrible cough, and the next day he said, “I woke up at three in the morning, and for the first time in my life, it was a logical decision to reach out and take a swig of whiskey. My cough stopped and I went back to sleep, and I woke up this morning thinking, ” Do you know what I mean? And you judge someone for being an alcoholic? You just try living on the streets and being talked down to and abused in that way.

Not to mention, Mohammad got through 9/11 in New York as a Muslim with a huge beard and continuous abuse from people walking past. He talks about the one conversation he’d always have with the police when they were waking him up: “Oh, have you talked to your friend Osama bin Laden recently?” Osama bin Laden isn’t even Afghan; he’s from Saudi Arabia! The pressure that these guys live under, you know? And at the first opportunity, the first support network, the first system, his desire immediately went to stopping drinking.

People are so quick to judge. People might say, “Oh, you put an alcoholic in a flat, you give them everything they want, you put them on welfare, and they still drink.” Well, it’s because, actually, what humans are missing is not a flat and money and food. It’s community. It’s love. It’s the thing they’ve done the most to destroy in our society. Independence is a terrible, terrible lie of our culture. The more independent you are, the weaker you are, the more vulnerable you are, and that’s exactly how they want the underclasses to be. Independent, alone, without faith, without hope. And that’s the situation most of us live in, even within our nuclear families.

If you had to go next door to see your neighbors and say to them, “Please, we’re hungry,” you’re taught by your society to be ashamed to the point where you might not even do that if you’re in need. And that’s a very, very sad thing, and it’s been designed for us. You only have to look at societies around the world.

The first thing that the English did when they wanted to suppress the Irish uprising was to ban all dances, all social groups, all sporting events. They were banned. No people allowed to get together, because people together are powerful, and people alone are weak. And that’s what they want the world to be like.

It’s something people are missing about what’s going on here.

Communities are self-correcting, and this one’s halfway through. This one’s growing and changing all the time, and there’s bad elements to it. In my opinion, the bad elements are not the homeless, drug-addicted people; it’s the other people. So I have a very different viewpoint to some. Maybe a gangbanger who just got out of jail has come to the park because they want to be part of this movement. He’s not the bad element, it’s the people who think that he’s the bad element just because he’s got a tear tattooed on his face. The bad element, to me, is the highly educated, highly—

[Laughs.]

You know, the supposedly liberal element that’s running around talking about who is to blame for whatever problems are in the camp. They’re the destructive element. They always have been; they always will be. The judgmental, the unkind, the intolerant have always been the thing that’s weakened our society.

You’re so well-spoken.

See, this is what’s funny. You told me that the reporters who say nice things are going to slam you. Should I say something hostile? [Laughs.]

[Laughs.] Well, no, you haven’t said anything, which is good. The reporters—they lead you. They go, “Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, have you heard about this? What do you think of that?” You know, “I heard there was a rape here. Did you hear about that?” Oh, well, I hear there’s a rape in every single homeless community in the entire of America on a regular basis.

When I feed homeless people, someone turns up every week or so beaten to within an inch of their life for their possessions. Poor people robbing from poor people because they’re desperate and vulnerable. If that stuff happens in this camp, it means we are involving the people who most need us, the people we’re fighting for the rights of the most. They live that lifestyle and they have that reality. It’s hard for people to understand when they’ve been sheltered. But it’s easy for someone like Joey—who comes from gangs in Cincinnati—to understand.

I think that people who are sheltered believe that they deserve the things that they’ve been given.

But compassion and empathy has to extend to everybody. There is nobody who thinks what they think independent of their community, their society, their media, their government. That viewpoint—that you have what you have because you deserve it or you’re entitled to it—in some way is basically taught to you as a child. No individual person is to blame for their worldview. If you’re privileged enough to have met good teachers in your life, then you’re lucky. If you’ve met bad teachers in your life, you’re unlucky.

The guy who’s going around saying everyone’s a parasite is in a state of absolute panic. He’s got no peace, he’s got no joy, he’s got no love, and that’s a horrible way to live. So you have to have compassion for those people.

Here comes my wife.

[Catherine arrives.]

We’ve pretty much covered your experience of the camp—what would be the word you would use?

From a legal standpoint, it’s best to describe it as an assembly.

Okay, your experience of the assembly. I think that we’ve also covered why. Would you like to say anything else about that?

Well, we talked about why I occupy as a Christian. Why I occupy as a thinking person is the same as most people. I think the Federal Reserve is a highly, highly immoral industry, and I think that the government is highly, highly corrupt. The corruption runs through every element of our society, and it’s acceptable in our society as well. When the police can be given, like, four point six million by the Chase bank to improve security, and then a few days later they arrest seven hundred of us on a bridge in Brooklyn, that is a proof beyond all proofs. The ten-day media blackout is a proof of the corporate interest in the media. In the current state of democracy, if you have money, you have more of a say than if you don’t have money, and that is not democracy.

I like democracy. I like the idea of it and I support it. I don’t necessarily believe it’s possible, with such a large, powerful and corrupt government, to actually run a democracy, so I’m ready for them to give up power. The American government has allowed itself to become the same way as the royal families allowed themselves to become: in the interest of the royal families and not the interest of the people.

So if the president and the Congress want to be a tourist attraction, we could have people visiting them. Maybe some time in about the next fifty years. We just have to slowly take away their power. We can try and improve them, but . . . I’d like to impeach Congress, basically, based on the corporate interests. You shouldn’t be allowed to have corporate interests. It should be illegal, not acceptable. If that’s not the case, I think we can keep them as an institution, because I’m sure that their wigs and stuff—do they wear wigs?

Catherine: [Laughs.] No.

No wigs.

Catherine: Some of them probably wear toupées.

Sebastian: We should get them some wigs. It would help their tourist appeal, because that’s what I think they’re good for, really. We need to have small governing bodies in our towns and cities. The states, obviously, should have more power than the federal government. That’s obvious if you want to keep things safe and un-corrupt. From a political standpoint, I’d like to take money out of politics completely, so I’m with everybody else on that. But that wouldn’t be enough necessarily to keep me sleeping in a park—maybe it could be, I don’t know. It’s hard to separate yourself from being a Christian.

And what was the other thing you asked about? My background in activism? I’d say my background in activism is a hundred percent tied to my background as a Christian, which is a small proportion of my life overall. My load in my life has been to seek my own glory—I was a musician all through my twenties. I was seeking gratification and glory. I’m thirty-three now. My late twenties into my early thirties has been a time when I’ve been redressing that balance in myself, and finding happiness in that.

I do mural projects in schools in Portland, and I try and improve the environment of underprivileged schools. I think that’s activism. I think that’s the kind of activism we need more of. It’s great to fight the beast, but the beast will crumble if we don’t support it. You can’t lose a game you’re not playing, you know? So if you decide to be poor, and you decide to give what you do, as far as your time and your energy, to helping other people, the beast won’t survive. If you choose to go and buy expensive goods at corporate stores and indulge yourself in all sorts of ways, then the beast will continue to grow. There’s a very strong amount of activism in your personal choice about how you live. Not that I’m judging anyone’s personal choice about how you live, but I’m just saying: If you don’t like the way the system is, you don’t have to have it. It’s your system. ❖

Jonathan

My name is Jonathan. I’m twenty-three, and I live in Park Slope. I’m a music producer by trade; I went to school for sound engineering. I’m back in school for political science. I go to Queens College.

I saw a few footages on YouTube when it was first starting, around the seventeenth, the eighteenth. I finally had a chance to check it out—I think the first time was the twenty-first. The initial message was pretty catchy: the ninety-nine percent versus the one, and the one percent controlling a lot of the wealth and the power for the ninety-nine percent to have what’s left over.

I care deeply about that, and personally, I’m also here because I’m antiwar. I would love to see all the troops come home from everywhere. We’re not safer being in a hundred thirty countries. People argue that that is our security is being everywhere, killing people before they kill us. I think that one casualty will create one more family hating us and our policies.

What do I do? I drum with Pulse, the drumming working group. But I also participate in Sanitation, Comfort, and Direct Action. We plan marches and demonstrations.

That’s what I do.

What’s been the the good and bad of your experience here?

It’s good that it’s so open, and it’s bad that it’s so open. I mean, what comes with it being so open is: We’re not in control of who comes or what comes, or what agendas are being pushed. I’m all for feeding the homeless—I think it’s awesome—but then we also have a little problem with junkies and dealers. And they need help, too, but I don’t think they can get the appropriate help here. Unintentionally, we’ve sort of created a safe environment for them because the cops don’t come in here. So I joined Community Watch. We walk around late at night, and we have a little sticker that says “Security” or “Community.” That’s something I’m concerned with: people who are a little destructive.

The positive I sort of mentioned. It is that anyone can come and share their ideas. You know, I’ve learned so many new perspectives, and I’ve learned about so many different things I didn’t know about just from talking to random people. It’s a wonderful thing.

Does Pulse have a sleeping spot? Do you camp in the same area?

This area, basically. This big tent. We keep most of the equipment here. A drummer sleeps there. [Points.] Another drummer sleeps there. I sleep up the park, almost on the other side. I don’t sleep with a group, really. I just have my own little tent.

Are you guys still having problems with theft?

Yeah, we still have some trouble. I mean, I just had an argument with a fellow drummer because I brought a lot of equipment and I’m not here all the time. I don’t bring it for me, I bring it for the group. The conversation ended with him yelling and saying, “You should be here to watch it!” And that just makes me think, “Oh, maybe I should just come with, like, one drum for myself, and leave with my own drum when I go.” But I don’t want to do that. So I’m thinking about that, how to solve that problem. ❖

Matt

This interview was conducted at Charlotte’s Place.

Now Sebastian set me straight today. I thought your area was the Nonviolent Communication Working Group.

No, it’s not, but we are affiliated with the Nonviolent Communication Working Group. A few of the folks in the camp are with that coaching table, but only three or four. I think the number was higher, and then a couple of those guys left, so I think it’s down to three or four now.

How many people would you say are actually in that area?

There’s three . . . five . . . eight . . . ten . . . fourteen or fifteen, something like that. It’s hard to say exactly who’s there and who’s not, but I’d say fifteen or so. It’s grown as folks pop up who need places to stay.

Can you tell me the story again about getting your stuff stolen?

Yeah. I’d been here for . . . I might have spent three nights . . . yeah, about three nights in the park. I had a tarp, and I had a sleeping bag and a pad, but no tent, and I was doing pretty well staying dry; I got a little bit wet one night. I was camping in a space kind of adjacent to the . . . whatever the community is called, and I had met a few of them.

Then I went to Brooklyn to visit a friend and sleep in a warm spot, because it was raining and cold that bad night. I spent the next day just sort of wandering around Brooklyn and sightseeing a little bit, and then when I came back, all my stuff was gone. I had a shoulder bag of books, and my banjo, and the clothes on my back. My sleeping bag and my mat and . . . everything was gone.

It started out unintentionally. The folks—they were just cleaning up and straightening up, and they’d set my stuff in a “We’re not sure who this belongs to” pile, and I think it walked from that pile. So they didn’t steal it—they didn’t intentionally put it out to be stolen—but you know, from that pile of stuff that they weren’t sure who the owners were, my stuff just walked away from there.

But from that point, they took me in and said, “Here’s a spot in a tent.” And actually, my sleeping pad hadn’t gone very far. And then I went to Comfort and got a sleeping bag. I started staying in the tent where I’ve been for the past ten or eleven days, something like that.

Maybe you could talk a little bit about that group, because it seems like you guys are pretty tight-knit, and you have some kind of interesting energy happening over there.

Yeah. Sebastian and Catherine might be the only two people who came together. Everyone else has been added, you know, sort of piecemeal. Mm, I don’t know . . . there’s a little bit of a common denominator—a radical faith aspect—between some of the folks. Loren and Joey are both Catholic Workers, and Sebastian is here on—he might not agree with calling it this—a mission call. I came here to see what church folk were doing on the ground, and Stacy is also here for some faith-based reason. So there’s a little bit of a common denominator between a third or a half of us, something like that.

I came here to see what, if anything, the church was doing on the ground because Zuccotti Park is where the church is called to. It’s not Trinity. It’s not Saint Paul’s. It’s Zuccotti Park, and I wanted to see what was going on there.

It’s been interesting. There’s a lot of seminarians from Union who come in and hang out with us, and there’s some Protest Chaplains. The church activity amongst the park is sort of grassroots. There’s not a Chaplain Tent. Nobody’s handing out tracts or anything like that. Well, there’s some guys preaching on the street corner, occasionally, but most of the church’s activity is grassroots, which I find encouraging because it’s coming from a personal, organic level.

Could you tell me a little bit about radical faith?

Yes. A growing interest of mine is this intersection of Christian faith and social justice. I feel like that is the scriptural call. It is to pursue—yes!—to pursue justice at the cost of economic stability. It is to forswear the state and all of that sort of thing. I feel like that message is all but entirely lost in the mainstream American church. I know that’s a lot of the reason why Sebastian is here, pointing out the discrepancy between mainstream American church practice and what our scriptural precedent is.

He characterized his church as post-evangelical. Is that something that’s familiar to you?

I know of it, but I don’t identify that way. I grew up in the Methodist Church. I have been working and attending church in a Mennonite Brethren sort of Anabaptist community in Virginia. So I would say I have a growing Mennonite affiliation, but not officially.

So Mennonite is like Amish, is that right? I’m a little ignorant about the—I’m Jewish.

[Laughs.] They’re related, and old-order Mennonites resemble Amish folks in their practice of radical simplicity. No electricity, no cars. Horse-and-buggy, rural agrarian work, and rural-based communities.

So it intersects with a lot of the kinds of things people are saying who are affiliated with Occupy Wall Street.

Yeah, but I’m feeling a conflict in being here myself. From my experience of what environmentally sound life has to look like, the city doesn’t work. I think, all green energy initiatives aside, New York City is inherently consumptive. Urban gardening and wind and solar and all of that is great, but I feel that there needs to be a stronger rural-community rejuvenation, and that’s what I feel called to. But I also feel called to be a part of this kind of social movement. So I feel like I’m here for a time to be on the ground at the center of this movement, but it’s not my place long-term.

I came here from a farming community out in Missouri, and it’s just been sort of system overload, culture shock. There’s always too much stimulation, and it’s just . . . it’s crazy.

I understand. If I go away for the weekend, it’s hard coming back, and I grew up here.

Yeah, Manhattan makes me crazy. Brooklyn’s not so bad. I’ve got a friend in Brooklyn. I met her on the train on the way down here, and I went out to her apartment the other day to get a shower and do some laundry. It was amazing! People live out there. There’s, like, a soul to Brooklyn that is absent from downtown Manhattan.

So the conflict I’m feeling is: How long do I stay here? It’s all up in the air because I’m just sort of traveling around indefinitely. I’ve got nothing I have to get to. At the same time, I’m not going to hunker down and pull through the whole winter, but it’s just because the city makes me crazy.

How about an Occupy in a slightly more rural area?

Right, that would be good.

You’re coming from an intentional community?

Yeah, I’d been visiting for the previous month at an intentional community in Northeast Missouri. That’s Amish country, although this community is not Amish.

Do you mind me asking which one?

The Possibility Alliance. Their project is—I think it’ll be five years old in April. So pretty young, as their experiment goes.

And it’s a farm?

Mm-hmm. Petroleum- and electricity-free, so candlelight at night, and wood heat.

That’s nice.

Yeah, it’s wonderful. I spent the month sleeping in the barn loft and waking up when the roosters crow. Coming from that to sleeping in the park was a huge, huge shift.

Well, just the light can be very disconcerting.

Yeah. The first night I got here, I just walked around town until, like, two thirty in the morning because it was just so overstimulating.

Did you grow up in a more rural environment?

No, I grew up all over the state of Virginia. My father is a Methodist minister. The Methodist church keeps its ministers moving about, so it was four years here and four years there. I didn’t grow up in any one place, but it was always small-to-medium towns. I guess the largest city was forty thousand folks.

What does your father think about what’s going on here?

I talked to my folks the other night, and they’re not surprised that I’m out here. They’re a little bit skeptical. They want to know what I’m doing, and they want to know what everybody is doing. “What’s the point? What are you asking for? What are your demands?” It’s hard for me to answer because I’m asking the same questions.

Okay, we’re all here. We all have valid grievances, but where are the clear solutions? They’re here. You just have to find them. Because of the horizontal leadership structure—or lack of leadership structure, intentionally so—there’s no spokesperson. There’s no clear set of demands, but it is a place where any number of folks can come together and talk about their grievances and pursue solutions. It’s not easy to point to, but it’s happening all the time. That’s tricky to describe to your parents, who want to know, “What are you doing exactly?” Well, I’m not exactly sure, but there’s tons of important things going on.

The social construction here is really important. The consensus model, I think, is great. The N.Y.C.G.A., the General Assembly here, is pushing its upper limit for size to still be effective. I’m really down with the General Assembly model, but it tries my patience for getting things done. I like the Spokes Council idea.

Did you go to the meeting?

I missed the meeting—I was with a different working group—but I like the idea. I’m hopeful for the possibility of the Spokes Council freeing up the G.A. to talk about real broad, ideological, movement-based things because the time won’t be consumed talking about budgetary things and logistics and money.

So that’s what’s going to get separated to Spokes Council?

As I understand it, Spokes Council is specifically for logistical things, while General Assembly is for ideological, Occupy-movement issues. The General Assembly was getting bogged down with day-to-day working of the park, and spending too little time on political things. Its whole purpose is to be a political body. I think they’re both really wonderful models that are applicable and important for any community, whether it’s a town community or a city community or an intentional community. I think that horizontal structure is really important and really beneficial. So for me, just seeing the self-governing policy at work has been really helpful, both for its strengths and its weaknesses.

How big would you say General Assembly has gotten?

It was in the mid two hundreds the night that the Spokes Council proposal was passed. The fifth time that it was proposed, it finally passed. It wasn’t on full consensus, so they counted the votes. It was seventeen blocks and two hundred something affirmative votes, so in the mid two hundreds that night.

What percentage of the park shows up for those, do you think?

I would say a third or a half. And it’s hard to tell if that attendance is based on involvement in other things that are going on at the same time, or if it’s just apathy. I’m sure it’s both, but as to what percentage, it’s hard to say. There are some folks who are active in a working group or something that aren’t compelled to join the General Assembly, just because of its pace. It’s during dinnertime, and they get impatient.

Which working group are you involved in?

I’ve been to some of the Direct Action trainings. I’m involved with them to a certain degree, and I was working with Sustainability folks when I first got here. I’ve sort of fallen off with that. And now I’m trying to have a look at some of the different environmentalists, like the Earth Summit, and the Environmental Solidarity Working Group. They’re meeting at the same time, so . . . [laughs].

That’s problematic!

Yeah, it makes it a little bit tricky, but I’m trying to hear more of the environmental conversation, because we must go through thousands of plastic forks, knives and spoons every day. The waste in the food line of disposable utensils and plates and cups is really disgusting. ❖

1. Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2007). ↑
2. Aric McBay, Lierre Keith and Derrick Jensen, Deep Green Resistance (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2011). ↑
3. Derrick Jensen, Endgame (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2006). ↑
4. Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York. ↑