Portraits From the Revolution: Interviews With the Protestors From Occupy Wall Street by Robert Couteau

Author:Robert Couteau [Couteau, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780996688802
Goodreads: 51978368
Publisher: Dominantstar
Published: 2020-03-03T00:00:00+00:00

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Jenny was conspicuous in her canary-yellow “Grandmothers for Peace” apron. After she took a break from her marching, we spoke about the future of the movement.

RC: Have you been down here since the beginning?

Jenny: Some of us were, a group of about fifteen was here since the first day. Three members were arrested at the Union Square rally, and others have been arrested at various other times. We feel very strongly about supporting Occupy Wall Street and about how our messages are the same.

RC: What are your impressions of the young people here?

Jenny: I’m so impressed by the energy, the thoughtfulness, and the commitment not just to goals but, even more so, to a paradigm shift around communication and discourse. There are any number of people here who are not on the same wavelength as I am. I mean, I’m not a Libertarian; I’m not particularly into waving American flags, or anything like that. But the fact is, their commitment is to deepening discourse and to not polarizing.

When there’s a police action that is brutal – and they’ve been awful – the commitment after addressing what’s happened is: “Let’s get back on focus.” The other day, we were yelling, “You are the ninety-nine percent!” to the cops. That’s a really significant thing to be supporting. When we hear antipolice comments, we can talk about “abuse is abuse,” but there are still individual police officers who are operating without contact who are part of us.

RC: A year from now, ten years from now, how will people talk about what’s happened here?

Jenny: I don’t think the change is going to be in my lifetime or in your lifetime. But hopefully the discourse will change over time.

RC: Anything you’d like to add?

Jenny: This is an amazing, wonderful experience, and we need to guard against it being co-opted. The other day, someone said, “Oh, it’s too bad there isn’t a centralized group with a message.” And I almost had a heart attack. I said the strength of this is that it isn’t that. Any push toward centralization or toward a hierarchal model is in total opposition to what the strength of this is about.

In terms of real change, I don’t think we’re going to see things in our lifetime. But now there’s a different model out there; that’s what’s critical. And I believe that will continue.

RC: It’s also educating a lot of people. As it seeps into the middle class, they’ll be thinking about some of these things for the first time.

Jenny: Yes. And there are people from all over the country here. There are even kids from Kentucky who came to study the model. They came for twenty-four hours, to sleep here and to study it. Next week, they’ll be starting an “Occupy Lexington, Kentucky.”

RC: I saw on the Internet that there’s even an Occupy North Dakota!

Jenny: Yes!

RC: So I thought, that’s got to mean something.

Jenny: That’s right.

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