I see corporatism, fascism, crony capitalism.
I don't see a free market,
I see a police state, I see an American empire,
I see seven hundred military bases in a hundred and thirty-five foreign countries,
I see five thousands dead bodies in Iraq,
a welfare warfare state which gives out billions of dollars of foreign aid
for dictators to build up huge armies.
I see America that's lost its way.
Republicrats: Republicans and democrats
who both pretty much stand for the same thing.
I do not see true democracy,
I do not hear the voice of the people...
Finally, we've risen up.
"Mic check, MIC CHECK"
Spain, Egypt... You know, is it the dynamic? Is it the time right? You know...
Is it the right moment? Is the Zeitgeist there?
None of these things we can predict.
We've seen what happens when people protest
and come out, and march around for a day.
This is an opportunity maybe for a new style,
for a new shift in power, in the way the people relate to each other.
Like I say, I think we're fucked either way but it's worth a shot.
I was waiting for this to happen. I knew it would happen
because it happened in Europe, and I knew it would spread.
This is something that I've been going through internally for a good part of my life now
and to see it externalized in the outside world
is really a blessing. It's really something I enjoy being a part of.
I'm an old timer, so I've been around for four decades at
one kind of activism [sic] or another and,
you know, so it's been a hope to go after Wall street.
Attack it without getting locked up and beaten up and
physically beaten up...
How do we win?
"All month! All year! We're not going anywhere!"
It's a process of educating people and educating the world really,
that we have to be, first and foremost, altruistic and care for the collective
before caring for ourselves.
A model should be a growing movement of
round table discussions basically.
I was arrested
two days ago
interrogated
by police investigators
and intelligence.
I encourage everyone
who is arrested
to not speak with these people.
They intimidated me,
said I would be chained to a wall
for a week
if I didn't talk.
I didn't talk
and I'm here right now.
The major of New York has a
strange position to be in here. He can't go off looking like a...
Mubarak or some other middle eastern leader
and treat protesters in the same way that they do.
And he himself made a comment that if they don't find some jobs for kids,
they're going to have a problem like they had in Tunisia, Egypt and other middle eastern countries.
The only way that people like us with no power and no money can,
at least, try to change things is through social pressure.
"All day! All week! Occupy Wall Street!"
I don't know how to achieve collective collaboration which we are all striving for but
I think it all needs to happen at the same time
and you know, we're here making a stand were holding space.
To make people conscious, because people
are in their houses, comfortable, as long as they have food or they have a house
they don't like make the effort to demand their rights.
It's about time that people start standing up for a true democracy
so we can get rid of the corporate greed.
Demands are problematic, and... disempowering, actually.
It's about people making things happen rather than expecting like someone else to take care
and you could see, this is like a micro-society.
It's a model for a new society.
It's not a protest in the sense of being against something,
it's a way to formulate something new.
A mass awareness, a mass realization and awakaning of the masses
to the obstruction of justice that has been a part of our lives for too long now,
for too long of a time.
Hey NYPD, the bankers are stealing from you too.
Even though we're so close together, especially in a city like this,
and everybody's sort of scared to make that the first step
to break through these walls that people put up
to make the connections necessary to build a community like this or
different, that talks about problems
and we all have common problems,
common things that we can change to make our lives better.
I'm a sixty-year-old Vietnam-era vet
who's been working like... irregular hours for a lawyer
and the lawyer himself is having financial problems,
and he's getting ready to not have me work for him anymore and I'm in trouble.
I don't know what the hell I'm gonna do.
If you're frustrated, if you're like me and, you know,
you see the Tea Party on television and in the news all the time, and you wonder
why the hell isn't there a radical left answer to the Tea Party, you should be here.
If you have a ton of student debt, like me, you should be here.
If you're pissed off and you realize that, you know,
if you paid any taxes last year, you paid more taxes than General Electric,
the corporation, you should be here.
If you want to see something amazing, period, you should be here.