Time for tonight's rewrite.
This weekend a few troublemakers turned a peaceful protest against Wall Street greed
into a violent burst of chaos.
The troublemakers carried pepper spray, and guns, and were wearing badges.
Because it's not just the hundreds, four thousand that have come down here to Liberty
Square.
It is millions of Americans who have suffered.
While they continue to bummer, no more attention on the mainstream media.
It's them who caused all the growing.
You know, for us, who's the enemy?
Is it Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs?
Is it, uh, is it John Boehner?
Uh, I don't think that's the problem.
We sense that there's something systemically wrong, and culturally wrong, that our values
are screwed up, that we've lost some way of communicating with one another.
And I think what this is presenting to me, at least, is some kind of vision of an alternative.
Now, whether it can be sustained, uh, is another question.
Whether this protest will grow.
You know, I don't know where this is going, and I'm not quite sure I know what this is,
but I'm coming back tomorrow.
The fact is, what we saw was that the kind of change, meaningful change that we were
hoping to achieve through the electoral system, did not work.
And, you know, it's easy to see this.
I've heard people say that people are angry.
This is an expression of anger.
But I really think that to look at it that way is to miss the point and to miss the beauty
of what's going on here, which is these people are creating a new model of society.
And that's what we need to do, is find new ways to live together on this planet
before we make a total mess of it.
I think that now the new paradigm, which is very much needed, is occupation.
You take a public space, you occupy it, you create a confrontation between, you know,
the people occupying public space and the police that are, you know,
keeping people off public space.
And then you reach consensus and you start making demands.
Even if those demands aren't very good, and even if you try to have consensus among all these strangers
and the demands are, you know, less than perfect or less than what I would have come up with,
that process is worth the struggle, because we live in a profoundly undemocratic society
and most of us, frankly, are unprepared to make democracy happen.
I feel like it got to the point for me where I was just so upset
every time I watched the news that I was not watching it, you know,
because I didn't want to feel that way.
And to get to the point where you're so upset that you want to be disconnected
is like, what do I do?
I think for me, it's really kind of opened my eyes and my heart
to want to reach out to people more and not to feel like that this is just a city
full of selfish people who want to go about their day-to-day life and don't care about anyone else.
Because that is clearly not the case in this park.
There's an amazing amount of love and respect and communication that everyone has for each other.
And if anyone doesn't have that, other people step in and teach them how to have it.
I think the people here are truly heartfelt about the cause.
And it's not even to punish the people that have robbed and stolen and raped and massacred.
It's to just give back to the people who are deserving,
who are the employees or the workers or the homeless or the hungry.
And if that, I'll happily settle for just that.
This movement gives me an unbelievable amount of hope.
I feel like because there are no leaders who are telling us what we are fighting for,
we get to decide what it means to fight for what we believe in.
And if all we can agree on in this really incredibly diverse group of people
is that we don't like what's happening right now,
then I think deciding to take the time to be with each other and build relationships
is the key to superseding what normally disrupts a movement, which is identity politics.
I think it came to a point where I felt like I could sit in my house and cry
because I'm so upset at the way things are going and the cuts that I'm seeing
that we're doing to all of these programs that are helping people.
Or I could go stand up and I could march in solidarity with people
and become a visualization of the discontent that is across our country.
I mean, we believe we have the moral, we're on the right side of morality in what we believe
and that's true, but it doesn't do you any good if you never speak your mind
and you don't stand up and fight for it.
So I wanted to come out here and be in solidarity with other people that also are tired
and are willing to stand up and say, okay, we're here and we really believe this is a problem.
Up in Wall Street is where they're making their money, is where they're sucking us dry.
And then they come down here to K Street to shove it all into the political system
to get what they want.
This is like we go to the mall and we go online to Amazon,
K Street's there fucking Amazon and they come here and they're like...
We are trying to create a model of democracy that could be projected onto this country
and that is something that is so desperately needed.
Everyone here senses possibility.
I think it's too early to... I don't want to jinx it
and I don't want to make prophecies before they happen
but with the occupation here and in Wall Street and cities all across America
it feels like possibility, it feels like a symphony of possibility.
If you have a movement and especially a social movement
and you stop when it's a hard time or when it's too cold or it's just uncomfortable
you're never going to get anywhere.
You're always going to be stuck in the same spots that are moving forward
because the social movement in and of itself is uncomfortable and hard and tough.
It's not easy.
So persevering through the winter is kind of more like an actual physical manifestation
of our dedication to the movement.
The Occupy Wall Street protesters have been camped out in Lower Manhattan
for one month now from its very simple beginnings
the movement has lightly been seeing its impact felt around the globe
and many around the world are asking what the next move is here.
It's a real qualitative shift.
It's the beginning of a new movement.
It's something that we haven't seen before in quite a long time
and I think the importance of it is that it's something that was essentially spontaneous
that allowed all of these people who were feeling frustrated and feeling angry
it's given them an outlet and it's giving them a way to meet other people who are feeling the same way
and it's giving them an action to take and that's why it's spread so much
because there's so much discontent, there's so much frustration with the system
you know inevitably people will be pushed into political motion
because of the deteriorating conditions for average people in the U.S.
Now we have real interest in this movement.
Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey!
This space is powerful because it is the biggest, brightest part of New York City.
Actually, if you're a New Yorker, you never come here if you can possibly avoid it.
But beside the point, it is symbolic and they were from demonstrations all across the city
and it was very symbolic that the presence be shown here.
Let me look around, there's TV screens everywhere, this is all about commercialism and then for
once somebody is here occupying for the people.
It's just great to see everybody out here that they're really trying and I can tell that this isn't going to stop.
This isn't some repeat movement that happens in history all the time.
This is something new and that's everybody wants something new.
Hello to all my brothers and sisters occupying Wall Street, thank you, good work, love and a newer in Maine.
Hello friends of Occupy Wall Street, I am so proud of you and what you are doing for the rest of the 99%,
please be safe and keep up the good work you are making history, Linda B.
To our pals and NYC, thanks so much for all you're doing to bring attention to all the needs change,
sending you love, strength and light, in solidarity, Christine.
What this place showed was how much more things could be, how much more you could feel you were contributing to something,
that's what was so inspiring about it, that's what was so transformative about it.
I think our society is deeply isolating, but despite its drawbacks and despite its messiness,
in this space the idea of community was invigorated, the value of community.
I think in this space we tasted freedom, once you taste that there's really no going back.
Good things happened here, righteous things happened here.
But that getting out into the streets, that to me is where change happens.
You just need a lot more people. I look forward to this spring.
Freedom is an interesting concept, we use the word all the time, but what does it really mean to be free?
I think it's a sense of possibility that things can be different, that in itself,
that I could be different, that the world could be different.
That sense of possibility, it changes you for the better.
A lot of imagining went on here, a lot of dreams happened here.
That's going to stay with me forever.
Thank you for watching.
