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 700 military bases in 135 foreign countries.
I see 5,000 dead bodies in Iraq.
A welfare warfare state, which gives out billions of dollars
in foreign aid for dictators to build up huge armies.
I see America that's lost its way.
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.
Spain, Egypt, is the dynamics, is the time right?
Is it the right moment?
Is the zeitgeist there?
None of these things we can predict.
Hey, sirs.
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
that people relate to each other.
And 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 eternally
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 that I enjoy being a part of.
I'm an old timer, so I've been around for four decades
at one kind of activism or another.
And it's always been a hope to go after Wall Street
and attack it without getting locked up and beaten up
and physically beaten up.
And how do we win?
All year, we're not going anywhere, but a lot.
All year, we're not going anywhere, but a lot.
This is our talk, Agamist.
We're not going anywhere, but a lot.
It's the 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, I would say,
roundtable discussions, basically.
I was arrested a few days ago to get to know, interrogated
by police investigators and intelligence.
I encourage everyone who was arrested
to not speak to these people.
Do not speak to these people.
They intimidated me.
They intimidated me.
And I would be chained to a wall for a week if I didn't talk.
I didn't talk.
I didn't talk.
I'm here right now.
I'm here right now.
I'm here right now.
Mayor of New York has a strange position to be in here.
We can't go off looking like Mubarak or some other Middle Eastern leaders and treat protesters
the same way 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 and 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.
I don't know how to achieve collective liberation, which we're all striving for, but, I mean,
I think it all needs to happen at the same time, and, you know, we're here making a stand,
we're 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.
And it's about time that people start standing up for a true democracy so we can get rid
of the corporate greed.
The demands are problematic and disempowering, actually.
Because it's about, like, people making things happen rather than expecting, like, someone
else to take care.
And you could see this as, 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, an awakening 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.
Even though we're so close together, especially in a city like this, you know, and everybody
is sort of scared to make that first step, to break through those 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 60-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 going to 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.
