Occupy Wall Street Medic Interview Transcript
Q: Looking back on Occupy, how do you feel that protests have learned and grown since then?
A: Decentralization. We learned you can’t rely on one voice, or one group of voices. When any person can lead, the police cannot stop us through single arrests. I think that’s why they pulled that bullshit mass arrest – they wanted to intimidate everyone because they didn’t know how to stop a leadership that didn’t exist.
Q: How has the police response changed over the years?
A: In the past decade it has become terrifyingly and infuriatingly more militant and under trump they’ve become so absurdly violent that we’ve had to adapt as medics and protestors. They’ve gotten much too trigger happy on impact weapons, projectiles, and chemical weapons and they’re trying new stuff on us all the time.
They’re lasing protestors to mark them for arrest. That was a new one to see. Plus that terrifying DNA-marker UV dye. This stuff can mark you as having been out at a specific date or even time and place and it is devilishly hard to remove. They have also been seen using Adamsite, which is a chemical weapon designed to cause vomiting and sneezing and unlike CS, can last for 12 hours in the system. There’s some nightmare fuel for anyone who believes in democracy.
With few exceptions, I see police as being more violent, and faster on the draw. Criticism of several high-profile police-murder-unarmed-Black-civilian cases has also seemed to make them really shitty.
Q: How has protest culture and organization changed in the years since Occupy?
A: Communication is huge. Encrypted messaging, the ability to blast out info to a whole country, the capacity to put everything, every video, online has meant we have more options but also more risks. Even what, nine years ago? We couldn’t mass organize nearly as well as we can today, though it was pretty good at the time it has only gotten better.
Honestly, the prevalence of social media may have made communication and mass movements harder as the signal-to-noise ratio goes out of whack. How do you expect to find out about an action when the FB algorithm buries it but shows you 50 fuckin buzz feed quizzes? But as the landscape has changed, so have tactics.
Q: Do you think modern protestors would have handled it differently?
A: People are way more pissed now, but I think Occupy helped push that. For all its faults, Occupy made it clear that civilly obedient protest, which we’d fallen back on for… some reason, was just not as impactful. Love or hate it, everyone was talking about it. They delayed the NYSE opening bell which was, I believe, a first. I remember nearly being crushed by a police barricade that day, in fact.
A lot of people radicalized in Occupy movements. I did, personally. Prior to OWS, I thought protesting was pointless and stupid. I thought the police were just keeping the peace. I was, eugh, a libertarian. And then, while trying to help people, I saw just how offensively bad NYPD was and it was a shock. Maybe that perspective skews my thoughts a bit, but I do feel like protestors after a year of increasing violence and anger would be far more confrontational and I think it would have boiled over in that park far sooner.
I also have to say, I think OWS would have been a more diverse movement today. They acknowledge the issue at the time, but there was a bit of an “it is what it is” reaction, and maybe a tendency to overcompensate when Black voices did speak. “Promote Black Voices” doesn’t mean “turn off your brain” and look, lots of people had iffy ideas at Occupy, across melanin shades and hues. The white guilt did us no favors. Having more Black Voices and white allies who actually know how to ally instead of white knight would have been badass.
Q: What kind of impact do you think Occupy had on protesting in the US?
A: It taught cops they couldn’t just target the “people in charge”, that’s for sure. it also was there when live streams off the street were becoming a thing. Having PD there, on a live feed, hiding badge numbers and going berserk was influential in ways I think we’ll bee tracing the effects of for years. A lot like how when war footage went from carefully edited and shown in news reels to on TV, sometimes live, and horrifically live and raw and bloody in Vietnam, the people’s view swung hard.
Seeing Officer Bologna randomly and cruelly hose down a couple of protestors quietly stood in a kettle while even other cops looked on in shock and confusion is one of those images I think we need to make sure is kept around for generations. That being blasted over the internet infuriated people. And the cops know it, now. They know how fast video goes live and how much people are willing to dox every last one of them.
Beyond that, taking protesting to a youth-level, taking it to a fully digital organization and digital word of mouth, this is massive. Occupy reminded us to pressure them in their daily lives, not just at the RNC and DNC but to say “Oh, I’m sorry, were you enjoying your Tuesday? Fuck you Tuesday, people are dying.” Y’know how pearls are made? A tiny grain of sand gets into an oyster and irritates the shit out of it until the oyster makes it into a precious “stone”. OWS taught a lot of us to make ourselves a menace.
Q: What advice would you give to future protestors?
A: You are one, fragile, insignificant person. In a crowd that outnumbers anything they can throw at you. If you refuse to accept “no”, there ain’t shit they can do.
