OCCUPY: Inside The Movement

Let Me Ascertain You: Occupy Wall Street, Part II is happening this Friday! Tickets for the event are going fast, but can still join us on January 13, 2012 at 9:30 PM at Joe's Pub by clicking here for tickets. The Civilians will be bringing you material collected by our artists in over 100 interviews, featuring people with a variety of viewpoints and levels of involvement with the Occupy movement.

In anticipation of the cabaret, we're posting some of the interesting material we got that didn't make it into the cabaret,  right here on the blog!

This excerpt is from a German oncologist talking about how he got involved with Occupy:

"And so the day the occupation start I thought this uh by chance I was at Grand Central and I saw many young people with backpacks and sleeping bags, which is not totally usual for Grand Central, and I was wondering what was up.  And uh then you know I do not know why I uh two days later or so, on the internet, saw one of the live streams where they had a General Assembly and this was for me I said Wow! This is like being home.  Because they were using exactly the same methods of consensus building that we had used in the 80s for our non-violent blockades.  Look uh clearly there were people involved who have the same background I have, who have the same ideas.  And this led to that then uh on the first Wednesday so it started Saturday, Wednesday after was the first time when I was at uh downtown with Occupy Wall Street.  Again this incredible feeling.  Like time travel, you know, as if uh, look, '84, '83 to now, as if there would not be a gap in between in a way.  And then that Wednesday I decided that I would participate, that I would give one day per week.  Because look, with my flexible schedule, uh, and I decided that it would be Wednesday because that's in the middle of the week when other working people normally cannot do it, that this would be my day to be there, and so essentially since then every Wednesday I'm downtown."