Call for Submissions to Grid City on OccupyChicago and the national OWS Movement
AREA Chicago is interested in your thoughts about the Occupy Wall St movement. We want to build on the access we have to such diversity of voices and perspectives around Chicago. Please email your reflections/ responses to questions below (optional) to: content@areachicago.org
- What were some things you thought of when you heard about Occupy Wall Street?
- How are you keeping yourself aware of any updates?
- If you have been able to go to the actual occupation space can you share some reflection about your feelings and of any interactions you had. Did you feel that it was a safe and welcoming space? If not, how can it become one?
- How would you like to see it grow/build? What are some issues you think it could take on? Should it have demands?
- What can the role be for young people, immigrants, queer/trans people and communities of color (especially those who identify with all of them)?
This is a response from Hector Gonzalez, family outreach coordinator at Hancock high school.
- What were some things you thought of when you heard about Occupy Wall Street?
When I saw the pictures from New York it was eye opening in how sporadic and organic the occupation was started. You had many entities that participated as a whole; I am still fascinated by seeing the airline pilots lines up in the uniforms; magnificent!
- Did you feel like you had been well informed about these issues?
No, I was not informed but I have kept up with the events that have been happening and trickling around the world. We also have to recognize that “occupy Wall street” is not new; I feel
that the influence of the occupation comes from the many movements and general strikes that have been happening around the world. Before New York you had the “London Riots, the Chilean demonstrations and the “Arab Spring.”
- How have you seen the more mainstream or corporate media cover this?
Biased of course but it is something that can be expected to downplay the actions of ordinary people.
- Would you call it a movement?
Movements are meant to create change; I am not sure that Occupy has done so; it has brought awareness to many people of the economic state we are living in, and it only includes a small percentage of people participating in it.
- How would you like to see it grow/build? What are some issues you think it could take on? Should it have demands?
Demands yes, accountability for big businesses that have been robbing the poor, but also bringing it to the neighborhoods that are being affected by gentrification, displacement, poor housing conditions, dilapidated schools and who are fighting to save their homes. Yes we are the 99% but over 50% of the people participating in the “Occupation” are well off middle class white people that can afford to occupy.
We also need to look at our elected officials who have supported wall street and that supported policies to continue to bail them out, lets look at our policy makers and hold them accountable. if you want it to be a movement these individuals also need to be targeted, OCCUPY CITY
HALL, OCCUPY SPRINGFIELD, OCCUPY EVERY CAPITAL IN THE UNITED STATES,
AND OCCUPY THE WHITE HOUSE!
- What can the role be for young people, immigrants, queer/trans people and communities of color (especially those who identify with all of them)?
Young people of color have an interesting place in the occupation and that is bringing and tying their everyday experience or racism, prejudice, stereotyping, and demands of what they want to see changed. There is a ripple effect in communities of color that can be pushed in the occupation but most importantly is understanding the disenfranchisement of their neighborhood not by wall street by but by bogus economic policies that were handed to their respective
neighborhoods, housing, and lack of resources. Lets bringing it local and OCCUPY CITY HALL!
These are the responses of Chicago resident Viviana Arrieta
- What were some things you thought of when you heard about Occupy Wall Street?
At first, and because of lack of media coverage it seemed a rather ambitious campaign, and although very necessary. I wasn't aware of the amount of organizing that had been done in NY to make Occupy happen.
- Did you feel like you had been well informed about these issues?
For the most part yes. It is hard as an immigrant and person of color to not be aware abut the fact that we're paying for an economic crisis we did not create.
- If you have been able to go to the actual occupation space can you share some reflection about your feelings and of any interactions you had. Did you feel that it was a safe and welcoming space? If not, how can it become one?
It most definitely wasn't a welcoming nor safe space to be. I had a rather heated altercation with a few white organizers after I made an outloud comment about the lack of womyn and people of color on the mic as well as the main organizing. Rather than open up the space to us, the response was very hostile. I was called hostile, ignorant (uninformed), and was told to "not make the issue about that" regarding womyn's role in the organizing. I had already heard many accounts of folks focusing on the working class aspect of this struggle while dismissing concerns brought up by LGBTQ, Womyn, and People of Color, but decided to go check Occupy on my own. I kep hearing the same things my friends, had, to not be divisive by bringing up issues of race and gender. How can there be a unified discussion and struggle about classism when racism, sexism, and homophobia isn't being addressed? Are the main organizers not aware that this economic crisis is disproportionally affecting marginalized communities?
