Image provided by: University of Oregon Libraries; Eugene, OR
About Eugene weekly. (Eugene, Oregon) 1993-current | View Entire Issue (Nov. 10, 2011)
Pam Garrison Dave Waggenheim Phillip Crowe OCCUPY EUGENE ORGANIZER; NURSE VIVA VEGETARIAN GRILL; FOOD DONOR TO OCCUPIER; POET OCCUPY EUGENE PROTESTS What do Occupy Eugene and the Occupy movement represent to you? It represents a people’s movement standing up and saying that this country is not going in a direction that’s helpful for the people, and I think it’s generally about economics but it’s about a lot of other things: It’s about classism; it’s about ageism; it’s about sexism; it’s about gender identity issues. I was around in the ‘60s. I was against the Vietnam War; my boyfriend from high school was killed in it, and so I started doing all this stuff, and we thought we had accomplished so much. We fought so hard for feminism and all this stuff and then gradually throughout the years my generation became the yuppies and did all this stuff, and we started seeing the pendulum swing all the way back and everything’s falling apart. What I see is where the pendulum stops swinging, and we’re going to start going back, and I think it’s necessary. For me, I’m just so excited that the younger generation is here, and that’s why I’m trying to help. I remember when I was that age, and we had older people help I felt really good about that, so I just wanted to be able to do that for this generation. What is your role and why did you become directly involved? I work in the medical tent and in the sobriety tent and I’m also the liaison between medical and peacekeepers, because I’m an RN. I’ve been working with most of the peacekeepers here for about 10 years since the Iraq War started; we’ve done a lot of protests; we’ve been arrested together. It’s a really strong group of my generation. We started hearing about this and we started meeting and asking as a group of the elder activists what we could do, and we started going to the general assemblies and we each found our way to fi t in. What do you hope the Occupy movement will change? I think I want it change the attitude of apathy. People think they can’t help it, the dishonesty, the way people vote. We’ve been voting in people who aren’t what we thought they were, and I believe that Barack Obama is one of those. I think he might have been that person but when he got in offi ce he couldn’t be, because there’s just so much corruption. And I think it’s just really important for us to try through the system and outside of the system — we can’t do it all in the system and that’s the mistake we’ve been making within the Iraq War. It was too much inside the system, and it’s just been continuous killing. And now I think they’re talking about going to Iran and I’m thinking “This has got to stop.” I also do it for my grandchildren who are little children and I want them to have more than this. WWW.EUGENEWEEKLY.COM • BLOGS.EUGENEWEEKLY.COM What do Occupy Eugene and the Occupy movement represent to you? Specifi cally as a local business owner and part of the community, it’s just a really good expression of ideas, the thoughts of what’s kind of going on in our society right now and with politics and the fi nancial side of things. As a local, small business I think I can relate 100 percent with what all those posters and sayings are saying. When you compare a small business to a large corporate behemoth there’s a lot of imbalance. So in a way you can kind of project that up to the working class man, to the movers and shakers on Wall Street getting paid millions on the backs of normal taxpayers and hardcore workers. It’s a great movement. I support it. As someone who’s busy I want to support it any way I can. Why did you get involved directly, and what are you doing or have you done? I thought it seemed to be a movement ramping up, and I wanted to fi nd a way to contribute, either time or product, to kind of show the people out there that they were supported by all kinds of people in the community. I don’t have a lot of time to donate so I fi gured I’d just donate food, and I thought it translates really well. So, for two hours we were giving out food nonstop until we were all out. We gave away about 200 sandwiches. Everyone was real psyched. What do you hope Occupy Eugene will change? I hope that it will send a message to everybody in the Eugene community that if there are things that we’re unhappy with, we can mobilize and come together as a solid voice and work to change things. It may not happen immediately or overnight, but as this movement attracted a lot of attention and continues to attract a lot of attention I think the main message is that people are not content and they want to speak out instead of just being silent and just taking it. If a few things can change as a result, I’d call it a huge success. Or even if it gives people more confi dence to speak out the next time we go to war, or some crazy thing that’s just ridiculous, people will be like, “I remember when all these people camped out and created a scene, we can do it again.” I hope that’s the message it sends, that we can create a scene and start a conversation. What do Occupy Eugene and the Occupy movement represent to you? To me — and I can only reiterate that I can only speak for myself and not for the whole occupation — Occupy Eugene and the whole Occupy movement represents a shining example of taking into your own control our own governance and being a shining example of our democracy in practice. Why did you get involved directly and what are you doing? I saw a system of mass inequality. There are a few key points that I see as being my key issues. One of them is the forgiveness of student loan debt. We have an extremely inequitable university and college system, and in order for democracy to work, we should have free education as a human right so that people can plug in where they have the passion and also have the knowledge and skill sets to do so. Our current education system creates wage slaves, people who are in debt $40,000, $50,000 or more sometimes and often given jobs that cannot pay that debt back. So they don’t have the same leg-up on life as those who go to school and have it paid for them. Secondly, I am defi nitely interested in ending corporate personhood. I’ve been working with We the People– Eugene on this topic. Right now corporations have the same free speech rights as individuals, which seems ludicrous to me because they have very limited liability and their general motive is not a holistic one, it’s based upon making profi t. Thirdly, I’d like to see a fourth branch of the government to serve as the voice of the people, as a check-balance for the other branches of the government — judicial, legislative and executive. My demands in general are for a more equitable society, one in which people can actually have the American dream. I have a few different roles here but my key issue is morale. I am a poet and spoken word artist and I lend my abilities in terms of helping keep morale up. I also helped organize shows here to help keep morale up. What do you hope the Occupy movement will change? What I hope to see change is apathy. What I am noticing is that in the ’60s, the college students spearheaded a movement. Here there have been some students who have come down here and showed interest, and it’s not just the students. In general we have a general feeling of apathy. The idea is to go from the I, you, he, she or it to the we. To have social responsibility. EUGENE WEEKLY NOVEMBER 10, 2011 13
