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Unoccupied? Occupy!

Protesters at the Occupy Wall Street, Zuccotti Park (Photo courtesy of Debora Nuryanto)

One would expect that there is an end to everything, but 2011 has yet to prove that to us. The Arab Spring, the euro zone debt crisis and the Occupy Wall Street movement erupted last year, and it seems like none of them are ending any time soon.

Take the Occupy movement, for instance. The so-called “99 percent” started to congregate in Zuccotti Park on Sept. 17, 2011. Similar movements began to take place all over America and around the world since then. It’s amazing to see that even Lancaster, a small city in Pennsylvania, has its own Occupy-like protest, with all the tents, posters, sleeping bags and people, right near its town hall.

Back in New York, the movement is ongoing. Now, though, New York protesters are divided in their opinion on the importance of the occupation of Zuccotti Park, with some still believing that living at the park is essential while others convinced that actual encampments are unnecessary. This difference of opinions arose as a result of several police raids at the park.

It seems that Occupy Wall Street has become more than a mere protest against uneven wealth distribution and inequality. For some, it has become a new lifestyle they picked up; for others, the park has become their new neighborhood where they have installed and built a new community.

George Packer, a correspondent for The New Yorker, wrote a story about Ray Kachel, a 53-year-old man from Seattle whose life was changed by the movement. He was born and raised in Seattle and works in the computer industry.

Initially, he worked at a company specializing in optical character recognition. After being laid off, he worked independently as a Web editor. From time to time, he earned pocket money by playing the keyboard with a local band and DJing at a nightclub.

It was not until the latest recession struck the country that Kachel started to cut his living expenses. His source of income gone, he began to sell his belongings to make ends meet. He said goodbye to his MacBook Air, then his iPad, his iMac, his DVD collection and, lastly, his copy of Final Cut Pro. He could have kept on living by taking up jobs as a barista or deliveryman, but he didn’t see himself as a good communicator who could chat with customers all day long.

As things got, Kachel eventually could not pay his rent. But thanks to Twitter, he learned that a demonstration had started in a park in Manhattan and thousands of people, with whom he shared a similar situation, were starting to occupy the park. He took a Greyhound bus to New York City, only with a few changes of clothes, a portable hard disk and a cellphone in hand, leaving his life behind.  

Establishing one’s self in a new community is never easy, but Kachel made it through. He started to make friends and learned how to communicate with people. He scrubbed the park’s pavement daily, and in return, someone gave him a sleeping bag. He walked around lower Manhattan in the morning, charged his cellphone at Starbucks and tweeted regularly. He didn’t even have to worry about the change in his pocket as meals were distributed daily at the park. If he ever got bored, the People’s Library in the corner of the park provided free books to everyone. Everything was provided free. Perhaps it was a miniature of the utopian America everyone dreams of.

Kachel is only one of the several thousand Wall Street occupiers. There are thousands more men and women whose lives are flourishing in this collective movement. Now that occupying the park is prohibited, Kachel and others like him are living homeless around New York.

Kachel has found a comfortable spot somewhere under the Brooklyn Bridge, while others can spend their nights at local churches. For some, they don’t know where they are going to sleep tomorrow. We don’t know when this is going to an end.

Ray Kachel tweets his story regularly on Twitter at @rayk58. He blogs at rayk58.wordpress.com.

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