MY STORY

My Experience at occupy

Picture of me at Zuccotti Park from the Wall Street Journal

Channing Creager, 22, left, and Hugh Thorne, 72, right, hold signs at the Occupy Wall Street protest in Zuccotti Park in New York City on October 6th, 2011.
Bryan Derballa for The Wall Street Journal

Personal Comment: The man and I had some really great conversations, I stood there for a while speaking to him and although my sign was antagonistic, our conversation was very friendly. The other side of my sign had a list of Obama’s major political donors, most of which were major financial institutions who were bailed out by the government. One of the strengths of Occupy was non partisanship.

I first became aware of Occupy Wall Street through a Facebook post advertising a protest that would be taking place on Wall Street. At the time I was taking real estate classes and living with Pratt students in the Bedford Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn. As someone familiar with Adbusters magazine from my days hanging out at a punk community space in Texas where I grew up, I was very excited to attend the protest and meet with like-minded people.

Tobacco Rolling Area in Zuccotti

Photo taken by me during my time in the park.

Although I lived with college students and most of my friends were in college, I had dropped out of high school and been in the work force since the age of 14. Living with people whose parents were paying for them to attend college, I was very aware of class and my place economically as someone supporting myself and trying to survive.

I attended the protest on day one and when the protest was asked to move by the police, I went with several others to a public administration building nearby to get necessary documentation that explained the zoning status of Zuccotti Park and why we were allowed to stay there. I had recently finished real estate school so zoning was something I was familiar with and this loop hole was what ultimately gave Occupy Wall Street its visibility and staying power. You can read more about the zoning significance of Zuccotti Park here.

I went to the park almost every day and soon began sleeping there in order to be involved as much as I could. Before the protests I was very critical of the TARP bank bailouts and had seen the economy as well as my own family suffer due to the recession that followed. Having turned 18 in 2007, my own experience with the job market during the recession and seeing my grandparents lose substantial wealth in the stock market crash made the cause personal. I was willing to dedicate all of my time to do something if possible or at least whatever I could.

As the park filled with people, groups began to form such as the Liberty Kitchen working group, which provided food to anyone in the park who was hungry. Initially many people ordered Pizzas to the park from the first day, but as the population of the park grew, the kitchen provided warm food to the occupiers throughout the day. I joined the kitchen working group and helped serve food and eventually prepare it at an offsite kitchen. Soon I would be involved in several working groups including direct action, the workers union working group, and community affairs which included onsite security for the park.

Photo Taken of Liberty Kitchen Serving Food

Personal photo taken by me, serving bread pudding in midtown after the Zuccotti Park was raided by NYPD.

Within the first couple of weeks of Occupy Wall Street, I was given some donated Law Books for the Park and along with some of my own books, the Occupy Wall Street Library was born. Soon other people were donating books, including celebrities like Patti Smith. Eventually the library had over 5000 books and full time librarians.

My Friend and Tentmate Toby at the People’s Library in Zuccotti Park

Photo by Tom Giebel

By mid October 2011, Occupy had overtaken my entire life. Despite my best efforts to entice my college student friends at the time with free food and exciting tales of my time at the park, I found myself feeling a bit lonely. After seeing another occupier with a pet rat, I adopted my rat Hillary Duff (Puff) and she became a full time occupier, living on my shoulder and inside my coat hood. She also had a house inside my tent that I had made out of a box and filled with shredded papers. I had always wanted a pet rat and Hillary became the first of many that I would have in the following years, even breeding them as pets.

My Pet Rat and Fellow Occupier Hillary Duff (Puff)

Photo taken by me

After settling in and acquiring a tent, I settled in the northern corner of Zuccotti Park with someone who had traveled from my home state of Texas to join the protest. Luckily, I had already been living in NYC when the protest started, but like many who traveled to join the protest, I abandoned my work and old life to dedicate my as much time as I could to the cause. As the park evolved, I started giving tours to passerby’s which usually included tourists or people interested in what we were doing there but were apprehensive to enter the park.

The best thing about Occupy Wall Street and Zuccotti Park, was how people from different backgrounds were able to come together under a similar goal. Despite what was reported about the movement, there were many different kinds of people with differing political and economic backgrounds present. One of the groups I identified with immediately were people interested in cryptocurrency and how decentralized currency had the potential to change the monetary system. Occupy was the first place I was able to meet people in real life to talk about Bitcoin.

Lost and Found Slip and Working Group Slip

(1) The lost and found slip I filled out after my tent and belongings were moved by the Direct Action group which later turned up on a blog online. (2) Blank attendance slip from a working group

I spoke to many journalists and news people, as I was aware that media coverage overall seemed to paint the movement in an unfavorable light. Unfortunately I learned that in many cases, the media had already decided what they thought of Occupy before they got there and tried to minimize our efforts with character assignation. Looking back, it’s not surprising, given the fact that our message was that of contempt for the powers that be or the struggle of the 99% against the 1%. Although the media said we had no goals or a coherent message, this was simply not true.

Image of Recorded Tour Footage with Lee Stranahan and Brandon Darby

Shooting Sage : Occupy Wall Street by Lee Stranahan is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

After giving an hour long video taped tour to a man who I would later learn gave me a fake name and was accompanied by someone I would soon find out was an FBI informant in sunglasses, I was getting calls from my family that I was on Glen Beck and other right wing news like Fox and Breitbart. Eventually that footage would be included in a hit piece on the movement called Occupy Unmasked.

The man had told me he was visiting from Dallas, my hometown, and was an amateur journalist documenting the park out of curiosity. He was very nice but after I realized he had lied to me and sold the footage to several outlets, I decided to be more careful appearing on camera. Despite the media portrayal of the movement, Occupy was non partisan, there were a few organizers from the democratic party who attempted to co-opt participants at different points but after their motivations were uncovered, they were ignored. Overall sentiment towards both democrat and republican politicians in the park was overwhelmingly negative, as they were both owned and operated by the same 1%.

Donation Box for Federal Reserve Bank

Trash can made out of a box by a friend at the park who was not a fan of The Federal Reserve Bank, Personal Photo

My arrest on wall st

Photo of My Arrest at N17 on Wall Street

Photo of my arrest taken with a cell phone by my friend Toby, I was arrested for disorderly conduct for obstructing the street with other protesters. My charges were later dismissed.

Video of My Arrest on November 17th, 2011

Occupy Wall Street protesters arrested by New York Police posted by The Telegraph on Youtube

On November 17th, two days after the park was raided by the NYPD, I was arrested with about 200 other people as part of the N17 direct action taking place on Wall Street. I can be seen in the above video attempting to prevent an officer from arresting a fellow occupier who was a young man of color, under the age of 18. This footage was later included in a documentary series episode by Oliver Stone called The Untold History of the United States.

Captain Ray Lewis, a retired Philadelphia Police Commander and Occupier

Photo taken with my cell phone while wearing handcuffs. I was arrested with Captain Ray Lewis, a retired police commander turned Occupier who was often interviewed by the media.

Ray Lewis, a Former Occupier, Interviewed at the Democratic National Convention in 2016

Former Philly Police Captain Ray Lewis Speaks Out on Poverty in His City, Activism, Sanders, Police Brutality, and More by Rising Up With Sonali is licensed by CC BY-NC 3.0.

Handouts from Zuccotti Advertising Stop & Frisk Protest

Although the original motivation behind Occupy Wall Street was focused on the bailouts of major financial institutions and class warfare, Zuccotti became a place where activists for many different issues would come together to organize actions for various causes.

By the time the park was raided, I had been living there for quite sometime and had settled into a cot in the women’s tent. The night of the raid I went to get some water and saw that the police were surrounding the premises in swat team regalia. Unfortunately my most precious belongings and many of my keepsakes from the park were supposedly taken to a sanitation facility, but I was never able to find them.

Me Working with In Our Hearts, Anarchist Zine Table at Zuccotti Park

Photo taken by my friend Nick

Luckily I was well connected in the park as I was involved in many groups so I was able to find housing close by in a squatted office space on Wall Street that had previously been used for hosting cocaine fueled parties for rich Wall Street traders in the area. It was incredibly nice and had power, heat and a bathroom. My fellow squatting occupiers had even gotten a water filter and hot plate to create a kitchen for us to use.

Because many people in the park were now homeless, disbanded and lost most of their belongings following the raid, I was asked to pass out warm socks and other supplies in the park. I was told to go to SIS which I found out stood for shipping, inventory and storage. The space was on Broadway and housed donations that were sent from all over the country, including warm clothing, food, and just about anything you could possibly think of. Once I became aware that this space existed, I joined SIS and spent countless days opening boxes, sorting donations, and enjoying coffee with ice cream from a cart donated by Ben Cohen of Ben & Jerry’s fame.

After Occupy

Eventually my life became unsustainable and I returned to Texas for a few months before later returning to NYC. Many of my friends from Occupy who had moved to NYC for the protest had remained in New York and I was able to become involved again in different activist circles. I lived and worked with A New World In Our Hearts, an anarchist group known for creating the Brooklyn Free Store, Community Fridges and hosting a freegan dinner called Community Grub. I also began attending presidential debate watching parties with The Young Republicans Club, a group of libertarians who later founded the Bitcoin Center, where I would later spend a lot of my free time.

After visiting some people from Occupy that lived in Detroit with my friend Nick, the former leader of SIS, we decided to make efforts to move to Michigan and settle in Detroit. At the time the city was bankrupt but was experiencing a surge in DIY farming and activism geared towards cleaning up the city and providing services to people that lived there.

Upon returning to NYC, My friend Nick and I were arrested on the subway after seeing several NYPD officers accosting a man who appeared to be sleeping. After having been in Detroit for a few weeks and remembering how intrusive the NYPD were in the lives of NYC citizens, we began talking to each other about how we weren’t the biggest fans of the NYPD in general.

Me On The Roof of The Abandoned United Artist Theater in Detroit

Photo taken by my friend Nick

At some point I raised my middle finger at the police as they accosted the man who was bothering no one. My friend and I were eventually arrested for “showing our middle fingers” towards the officers. Luckily, were able to use his lawyer from a previous Occupy related arrest to sue the NYPD for violating our first amendment rights. When this was reported in news articles, we were said to have made comments that are not accurate, but after my experience with Occupy I was aware of how misleading news reports could be after experiencing the reality first hand.

After attempting to move to Detroit full time, I was unable to find a job so I began commuting between Detroit and NYC by bus to work cleaning apartments for weeks at a time while sleeping in squatted buildings with friends from Occupy. The commute became too much for me and I moved back to Brooklyn after a year. Upon returning, a friend who was a lawyer that had previously housed me and other occupiers told me about CUNY and suggested I enroll in one of their community colleges. I took her advice and began attending Borough of Manhattan Community College where I eventually earned my Associates Degree in Multimedia Programming and Design.