Students explain why they occupy
Why Occupy Dartmouth? Occupy Dartmouth participants explained their reasons for joining and future plans at Occupy America: An Open Forum, held at 3 Rockefeller yesterday afternoon. The organizer stressed that the students were not there “to recruit or to justify,” but rather to use “their own body to respond to a massive crisis that many of their peer do not even acknowledge.” He also asked the audiences to “ask yourself what do you want and what kind of society you want to see before asking [the occupiers] what do they want.”
Professor Annelise Orleck from the History Department started off the forum by showing a video of what she called the first occupy movement in America in 1932, during which the US army set fire to the camps that occupiers built in Washington, and used tear gas to disperse the crowd. Orleck cited other incidents in history such as the civil rights movement and the Columbia University protest of 1968 to prove that “the first response to these movement is violence” and that “violence will always level across [occupiers].”
In response to Dartmouth occupiers’ concern that they were not making an impact on the campus, which Orleck came to understand from conversations with the occupiers, she pointed out that “every movement reaches this moment.” Orleck answered the question about how an occupier can continue the movement by quoting from activist Grace Paley who said of her own activism, “I don’t do it to win, I do it because it is a good way to spend my life.”
Following Orleck, four of the seventeen occupiers at the Forum spoke of their reasons for joining the movement. Allison Puglisi ’15 felt that the “American dream is not accessible for everybody” and that “the movement is too diverse for us to have one answer, it is not about a list of demand, but making people to realize there is a problem,” she said. Deanna Portero ’12 said she has two main beliefs that guide her participation - that she does not believe we live in a democracy and that “we are not equal before our justice system.” Nathan Gusdorf ’12 realized through his studies of European social and political philosophy that, “You don’t have politics if you neglect the economics side, because that is what defines power in our society,” he said.
Stewart Towle ’12 said the occupiers have “moved through our despair to hope in the last 24 hours. We are dedicated to maintaining Occupy Dartmouth until the end of the term and we are in intense dialogue right now about whether to attempt to maintain [the effort] in winter term.”
At 7a.m. today, the International Day of Solitary, the occupiers joined other groups at Ledyard marching to Hanover with puppets and sign.
Students spoke about their reasons for joining the movement.