Dylan Kelley: So first, state you name and who you are.
Sandy Baird: I'm Sandy Baird and I'm an instructor at Burlington College where I teach history, politics, and law; I'm also a lawyer and I've been so for a very long time.
DK: I'd like to ask you about the Occupy Wall St movement and what it means in your opinion, in terms of the United States and the rest of the world in general.
SB: I think that the Wall St occupation and also the one in Burlington is a revolutionary movement among young people in particular but also people who are older and even my age who recognize that this society is in a real crisis financially, politically, and culturally who are demanding radical change. I don't think that these occupations can be co-opted by the government or by politics or politicians because the demand's imply a new society and so I see this as a very hopeful sign of a real critique of capitalism as well as The Government which I see as a government of the rich that has been completely taken away from the people.
DK: And how in your opinion has this movement been able to grow so huge? There have been a lot of protests that have been limited to one city; one state; or one country. What do you think it is about Occupy Wall St that has turned it into a global movement?
SB: I think one of the things is the dynamic of capitalism itself which also became in the past 20 or 30 years an international movement, and so all over the world people are experiencing the same hardships that this kind of global capitalism has produced which is unemployment, huge unemployment. I was reading the other day that 41 percent of Spanish youth between 24 and 30 are unemployed. How can that be!? And it's not only in Spain, it really started in Greece a lot, it started in the Arab world; all young people, pretty highly educated young people, but now they all have no future and that has occurred throughout the world. That's what I think is at the base of it including in the United States where unemployment isn't that high but it will be and it's pretty high anyway. Real unemployment in this country is probably at 30 percent. But it's also young people who have huge economic debt from going to college these young people are very highly informed and very highly trained, but as far as I can see they have no real future. That's what they're protesting about. However there's a political element of it as well. Most of the revolutions in other parts of the world have been against, I would say, real dictators. You know, Mubarek and the Arab Spring in particular. In this country it's harder to find who that political enemy is. In other countries it's easier because those countries don't pretend to be democracies. So in this country, the criticism I think has been mainly economic. And I think people have not aimed their criticism at also the government of the United States because the government of the United States is essentially a plutocracy. But I don't think people understand that as well about the U.S. as they do about the rest of the world.
DK: Do you feel that this movement is different from those that happened during the 60's and 70's regarding Vietnam or even what was happening in the 30's with the Hoovervilles and the Bonus Army March? Do you feel that this movement is something that could go further than something before?
SB: Yes I do. And I'm hopeful that it will. And the reason is that this movement does not seem to have specific demands. I think that's good because, in other words, it really can't be co-opted. If you think of the two main criticisms that the occupiers are raising: one is to end greed. You can't end greed without ending capitalism. And the second is, not that they've said it as much but what they have established is a system of direct democracy. So that's their political goal, I think: the establishment of direct democracy. Bypassing representative government and the whole idea of a republic and instituting things like town meetings. If those were implemented we'd have a totally different society: An end to capitalism, an end to representative democracy and it's replacement by direct democracy.
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