占領者并不僅僅是學生

????這些抗議者是誰？首先得說，許多都是熱忱的大學生。（“他們并不全是白人，”剛到曼哈頓下城祖科蒂公園的時候，我曾對一位同事說。“沒錯，但這些學生看起來似乎都是文科大學生，”她說。）老板派我去市中心采訪時，特意叮囑我不要把所有時間都花在奧柏林（Oberlin）大學的學生身上。所以，我在這里只講一位我在華盛頓特區碰到的學生。當時，這位名叫山姆?朱勒的學生穿一件紅格子襯衫，戴一頂綠色的毛織帽，拿著他的MacBook Pro筆記本，坐在麥克弗森廣場（McPherson Square）的一家星巴克咖啡店（Starbucks）外面，想方設法躲開雨水的侵襲。那天早上，東海灣正遭受一場大風暴的襲擊，雖然天還沒下雪，但刮著風，天氣潮濕而寒冷；我冷得全身發抖，在那里只待了兩三個小時。

????“這里有很多大學生，這沒什么不對的，”朱勒說。“你看看開羅，那里的抗議者基本上都是大學生，他們畢業之后發現自己一無所有。這一點跟我們里的情形很相似。”只不過這番描述并不完全符合他自己的情況。朱勒去年12月份畢業，為了省錢，他搬回了家跟父母一起住，并嘗試著在媒體圈內找一份差事。他很幸運，在《華盛頓人》雜志（Washingtonian）謀得了一份帶薪實習的差事。但隨后，占領運動開始向他招手。就在上周，在這起他眼中的歷史事件的鼓舞下，始終固執己見，不愿做“虛假的客觀報道”的朱勒辭去了這份帶薪的臨時性工作（“沒錯，這樣做是和不可理喻。”），參與創辦了《占領華盛頓時報》（Occupied Washington Times）。他現在睡在一個帳篷里。隨著冬季的迫近，他每天晚上不得不衣著齊整地爬進睡袋里。但他告訴我，每天早上醒來時，他依然覺得“這里的日子很快樂”。

????我還遇見了些什么人呢？我在波士頓碰到了一位在人行道上讀卡夫卡小說的年輕人；在華盛頓特區邂逅了一位19歲的流浪者，這位以“錢袋”自稱的年輕人沒有上大學的打算。他對我說：“我憎惡金錢.有錢的時候，它是個好東西，但我常常身無分文。”49歲的藝術家威拉德?林克也是在華盛頓碰到的。他給我看了一幅他畫的反戰作品，還說他愿意用它換“一部iPad 2平板電腦和一部帶話費的iPhone手機”，后來，他向我討了10美元的車票錢，打算去巴爾的摩。81歲的退休警察馬爾科姆?布朗經歷過朝鮮戰爭，在警察逮捕了17位抗議者之后的那天，他坐在丹佛市中心花園（Center Park）的一條長凳上，手持的標語寫著：“公司禽獸不如；金錢不是自由言論。”來自印第安納州，現住在奧克蘭的前學生爭取民主社會運動（SDS）成員喬爾?休伊對我說，當1968年的反戰運動轉變為暴力活動之后，他就退出了。他現在擔心，如果無政府主義者為所欲為，占領運動恐怕將落得同樣的下場。

????我最喜歡的一位受訪者是被人們叫做山姆的薩曼莎?羅伯斯：那是一位20來歲的姑娘，長著一頭長長的黑發，留著劉海，胸前刺著“對抗內心的惡魔”（Fight Your Demons）的紋身。這位聰明且頗有主見的小姑娘告訴我，她沒有上過大學，因為她沒有錢，也不想背負債務。山姆離開家鄉佛羅里達州【她說：“我想換個環境。”】，來到了波士頓。她在一家餐廳找了份工作，并找了一間出租屋作為棲身之地。聽說占領波士頓運動之后，她依然繼續工作，但放棄了出租屋，搬到了杜威廣場（Dewey Square）。“我知道，倘若我有個家，我就很難做出這樣的決定，”她說。“當你身上背負起責任，有了擔子，你的生活離不開這套體制的時候，你就無法呆在這里了。但我卻有自由來到這里，提供力所能及的幫助。要是我不這樣做的話，我就覺得自己無足輕重，是個多余的人。”

????山姆的帳篷位于“神秘街道”，這是面對大西洋大道的一塊營地。午夜時分，酒吧打烊之后，人們開著車經過這里。有些人會搖下車窗，大聲吼到：“去找份工作吧”。“我不明白這些人為什么要我們。我們只是想改善他人的生。”山姆說，“我們所做的這一切不僅僅是為我們自己，而是為了所有人。我們是在為所有人爭取平等。這樣，人們醒來時就不必擔心：‘我怎么才能養活我的孩子？我怎么養活自己？要是天下雨的話，我又該去何處安身呢？’我不希望任何人為這些事情憂心，我也不希望辱罵我們的那些人過上這樣的日子。”

Occupiers: Not just students

????Who are these people? Lots of earnest college kids, let's start with that. ("They're not all white," I remarked to a colleague on an early visit to Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan. "No," she said, "but they all look like they have liberal arts degrees.") When my boss sent me downtown, he specifically told me not to spend all my time talking to Oberlin students, so I'll tell you about just one that I met in D.C., Sam Jewler. He was sitting outside a Starbucks (SBUX) on McPherson Square, in his red plaid shirt and his green watch cap, with his coffee and his MacBook Pro, trying to stay dry. It was the morning of the big East Coast storm and while it wasn't snowing yet, it was windy, wet and bitter cold; I was so chilled I was shaking, and I'd only been out there a couple of hours.

????"It's not illegitimate for a lot of us to be college students," Jewler said. "If you look at what happened in Cairo, that was largely college students who graduated and realized there wasn't anything for them. That's kind of what's happening here." Except that that's not really Jewler's story. He graduated in December, moved back in with his parents to save money while trying to launch a career in journalism, and was lucky to land a coveted paid internship at Washingtonian magazine. But the Occupy movement beckoned, and just last week, inspired by what he viewed as historic events and too opinionated by now to do the "false objectivity" thing, Jewler quit his paying gig ("yeah, it's pretty weird") to help launch the Occupied Washington Times. He sleeps in a tent now. With winter coming, he's been climbing into his sleeping bag every night with all his clothes still on, but he's waking up every morning, he told me, feeling "happy to be here."

????Who else did I meet? A young man reading Kafka on the sidewalk in Boston; a drifter in D.C. named Pockets—19 years old, no plans for college—who told me, "I hate money. It's good when you have it but I often don't;" Willard Lake, 49, also in D.C., an artist who showed me one of his anti-war paintings and said he'd trade it for "an iPad 2 and an iPhone, with service," and afterwards bummed ten bucks off me for a bus ticket to Baltimore; Malcolm Brown, an 81-year-old Korean War vet and retired cop who was sitting on a bench in Denver's City Center Park the day after police arrested 17 protesters, holding a sign that read "Corporations are not people" and "Money is not free speech;" Joel Haughee, a former SDS member from Indiana, living in Oakland now, who told me he drifted away from the anti-war movement when it turned violent in '68 and worries now that the Occupy movement could come similarly unraveled if the anarchists have their way.

????My favorite was Samantha Robles, goes by Sam: 20-something, long black hair with bangs, "Fight Your Demons" tattooed on her chest—a smart, assertive kid who said she didn't go to college because she didn't have the money and she didn't want the debt. Sam left her home in Florida ("I needed a change") and made her way to Boston. She found a restaurant job and a bed in a rooming house. When she heard about Occupy Boston, she kept her job but gave up her bed and relocated to Dewey Square. "I know it's hard if you have a family," she said. "You can't come and stay here when you have responsibilities and things like that, when you're so in the system with your life. But I have the freedom to be here and help as much as I can. I'd kind of feel like a jerk if I didn't."

????Sam's tent is on "Weird Street," a section of the encampment fronting Atlantic Avenue. People driving by late at night after the bars close sometimes roll down their windows and yell "Get a job!" "I don't understand how you could shame people for wanting to better the lives of other people," Sam said. "The things that we want aren't just for us, it's for everyone. It's equality for everyone. So you don't have to worry when you wake up, 'How am I going to feed my kids? How am I going to feed myself? What if it rains, where am I going to sleep?' I wouldn't wish that on anyone. I wouldn't wish that on the people who yell at us."