How does it feel to be pepper-sprayed in the eyes?

Elias: It feels pretty terrible. The officer walked down to me and he goes: if you don't stand up and come talk to me, I'm going to have to pepper-spray you. I said, well, you're the 99 percent, do what you need to do. Then he pepper-sprayed me. I was able to close my eyes at first, but I had to open them because they wouldn't help me into the police van. That's when the pepper spray got into my eyes. It feels like being stabbed, and then it feels like needles and it burns for hours. It's absolutely miserable. I had the most painful shower in my life later. It's just exhausting because you're in constant pain.

How did the arrests affect you life?

Amanda: They posted our arrest shots immediately on the news. I didn't intend to tell my parents, but they saw it on TV. I lost a lot of friends, and the others don't keep in touch like they used to, they kind of see me in a different light now. And it's difficult at work. I'm a therapist and I have to counsel everyone. Shortly after the arrest, I counseled a police officer and I got through that session remembering that he sees a lot of horrible stuff, making sure to not judge him and not treat him badly because he's a police officer. I try to remember that not each police officer is bad and out to get me.

You lost a lot of friends, but did you gain some with the movement?

Amanda:  Yes, definitely. All the people that are here are my friends, and I gained probably more friends than I lost. And the types of friends that I gained are all the friends with similar viewpoints and ways of thinking. So in a lot of ways I gained a lot more than I lost.

What prompted you to join the movement?

Amanda: In my family background, I'm one of the first people that went to college. My mom worked very, very hard just to give me the things she did get me. I finished school in a very poor town, where a lot of people didn't have anything to do but drugs or alcohol. I've worked in a field where I've seen how valuing money over valuing people has become such a problem that that there are people losing their lives to prison, having to do illegal things just to survive. I've seen that over and over again, and I always wanted to do something about it. Or at least rather be a part of solution, rather than part of the problem.

Lack of clear goals is always mentioned as the movement’s problem. What are your goals and how do you see Occupy achieving those?

Elias: One of the biggest goals is actually the process that we engage in. Horizontal democratic decision making, like our process, is part of the message, it's part of what defines us, it's part of our philosophy that people come together to reclaim their freedom and  democracy. I think that's an underlying goal that media and a lot of people just can't comprehend because it's not a concrete list of demands as much as it is calling for full overhaul of what we do. Decision making by consensus, horizontally, where there are no leaders, and we work toward a better society together, is not something that you can prepackage in one to two sentences.

Are there any such models that are being implemented in the world now, or do you envision a new model that has yet to develop?

I think that there are models that are working in the world, like Spanish Indignados movement which is accomplishing things, if not always peacefully, in fighting back against austerity measures and against the banks and corporations. I think also that this process, this model, allows for a lot of development. It is an ongoing struggle for more freedom, more democracy, more rights for people, more economic democracy where people have more resources, instead of just being hoarded by a small group of people.  

Occupy Nashville sued the governor over the curfew issue, and he agreed to stop the enforcement of the curfew. Do you plan to do anything similar?

Elias: We are still in process of discussing whether we are going to do something like that. But it is not something that we are willing to release at this moment.

Do you have a lawyer, does he work free of charge?

Elias: We have a great legal team.

Amanda: They work pro bono.

Do you think that the movement had any influence on the policies of president Barack Obama, who called for tax raise for those earning more than 250.000 dollars annually?

Amanda: For sure. I think not just Obama's policies, but so many things have been influenced by the movement. For example, a lot of people have started growing their own food and I've notice in social media trend of pictures of people who are proud of what they grow, do and cook. It seems like there's a shift in our culture and that we are at the beginning of the process of valuing things that we are creating, rather than just going out and buying it. I think that, if anything, that the shift has been enhanced by Occupy. That's not really answering your question, but...

Elias: I think that the movement has changed the general public's interaction with certain policies. When the Patriot Act passed in 2001, even though there were people questioning it, that wasn't something that could spread through popular consciousness. Now, ACTA was defeated in Europe, I think in part because of the Occupy, the Indignados and Anonymous. In the US, it was the case with CISPA. SOPA. PIPA acts; now they're working on something called the Transpacific partnership, and that's meeting with the heavy resistance by the population because of the way it protects the corporate interest and not free information. I think that's one of the really good things that have come out of this movement. Also, we have the drone wars that had been happening overseas, where America is using robotic drones to strike in Yemen, Somalia, the Philippines etc. Those are things that people are openly opposing now, and they didn't oppose before. We oppose the wars in general, but there is a lot more information and that's what social media did in Egypt and is doing here – spreading information.

Americans opposing drones, however, is something that’s rarely seen in the mainstream media.

Elias: That is rarely reported. Any young man over the age of 16, who's killed by the drone strike, is automatically branded as militant, regardless of whether he's armed or not. Obama is rewriting the language of war but people are opposing that. At the Philadelphia national gathering, there was a big event about drones.

Amanda: Our media is starting to change a lot, too. People are starting to value truth in journalism, rather than just watching a show. Rather than just wanting to be entertained, they are seeking he truth.

Marshall: The mass media was actually one of our biggest, unwitting allies during the early days of the movement. It was such a novelty and a media circus that for a while it became ingrained in our media narrative. And that led to changes in popular perception, like Elias was talking about, where people were actually caring now about stuff that's been going on for years, but now this big, highly visible movement was drawing attention to these issues. So that was nice of them.

How you would like to change the image of the US abroad?

Marshall: Where to begin? I think a big help would be to stop starting all these wars.

Amanda: They are not wars, they are police actions.

Marshall: Oh sorry, police actions. When the government just decides that this and that country are doing something really bad and they deserve what's coming to them, so they bomb the hell out of them because we're America and we are the world cop – we paint it as this noble thing like we're trying to keep the world safe, while we're just serving out own interest and it's so blatant that I'm really not at all surprised that there's such a low opinion of the US throughout the world.

Elias: I think that the anti-imperial message of the Occupy movement is definitely changing the way that we interact with other communities. It's not just Occupy Tulsa that's here – this is Tulsa interacting with Oakland, with D.C., with Amsterdam. We do news reports from the Middle East and I have personal contacts abroad. This is a global movement and we are interacting with other people to oppose the American empire. It's something that we are absolutely against. We're against the wars, against America monopolizing resources overseas, and even though we want security of life we also want a better world for everyone, not just restoring America's middle class at the expense of everyone else because that's not worth it. I believe that this movement has a larger vision in mind of what a just and equitable world for everyone looks like, which is why it's so hard to pin it down to – we want these tax cuts or these taxes raised, this law passed, or this and that to happen. It's so much broader than that because we're really trying to overhaul and reboot society and civilization from the ground up.    

There was a lot of comparison between the Occupy and the Tea Party, even though Occupy basically has no funding. What do you think of such comparisons?

Elias: The Tea Party is not a grassroots movement. A bunch of activists who were trying to get Ron Paul elected by taking over representative seats in the party, got bought out by establishment of Republicans. They just pumped a bunch of money into Republicans who wanted to be more radical. The Occupy movement has up to now stayed away from electoral politics, we are not a supporter of Democratic party, and there's actually a lot of anti-Obama and anti-democratic sentiment within the movement.

But clearly, you are more democrat than republican?

Elias: More leftist, I guess, but definitely not a democrat.

Marshall: We generally try to stay away from republican-democrat dichotomy because neither one really has our goals in mind at all, they both serve the same corporate interest.

Do you thing that part of the problem is the two-party system?

Marshall: Absolutely, that's an enormous problem because it essentially eliminates the choice that we as a country are supposed to have about where are country is going. But it does it in such a way that it still creates an illusion that people are pacified in thinking that voting for either this guy or that guy that they're actually having a say in the way their lives are run, and that is just not the case.

Amanda: I think one of the reasons why people are having difficult time measuring success of Occupy is because we don't measure our success with money and that's what everybody measures success with – how much money do you have and how much influence do you have with that money. Our influence is more educational, social, like a spark – we want to teach you to be a part of what you want to be of your world and your political system, engage and realize that the government is supposed to be made up of us. It's not supposed to be us versus them, it's supposed to be they are us, we govern ourselves and that's the ultimate goal. And even if it's an impossible goal, pushing for it makes it a better world and a better place to live and better quality of life.

There's only a dozen of protesters that show up in this park. How different is it to be a part of the Occupy movement in Oklahoma, than in some traditionally democratic state like California or New York? Do you feel that your activism here has more importance, is it harder?

Amanda: It's just different. In some ways, we have less problems because with fewer people we are able to make decisions a little bit faster and everybody's voice is able to be heard in a little bit better way. But for the same reason, it seems like sometimes we make less impact and that it is harder because the state moves so slowly and changes so slowly. So in some ways, it is more important.

Elias: Larger cities have to deal with having a camp, or hundreds' of peoples' needs, trying to feed them every day, while we have the luxury of having a smaller city where we can really do some deep thinking about the visions of the future of the movement and floating of those ideas to other Occupy cities and other countries as well. In Philadelphia, I was talking to a guy in Germany about energy policy and energy liberation. That's one of the things that this movement is doing that you can't really measure the immediate effects: that guy, or somebody else, they go to their garage and build a bunch of solar panels and they donate  them, sell them for cost, without making profit. You’re not going to see that in the news, but that's something that's happening and changing the world.

What are you working on now? The local newspaper reported that you are against the budget cuts in education?

Elias: We have been hosting demonstrations in regards of school budget cuts across the city and the state of Oklahoma. We are one of the most undereducated states in the country. Also, we’ve been working on finding a space for ourselves and building centers where we can, hopefully, eventually host a people's clinic. If everybody pays for supplies equally, we can have doctors and nurses who would donate their time to do health care at affordable rates.

So you think Occupy will endure?

Amanda: Yes, in some ways it will. We might lose the term Occupy, we may lose the encampments, but the symbolism of the beginning of it will always be there. The significance of what we've done will continue through some other means, but it will continue nevertheless.

Marshall: We’ve made contacts and connections through Occupy. Being a part of this movement, we'll always have this network of activists who are willing to put the time to try to affect change. Even if the Occupy movement is crushed under the heel of the state, we'll have this group of people that we can draw on and collaborate with, to work on whatever we want to try to solve in the future.

If most of your goals are not met in 10 years from now, how do you envision the US?

Marshall: Have you ever seen Mad Max?

Which part, the second one?

Marshall: I was thinking of the first one, but I think they would all apply pretty much.

Amanda: It would be less like an industrialized nation, more like a Third World country where our poor would be poorer, and rich would be richer.

Elias: A lot like 1984, too. This movement openly opposes not only wars abroad but the internal war on citizens. We are trying to fight against privatized intelligence companies selling spy technology to our government so they can spy on us. The NSA has been hacking and spying on over 1.7 billion emails. In a free society that supposedly grants your right to privacy, that is a problem. America is stuck in the whole war on terror complex, where it's waging war on its own citizens in the name of freedom.

How do you comment on scrutinizing the Occupy movement in the light of the Arab spring, which had a clear goal - regime change?

Elias: In many ways, that gives us freedom. Look at Egypt now. As Mohamed Morsi tries to call for a parliamentary meeting, the Supreme council of the armed forces said no through a judge. Instead of combating that and appealing the process, Morsi is basically a puppet president, he's not a truly democratically elected official. And Egypt is not truly a democratic society, it's the illusion of democracy. Their one demand has been given to them by proxy and they didn't actually accomplish what they intended to accomplish. When you don't have specific, concrete goals, you can let people represent what they want, you're more fluid and flexible. And it creates this perpetual sense of improving the world.

Amanda: The movement encourages people to think for themselves about what do they want rather than being told what they want all the time. We definitely have a puppet president, always do with the two party system where the person that's elected is the person that spends the most money on propaganda which tells us what to do and what to think. So having a movement that doesn't have clear goals and that is consensus-based allows for everyone to stop for a minute and think what about what they want. It just makes people more creative and hopefully better citizens will come up with a better government. It will grow up naturally, grassroots.

What kind of future do you see for Bradley Manning, former American soldier charged with leaking secrets to WikiLeaks?

Marshall: It's really high profile instance of something that happens all the time, but it's particularly egregious in this case because he is probably our greatest national hero right now. He's one of the rare people who had the courage to put his own life on line just because he feels that what the US is doing is so incredibly wrong. He risked everything for what he believes in. The fact that his punishment for doing so is putting him in jail without trial, under conditions that violate all kinds of human rights and international law, really speaks volumes about our government’s attitude towards anybody criticizing what it does.

Elias: American culture claims to be built on the ideals of truth, justice and freedom. Bradley Manning exposes the truth for the sake of justice and loses his freedom. How does that help anybody in the world? If there are war crimes going on, shouldn't we be the first to stand up, as an unofficial leader of the UN, NATO and the world's police for justice, truth and peace? And here we are, violating human rights and throwing this man in solitary confinement for over two years without any form of charges being brought. Bradley Manning is what every single American soldier should be aspiring to be. President Obama’s claims about the most transparent administration are absolutely ridiculous given the way he has treated the Bradley Manning trial, Julian Assange, Wikileaks in general, the way he's cracked down on the Occupy movement.