EXPOSURES Occupy Wall Street: Where Are They Now?

Five years ago, I spent a year photographing 400 people at the Occupy Wall Street protest in Lower Manhattan. Recently, I began noticing familiar faces in the social justice movements sweeping the country. It was as if Occupy had served as a crash course in activism and now the alumni were seeking to change the world. I tracked a number of them down. Though some have returned to their former lives, all of them say they were transformed by the experience.

Shannon Park and Zuzu Park-Stettner I was captivated with Shannon and Zuzu the moment I saw them in Zuccotti Park. Zuzu was so small and her glasses were so large. The bond between her and her mother, Shannon, was both clear and beautiful. Shannon felt that the Occupy Wall Street protest was of historical significance and outweighed a day of school for her daughter. Through Zuzu’s middle-school eyes, the protest was intense, with adults rushing about preoccupied with matters mysterious to her. By this point the tents had gone up and homeless people in search of free food had been steered by the police to the park with the hope that they would disrupt the demonstration. Zuzu is in high school and looks back fondly at her experience. She told me that those big owllike glasses were purely decorative. They had no lenses. I asked Zuzu if she had ever discussed those events in school. The answer was a simple no; there had been no acknowledgment of any of it.

Craig Bethel I photographed Craig the first day I brought my wooden view camera to Zuccotti Park. I knew only that he was an organizer of the protest, and when I returned to give him a copy of his photograph I was told he had left to help set up Occupy rallies elsewhere. When we met this year for the second photograph, Craig explained that in 2011 he had just finished college in Florida and had been working as a production assistant on documentary projects in Cameroon, Argentina and other countries. He had come to New York looking for work when he heard that several young women had been pepper-sprayed near Union Square during a march from Zuccotti Park. The incident inspired him to volunteer his film-production skills for the movement, and he helped coordinate a large protest in Times Square that October. Afterward, he went to Washington, Seattle and Oakland, where he helped establish parallel protests. Since then, Mr. Bethel has returned to work in film and video.

Udi Ofer I photographed Udi on Nov. 15, 2011, the morning that protesters were ejected from Zuccotti Park. I didn’t know at that time that he was a lawyer with the New York City chapter of the A.C.L.U. He stood out that day among the throng of protesters and police officers with his neatly pressed suit and tie. He seemed an island of calm and I was delighted when he agreed to be photographed. Two years later, he became head of the A.C.L.U. in New Jersey. His first major initiative was to push for marriage equality legislation in the state, a campaign that eventually culminated in a court ruling in 2013 allowing same-sex marriage. When he sat for me again in February in his office in Newark, he told me about his organization’s efforts to reform the state criminal justice system. He is working for changes that would reduce the prison population by as much as half and help ease the unemployment discrimination against ex-convicts.

Alexandre Carvalho I photographed Alex in April 2012. By then, the news media’s attention had moved to other events even though much of the Occupy activity had shifted a few blocks south of Zuccotti Park to the steps of Federal Hall, across the street from the New York Stock Exchange. He was then, and continues to be, a doctor and public-health specialist. When I first met him I knew him as the founder of Revolutionary Games, a group that created environments where people could use games and play as a vehicle for building political awareness. After Occupy Wall Street, Alex went to Brazil, where he was hired to oversee medical care for workers at the national oil company, Petrobras, on an oil rig in the Atlantic Ocean. The conditions appalled him, he said, leading him to protest against the company last year. Petrobras removed him from the oil rig. I photographed him just a few days after his arrival from Brazil at his friend’s house in the Catskills.

Yajaira Saavedra I first photographed Yajaira in December 2011 at rally calling for passage of a bill now known as the Dream Act. The bill seeks to protect children who enter the United States with their parents without the proper documents. By then, Zuccotti Park, though not empty, was relatively quiet. After the clearing of the park the previous month, the media spotlight had shifted, and the cold kept people inside. I didn’t usually photograph people who dressed up in costume. Most of those who did so seemed to be more interested in gaining the attention of photographers. Yajaira, however, was different. She was self-possessed and perfectly at ease. When we met again this year, I found out that she herself is undocumented. She and her family are Mixtec. They arrived in New York from Mexico when she was 4 years old. She now runs a restaurant in the Bronx with her brother, Marco, called La Morada. This popular Oaxacan restaurant is an expression of Yajaira’s political concerns: The workers are all undocumented, and the restaurant offers information and help for other undocumented New Yorkers.

George and Brook Packard I met George Packard, an Episcopal bishop, and his wife, Brook, on Dec. 17, the beginning of the fourth month of the protest. We were on a little triangle of land called Duarte Square owned by Trinity Church. Just a few months earlier, Trinity Church, which has $2 billion in real estate holdings in New York, had held a series of meetings to find ways to put the square in the service of the community. Now, protesters, including the Packards, were asking that Duarte Square become the new home of Occupy Wall Street. Trinity Church on the advice of Wall Street financiers on their board declined. When I caught up with them again this year, I learned that the Packards continue to be active in social justice issues. In their own backyard, in Westchester County, they were involved in protests over development plans for Rye Playland, one of the last of the old amusement parks. They are also fighting to stop a gas pipeline from being built next to the Indian Point nuclear plant about 45 miles north of Midtown Manhattan.

Nicole G. Whetstone When I first photographed Nicole she was with her friend Rayvawn, a dancer. They were attending a protest against student debt at Zuccotti Park. At the time Ms. Whetstone was a musician and a freelance producer for MTV. While I was photographing her this year, she reflected on how Occupy had raised her social awareness and given her inspiration for her music. After focusing on the protest and her music, she returned to television. She worked for a time at Al Roker’s production company. She now works for another company that makes reality television shows. She finds it ironic that her job is designed to gloss over the inequalities that she has been fighting for, but she also recognizes the importance of her role as a woman of color.

Su When I originally photographed Su and Kyle, who declined to give their last names, in November 2011, they were a couple (and a very stylish one). Su had just started her freshman year at City University of New York and Kyle was trying to figure out how to complete his senior year of high school — he had been thrown out of the house by his parents. Without an address, he was having difficulty registering for a school. When I contacted Su to photograph her again she was completing her senior year and was a volunteer for a group called Food Not Bombs (and was still friends with Kyle, though they were no longer a couple). After she graduates from CUNY, she says, she plans to study law though she struggles with whether it is the most direct way to effect change. The day I photographed her she had just come from a soup kitchen on East First Street where she had been preparing food to distribute in Tompkins Square Park. That day, we talked about her post-graduation plans. She was conflicted. She saw a role for herself in the law, but doubted that it was the most direct path to change.

Louyi Ferrin Louyi was also a photographer when I first met him in April 2012. He photographed the Occupy protest extensively and had several (uncredited) images published in major magazines. His camera was stolen shortly after Occupy Wall Street ended. When we met again this year, I learned that Louyi was an undocumented immigrant. He had come to the United States with his family as a child from Panama. He’d grown up in the Deep South and found his way to New York. Fluent in four languages, he has built a career as a stylist in the fashion industry. He is working with lawyers to become documented.

Isabel Liali Isabel was a new nurse when she found herself at Occupy Wall Street. She provided health care to anyone who needed it there, including free flu shots. This led to an unexpected clash when demonstrators opposed to vaccines objected. Isabel has a wonderful sense of humor and laughed as she told the story. She understood the concerns of the demonstrators, but said she wouldn’t let a misperception stand in the way of good health care. She continues to work as a nurse in New Jersey. Some of the issues from the Occupy protest still resonate with her. She says she is frustrated with the priorities of the health care system, which she believes serves hospital administrators and insurance companies rather than patients.

Damian Treffs When I met Damian, tensions were high. It was the day after Department of Sanitation snowplows had razed the protesters’ encampment beneath the glare of spotlights beamed down by helicopters. The police had corralled the press away from the scene. Hundreds of people had come in the morning to protest the city’s actions. I saw Damian amid a swirl of people. The crowd was so large it was impossible to take a full-length photograph of him. A few weeks later I was surprised to run into Damian near my home. He had just completed his law studies and was a lawyer for the National Lawyers Guild, whose members acted as “legal observers” documenting police conduct at the protest. Damian now is a lawyer for Transport Workers Union and is a new father.

Winnie Wong When I met Winnie in 2011 in Zuccotti Park, she was starting the Sustainability Working Group, which set up a system of stationary bicycles to power protesters’ laptops and cellphones, and thus reduce their carbon footprint. Some of the group’s members went on to organize against the Keystone XL pipeline. When I saw her again in 2015, Winnie was a founding member of People for Bernie, a grass-roots social media campaign that helped propel the presidential candidacy of Bernie Sanders. She helped popularize the #FeelTheBern hashtag. Her commitment to sustainability remains undiminished. “There will be consequences if you ignore the laws of nature,” she said.

Julie Goldsmith Julie helped to found the Printmakers Guild at Occupy Wall Street. It created many of the graphics associated with the protest, such as the one pictured in the photo from October 2011. When I met her, she and her colleagues were silk-screening the image onto T-shirts. Since then, Julie has been making socially aware imagery. Printing exclusively on textiles, she has made images supporting the whistle-blower Edward Snowden and rejecting the Keystone pipeline, among other causes. She feels that because items like T-shirts and tote bags are not quickly discarded, they have a lasting cultural effect. She travels with her wares to protests around the country. When we met in her studio last November, she had recently returned from a rural Pennsylvania protest against hydraulic fracturing. She also works with the group Rockaway Wildfire, an organization that grew out of Hurricane Sandy. Julie is training apprentice printers and helping them set up their own cooperative printmaking studio.