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Bryan Parsons, visitor to Charlotte’s Place, is a member of the Ethics and Spirituality group of Occupy Wall Street.

What is the Ethics and Spirituality group?

Everything’s constantly evolving, but at first the idea was when there are altercations and interactions between police and the camp, how do we promote nonviolence as much as possible? It’s grown into other things. For example, at Charlotte’s Place, a lot of the homeless community, almost exclusively young persons, have come here since the raid [on Zuccotti Park].

It’s a beautiful thing, because Charlotte’s Place is not going to say “Hey, folks don’t come here.” Even though OWS as a movement likes to say, “We’re all-inclusive,” they definitely are more welcoming to some types of people than other types. When the camp was raided and that physical space was no longer central, where people went and why and how was something that became of particular interest to me.

Why did you get involved with the OWS movement?

To begin with I had a very strong concern about social justice. For me that was the core, that was the crux of it. I dropped out of school because I couldn’t afford to stay in school and the idea of compounding my financial situation with massive student loans didn’t seem necessary. I just sort of went away and spent some time in corporate land before backing away from that and getting involved in homeless outreach work.

Then Occupy L.A. started when I was visiting Los Angeles. I show up, not knowing if I was going to stay there or not. I ended up living there full time. There’s a massive homeless community in Los Angeles, a block away from the Occupy, but it might as well have been in another state. Here, one block away is the largest homeless community in the county and they’re not being invited in.

All the kids in the Occupy weren’t necessarily concerning themselves with what was happening in skid row, but there were some people who were and there was a real palatable change. We started sharing resources as best we could with the homeless community. And seeing what that meant as persons started to trickle into the Occupy and then watching the hierarchy of the Occupy in L.A. react to that. They had this whole thing where they wanted to create this community paper, where anyone who was a part of the Occupy in L.A. would sign this paper saying they were going to adhere to the rules of the community and then they would get a wristband. If they didn’t sign the paper they wouldn’t get a wristband and wouldn’t be welcome in. And it’s like--well it’s kind of borderline fascist, don’t you think?

What are these institutions that we are fighting against and how do they exist in ourselves? We can protest them in other places but we’re not going to protest them in our own hearts. I found that really interesting.

What is your advice for parishes or individuals around issues of homelessness?

One of the things that I’m discovering is the perception that homelessness is an economic problem. Homelessness is a symptom of something much larger. Even seeing what’s happening currently in Charlotte’s Place—there’s a massive LGBT contingent. Half these kids are gay. And what does that mean about our society as a whole and how we are treating these people? These kids are being thrown out of their homes. They’re not homeless because they couldn’t get a job. Sure that’s part of it, but they’re homeless because they are gay and that’s not accepted. It’s not, “I can’t pay my rent.” It’s that there’s no place for you in society.