about Occupy and the meaning of money

Moore speaks with Occupy protesters.

Excerpts from the LeftLion interview. The complete interview can be read here.

When the Occupy movement kicked off last year – the V from V For Vendetta mask became a major visual symbol of the movement.  How did that make you feel?
Alan Moore: I was flattered. I thought it was a much better organised protest movement than anything that we saw in the 1960’s. When it was happening, Channel 4 took me down to this camp, and I got to meet these guys and girls, and I think they’re terrific and really well organised. They’ve got a lot of hard work in front of them and the recent setbacks demonstrate that. But they’re resilient and they’re evolving. With a bit of luck, I think they may be around for a while yet.

I’ve just recorded a track for Occupy records and done this big piece for Occupy comics. It was originally was just going to be a short essay, but I think I’m long past the point where I can do short essays about anything. So it turned into 21,000 words and they’re print excerpts from it in Occupy comics, and then publish the whole thing as a book, with the funds going to help the movement. 

[...]

You’ve always refused to put your name to film adaptions of your work. I know this is going to be hard to put a figure on, but how much money do you think you’ve turned down, for taking a moral standpoint on this? 

Alan Moore: Well, they asked me if they could give me a huge amount of money to bring out these Watchmen prequel comics – which they were going to do anyway - and that was probably a couple of million dollars. I should imagine with all of the films it would be another few million? In a way it’s really empowering to do that.

You can’t buy that kind of empowerment. To just know that as far as you are aware, you have not got a price; that there is not an amount of money large enough to make you compromise even a tiny bit of principle that, as it turned out, would make no practical difference anyway. I’d advise everyone to do it, otherwise you’re going to end up mastered by money and that’s not a thing you want ruling your life. Money’s fine if it enables you to enjoy your life and to be useful to other people. But as something that is a means to an end, no, it’s useless.

The complete interview can be read here.