It’s just beginning to get dark when I make my way down 23rd Street, past Madison Square Park and the Flatiron building, before ducking inside an unassuming and surprisingly spacious pub called The Limerick House.  Once inside I make a left, avoiding the bar, and follow the sound of pacing and the odd muffled curse word upstairs to discover the host of the evening and the object of my interview today.  For those of you who haven’t met him, Jon Savoy is a slender man with piercing black eyes and a manner which bleeds the sort of no-nonsense intensity for which New York comics are so (in)famous.  I would be remiss, however, if I left you with the impression of Jon as a gruff personality, because in truth, I have caught him at a bad time: he’s setting-up for his weekly show Underground Asylum, he’s one man down, and he’s currently grappling with a malfunctioning sound-system.  "Why does this thing have negative volume?" Jon asks with an air of biting wit tinged with the long-suffering outrage of the lone sane man in a world staffed by nitwits. “Who designs a microphone that makes your voice quieter?”

But as soon Joe Yoga, this evening’s musical guest begins to play, aided by the now-functioning amplifier, Jon “the producer” melts away and I begin to see the good-natured charisma and old-school class which so often tempers his act and makes Jon such a stand-out of the New York underground comedy scene.  We go through the basic questions. He’s been doing comedy for six years now.  He draws inspiration from subversive comedic legends like George Carlin, Bill Hicks, and Lenny Bruce, as well as the more wordplay-oriented stylings of Stephen Wright and Mitch Hedberg.  But to tell you the truth, I’m only half-listening.  The reason I’m here to talk to Jon tonight is the same reason a freshly inked tattoo reading “99%” emblazons his shoulder: Jon isn’t just a comic. He’s a member of Occupy Wall Street.

“I’ve been around since day seven or eight” Jon informs me. “I heard [comedian] Tim Warner was doing a set at Zuccotti park and I was really surprised to see that the protest was still going on.” Jon was skeptical at first. “I wasn’t aware of what was going on initially, and almost dismissed it a bit, but then I read an article in the Daily Kos by a mutual friend of ours, Ed Murray, where he made sense of the movement, so much so that I went down and marched on October 1st and ended up getting arrested on the Brooklyn Bridge. I was thrown in jail, and spent the next eight or nine hours learning more about Occupy Wall Street.”

As you may have guessed, the arrest did not deter Jon; his time in jail only managed to provide the chance for education on the movement and ultimately strengthened his resolve and dedication to the 99%.  Between working 40-60 hour work weeks and pursuing his comedy career, Jon returned to Zuccotti Park time and again to protest.  He used his comedy as a chance to educate New Yorkers about the Occupy Movement, and he joined the massive protest at Foley Square to march on the Brooklyn Bridge on November 17th.  “I finally made it to Brooklyn,” Jon quips. “Bloomberg called it ‘a couple of hundred,’ but I was there; we filled up 3 city blocks, packed to the gills.  I came out of the train, I had to walk four blocks just to get around the barricades to get to the protest.  We marched on the bridge, we took over downtown Manhattan.  It was not a couple hundred people, it was not five thousand people.  I’ve heard twenty-five to thirty thousand people were there, and I believe it, easy.”

 “I realized that Occupy Wall Street was all of the things I’ve thought and felt for years and years, but had just kind of put aside and said ‘this is the way it is, there’s nothing that can be done about it.’  But here is the opportunity to actually change things and unite people.  Where we might disagree, we can at least find consensus and use that consensus to effect real change and move forward.  Occupy Wall Street has really invigorated my spirit in that regard and reinvigorated my desire to call bullshit on things that are bullshit.”

Many times Occupiers have been criticized for “being vague” about their demands and political views.  However, this is not the case with Jon, who, deftly jumps into a plethora of issues and objections to the political and economic policies in this country. He also objects to the media’s lack of objectivity in the pursuit of pacification, sensationalism, and bullet-points.  This is not a crazy, conspiratorial rant. This is the genuine outrage of one sane man in a world run by nitwits.  Jon’s words are calculated, specific and articulate, so much so that I suspect the only thing preventing this from becoming a more-nuanced conversation is the upcoming comedy show and my waning recorder battery.

“I could talk for three hours about everything that’s bullshit,” Jon informs me. “The government in this country is bought, and of course that happens in all countries, but currently, it’s just right out there on the table. This system only works if there are checks and balances, and these balances do have to come in the form of regulation to keep things honest.  I don’t like the fact that this country has gone back to where it was before Teddy Roosevelt and the Trustbusters. I don’t like the consolidation of power in the banking sector and the corporate sector, and I don’t like that those corporations can fund political campaigns and have elected officials act on their behalf. It is subverting the voting process; it’s the equivalent of millions of non-citizens controlling a government that is supposed to be of the people, by the people, and for the people.”

In case you think Jon is only throwing out criticism and not offering any solutions, Jon has answers, one of which is to support the amendment proposed by senators Ted Deutch (D-Florida) and Bernie Sanders (I – Vermont) to ban corporate donations to political campaigns.  The OCCUPIED Amendment would make it illegal for private corporations to donate money to political campaigns, and instead run all campaigns off public money…which, after listening to Jon, is starting to sound like an amazing idea.

As the official opening of the show draws closer, our interview comes to a close.  Comedians and audience members begin to trickle in, and Jon has to switch gears from activist to producer and, finally, to host.  I watch him take the stage and I realize as he riffs with the stand-in co-host that Jon Savoy is a man to watch.  He not only is a dedicated and articulate activist but also possesses the poise, swagger, and easy charm of a seasoned entertainer, combined with an aggressively subversive wit.  Like his interests, and like Occupy Wall Street itself, Jon is diverse and certainly has the potential to go all the way, in either, comedy, politics, or perhaps both.

Before we broke, Jon gave me some parting words about the Occupy Movement:

"Occupy Wall Street is like Fight Club:  it was on the tip of everyone’s tongues, and they just gave it a name. We were all already thinking this, but we didn’t know what it was until it was here.  The difference is that the first and second rule is you have to talk about it constantly. You don’t like something about it? Great, go down there and make your voice heard.  You like this but you don’t like the approach? Go down there and influence the approach. You’d be surprised how easy it is. When you’re there, when you talk, people listen. [Comedian/Activist] Ted Alexandro called it a ‘Farmer’s Market for the Soul,’ and it is. You go down there and talk? People you’d dismiss, other people on the street, who you’d think: ‘they’re ignorant, they’re idiots’? You go down there, you’ll be amazed at the intelligence and the erudition.  People really have thought about these things, but it just never comes up in conversation, or it does come up in conversation but people just don’t want to talk about it because they’ve just been beaten down with the hopelessness, with fears that the system is too big to fight, it’s too big to change…"

And then Jon breaks off.  It’s almost time for the show, but more, I think comics risk losing more than the joke if they become too earnest, an audience will eat them alive if they display vulnerability, and so Jon leaves the final sentence in the air. However, even though he doesn’t say the words, his implication is clear: “It’s not too big to change” he seems to say. “We can change things if people just conquer their apathy. So get off the couch, get off facebook, stop watching TV and do something.”

And after this conversation, I’m inclined to agree with him.

If you’re interested in seeing Jon Savoy in performance, please check out his website and if you’re curious about Occupy Wall Street, I suggest you take Jon’s advice and go out yourself.  You can find more about upcoming protests and days of action on www.occupywallst.org and on Twitter @occupywallstNYC.