Long Live Occupy: Occupy, three years later - Judy Rebick (never say die, just keep shape shifting, aligning with progressives causes...) Another Occupy Toronto organizer Sakura Saunders put it this way: I believe that Occupy, Idle No More and Quebecs student movement showed us that there are hundreds of thousands of people, if not millions of people, who want dramatic change but are on the sidelines waiting for a movement that inspires them to hope, and this is what I hold onto in continuing to organize past these moments of heightened activity. In my view, Occupy as a movement continues in the particular forms of activism we are seeing emerging around the world. Whether Occupy Gezi in Turkey or Occupy Hong Kong, all these actions have similar qualities. While they include big marches, their focus is on building alternative communities, however short-lived, that are providing the necessities of life, political debate and cultural activities, as well as protests. They are all organized collectively with relatively flat structures, participatory democracy like the general assemblies and a valuing of whatever skills and ability people bring into the community. Many of these qualities were present in the occupations of the Indignado in Spain and the Arab Spring, particularly in Egypt, that preceded Occupy Wall Street; but Occupy Wall Street, through both social and mainstream media, spread these ideas around the world. The Arab Spring kicked off a series of peoples uprisings around the world, unseen since the 1960s. Most of them identify as Occupy and communicate with each other. So internationally, one can still talk about an Occupy movement. Besides inspiring a new form of activism, Occupy has had other significant impacts on society. The most important is naming the elephant in the room created by neo-liberalism, the gap between the rich and the rest of us. The dynamic of redistribution of wealth from the poor and working class to the rich was being documented by think tanks, but before Occupy it had almost no discussion in the mainstream. Instead of being hailed as heroes, the rich bankers of Wall Street are the new villains. One of the primary jobs of social movements is to change the conversation. Before the emergence of second wave feminism, no one worried about womens equality. When I was a girl, it was assumed that women and men were different and wanted different things. Same is true of the Black Liberation movement, the LGBT movement and even the workers movement of the 30s. Lana Goldberg, one of the key organizers in Occupy Toronto sees policy changes too: There were a few concrete policy changes following the Occupy movement, such as increased tax rates on the wealthy in some provinces in Canada and the millionaires tax in New York, which are still in place. Secondly, Occupy Wall Street made protests cool again. I have spent the last twenty years responding to the manufactured consent of mainstream media that protests are so 1960s and no longer have any relevance. You never hear that anymore and thats because of Occupy. Most people on the Left would agree with these two points but after that we might find some differences. One of the most powerful elements of Occupy to me was the way it practiced inclusion. While I agree with critiques of Occupy Toronto that it failed to practice anti-oppression politics, all of the Occupy communities that I visited included the most marginalized, homeless people and people with serious mental health issues. Sakura describes it this way: What started off as an expressive political project highlighting inequalities, began to shift its purpose as the people who occupied the camp and took advantage of its resources were increasingly people who lived on the streets. This came with hard lessons, but it also became more of a prefigurative project as we were able to demonstrate mutual aid and meet each others physiological and social needs with very few material resources. rabble.ca/news/2014/10/long-live-occupy-occupy-three-years-later
Posted on: Mon, 20 Oct 2014 05:01:04 +0000