Finding Power in Occupy: How Occupy invigorated a generation’s fight for survival

[marmar]

from In These Times:


Finding Power in Occupy
How Occupy invigorated a generation’s fight for survival.

BY Kirin Kanakkanatt


[font size="1"]'Occupy was not about hope. It was about power.' (Joe Raedle/Getty)[/font]

For In These Times' December 2013 cover feature, “Generation Hopeless?”, the magazine asked a number of politically savvy people, younger and older, to respond to an essay by 22-year-old Occupy activist Matthew Richards in which he grapples with what the movement meant and whether Occupy’s unfulfilled promises are a lost cause or the seeds of the different world whose promise he glimpsed two years ago. Here is Kirin Kanakkanatt's response:

I came to Occupy Ohio University as an environmentalist. I played my part, I answered questions about fracking and mountain top removal. I even spoke on greening urban space. I came angry and hungry.

We took turns explaining that our occupation was about drawing a connection between what was happening on Wall Street to what was happening on campus. We wanted to make sure that folks understood that Occupy was about taking back space that belonged to us and that our encampment was more about representing that lack of “space” for students in our university. We got our favorite professors to come and give lectures and donate their class time. Slowly but surely, we each started to rethink public education.

Occupy was about rethinking the spaces we inhabit. These spaces are beyond parks and lawns and state capitols. These spaces are in leadership in history books, in racial profiles, in standardized tests, in pre-existing conditions, in credit scores and loan distributions. Occupy was about shifting the conversation to make people understand that we are many and they are few. They have leveraged the resources they had at hand to gain control. It is up to us to do the same.

Occupy was not about hope. It was about power. .........................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://inthesetimes.com/article/15900/finding_power_in_occupy/

[tavalon]

1. I agree with everything but the tense

Occupy is.

[BelgianMadCow]

2. Occupy is.

in my heart.

[tavalon]

3. It's not over

That was the opening act. I guess it's good that the monied idiots think it's over.

[SammyWinstonJack]

5. ...

[BelgianMadCow]

7. How could it be over?

it's part of the revolution within, was my point.

[woo me with science]

4. K&R

[RBInMaine]

6. "Occupy" was a flash in the pan because they refused to organize into a real political movement.

Too bad. It could have become something lasting. Instead, it became the larger community's pain in the ass with endless park squatting and making a big mess. They refused to form into a lasting political force for communicating, lobbying, and working to elect progressive candidates to office at all levels. THAT is what you do.

Occupy dead a self-inflicted death. Want to start a REAL movement? Look at the history of the American Revolution, labor, suffrage, civil rights, gay rights, etc.

Those are examples of REAL movements. Occupy doesn't qualify because there were no results and no lasting organization to it. It wasn't a movement. It was a temporary protest. Too bad, so sad.