Occupy Wall Street turned two today with a smattering of direct actions in New York and a bigger-than-expected media output. The laziest writers focused on “What has Occupy actually done?” (plenty, actually) while the more nuanced scribes listed the individual projects that various members of the original Zuccotti Park crew have devoted their talents to. Then there were the usual suspects, er, malcontents, claiming Occupy is dead, because they think it is. And that is fine with me.
From my first spine-tingling realization, in the fall of 2011, that NYC might finally have it’s own Tahrir Square, to my subsequent visits to the park, I knew they were onto something. I knew that the fight for the interests of the 99% was the right fight, for the right time. So I volunteered. I put in the hours trying to build an organized web space for the movement to learn and share, and had my heart broken over the concerted efforts by the powers-that-be to discredit and destroy something so potentially good. And then there was the chronic (if understandable) dysfunction of a leaderless movement that grew so much bigger than the sum of its parts. We are still working on that.
But I have stayed focused on the movement’s potential and I am not walking away now. And while there are plenty of real-world Occupy-based projects that I will gladly work to make happen, they are not the reasons I stay.
I occupy because Occupy showed me that I could make a difference and that I could become an active participant in my city, country and world. The people I met and the things I saw convinced me that I had just as much a right as anyone to be here. And we are still just beginning.