Happy Anniversary, Occupy

The Occupy movement burst on to the scene rather unexpectedly on September 17, 2011. It was a meteoric rise to focus on the many causes of wealth and income inequality. See Occupy Wall Street had it Right on this blog. But two years after its inauguration Occupy is all but absent from public discourse with income and wealth inequality worse than ever.

There were several reasons trotted out to explain the seemingly quick demise of the Occupy movement. There was no structure, discipline, strategy or recognized leader to articulate the demands of the movement and its participants. It was compared to women's suffrage, civil rights and anti-Vietnam war as examples of what a successful movement should look like.

Occupy did not have a single purpose as those movements stated above. Rather Occupy arose from the recognition that there is "a better way possible" than the current crony capitalist system. This realization was not from a group of anarcho-terrorists but from well educated middle class kids across all socio-economic classes and races. (It was reminiscent of the Paris Commune of 1871).

These kids were trapped because they followed society's rules and then lost big.  So they set up micro-societies in parks across the country/world that demonstrated the status-quo could be successfully challenged.

The occupied parks were fully functioning alternate societies that did not require the structure of the 1%. The status qou-ologists were not amused to see an alternate society forming that could survive without the requirement of flowing money to the top.

As a result the police thugs were sent in to squash the movement. Arrests, brutal treatment and public ridicule arose and then blamed Occupy that it did not have a proper structure.

Occupy had a short but very successful life. It demonstrated that we can act together to develop a better way. Occupy planted the elephant in the room of income and wealth inequality squarely into public debate that remains to this day.