Occupy the Spaces

“WE THE PEOPLE of the Occupy movement embody and enact a deep democratic awakening with genuine joy and fierce determination.”—The Occupied Wall Street Journal, November 2011, Issue 5

Occupy… what a powerful and poignant word. One that I feel aptly embodies the potency of this global movement by the people, for the people. I really like it.

To me, the Occupy movement, preceded by the Arab Spring, represents a ripple of awakenings of the people, with voices ringing out and echoing around the world. There is no way to ignore us anymore. 

The time that I got to spend with the masses in Zuccotti Park (physically occupying), shadowed by the buildings of Wall Street, was empowering and overwhelming to the point of tears. I felt connection, contemplation, conversation, inspiration, and overall, like I belonged.

As Eve Ensler said in her “Ambiguous Upsparkles from the Heart of the Park” storytelling sessions, when you’re there, and involved with the call and response style communication, you aren’t just hearing the words, you’re truly listening, then repeating, and thereby ingesting the words of your Occupy community, establishing a space of unequivocal solidarity. It’s very powerful stuff.

I recently had the incredible opportunity to hear a panel of Columbia University professors from various fields speak on the matter, a perspective that I had been craving to hear and I am very excited to share with you all reading this blahg. 

The panel was made up of (among others):

Jeffrey Sachs, Director of the Earth Institute and Special Advisor to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon.

Professor Sachs began by saying that “it’s going to be the millennials who fix this mess, and I think that the Occupy movement is just the beginning”. He explained that our current economic and governmental system is “very unequal and very unfair” and that it got to be this way through unethical and illegal means.  Professor Sachs says that OWS has been successful at changing the level of self-understanding of America, and has opened many people’s eyes. In his opinion, there are four elements of the system that are phenomenally broken right now:

1)     Inequality: The vast proportion of financial gains are within the top 1%, while simultaneously an unacceptable level of financial loss for people in the middle and at the bottom of the economic scale is in motion, rendering this time as the biggest wealth gap since a time that preceded the Great Depression by mere moments.

2)     Impunity: Crimes of immense proportions that impact the majority of the country in devastating ways go unpunished. The 1% breaks laws and fouls social norms without being affected, indeed, in many ways still revered.

3)     Money infuses every element of our politics: Lobbying, campaigning, insider trading in Congress… these are all part of a system that caters only to the self-interested rich and powerful.

4)     The decay of government investments and services: Education, infrastructure, environment, job training, science, climate....… Everything but the military is being GUTTED financially.

Professor Sachs asserts that this problem will not be solved by the Occupy movement alone, but it has certainly opened the world's eyes to the issues.  He suggests that the next generation of politicians, who we need to replace entirely because no incumbents will hold themselves accountable to such an enormous and reformative task, need to win without any campaign contribution that exceeds $99.

Peter Rosenblum, Professor of Human Rights Law, Columbia Law School.

Privatization is undermining human rights and it is the activists who bring to light the issues around the world that have gone unacknowledged for far too long. He implores that we all make an effort to Occupy the Spaces, some that are established for us, such as voting, and in a school setting, student representation to the boards, for example, and some spaces we need to create on our own. Wherever we are, we need use our voices to tell systems, government, and corporations what they can and cannot do. He made reference to the first Supreme Court case in 1978, First National Bank of Boston vs. Bellotti, in which corporations were deemed “people” entitled to the protection of the first amendment. 

“What a huge contradiction” Professor Rosenblum says, “that corporations can be free individuals but are not held accountable for the immense international human rights violations that they are responsible for.”

Bruce Kogut, Professor of Leadership and Ethics, Columbia Business School

We have in front of us a well-organized Republican party with a lot of money. (Uh oh.) Now, what can the democrats do? Professor Kogut stipulates two options:

1      1)      Realign with money. Refocus our politics around who can finance it, like the Republicans. OR… 

        2)   ORGANIZE extremely effectively: advertise, coordinate, and properly use all funding.

Professor Kogut asserted that the whole rhetoric around the 99% was a brilliant marketing framework. The notion integrates all people and breaks down the walls of polarization and the “us and them” mentality to say that we are ALL in this together.

--------------

So we’re off to a solid start.

Not only are we marketing the cause with powerful words and a voluminous online presence, we have been joined by key players throughout the academic, political, and international spheres. 

The Special Rapporteur for the protection of free expression to the United Nations, Frank LaRue, is drafting an official communication to the US government “demanding to know why federal officials are not protecting the rights of Occupy demonstrators whose protests are being disbanded -- sometimes violently -- by local authorities”. LaRue describes that the authorities’ violent response to this peaceful protesting is a mistake and it’s time for the government to defend the people.

President Obama, in an act of indisputable distinction from the current climate of the branches of government, described the unacceptability of the innate inequality that permeates our culture with the current economic theories that favor the 1%. He even alluded to the language of the Occupy movement; while not endorsing it as emphatically as I hope that he will soon, he's getting there. (GOBAMA!)

(Video above: Poet Drew Dellinger--"It's time to rock the nation, rock this occupation".)

We have grasped the attention of the world and we have a unique opportunity upon us that we must not let slip away. No generation has ever been more equipped or able to organize effectively and quickly.

We must Occupy the internet, Occupy the governments, Occupy the spaces, and Occupy our own imaginations to fully realize our potential as a people. We will Occupy with empathy and passion and we will shift the course of history. We are the 99% and our moment is now.