Forum Post: "A Brief Analysis from a Wall Street Occupier" - Znet article
Posted 13 years ago on Oct. 4, 2011, 7:23 a.m. EST by justanotherleftist
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Read the full article at: http://www.zcommunications.org/a-brief-analysis-from-a-wall-street-occupier-by-yotam-marom
Writing for Ourselves
The occupation of Wall Street is now in its third week. Thousands of people have worked and fought for it, have given it their time, their bodies, their ideas, their blood. People have used their bodies as shields, sent letters of solidarity, marched, slept out, donated, tweeted, and more. There are thousands more still who have not been with us, whether because of geographical reasons or because they are busy struggling elsewhere.
I have been involved, in some way, with the occupation on Wall Street since the first planning meeting a number of months ago, and I have been out there almost every day since the occupation actually began, though mostly keeping quiet and working on the sidelines – often critically. I have participated in assemblies and working groups, done outreach to community organizations, pushed demands, been to dozens of meetings, gone hoarse from chanting about the banks, been bruised by metal police batons while marching for Troy Davis, and had about a million incredible conversations – at the occupation at Liberty Plaza itself, in other political contexts around New York, and even in jail with the 87 friends I made during the mass arrests of September 24th. I am not an authority, and others have struggled and sacrificed much more than I, but I have learned a lot; enough, I think, to begin sharing some of it . . .
What a beautiful essay. Wise and wonderful.
And perhaps even more important than learning about the ways we are kept down, is learning and exploring the world we might want instead, one without capitalism, racism, patriarchy, and authoritarianism – an economic, political, and social model that is solidaristic, equitable, self-managing, ecologically sustainable, liberating, intimate, warm, and creative. We have to spend some of this precious time developing the values of the society we are fighting for, so that we can imagine the institutions we will need to build in order to live them out. We have to do this because that’s what it will take to defeat the age-old mantra that there is no alternative; we have to do it because imagining that alternative will give us hope and strength to struggle, because it will define the different ways we can fight and the different institutions we need to build for ourselves now, because it will give us the foundation on which to build a movement beyond one or even a hundred occupations. We must do it because dreaming is part of what gives us the strength to actually create those institutions we want to live in, as we fight to knock the rotten ones down.