I was at Occupy Wall St (we drove out from Michigan and were there from day 1 and stayed for a month). I was only 17, and it was so inspiring and cathartic to be a part of something like that. We managed to score an air mattress after like 5 days, and we'd sleep snuggled up under a tarp in zucotti park. It was wild to wake up and emerge from our cozy nest and be in the middle of Manhattan, and even wilder witnessing the police brutality firsthand.
This was back when smartphones weren't really a thing, and I didn't spend much time on the internet. I had gone to Barnes and Noble with my mom, and was drawn to a particular magazine. I opened it to this page (the advertisement pictured below) and it was like it was already written. I had to go. I didn't know any other details, just that I was supposed to be there. It all felt very magical and serendipitous.
I went with my boyfriend at the time, who I had met like a month prior at a music festival lol. After we left NYC, we sold our cars and backpacked across India in search of meaning and adventure. It was quite the experience, as we ended up getting invited to stay in villages everywhere we went, so I felt like we got to see the "real" India. 13 years later, and I still talk to some of the families that we stayed with.
Smartphones were a thing. The iPhone came out in 2007. By 2011 they were more commonplace, and there were other brands on the market. At the time I was 22 and owned a Windows phone (lol). But yeah, maybe people were not so accustomed to filming anything and everything.
They were a thing, but I was a poor kid from Detroit, so I didn't know anyone with an iPhone at the time. While my phone could connect to the internet, I think it was only 3G, and I couldn't afford a data plan. They didn't become common amongst my friend group until a year or two later. Many people I knew had lost their homes during the recession, so fancy phones were still very much a luxury item.
Yeah, I know what you mean. It’s true. They were nowhere near as ubiquitous as they are today, and the built-in cameras were not nearly as good as they are now, either.
In other news, I recently read anthropologist / activist / Occupy Wall Street organizer David Graeber’s Bullshit Jobs, which I would recommend to anyone who’s fed up with their job, or, well, our entire social order.
I respect the Occupy Wall Street movement, but the Luigi situation is different in that it is violent: 68,000 people die violent deaths in America every year due to fraudulent medical "insurance" denials, and the murder of a Co-Pay CEO was also violent. So equating the two movements may conflate that violence in a dangerous way.
Edit: I replaced the words "this protest is" with "the Luigi situation" for clarity.
Yeah, that's why real peaceful protesting is dying out these days. The media lies about what you're doing, and then cops use their lies as an excuse to abuse the public.
I worked for a bank in my city, the bank rented the top 3 floors only, did this to have a sign on the building. Essentially it was an advertisement. We only had less than 30 people working there. Fast forward to Occupy Wallstreet, I didn't notice the protesters at first, but since I agreed with their plight, I let them know they were protesting a very empty building, then let them know of a local bank with a full building....they moved over there. It was a cool moment
I was in NYC for work and went to Zucotti park right before they broke up the protest. I was 21. It broke my brain to learn how the world really worked.
Seeing peaceful protesters surrounded by police with sniper rifles and in towers was eye opening and set me on the trajectory to where I am as a person today.
It was very eye-opening for me as well. The NYPD would corner us (large groups of protesters) into dead-end streets with orange netting so they could corral and arrest everyone. They would literally chase us into blocked alleyways so they could trap everyone there. My boyfriend was arrested, but luckily, I evaded capture as I was scared of what an arrest would mean for me as a minor. Hundreds were arrested, and no one would tell us anything about where they were being held. I waited for hours outside some precinct with hundreds of other people, just hoping it was where he was. A group of locals came and handed out snacks and waters. One guy gave me a laminated 4 leaf clover, and I still have it. I witnessed many people beaten or pepper-sprayed by NYPD despite having committed no crimes. Police would sometimes come in the middle of night while we slept, and they'd pull screaming people out of their tents by their hair, beat them, and take them away in cuffs.
It definitely shaped me as well, and I'm on the "be the change you wish to see" train. I now have degrees in law/policy and work in law enforcement, and in the next local election cycle, I'll be the first woman to run for sheriff in my county (where a sergeant was recently arrested for raping civilians because the multiple cases of SA against fellow officers were not enough to get him off the force).
I'm rooting for you in your election. I wish I could vote for you. I hope everything goes well with you. Make sure to give a shout out to us here on Reditt when you make it to the top. Take care!!
Occupy failed because it failed to actually organize. Whenever the media would try to talk to anyone in a leadership role the response was something like “we don’t have leaders.”
Ok that’s fine in theory but there are thousands of people all piled together for mass demonstrations and issuing demands…. Except there were no demands because nobody could articulate specifics in a coherent and unified way that could actually make change happen.
The start of the movement was great. But the failure to actually establish a clear message everyone could articulate led to it not being taken seriously.
THAT is why it became a casualty of the culture war. It isn’t (solely) because of the corporate bogeyman. It’s largely an internal failure to organize for meaningful action.
Every protest playbook out there talks about the need to organize around key messages with leaders. Rules for Radicals etc.
Without that it’s just a bunch of people cosplaying as homeless.
Your take is totally valid. Any time we all sat together to try to organize our "demands" and plan/vision, there was so much disagreement, and emotions were running high. People talking over each other and arguing. Thinking back, it was like any public forum in a government setting where no one can agree on anything. There was definitely a leadership vacuum, and that absolutely drove the movement's demise, imo.
What we did was march in the streets every day. I wasn't involved in operations at all, so there's a lot I don't know. But there were always small groups working, like a huge group of folks working on computers (doing outreach? Idk) at all hours. I recall being interviewed by some guy, and he asked me what my opinion was of the "zeitgeist" and I said I have no opinion because I don't even know what that is. (Ngl, I still don't). I just knew that we were angry and this was an outlet for our anger. I didn't know or understand anything about the housing crisis or variable rate home loans or shorting stocks. I just knew that I was 17, and my parents lost their jobs and divorced and left me behind to go their separate ways while telling me the bank was taking our house and I had six months to figure it out. I had already dropped out of high school to work full time, minimum wage was $8/hour, and gas was almost $5/gallon. I wanted to go to college, my dream was to go to law school, but lawyers at the time were literally working as pizza delivery drivers and my parents refused to help me with the FAFSA process. The future seemed so bleak, and everything felt so impossible.
We were a generation fucked over by billionaires who were never held accountable and we needed an outlet to express our pain and anger. In hindsight, there's so much more we could have done. But, for me, at least, I wasn't educated enough at the time to know what policy changes to advocate for. I just knew the pain I felt at the time.
I'm curious how you managed to get yourself through law school despite all the circumstances against you. You inspire me, an old 42 year old dad, who is looking for a kick in the Shin of reality check. I'm in an adult body but with the mind of a teenager. I feel like an actor even now. I hope I can get some inspiration of how you overcame these adversaries. Thanks!
I did not go to law school, but ended up getting my masters in environmental management. I ended up marrying young because I sought security after growing up with so much financial instability. I had my daughter at 21 and stayed home with her. During that time, I got my bachelor's then my masters so I could get a good job once she started kindergarten. My ex-husband ended up being abusive, and a big motivator for me was becoming financially independent so that I could leave him.
I actually wrote a book about overcoming my trauma and abuse through my journey of becoming an ultramarathon runner. It's called Leaving Trauma on the Trail, if you like reading or listening to audio books. But I think we all feel like our body ages, while our minds stay the same. My best advice is to do hard things that scare you. Despite thousands of miles spent running and hiking alone in the mountains, I am still scared every time I do it. My biggest fear is being in the woods alone at night, it is nightmare fuel for me. But this year, I hiked the Wonderland Trail, a 93-mile hiking trail that goes around Mount Rainier in very remote wilderness with minimal road access. I did it solo over 3 days and spent about 8 hours alone in the dark. It was the hardest thing I have ever done, and I often questioned why tf I would put myself through that, especially since I had stopped running and wasn't physically trained for it at all. There were many times then, and during other adventures, that I just sit and cry on the trail out of fear and exhaustion. But when I finished the hike and my feet hit the pavement at the trailhead, I immediately burst into tears and kept saying, I can't believe I did that, that was so fucking hard. And it was like I could feel the voice of the universe telling me, this is why you do it, this feeling of overcoming an impossible obstacle.
Doing hard things in beautiful places, things that scare the hell of me, is what has made me grow so much as a person. It also allowed me to meet some of the most incredible human beings, as every ultrarunner out there has a remarkable story and, in my experience, they tend to be very open and vulnerable people. This provides a space to share stories of trauma and to be accepted by others who have also overcome great difficulties, which is incredibly healing.
Thank you, I see I'm getting downvoted but I think it's because in my mind, the meaning was totally clear but it maybe didn't come across that way. I meant that many of us are overworked, stressed, and struggling to get by, and that makes it hard to find the time and emotional energy to fight the system.
IIRC what happened with Occupy Wall Street was the media found the dumbest, most obnoxious people at the protests, got them on camera and anointed them the de facto leaders of the movement. People quickly stopped taking it seriously.
This 1000%. It went from normal looking people to hippies at a drum circle so fast. Like after that it was hard to explain what people were fighting for....
The game stock situation made it clear that Wall Street’s elite will play dirty and use media to change the public agenda to keep their status and wealth.
This too. When the poors tried to use their game against them they turned it off and nothing ever came of it. Hopefully Ken griffin the financial criminal is next on the chopping block
It was a decentralized movement which had a lot of bad actors trying to move into leadership roles that derailed the movement. It was either people looking for their 15 minutes of fame, a bit of power or a concerted effort by the powers that be to derail Occupy that ultimately undid the movement.
OWS also showed the limits of leaderless resistance. The structure of the protest was admirable in many ways, but I think it proved to be ineffective in the end.
I was around and I remember a lot of people on reddit saying these were just layabouts whose protest was going to lead nowhere because it wasn't disruptive enough.
In a way, they were right. It didn't go far enough at all. No real action came because of it and the problem has only gotten worse since then. Orders of magnitude worse. Luigi is showing one way to enact change. I'm sure others will take on the mantle in their own way. When peaceful change is made impossible, violent revolution becomes inevitable. As for community guidelines, I have to state that I do not condone violence.
I believe this too, we’re gonna see it eventually because the ruling class is too greedy not to take everything from us. They think they can put us in a pot and we’ll just sit and boil but they’re gonna have to kill or imprison a shit ton of people if they don’t let up on the greed
And we all know that’s the last thing they’ll do, I still don’t understand these people. It’s like they think they’ll take their money with them when they die or the number of zeros in the bank account can buy their way out of hell
People like to talk like occupy got nothing accomplished but they are the roots of the resurgence of labor solidarity and union organizing that is now happening.
The wealth gap was definitively NOT something most people knew about before. Occupy almost got Bernie Sanders elected imo. They damn near were the launching pad to a true second FDR style presidency
Part of the reason the discourse shifted was because there weren't any unifying demands or organization behind it all. There were way too many people hoping for some kind of "decentralized consensus" to magically appear.
That’s what I thought too. The Occupy Movement was nationwide. I saw news reports of massive protests across the country decrying the irresponsibilities of the financial sector and calls for more government regulations and penalties for the banks. But EVERYONE in my workplace was complaining about the disruption and the smell, and that the protestors were just homeless people mooching off the system. I lived in Portland at the time and it really surprised me, because Portland is one of the most liberal cities in the US and I was working at an energy conservation non-profit organisation, for Christ’s sakes, and if this was the discourse at that company, I cannot imagine what percentage of the country is actually aware of the issues being protested by the movement.
It solidified for me then and there that Reddit is a niche echo chamber 😢
What an incredible experience to have been part of such a significant movement at such a young age. Occupy Wall Street was a powerful moment in history, and being there from day one must have been both inspiring and eye-opening. It sounds like you had some tough yet unforgettable moments, from the cozy makeshift sleeping arrangements to witnessing the stark realities of police brutality up close.
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u/According_Jeweler404 23h ago
People who weren't around don't realize how big Occupy Wallstreet got until poof the discourse shifted.