Here’s The New School Reoccupied spreading the universal message that you cannot evict an idea whose time has come:
Occupy means “to engage the attentions or energies of”, and this is a very active verb. Just like the actions of the Occupy movement. But it is taking on a new meaning as people are literally trying to occupy everything without hesitation. Some of it is being done tongue-in-cheek, and much of it is taking on a much bigger concept.
After that initial Adbuster call, occupy now has a new meaning. Now, it’s defining a move for reinvention or renewal, though others are creating their own direction of action. If something isn’t working, then occupy it to change it into something that does work. This thought was jogged (partly) by a great design article written by August Heffner for Imprint. August rightly points out that the many tools that Occupy uses does tie together into a cohesive and powerful set of actions for the type of change that they’re seeking. This is an experiment in a new form of democracy where activity comes in many forms, but always moves towards a single goal.
No matter where anyone stands in their impression of this global movement, the only way to really get what everyone is clamoring for is to understand it from outside of your comfort zone. Embrace your humanity, and put aside your beliefs and ideologies so that you can hear the actual words emanating from the divergent groups scattered far and wide. And once you’ve put them aside, then simply use your unfettered vision to see what’s around you and react with your first gut instinct: Did you feel a twinge of discomfort or pain? Can you live with it, and I mean really live with it as though it were personally impacting YOU (it probably is and you might not see it)? Do you think that it should be fixed? Can you live with the consequences if it stays broken – especially if it eventually does affect you personally? Are you furious? Do you now feel like occupying…something?
Occupy isn’t about a physical location, though many of the protesters seem to be having a hard time letting go of this concept. It’s the reason why there is so many mixed emotions. In my mind, occupy is about a need. A need to call out the broken and find a way to work together to fix it. Well, it hasn’t reached the fixing stage yet, but that’s not really important because the conversation is just getting started. It took us decades to break things, and it’ll take just as long to rebuild a new world where the occupy message becomes the actual gears of change. Voices in the movement, as well as many supporters, know that we’re at the starting line. Now, where we go from here, together, will indicate whether we got the critical message that Occupy is transmitting on all channels.
And we have to realize that in other countries, they are not as lucky as we in the United States are.
