"Occupy is anything BUT a protest movement."

[Dover]

DUer Starroute posted this article in another thread.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x2195555#2195790


Thought it deserved its own thread:


Occupy is anything but a protest movement. That's why it has been so hard for news agencies to express or even discern the "demands" of the growing legions of Occupy participants around the nation, and even the world. Just like pretty much everyone else on the planet, occupiers may want many things to happen and other things to stop, but the occupation is not about making demands. They don't want anything from you, and there is nothing you can do to make them stop. That's what makes Occupy so very scary and so very promising. It is not a protest, but a prototype for a new way of living.

Now don't get me wrong. The occupiers are not proposing a world in which we all live outside on pavement and sleep under tarps. Most of us do not have the courage, stamina or fortitude to work as hard as these people are working, anyway. (Yes, they work hard.) The urban survival camps they are setting up around the world are a bit more like showpieces, congresses and "beta" tests of ideas and behaviors the rest of us may soon be implementing in our communities, and in our own ways. . . .

Whether or not we agree that anything at all in modern society needs to be changed, we must at least come to understand that the occupiers are not just another political movement, nor are they simply lazy kids looking for an excuse not to work. Rather, they see the futility of attempting to use the tools of a competitive, winner-takes-all society for purposes that might better be served through the tools of mutual aid. This is not a game that someone wins, but rather a form of play that is successful the more people get to play, and the longer the game is kept going.

cont'd
http://www.cnn.com/2011/10/25/opinion/rushkoff-occupy-prototype/index.html

[lunatica]

1. They're literally the faces of the rest of us 99%.

It isn't about politics per se, though politics affect all our lives deeply, so it can't not include politics. It's much more profound than that. It's about regaining a sense of community and a sense that we should be truly free to chose what we do with our lives. The rules we live by, what we have believed is normal is skewered and false on so many levels. It's somebody else's idea of what's normal or what the rules are.

[flamingdem]

2. This recalls a bit the liberated zones set up during the El Salvador war

In the zones people were taught to read, they developed a judicial system, women's rights were worked on etc. Very idealistic but crushed eventually.

But you know what now the FDR, the political wing of the guerillas is in charge of the country.. you never know.

[nadinbrzezinski]

3. This has a lot in common with the 1930s hobbo tent cities

[flamingdem]

4. Was it a model in some way?

I'm weak in my hobo history!

[nadinbrzezinski]

5. Those cities fed each other

Shared books, and talked revolution.