Occupy Lives, and Changes Lives

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Occupy movement flourishes in post-encampment phase

By Carl Gibson, Reader Supported News

I know what it’s like to be hounded by bill collectors. And regardless of how I feel about the Tea Party’s politics, if they spearheaded an initiative to abolish the $6,000 in medical debt I had racked up in Houston, Texas, after breaking my elbow with no health insurance, and if they did the same with thousands of others’ debt out of sheer desire to do good, I would feel radically different about the Tea Party. And if they led a disaster recovery effort that was on the ground in affected communities long before governments and well-funded relief organizations were able to provide help, I might even think about joining them. Occupy Wall Street, the populist economic justice movement the corporate-owned media and corporate-owned political class has been declaring as “dead” for months now, has been doing all of the above.

Snow falls outside an Occupy Sandy outreach center, lighted inside only by the aid of a generator in the Rockaway Park neighborhood of the borough of Queens in New York. (photo: AP)

When the camps were evicted, the media breathlessly reported about the official death of the movement and blamed nonviolent protesters for the city governments squandering millions of tax dollars on constant and overwhelming police presence and re-seeding grass in parks (that somehow costs hundreds of thousands of dollars to do). And after more than 30,000 marched through New York City on May Day, the media gleefully announced the death of Occupy Wall Street, since the ragtag populist movement didn’t succeed in getting 100% of Americans to take off work to participate in the general strike. By the time #S17 came around, the weekend of Occupy Wall Street’s 1-year anniversary, there were tens of thousands of people in the streets of New York, and the NYPD arrested hundreds of nonviolent protesters (including me), yet the media coverage was scant and inconsequential, and garnered just a passing glance.

Yet despite the Occupy funeral dirge that’s been played in dozens of headlines, the movement has flourished in its post-encampment phase. Occupy Sandy has become a full-scale military-style operation that has developed a highly-efficient means of training and deploying volunteers, storing and transporting goods, feeding the hungry and putting clothes on those who have none. Police who were arresting protesters on #S17 weekend are now handing bags of clothes down assembly lines, side by side with those same protesters.

Occupy’s solidarity through charity has affected people beyond New York as well, as the Strike Debt Rolling Jubilee has raised almost half a million dollars in small donations to erase $8.4 million (and counting) of distressed medical, student loan, and mortgage debt less than a week after launching. While speculators trade the debt of poor, sick, and injured people on the market like a commodity, purchase it for pennies on the dollar from the banks, and move to collect the full amount for profit, Occupy Wall Street’s Strike Debt project (born on #S17) decided to do the same thing, except upon purchasing the debt, they would abolish it. While I didn’t donate to any political campaign all year, I gladly gave $100 of money I can’t really afford to give to Strike Debt, and slept like a baby that night knowing that my contribution erased $2,000 of someone’s debt.

All through the election, we watched as each major candidate raised and spent over $1 billion on their campaigns. SuperPACs funded by billionaires like the Koch Brothers, Sheldon Adelson, and Karl Rove’s funders collectively raised and spent an additional $4 billion. Pro wrestling magnate Linda McMahon has spent approximately $100 million on not one, but two losing US Senate campaigns. Imagine if right-wing billionaires used just 10% of the money they spent on a mostly losing effort, on erasing ordinary folks’ distressed debt alongside Occupy Wall Street.

While police in Spain are taking to the streets by the thousands to protest government austerity and bank bailouts, and the world’s largest retailer faced over 1,000 protests nationwide and employee strikes in 100 cities on their busiest day, I’d say the only movement that’s dying is capitalism. The grip of the banks and corporations on our society and our government is growing weaker by the minute, and the Occupy movement is only growing stronger.

Keep up with US Uncut:
Web: usuncut.org
Twitter: twitter.com/usuncut
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Carl Gibson, 25, is co-founder of US Uncut, a nationwide creative direct-action movement that mobilized tens of thousands of activists against corporate tax avoidance and budget cuts in the months leading up to the Occupy Wall Street movement. Carl and other US Uncut activists are featured in the documentary “We’re Not Broke,” which premiered at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival. He currently lives in Manchester, New Hampshire. You can contact Carl at [email protected], and listen to his online radio talk show, Swag The Dog, at blogtalkradio.com/swag-the-dog.

Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.

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