On The Basic Level Occupy Changes Things

An unfounded worry I have  about Occupy is that cultural bullies will prevent it from having sanctuary again. Taking encampment away is like removing  air from a balloon--it is the last expression (choice) of placing one's body in a space. Once there, a new inter-dependent community thrives and rejuvenates its members. Stamina ebbs for lack of such a community. (Read on, to see how convincing this can sound.)So, that endurance receives fuel from those resuscitating, geographical enclaves. It was that phenomenon which gave life to Zuccotti and sent an archetype around the world.

But what do I know? The OWS optimism has always dodged my pessimism. Still, Tidal Magazine writers--in the delightful OWS fashion--address both sides of the question. Yes, says, June Butler, we will have "episodic and targeted" actions and in sequence and they will reveal a system of capitalism feasting on its own people. (Note the absence of any direct message about a spawning occupied site, like a mother ship.) As well, Sandra Nurse urges us on to face fear and complacency by turning toward each other where we "hold hands on the frontline of this fight." Again, no direct reference to a follow-up site like Zuccotti. 

Yet in any forum, working group, or general assembly there's always voiced a fond remembrance of Zuccotti days and a yearning for the Brigadoon to rise out of the mist once more. The jaded among us know that won't be so and I become impatient with their detail and clarity when they insist on dreaming that dream again. Not gonna happen with Commissioner Ray Kelly's riot police on alert. Every time OWS comes near to occupying empty space they will be descended upon by the dark wolves of order. Plain depression about that waits in line behind an ominous shudder of horror...could this really happen in America?

I hope you see what has transpired here...and I didn't do it intentionally. I am the problem and anyone who sees the world and its future with limited horizons. Occupy refuses to play by the given rules of order, expectation, and discourse. Their solution is to change the rules. We know what is, is dis-empowering and immobilizing. It enslaves us in a world of conditions that are so confining as to make us dull and unresponsive. We have no real expectations; we only anticipate the shallow flapdoodle the culture doles out to keep us busy.

Again, to quote Tidal, page 5, Issue 2, "We want no part of any contract that produces a world like this; we do not consent to  be governed; we take responsibility for our own lives."