Occupy Movement Celebrates First Anniversary
By Countercurrents.org
17 September, 2012
Countercurrents.org
Occupy Movement participants marched through streets. In New York, they marched. They marched in other cities. The dream is alive. The movement has not ceased. While protests have been shut down in some areas, others are still continuing. It’s continuing from the metropolis of the world system to the ocean shore in south India.
On Monday, in the US, media reports said, protesters converged near the New York Stock Exchange to celebrate Occupy's anniversary, marking the day they began camping out in Zuccotti Park. Marches and rallies were organized in cities around the world to commemorate the day. People joined concerts. Lectures were delivered.
Police in New York have made "multiple" arrests during marches and protests ushering in the first anniversary of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Hundreds took part in a rally Saturday in the city. Protesters marched from Washington Square Park and headed south down Broadway to Zuccotti Park, chanting as they went. The march came on the first of three days of planned events. Hundreds of marchers took to the streets throughout the weekend in a series of smaller protests.
It was part of three days of action celebrating the anti-capitalist movement, which burst into life a year ago but has long since seen its momentum wane.
Across the nation, there have been protests organized in the name of ending foreclosure, racial inequality, stop and frisk, debt: You name it, Occupy has claimed it. Occupy the Bronx. Occupy the Department of Education. Occupy the Hood. Occupy the Hamptons.
Protesters opposing everything from liquor sales in Whiteclay, Neb., to illegal immigration in Birmingham, Ala., have used Occupy as a weapon to fight for their own causes. In Russia, opposition activists protesting President Vladimir Putin's re-election to a third term have held a series of Occupy-style protests. Young "indignados" in Spain are joining unions and public servants to rally against higher taxes and cuts to public education and health care.
"All around the world, that youthful spirit of revolt is alive and well," says Kalle Lasn, co-founder of Adbusters, the Canadian magazine that helped ignite the movement.
Evaluating Occupy
It’s one year, in terms of formal launch, of the Occupy Wall Street Movement. Incidents and events, marches and resistance, occupy positions and raising voices of protests moved forward and spread around the world as more than three hundred days passed. Disarrays and indiscipline, dispirit and demobilization crept in as the time passed. Questions emerged as reflections continued. How was it? Has not it been a failure? What the achievements? Isn’t it still moving forward?
One year, at times, is not the time required to evaluate and to pass a verdict on a movement.
The Occupy Movement continues. It was like a spark. With all its historical limitations and efforts to renounce adventurism and anarchism it is moving, it’s continuing, it’s spreading, it’s widening, it’s deepening. The movement is emerging in places unknown to many in the world in forms innovated by time, by participants, by socio-political perspective, by weaknesses and possibilities, by dreams and imaginations based on reality. And, essential questions emerge. Questions shall continue to emerge. Debates continue. The emergence of questions is the evidence: Occupy Movement is alive. The dream is alive, the spirit is vibrant as are the conditions that push and press people to rise in resistance and protest.
Countercurrents likes to say, quoting Monthly Review editors, “we are in no way withdrawing our support for the Occupy movement, nor indicating that the struggle it represents is all over.” (“The Editors”, Monthly Review , vol. 64, no. 4. September 2012, http://monthlyreview.org/2012/09/01/mr-064-04-2012-08 )
Here are some pictures captured by Stacy Lanyon
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