At its inception, the Occupy movement garnered untold amounts of public support in most cities across the country due to its staunch opposition to corporate criminality and all the bullshit that comes with it. Almost immediately, occupations sprung up in hundreds of cities all over the world, inspiring millions of students and teachers, workers and artists, whites and people of color, veterans, the elderly, parents and their children, to take to the streets and give a stiff middle finger to the status quo.

Ruminating in a Holding Cell: 27 Hours in #S17 NYC

September 17th marked the one year anniversary of Occupy Wall Street. To say it's been a strange journey would be a colossal understatement.

Long (long) story short, these encampments were met with the unflinching force of iron-fisted police officers, occupiers were smeared to death (if not outright ignored) by the corporate media apparatus, and the numbers naturally dwindled. Couple that with the internal struggles endemic to all resistance movements (doubtlessly provoked in part by police infiltration), and you've got a recipe for friction. Nevertheless, the movement remains strong and dedicated as ever to eliminating the chain of command reinforcing these for-profit industries of pure and utter madness.

In light of the awe-inspiring fact that this thing lasted even a month (let alone a year), I decided to trek on down to New York City to behold the spectacle of celebration for myself.

I arrived at Zuccotti Park in the heart of the Financial District bright and early at 7AM. Tension on the subway was palpable, but the spirit and energy of the day cut that tension apart once I hit the ground. Before I could even plant my feet down, I was whisked away for a march to a separate convergance at 55 Water Street. For the next few hours, I traveled through the Wall Street area, moving from intersection to intersection, park to park.

Unfortunately, by mid-morning I found myself on the ass end of an altercation with the NYPD. Cut to: the transportation bus - I'm cuffed, awaiting the transfer to the holding facility downtown. (The exact details of the incident leading to my arrest aren't particularly relevant. For disclosure's sake, my initial charges were disorderly conduct - obstructing pedestrian traffic, and swinging at an officer.)

As I sat on the bus, I became briefly acquainted with a few fellow arrestees: the young man I'd seen only minutes earlier having his face smashed into the side of the bus by an officer, his eye still swollen and bloody; an older woman from the Boston area, her smiles and calming disposition indicative of an extensive arrest history; and about a half a dozen others. One of the striking features of these arrests was a particularly dehumanizing experience: once "captured" and loaded onto the bus, one was grabbed by the collar and made to strike a pose for a photo with one's arresting officer, not unlike the corpses of game animals snapped by the lenses of their human killers.

We then made our way down to the jail.

(Preface: getting arrested should be no point of pride. It's not awesome, it's not cool, and it certainly ain't no strategic victory. For every moment we spend locked in a jail cell, we become increasingly useless to the struggle on the outside. To be clear, there's nothing inherently wrong with being snatched by police forces for the crime of resistance; but let's not feed our minds with the prospect of achieving some sort of victory by filling their prisons with warm bodies.

Obviously, there are glaring exceptions to this. High-profile cases of political imprisonment like those of Mumia Abu-Jamal and Leonard Peltier have served to unite millions of conscientious individuals and foster solidarity on an international level, bringing attention to the issues of race and class within the prison-industrial complex. On an additional note, I'd rather spend a lifetime in a prison cell for the crime of liberation than five minutes on the outside not doing a damn thing. And *that* is a point of pride.)

We arrived at the facility for photos, documentation and detention (and strip-searches and retinal scans for a select few). As we were marched through the building from cell to cell, we were reduced to "perps" and "prisoners," nameless and faceless to the legal machine chewing us up and spitting us out.

Throughout my stay, I stumbled upon a strange phenomenon: I was surrounded by a bloc of animated goofs, hellbent on reclaiming their dignity from within the concrete confines of this monument to legal power. Though their actions may be commended, I quickly grew tired of the incessant noise and driving desire to be as disruptive as possible. I was of the select few that was clamoring for a productive dialogue of some sort. I had traveled from out-of-state to participate and contribute to the foundation of voices that would give way to the second year of Occupy, and I'd be damned if an arrest was gonna render me silent. Unfortunately, the dialogue didn't get very far, as the increasing number of entering prisoners (which quickly escalated to the triple digits) further incensed my fellow arrestees.

Moving on, I refused the NYPD's food offerings and stuck to myself for the bulk of my stay. I laid witness to some great words of wisdom from a Vietnam Veteran for Peace, heard the freestyle musings of a Queens native, and smiled wide with pride at the sight of two 16-year-old boys arrested for civil disobedience.

Upon my exit, I reluctantly rejoined civilization. Despite my arresting officer's insistence that I "go home and never come back," I quickly re-entered the fray at Zuccotti Park. By this time, the sun was resting and the chill of the New York night took over. There were hundreds of shining faces brightening the atmosphere: a handful of general assemblies, individuals distributing pamphlets and Occupy-sponsored periodicals, a group performing a full-blown musical play, and other acts of community, celebration and resistance.

So what did I take away from all this?

Occupy needs to grow, plain and simple. It took the world by storm a year ago, thanks to the victories achieved through the Egyptian and Tunisian revolutions shortly before, but we mustn't let the brutality of police violence or the threat of corporate co-optation dismantle what we've built. This should only be feeding our resolve. As Mickey Z. puts it, we need outreach! We need to recruit, and the main way to do that is to clear the misconceptions put forth by corporate media. Remind the public why we occupy, why we fight.

We need to appeal to broadened interests; make sure we're inclusive of the various circumstances and struggles we each face. The Occupy movement is an umbrella for opposition to the worst injustices we encounter on a daily basis: mass incarceration, corporate plunder of the ecosphere, rape culture, white supremacy, animal exploitation and consumption...

These struggles have found a place to unite and it'd be a damn shame if this unique opportunity of solidarity was forced into withering away (at least without some sort of fight).

Opening a(nother) forum for diversity of tactics would be repetitive and most likely ineffectual, but it must also be acknowledged that the only violence this movement has seen is the violence being visited upon it. There have been no bombings, no assassinations, no political kidnappings, no mass campaign of property destruction; but rather we've been sleeping in tents on public land, petitioning our grievances to government officials (however ineffective that may be) and yelling at the top of our lungs that policies in this country are seriously skewed toward the interests of a select wealthy few. And yet, the response on the parts of politicians, police forces and their media lackeys falls more in line with the former than the latter.

At least initially on a purely conceptual basis, we should be asking ourselves how much sense it makes for a resistance movement to adhere to the laws of the unjust system it's fighting. We throw our hands in the air in despair, charge toward the streets, and when the police state proclaims its prohibition on sleeping in a park we respond dutifully and fall back into our corners of complacency, twittling our thumbs in wonderment of how else we might topple the unjust through tactics approved by the unjust themselves.

If we have any serious aspirations of tossing aside this sick system, we may need to venture outside the box of proscribed behavior. If voting won't fix it, and simply screaming at the top of our lungs won't do it, we've then placed ourselves square in the middle of a mental fork in the road: we either put our fists down or think of something new. It's a conversation that needs to be had (again).

With that said, an acknowledgement of the victories of this movement:

First and foremost, as has been stated since its founding, we as a nation are finally talking about income inequality and class struggle. The fact that the mainstream public is even grasping the fact that certain sectors of society amass disgusting collections of wealth, while most others have to grasp at straws just to survive, is absolutely insane! Cheers to the Occupy movement for bringing class consciousness to the forefront.

Secondly: Mutual Aid. Through food-sharing networks, clothes drives, Free Universities, collective housing and much more, individuals are becoming groups, giving birth to organic communities. Obviously, these actions weren't founded a year ago, but it's seen a mighty fine rise since last September.

These are the ways we liberate ourselves from the idea put forth by corporate-political forces that we're just worthless pebbles of sand on a briny beach. Through community, occupation and re-education, we can arm ourselves against the pillaging of our planet, our families and our lives.

And remember, these actions exist independently of Occupy. If it were to die-off tonight, there'd still be millions of us acting in this way. Whether you choose to formally affiliate with OWS or not, we can all take steps toward course-correcting the insanity around us. If this culture is still standing (in whatever form) 20 years from now, what will your response be when asked what role you played while the world was falling down around you?

"Let us never forget that revolt is real; not merely the subject of history, but a living, breathing memory waiting for us to give it form. The terrain to be acted upon is not the geography of some faraway land, but the substance of our very lives." - A Day When Nothing is Certain: Writings on the Greek Insurrection.

Grab a friend and join the movement! ♥ Ⓐ

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