My time ‘occupying’ Wall Street

I went to Wall Street last week looking for a protest. But beyond the familiar display of activists’ handmade signs and picket lines, I found a smart and incredibly well-organized community sprouting from the dark concrete of the financial district.

Did I walk in marches? Yes. Did I hold cardboard signs? Of course. But the most important thing I saw in Zuccotti Park was a diverse group of Americans acting out a new process of dissent. These “occupiers” are making a fundamentally different and more profound statement than has popularly been reported.

It is direct democracy. It is a new vision of change. It is community values in action.

It is also no wonder the media has had a hard time making sense of it. The “occupation” isn’t what we’re used to seeing. It doesn’t lend itself to the familiar narrative arc of a protest: “You meet these demands, and then we’ll go home.” Instead the occupiers are protesting our economic system by offering a direct alternative, by actively living out values of trust and representation and interdependence — values that the surrounding financial institutions obscure and repress.

The media continues to ask for the demands of the occupiers, but they should instead look closely at how the occupiers in Zuccotti Park are organizing themselves. They are offering the world one “no,” but many “yeses.” Their goal is not just unity, but ubiquity.

In other words, the medium is the message. Their form of organization their demand — not a means to another political end.

Zuccotti Park is organized into a sleeping area, a media zone, a well-stocked library and a kitchen where throughout the day hot meals are handed out to anyone present and hungry.

Each of these areas of community life is run by a “working group” of occupiers.

Anyone can join.

And in this diverse group, all members make group decisions by consensus. Their “General Assembly” is a hundreds-strong direct democracy that accounts for every single opinion.

I participated in a meeting, and, yes, the process was long and cumbersome. But it was also electric. It was energizing. Every person there was committed to making decisions for the well-being of their new community.

I was inspired.

I came to Wall Street looking for a protest — and for good reason. Something is broken in the way we relate to each other and in the way we relate to our world. And our politics has forgotten how to fix it.

We still need protest, because there’s plenty to be mad about.

But I found on Wall Street something else: The practice of living as a community is our demand.

And all of us are invited.