Occupying Memory

My coverage of Occupy Wall Street continues, and evolves. The movement that started at Liberty Plaza is growing all the time, and as it does, I’ve been spending less and less time at the occupations themselves and more and more time writing about them, trying to take account of what has so far been the most tremendous, instructive, and hopeful political experience of my life, and perhaps of my whole generation. I’ve noticed many of the early organizers now stepping back some—resting, letting others take leadership roles, trying to dodge the temptations of ego that come with a movement that has hit the big time, a movement that is not to be confused with particular individuals, even while being made up of nothing else.

As a journalist, I’ve been doing the same. Everyone with a notebook or a camera seems to be covering the movement now, so I’m letting them do the work I was doing early on, when few others were there. I’m going through my notes and through my pictures and through my memories, trying to sort out where this came from and how. In the meantime, some more publications and appearances:

• My article “From Occupy Wall Street to Occupy Everywhere” was the lead story of the October 31 issue of The Nation. I subsequently discussed it on The John Batchelor Show.
• A bit of an essay of mine forthcoming in The Catholic Worker newspaper is now up at OccupyWriters.com, a petition that I helped start with Jeff Sharlet and Kiera Feldman.
• An essay on the meaning of “diversity of tactics” for Occupy Wall Street at Waging Nonviolence has been pretty widely circulated—and I hope its call for nonviolence will be heard. I’m told an edited version will appear in a new book being put out by YES! magazine next week.
• In an essay in The New York Review of Books, Michael Greenberg mentioned the article of mine in the first issue of The Occupied Wall Street Journal, adapted from my Nation FAQ.