Solidify Occupy: A Suggestion for What’s Next

An essay by social ecologist and Prescott College student, Charles Imboden, drawing on writings by Zizek, Kovel, Bookchin, and others, as well as the author’s own experiences with Occupy Tucson. The full essay appears on Charles’ blog, Better Worlds, Brighter Futures: Social ecology analysis from the Sonoran Desert. Here are two key excerpts:

Calls to “Occupy everything!” have been sounded, and  people across the country have begun turning to their communities with projects and groups that retain the directly-democratic principles of Occupy and serve to increase the self-reliance, communality, sustainability, and autonomy of their neighborhoods. Occupy Our Homes works to protect neighbors from eviction and foreclosure, while Occupy the Hood reminds us that the indigenous and peoples of color are at the forefront of the political and economic injustice that affects all poor and the working-class. Very recently, Willie Nelson has also advocated, “Occupy the Food System,” citing the degraded and polluted condition of this system in the United States, and the control of our food by only a handful of giant corporations…

One way [forward] is to preserve and protect the General Assembly originated with the Occupy encampments, by expanding their scope to become a forum for popular, directly democratic decision making on all matters affecting the local community. General Assemblies should be created throughout our communities, allowing residents a space to guide the direction of their neighborhoods. Simultaneously, this movement should work to demand the City Council recognize these assemblies as having some degree of legal authority. In this way, the Occupy movement would become a movement for the empowerment of individuals and communities in ways that overcome the corruption and corporate influence so prevalent in our existing representative electoral system.