ACCORDING TO LIZ - Remember those heady days of idealism as pro-democracy movements swept the world promising real change? From the Arab Spring to Occupy people seized the chance to challenge corrupt political systems and the scourge of capitalism.
September 17, 2026, marks the fifteenth anniversary of the Occupy movement in the United States.
From Wall Street to cities across the country and around the world almost by osmosis the inchoate anger that also fueled the Arab Spring spread to discussions around American kitchen tables laying the groundwork for Bernie Sanders’ populist presidential campaign, the rise of AOC, and Zohran Mamdani’s victory in New York.
Mainstream news media and the party hierarchies have focused on the most visual and demonizable aspects of the rise in democratic socialism this past decade. But the reality is more than skin deep.
The dialogues initiated from the spread of fresh ideas and the resulting corporate anger over the Occupy encampments, was just the beginning.
Occupy started on Wall Street because it was the greed and selfishness of the financial markets that ignited the 2008 financial crisis.
The implicit belief of those who framed Occupy was that the focus of the economy should not be on the production of wealth but in creating a balanced society benefiting all people and sustainably managing resources.
To initiate a regenerative system to establish a circular not linear economy with all humans and the biosphere as full participants.
Social philosopher Howard Zinn argued that change occurs when movements reach a critical mass, forcing cautious politicians to move out of their comfort zones of laissez faire, step beyond their tendency to keep systems in stasis.
With the advent of deep-pocket plutocrats giving those politicians even more reason to turn a blind eye to their electorates, it will take more, and more forceful, pressure to bring about change.
And more actions, initially failing but laying the groundwork for those that come next. Occupy then, No Kings now.
Rejection of Bill Clinton’s sell-outs – to the banking industry on one hand, losing the danger of inevitable Wall Street abuses, and to the Conservative think-tank mentality on the other, initiating decades of punitive social policy exacerbating crime and despair – inevitably led to an acceleration of the partial breakdown of American society. And democracy.
The 2008 financial crisis was the match that lit the fuse.
Capitalism, far from being the ideal system upon which America’s greatness as a land of opportunity was built, had become selfish, unjust, and ungenerous; focused on just one value – financial growth – which benefited a very restricted tranche of stakeholders, investors and shareholders, self-selecting themselves based on existing wealth.
Comprehension of this dangerous dichotomy was further popularized with the publication of Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century which argued that when the rate of return on capital exceeded the rate of economic growth, inequality increased along with entrenched patterns of inequality due to widening wealth and income disparities.
That the power of money accelerated the rigging of rules and double standards inhibiting change and diverting growth away from the people and into the pockets of the already overly rich.
And skewed the metrics in what should have been a sustainable and democratic economy by recasting patients and doctors, public parks and mining companies, farms and Big Ag as service providers and profit-centers.
To have any sort of quality of life, Americans must ensure the environment, healthcare and science are reprioritized overgrowth and profits.
But to debunk the deteriorating narrative of GDP growth as the lodestar of universal success – something that Occupy ultimately failed to do, a new generation of leaders must find replacements and stories that are more compelling.
Ones that fulfill the needs and rights of every human being and the planet rather than focusing on GDP and the increasing of profits driving the destruction of the environment and propagating further inequalities of income and wealth.
Instead of mankind being at the apex of a pyramid with the Elon Musks of capital at the apex of mankind, human beings must come to value our place as part of a web incorporating all life and must accept with humility our obligation to be respectful of the other portions that make up the whole. That make us whole.
Economics as taught today is the study of how society manages scarce resources. But it omits the in many ways rarer resources of values, human needs, and people, essentially relegating all economic growth and profits to the 1%.
The Occupy movement and Piketty awoke Americans to both the micro and macro unfairnesses that permeate our lives.
How the labor of the 99% is used to extract benefits for an overclass that cares little about the lives and futures of everyone else.
How by accelerating extraction in the short term is damning the survival of the planet.
In the words of Aldo Leopold, philosopher, scientist, and conservationist, mankind needs to transform its world view from being a conqueror of the land to being a joint member of the biosphere.
And ordinary Americans are waking up. Even as their government and most corporations continue with blinders on down the path of extractive perdition, many are starting to question the self-interest that drives them.
Is the two-party obsession with GDP growth more important than humanity, justice, generosity and public spirit?
Qualities that feed people’s souls.
The exponential rise in voters declaring themselves non-partisan, the exponential increase in the candidacies of populists across the country, and the exponentially rising Gen Z voices – once classified as apathetic, now challenging the status quo, say that change is in the air.
Occupy’s roots varied widely but as with the Arab Spring, in the United States it included a visceral reaction the militarized American presence in the world going back to Eisenhower’s warnings about the rise of the military-industrial complex, the Vietnam draft-dodgers and world-wide protests against the Bush governments illegal and uncalled for attack on Iraq.
To this growing rejection add the subsequent opportunistic seizure by the military-industrial complex and ramping-up of operations on American soil in the wake of the government’s ineptitude and overreaction following 9-11.
And now, imposition of the racist lawlessness of ICE and the gross expansions of the prison-industrial complex and its inhumane treatment of human beings of color – including children – being incarcerated on flimsy, if any, evidence.
We-the-people must decide, must determine what elements of society are inclusive or extractive. Generative for humanity or authoritarian incursions into our rights.
And starve the latter of any further power.
Americans must not only rise in opposition to current abuses but must also make hard changes for the future to ensure that the ground for the re-emergence of such evils is salted and forever rendered infertile.
Starting with changing the metrics for a healthy pluralistic society to ones that make human prosperity and planetary health key as opposed to government promoted corporate profits and cancerous growth of the current economy. A growth that doesn’t benefit the 99%.
And that starts with the message of Occupy: that individuals can make a difference standing up to what’s wrong in our society.
Harking back to the words of Gandhi: “We but mirror the world… If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change.”
(Liz Amsden is a former Angeleno now living in Vermont and a regular CityWatch contributor. She writes on issues she’s passionate about, including social justice, government accountability, and community empowerment. Liz brings a sharp, activist voice to her commentary and continues to engage with Los Angeles civic affairs from afar. She can be reached at [email protected].). Photo: (Spencer Platt / Getty Images)
