The word of the moment is “occupy”. It means so many useful things.
You can ask someone: “Is this seat occupied?”, meaning “Is someone sitting here?” Rooms in a hotel can be occupied (meaning used or inhabited), as can office space in a building: “The Pilewski Tower has 70 percent occupancy.” You can be occupied, meaning you have something to do: “The game kept the children occupied during the ride to Grandma’s.” If you get paid to do what you’re occupied with, it’s your occupation (your profession): “My occupation is journalist.” And with a large enough army, you can occupy a country: “Germany was occupied for almost 50 years.”
Occupying the attention of at least some Americans is the fact that Friday, October 7 marks the 10th anniversary of the start of the war in Afghanistan. Our leaders say American involvement will last another three years. The cost to America has been 1,678 dead, 14,239 maimed soldiers, and $386 billion. The cost to Afghanistan has been more than 14,000 dead. It is, however, encouraging to know that 350,000 Afghan soldiers have been trained to take over when the US leaves.
Occupying the headlines, however, will perhaps be the occupation of part of Washington, DC. After ceding a lot of territory to right-wing “tea partiers”, the left-wing protest movement is back to claim its ground.
Starting Thursday, October 6 — because no one pays attention to news that happens on a Friday — thousands of demonstrators are holding a massive sit-in at Freedom Plaza to call attention to the way they do not feel represented by their government. The movement’s website says:
“October 2011 will mark the start of the 11th year of the invasion of Afghanistan and the onset of the 2012 US federal budget, which provides unlimited funds for war and corporate welfare, yet withholds essential funds for services that meet human needs.
Starting on October 6, 2011, thousands of concerned Americans will assemble in Freedom Plaza in Washington, DC, to take control of our country and our lives. We will occupy the plaza and hold a People’s Assembly, where we come up with just and sustainable solutions to the crises we face and demand that these solutions be presented and that the people’s needs be addressed. We will plan and engage in creative acts of civil resistance and demand that our inherent rights and freedoms be protected, and that our children have a chance to live in peace, to breathe clean air, and to grow edible natural food.”
A cousin to this “Octobrist” movement is the Occupy Wall Street group, which has been camping out in a New York City park for the past few weeks. While the creators of the global depression are rewarded — first with government bailouts, then with bonuses — for their misdeeds, the protest against them has been too small, too spontaneous and too uncoordinated to have much effect. (The OWS group is still busy formulating its demands.) The only significant media coverage came last weekend, when 700 protesters were arrested on the Brooklyn Bridge — not for protesting, but for disobeying police orders to stay on the sidewalk.
If you’re going to risk arrest, at least do something more creative than that.
One thing about both occupations, however, is very important to note. The people organizing them, and most who are attending them, are students — the same students who voted for Barack Obama in 2008 and who might not vote for him in 2012. If enough of them show up, they may in fact be able to make a point.
