16 Oct Occupy

This was sent to me today through a listserv set up by graduate geographers. The list is growing as we find coalition across the campus.

In the past few weeks, we, more and more, are being forced to confront who we are, what we want, and how we want it. For all of the complaints i’ve seen and heard about the ability of anyone (and i do mean, ANYone) to speak at Occupy Seattle and the lack of demands (or even a cohesive set of complaints) coming from the Occupy movement, i’m actually quite uplifted by the movement as a whole.

People should be able to speak. All of our voices need to be heard. The lack of a leader is not due to lack of leadership, rather, is a reflection of a new kind of organization, a new way of organizing ourselves.

A visiting scholar from Hungary once told me that she was so surprised and in awe of how organized and orderly everyone is in America. Yes, it is very orderly here – we are well-trained to be hyper-organized, to follow rules (motility! keep right!), to be quiet, acquiescent, polite, and orderly. This movement is the infantile steps toward a new maturity – one that makes room for every voice and collective decision making. One that makes room for the organic intellectual to emerge, for collectivism to take root.

And of course people are complaining – we’re not used to it. We are afraid of what we don’t know. But we’ll never know if we don’t try. This is the moment of spontaneous revolution – and it is messy and unruly, yet peaceful. I was particularly heartened by the words of Francis Scott Piven, a woman whose academic and activist work i have long admired.