The occupation of Freedom Plaza in Washington DC was planned for several months to begin on the 10th anniversary of the Afghanistan War. It was planned prior to and quickly endorsed and supported the planning for Occupy Wall St. In numerous blog posts through the summer I described it as an occupation. Here is a video of me demanding an occupation of DC and George Galloway demanding an occupation of London. This is from June:
I bring this up because there are now two occupations in DC, both of them wonderful. I wish we had three! For the most part they support each other and work together well. But there are some persistent people in one of them, the occupation of McPherson Square, who — rather than protesting the plutocracy — have devoted themselves to the hopeless crusade of getting everyone to stop using the word “occupation” in connection with the occupation of Freedom Plaza.
Despite having planned an occupation for the better part of a year and described it with that word from Day 1, we tried to accomodate our brothers and sisters in the OccupyDC encampment in McPherson Square. We repeatedly told all media outlets to call us October2011 or Stop the Machine or at least the Occupation of Freedom Plaza rather than of DC or even of Washington. To no avail. We will forever be understood as a spin off of Occupy Wall Street and as the Occupation of Washington, DC.
And, I’m sorry, but who the hell cares? If the energy devoted to pestering me about the proper names for our two occupations were devoted to nonviolently resisting the work of the 1% government in Washington, we might pull this country and this world back from the brink.
Let’s think of our priorities.
Let’s work together.
Let’s be glad they aren’t calling us worse things.
Let’s invent new things to be called.
Let’s make them inclusive things.
If we are the 99% we are the 99% together as one movement, even if we have multiple general assemblies.
Onward!