The Occupation at 2 months and 24 days

Last night Occupy Austin held a General Assembly at the Capitol. (We've been doing this for about a month now). It might have been the shortest GA in Occupy Austin history. It clocked in at just under 25 minutes. I know, pretty amazing huh! I think it's amazing though that we still came out and we still followed our process and we still are doing what we're doing.

Maybe this doesn't make much sense, but I think Occupy Austin is doing okay. I don't want to say there aren't things we need to improve (and many of them!) but I do want to say that we're doing pretty well.

Three months I had never even heard of Occupy Wall Street, Consensus Process or Guerilla Gardening. Now, I know what all of those things are. Two months ago I could not even make it through an entire GA before I thought it was 'too late' or this is 'too boring'. Now, I am part of the facilitation team and moderate GA's at least once a week. I have edited more Press releases and newsletters in the past two months than ever before in my life. We are making this Occupation a reality.

Reality is not necessarily pretty, but it is real. Our Occupation has much to improve on, but I think we need to start seeing that we're not doing too badly.

We're doing something that has never been done before. We're writing the new American History. We are creating the future that we want to live in right now.

I attended a 'Strategy and Tactics' meeting a few nights ago. This meeting made it clearer than ever before that the Occupy movement is not a political movement. We are not concerned with just making politics better. We are concerned with the whole society. We are trying to find a way to build a society that values people over money. We have lived for so long in a world where everything is based on monetary value. You pay for what you learn in school. If you have a job, you are valued based on how much you earn for that job. As a culture we say that the money we earn gives us value. That is why people have been spending more than they earn because they are trying to create the illusion of value with things. Yet, we all know, somewhere deep inside us, that our value does not lie in anything monetary. Our value lies in our humanity.

Last night I caught the very tail end of the women's meeting. We had an incident of domestic violence that caused many of us in the movement to realize just how much we need to educate and empower all people. If people are empowered than they will say something when they see something. Speaking up is valuing someone else's humanity.

We are learning to Occupy. We are learning to live.


Check out the Austin Chronicle Photo Spread on Occupy