This the best summary I've seen yet of Occupy Wall Street -- looking back, what we've accomplished, looking forward -- and never-mind those who would label a movement in its infancy a "failure." Rebecca Solnit for Occupy.com: "...but
September 20, 2012

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This the best summary I've seen yet of Occupy Wall Street -- looking back, what we've accomplished, looking forward -- and never-mind those who would label a movement in its infancy a "failure."

Rebecca Solnit for Occupy.com:

"...but some of the people who came together under the Occupy banner have been working steadily in quiet ways all along, largely unnoticed. From Occupy Chattanooga to Occupy London, people are meeting weekly, sometimes just to have a forum, sometimes to plan foreclosure defenses, public demonstrations, or engage in other forms of organizing. On August 22, for instance, a foreclosure on Kim Mitchell’s house in a low-income part of San Francisco was prevented by a coalition made up of Occupy Bernal and Occupy Noe Valley (two San Francisco neighborhoods) along with ACCE, the group that succeeded the Republican-destroyed ACORN.

It was a little victory in itself — and another that such an economically and ethnically diverse group was working together so beautifully. Demonstrations and victories like it are happening regularly across the country, including in Minnesota, thanks to Occupy Homes. Earlier this month, Occupy Wall Street helped Manhattan restaurant workers defeat a lousy boss and a worker lock-out to unionize a restaurant in the Hot and Crusty chain. (While shut out, the employees occupied the sidewalk and ran the Worker Justice Café there.)

In Providence, Rhode Island, the Occupy encampment broke up late last January, but only the condition that the city open a daytime shelter for homeless people. At Princeton University, big banks are no longer invited to recruit on campus, most likely thanks to Occupy Princeton."

There have been thousands of little victories like these and some big ones as well: the impact of the Move Your Money initiative, the growing revolt against student-loan-debt peonage, and more indirectly the passing of a California law protecting homeowners from the abuse of the foreclosure process (undoubtedly due in part to Occupy’s highlighting of the brutality and corruption of that process).

There's much more at the link, and don't forget, all this is in between marches, rallies, preparation and meetings, often being violently arrested for exercising our Constitutional right to protest, then jail, meeting with lawyers, getting bailed out and court appearances.

I wonder what the naysayers accomplished last year?

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