As we come out of the introspective pause in Occupy activism and burst into the American Spring, the season of extraversion, here’s what I’ve come to realize about Why I Occupy. First, let me be absolutely clear that I am basically a raging introvert whose primary color is self-reflective blue…the exact opposite on the color wheel from the blazing orange of that’s come to symbolize the Occupy movement.
Okay, so I am a devotee of Thoreau, who may have spent a delicious two years at Walden Pond, but then had to come back into Concord and act on what he had learned…i.e. go to jail for refusing to pay taxes for a war he adamantly opposed.
For the inner knowing must become outer action, the private become the public, the personal become the political.
The Occupy movement bridges this process for me. Beginning with the personal issue of my own underwater mortgage that has trapped me here since I retired from the job that brought me here in the first place. Thanks to Occupy, I get to stand back and look at the bigger picture, then connect the dots with what’s been going on in the financial industry, in the corporate media, in the political arena, and on Wall Street itself.
For me, Occupy is as a light being beamed into all the little nooks and crannies of power and deceit that have co-opted the common good for corporate greed. And once I began connecting the dots, I found that everything is interconnected.
So now I am part of Occupy Las Vegas, Occupy Writers, Occupy Clergy, Occupy Earth, and Inter Occupy, for starters.
For while I am still predominantly introverted and using the internet to connect and ad my voice and energy, I also knit the Occupy Orange fundraising scarves sold at First Fridays….
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