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Listen Now. Share Now on:. Many experts believe the economic justice movement has had lasting influence. How socialism became the talk of the midterms. Divided Decade: How the financial crisis changed politics. For-profit colleges seemed to be actively scamming students and the government.
Former Occupiers also launched Strike Debt! The plan behind the Rolling Jubilee was simple — and smart: Organizers raised money to buy delinquent debt that financial institutions often sell for pennies on the dollar. Instead of trying to collect that debt, they forgave it. Alumni from that went to the Debt Collective , a union for debtors that has helped students launch debt strikes, such as former students of the now-defunct for-profit institution Corinthian Colleges. The attention the Debt Collective drew to the issue of student debt, including for those who took out loans to attend institutions that were fraudulent or broke the law, resulted in millions of dollars of loan forgiveness.
It propelled regulations to protect student borrowers against misleading and predatory practices. Gazette, said of the movement. The conversation around debt right now — and specifically student debt — is front and center. Sanders in campaigned on a message of free college, and the majority of the Democrats running in the presidential primary back the idea or something similar. Calls to break up the big banks and bring back Glass-Steagall, a Depression-era law that separated commercial and investment banking but was repealed in , have roots in Occupy as well.
She started holding teach-ins about the law and eventually became part of a group called Occupy the SEC. That group sent a more than page comment letter to the Securities and Exchange Commission on the Volcker rule , a regulation included in the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill that bars banks from conducting certain investment activities. Some of the movements that grew out of Occupy Wall Street were more directly similar, like Occupy Homes, an effort to try to help Americans hit by foreclosures and evictions during and after the crisis, and Occupy Sandy, which helped communities affected by Hurricane Sandy after it hit the East Coast in the fall of Occupy was also a launching pad for several people who would go on to become influential figures on the left.
Berger is one of the founders of Momentum, a group that trains organizers of social movements. Berger is also one of the founders of If Not Now. Much of his work is focused on the importance of social movements speaking to broader audiences and avoiding just talking to themselves. Smucker, who told me that he was initially skeptical, went to New York after he saw Occupy take off. He wound up staying for a year to try to help build movements and train people.
He acknowledged that work might not have always been so visible. For many former Occupiers, life has been more complicated. Cecily McMillan, for instance, was arrested at an Occupy protest months after the original encampment and was subsequently charged with and convicted of assaulting a police officer as he tried to lead her out of the park.
She was convicted of a felony and jailed at Rikers Island for 58 days. She wrote a book about the experience and now lives in Atlanta. Those more immersed in Occupy tended to see it as a major force, while others on the periphery or whose involvement in the left is more rooted in current events downplayed it.
A number of people pointed out that multiple other social movements, especially the Movement for Black Lives, have been essential. Charles Lenchner, who was on the Occupy tech committee and helped create an email list for it, and Winnie Wong, who helped start the sustainability working group at Occupy, created Ready for Warren to push Sen.
By framing the populist economic message that thrust anti-corporate lawmakers such as Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and Ocasio-Cortez into the electoral spotlight, Occupy Wall Street arguably did more in six months to move American politics to the left than the Democratic Party was able to do in six decades. Which raises the question: Could Sanders and his political revolution have been possible before Occupy shattered decades of silence about income inequality?
Not likely. Although the transition never happened, Occupy achieved something perhaps even greater. Operating independently of the Sanders campaign, the group created a horizontal model for voter engagement by inviting volunteers across all regions and demographics to help the Sanders phenomenon spread in the distributed, decentralized format of a social movement.
We gave away the keys. Photos: Occupy Wall Street spreads worldwide. When I interviewed Evan Weber for my book about Occupy and its legacy, he agreed that the movement played an essential role in igniting a new progressive era—one that might finally be on the verge of achieving transformational social, economic, and electoral reforms.
Occupy was like a great wave hitting shore—and a warning of even bigger waves to come. Through policies proposed and passed in its wake, to the individuals it set up to lead a new generation of social movements and political institutions, Occupy Wall Street has left a powerful legacy.
Political uprisings are usually categorized as successful or not based on what policies they achieve at their peak. But this is not the only means of measuring a movement, as noted by theorists Paul and Mark Engler. The Englers, authors of the book This Is an Uprising: How Nonviolent Revolt is Shaping the Twenty-First Century, argued that movements can also be measured by their ability to shape public opinion and articulate new solutions, many of which need more longstanding organizations to carry them through.
While the party remains tied to capitalists, as made clear by its prioritizing the healthcare industry during the pandemic, how the Democrats talk about economics has certainly shifted. During the Democratic primary, even the most moderate Democrats on stage were spouting policies that borrowed more from the democratic socialist Bernie Sanders than from Barack Obama. And while Obama had no initial plan to forgive student debt, Buttigieg argued that four-year colleges should be free for most students and called for an automatic enrollment in income-based repayment plans with loan cancellation after 20 years.
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