A tremendously insightful “Eulogy to Occupy”

Over the last 15 months I posted many reflections on the Occupy movement. That movement is clearly not over, morphing into new shapes even as its most potent meme – “We are the 99%” – continues to reverberate.

Yet there was something about the original Occupy encampments – those intense micro-communities, living vibrant and threatened in our midst – that still haunts many of us. They were so mixed and extreme, strangely embodying the best and worst of who we are. Diverse people found them inspiring and disgusting, potent and pointless, overflowing with grit, authenticity, passion, pain and whimsy.

I want to share an article that captures a lot of that – the full spectrum of those intense contradictions – and courageously attempts to fathom the meaning of it all – for us, for the Occupiers, for our whole society.

http://www.wired.com/opinion/2012/12/a-eulogy-for-occupy/
“A Eulogy for #Occupy” by Quinn Norton, a Wired magazine reporter who embedded with Occupy Wall Street activists around the U.S. for a year and reported back on what she witnessed. In this article she reflects on what she saw, felt, heard and thinks about it all.

I found “A Eulogy for #Occupy” profoundly insightful and sensitive, exhibiting a rare integration of journalistic integrity, unflinching critique, and deeply personal vulnerability and compassion.

It is a long read, so I won’t include it here. But it is also a rich, poetic read, quite in addition to the information and wisdom it imparts. I found it a more fruitful use of my time than at least 80% of the other things I do.

I came away from it grateful and pensive. Our challenges are so immense. Our human spirit is so remarkable. We know so much and so little and have so much to learn about how to do this right, this world-changing task we have inherited. The future asks so much of us and we have so much to give.

I am posting this to honor the courage of those who do messy hopeful experiments on behalf of the rest of us and the rest of life. We need more experiments like that, and more appreciative critiques to help us learn what to try next…