The Occupy movement sprung to life in a Manhattan park near Wall Street (a private park owned by a Canadian real estate company) on September 17, the occupation having been inspired by a Canadian cofounder of Vancouver-based Adbusters magazine (coincidence? yes). 

Preceded by similar uprisings in countries most of which had no democracy at all, the Occupy movement is still a months-old fledgling, albeit a fledgling on growth hormones. Like some precocious populist chia plant, it has sprouted branches in some 2500 towns and cities in over 80 countries, including Winnipeg.

It's as if a mentally disturbed world has been occupied by a warm blanket of sane.

“Sane,” you ask? But aren't these uncouth protesters merely an incoherent mob of malcontents? 

It's bad enough that the “lamestream media” – most notably its noisy Foxstream rump – has fixated on painting caricatures of the movement. Many people see only caricatures, too (coincidence? no). 

As someone who sees courage and political insight where others see bums, let me summarize in broad strokes what I believe the Occupy movement is about:

Wake up and smell the inequity. The Occupy movement is a long overdue correction. It aspires to deflate the bubble of a 30-year bull run of socially destructive public policies, especially in the United States. Its fundamental grievance is that the system – whether in countries run by oppressive dictatorships or dysfunctional democracies like our own (case in point: 60% of Canadians will continue to be governed for another four years by a party they voted against) – isn't working for most people as it should. The system is failing "the 99%" whose share of affluence and political influence has been plummeting since the 1980s as more and more money and power has been pumped up the value extraction chain to the richest 1% and to the 1% of the 1%, among whom reside the corporate executives and top-tier financial industry gamblers who earn millions of dollars a year for their skill in greasing that chain. 

Money talks – too much. The Occupy movement is a we-will-not-be-moved sit-in against government "of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%," to quote the title of an essay by Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, an Occupy movement supporter and educator and former chief economist of the World Bank. In the United States, where the law now encourages corporations, domestic and foreign, to buy all the political influence they can afford, the most important occupation is in Washington – by the 1%. 

Deregulation is the road to ruin. The Occupy movement is an indictment of a deregulated financial industry that played high-stakes poker with trillions of “leveraged” dollars in home mortgages and other borrowed money until it lost, triggering a global recession, a jobless recovery and the continuing threat of a double dip or a full-on global depression. More broadly, Occupiers stand for more regulation, not less, of all private enterprise to ensure business doesn't destroy public goods such as clean air and water, public health, biodiversity and this thing we like to call the climate in the corporate race to maximize profits. 

Peace and justice for all, not war and domination by the few. The Occupy movement is a “you're doing what with our money?” fiscal and moral reality check against the militarism that, since 9/11 alone, has (or will, when all the bills have been paid) destroyed trillions of dollars of American public wealth and hundreds of thousands of lives - Canadians, Americans, Iraqis and Afghans, among others. And unlike most popular revolts, but like those that brought independence to India and civil rights to America, it stakes its ground with nonviolent restraint and inclusive goodwill. Even when it comes to the much-maligned 1%, it demands only accountability and social responsibility. "Off with their heads" isn't what this live-and-let-live revolution is about.

There is, of course, a lot more to the Occupy movement than this, and none of it has been nailed down yet (much less to any door, congressional or otherwise). Nor is the Occupy movement saying anything new. What's new is that it's being shouted from the streets. 

This isn't the first time we've heard shouting from the streets since the financial meltdown. But when the Tea Party shouts "Take Our Country Back!" it wants to take it back from government (a government it would eviscerate), organized labour and social justice groups, and deliver it to an even freer, more empowered private sector. When the Occupy movement shouts "Take Our Country Back!" it wants to take back an occupied government and replace the undemocratic influence of the 1% - the deep-pocketed corporations, foundations and trade associations and their armies of lobbyists who buy the politicians and draft their legislation – with government truly of, by and for the 100% (excluding “corporate persons"). Here in Canada, money in politics isn't the free-for-all it is in the United States. Still, even if one discounts a few loopholes that help Big Money talk louder than the rest of us, Canadian individuals, corporations and interest groups with deep pockets can afford to max out their political contribution and third-party advertising limits better than Canadians with empty pockets can. Inevitably, politicians who please this deep-pocketted demographic – let's call it “the 1%” - are rewarded with deeper pockets of their own. Replacing private political contributions with 100% public financing – as some encourage the Occupy movement to demand - would level the playing field.

Occupy may come from the progressive side of the political spectrum, but it stands for all citizens who believe in an uncorrupted democratic enterprise. It embraces democracy so earnestly that, despite its ferment of timely and transformational political ideas, its slow, consensus-oriented process prevents it from rushing a mature political platform out the door. As Jesse Myerson, an Occupy Wall Street spokesperson, says: "That’s the thing about democracy – it takes forever and it requires a lot of diligence. If what you wanted was efficiency, you’d turn to totalitarianism.”

For those who ask of the Occupy movement, "what do they want? what do they demand?," the answers – in greater detail than I provide here – are not hard to find, even on their often witty and incisive signs (do a google images search for occupy movement signs). 

The lamestream media may be fixated on the spectacle and deaf, dumb and blind to the substance, but not-so-lamestream media like MSNBC and Democracy Now do entertain serious discussions about the movement, sometimes even with its politically astute spokespersons. On the websites of the Occupy movement's hundreds of outposts, anyone can read the issues, solutions and yes, even tentative demands. Sometimes they're naive, even deluded, as one would expect from a populist movement. Not so much at october2011.org/issues, where Occupy Washington, DC has articulated 15 core Occupy issues in intelligent detail. Finally, wherever you live, Occupiers are eager for you to visit, “dialogue” and participate in their general assemblies. 

Here in Winnipeg (occupy-winnipeg.com), the agenda includes issues specific to our city, region and country – the rights of indigenous Canadians, opposition to corporatist federal policies such as gutting the Canadian Wheat Board and distrust of a Comprehensive Economic Trade Agreement (CETA) being negotiated so secretively with the European Union that most Canadians haven't even heard of it. 

In October, an Occupy Winnipeg gathering gave a warm reception to Fred Tait, a farmer and veteran rural activist, “human mic'ing” his every word. 

"We recently had a plebiscite," Tait told the small crowd in Memorial Park (“WE RECENTLY HAD A PLEBISCITE”), referring to the grain producers who own the Canadian Wheat Board. "62% of us voted to retain the Canadian Wheat Board. Stephen Harper has announced that early next week he will introduce a bill to expropriate the Canadian Wheat Board. He also has claimed that he will remove our directors that we have elected. He has claimed that we will only have freedom after he has expropriated our wheat board. We find it difficult to understand how we promote democracy abroad and deny it at home."

Fred Tait defends the Canadian Wheat Board as Occupy Winnipeg co-organizer Louise May looks on. Photo: Ken Harasym.

Globalization has intensified the need for a 99% solution for issues such as climate change and weapons of mass destruction (nuclear, chemical, biological and financial) that transcend national borders. In October, several branches of the global Occupy movement and prominent public intellectuals, including Naomi Klein, Vandana Shiva and Noam Chomsky, endorsed a manifesto published in The Guardian by a group called United for Global Democracy. In their brief statement, the group wrote:

"We demand global democracy: global governance by the people, for the people. Inspired by our sisters and brothers in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Syria, Bahrain, New York, Palestine-Israel, Spain and Greece, we too call for a regime change: a global regime change.

"In the words of Vandana Shiva, the Indian activist, today we demand replacing the G8 with the whole of humanity – the G7,000,000,000.

"Undemocratic international institutions are our global Mubarak, our global Assad, our global Gaddafi. These include: the IMF, the WTO, global markets, multinational banks, the G8/G20, the European Central Bank and the UN security council. Like Mubarak and Assad, these institutions must not be allowed to run people's lives without their consent."

“We are Here Forever”

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. So the saying goes.

The ignore part lasted little more than a week, and the laughter has largely been confined to the Foxstream media and a minority of likeminded people. The fighting began immediately. But the pepper-spraying in Manhattan, the Iraq war-veteran skull-cracking in Oakland and the rifle-pointing in Chapel Hill were more the exception than the rule during the first two months. But in mid-November, a counter-movement to evict democracy from its encampments reared its ugly head. It wore full riot gear. It wielded truncheons, breaking the bones of peaceful college students and professors alike. It sequestered, accosted, even arrested witnesses by the dozen: reporters, press photographers, city councillors, a former New York Supreme Court justice, a retired Philadelphia police captain (in full uniform). It pepper-sprayed a pregnant teenager and an 84-year-old granny. It trashed the 5500-book Occupy Wall Street library and smashed residents' laptop computers. There was rioting in the streets. By the cops. 

The most authentic manifestation of Western democracy, possibly in living memory, had become too messy for civic authorities (and in the United States, the federal agencies who insiders say advised them). National leaders who only months before had demanded that dictators in far off lands stop brutalizing their own nonviolent protesters (and take a hint that maybe it's time to step down and restore power to the people) stood mutely by. Their military missions to bring freedom and democracy to other lands wore ironically on.

But the more cities evict their occupations, the more the occupiers are coalescing around a mission that transcends tents and parks. 

During Occupy Wall Street's show of force two days after its eviction from Zuccotti Park, a demonstrator named Megyn Norbut told a Reuters reporter: "We need to show that this is a mental and spiritual movement, not a physical movement." 

As NYPD riot cops threw their weight around that day, a young man held up a small cardboard sign. It said: "We are here forever." 

Here in Winnipeg, where Occupiers have encamped in Memorial Park, an organizer named Alex Paterson told a Winnipeg Free Press reporter: "Even if they evict us from the park, they're not going to evict us from people's minds....we're just going to transform ourselves and be more determined."

The movement has occupied a prime tract of mindshare. 

Its bold statements about economic inequity and dysfunctional democracy have shifted the conversation. A fundamentally left-wing analysis of wealth and power – unutterable in the Age of Stupid and the Epoch of Greed – has poked its head out from behind the bushes and into the sunlight. 

In the blink of an eye, Occupy has made the Tea Party's disingenuous taunts of "class warfare" – directed at a moderate Democratic president – ring as hollow as “let them eat cake.” 

The incumbent worldview, drummed into the American psyche by the Foxstream media, now has a rival in the battle to occupy American hearts and minds. And that's something even Barack Obama, for all his rhetorical skill and charisma, has been unable to do.

Obama may be the Occupy movement's greatest beneficiary. On November 10, he stunned pundits by throwing a monkey wrench into TransCanada's plan to build a major pipeline, the Keystone XL, from the Athabasca tar sands in Alberta to the Gulf Coast of the United States. Despite a formidable global campaign against the pipeline aimed squarely at Obama, it was only after the rise of Occupy that the Great Equivocator began signalling he might not approve what Stephen Harper had confidently described as a "no-brainer." 

By November 10, Obama drew a line in the sand. He called for a new, albeit limited (nothing on climate change), review of the pipeline, deferring a decision for at least another 12 months (it had been due by the end of 2011). 

Environmental activist Bill McKibben, a leader of the campaign to stop the XL, wrote to supporters that day: "The Keystone XL tar sands pipeline that we’ve been fighting for months has been effectively killed….Most analysts agree: the pipeline will never get built." (McKibben later downgraded that first blush of enthusiasm to “may effectively kill.”)

It's impossible to know (unless Obama tells us) whether it was Occupy that gave him the political cover (or self-preservational fear) to just say not-so-fast to a pipeline that would have struck a major blow in the war against combatting climate change. (James Hansen, NASA's iconic chief climate scientist, had famously said that if the pipeline gets a green light "it is essentially game over" for preventing catastrophic climate change.) But if the Occupy movement has legs, we Occupy supporters can hope to see much more of this tail wagging the dog – a would-be transformational president finally serving a transformational base – on the road to 2012 and a probable second term as president. 

And while the United States is a power in decline, it remains the first among equals in the nominally free world. It – and other occupied free-world countries like Canada – still has the power to shift global politics toward serving the 99%, just as its founding fathers (the ones who “worked tirelessly to end slavery,” as Tea Party presidential aspirant Michele Bachmann has recently revealed) intended.

Prior to the Occupy movement, the rise of the Tea Party hard on the heels of a decade of Bush-Cheney neoconservatism and 30 years of economic "liberalization" (translation: giving multinational corporations free reign) conditioned politicians to list radically – even have-you-lost-your-head?edly – to the right. The Climate of Occupy is a corrective. If it prevails, it could reverse the direction of that cold, numbing wind and change not only how politicians tilt but the tilt of who gets elected.

In the Climate of Occupy, progress and transformation that was impossible in the Age of Stupid and the Epoch of Greed is possible again in a way not seen since the civil rights revolution of the 1960s. They had Martin Luther King. We have the other 99%. CORRECTION: We are the 99%.