Where the rubber hits the road: Taking back Occupy’s past from the 1%

That the Occupy movement has been talked about in the mainstream media and that at least a third of Americans support it is a huge victory in itself. The Occupy movement is far from a fringe movement or a fad. Let’s put it this way, about 45 years ago, the counterculture in the United States really took off. People are still talking about it and its effects were profound in our society. Just ask any hard-core conservative. My cousin Robbie will tell you that everything went to hell thanks to those… hippies. Well, 45 years from now someone’s cousin Robbie will be telling you those… hipsters who camped out in public spaces ruined everything because they could have just gotten a job like everyone else and didn’t because they liked to smoke marijuana and harbored a deep, deep hatred for America and all that it stands for. The strange thing is, that’s actually a scenario that we who support the Occupiers should want. We need to have mattered because, and this is a dark scenario, the alternative would be that the Occupation never happened. Under the pretense of copyright enforcement, all the footage and articles could some day be swept under the rug. Perhaps I’m being paranoid, but that doesn’t mean it can’t happen.

So, what I encourage everyone to do, if everyone isn’t already on this boat already, is to back up everything online about the Occupation that’s interesting. There are ways to download Flash videos to your hard drive. Download and archive all important footage relating to police brutality against Occupiers. Download and archive articles about the movement. Download and archive the graphs that illustrate the economic injustice currently being perpetrated against the 99%. These are our raisons d’être, and the last thing we want is to wake up in some weird dystopian nightmare where Occupy never happened.

To be realistic, the 1% will dismiss this as a self-important action. It might well be, but at least we’re taking history from their hands and into ours. I conclude by paraphrasing George Orwell: Who controls the past, controls the future. Who controls the present, controls the past.

Who controls the present now?