From "Lost Generation" to Occupation Generation: youth, anti-capitalism, and the revolt of the future

"Capitalism? No thanks. We'll burn your fucking banks." - anti-globalization chant from the early 2000's


“Fuck the police, we don’t need ‘em. All we want is total freedom”- anti-capitalist chant during a recent march in Oakland


"We're new subjects of class struggle, uttering unexpected words with ever more confidence." - "a few unexpected subjects of class struggle – notes on recent university strikes"

I.
Whatever the merits and failures of OWS are, one thing is perfectly clear: we are no longer a "lost generation". In the streets and in the plazas we have finally found something that they can never take away from us, or control: each other. This is the reason that cops beat us and arrest us even when we march on the sidewalk or sit down in the street- they want us to go home, to get back to work or school, to be alone. They are starting to understand that our individual precarity is a collective weapon- that the flexibility and mobility we were forced to learn as low-wage workers is our strength. They are not afraid of what we do or where we go, they are afraid of the fact that some of us take their baton blows and jabs with rage and joy. Zip-ties and holding cells only make us laugh. Now that we have been through this once we have no hesitation do to it again. 

Anti-capitalist bloc leading the first march out of Oscar Grant Plaza on day five of Occupy Oakland

The cops and the banks that own them are afraid of the fact that we are no longer afraid and that we are growing every day. Every time we see those fucking orange nets come out or an NYPD truck full of barricades barreling through the night the message is clear: ok kids, its time to get back inside. The NYPD and the banks that manage it really don't get it. They are under the impression that these protests are like some giant global recess- that if they give us time to play we will go back to class obedient, even thankful for being allowed a little fresh air. They want us to pretend like we can go back to a world that we are now beginning to abandon, or a world that has systematically excluded, brutalized, murdered, and abandoned many of us from the beginning. The reality is that we can never go back and nor we do want to. Our lives before this moment seem boring, haunting, and painful compared to the world we are building together today.  Why would we shut the fuck up and go home when we are only just getting started? Today we are caring for each other, tomorrow we could be taking care of all that stands in our way: banks, cops, governments and universities. The possibilities seem too limitless to stop now. 

Anti-capitalist banner from the 2009 California student uprisings

II.
In an age of austerity there is nothing left for the state and political parties to give us anyway- everything has been cut. The new global consensus is one of calculated abandonment, bare life stripped of its rags. We should be happy that our supposed "representatives" have decided to leave us alone. It was this dissensus that enabled us to find each other, to find consensus-- to care for and defend each other and to occupy together.  But this coming-together is only building the groundwork for the reality now facing us: either capitalism burns or we burn with it.  In this sense, burning a bank or storming a government building is not act of violence or despair, it is act of hope. What could be more hopeful than a world without banks? 


Its time to acknowledge that prefigurative politics is about more than just mutual aid . The fires that burned in Rome yesterday, the black smoke swirling around the Coliseum, to borrow from a CA anti-capitalist slogan, illuminate our future- a world without cops, cars, and banks. As these global struggles advance we must have the courage to realize that now is not the time to bargain for concessions or chew the few scraps they decide to throw at us. Jobs bills and calls for the "restoration of the American Dream" are violent liberal fantasies. A "good middle class job" is predicted upon the exploitation of undocumented immigrants, prisoners, unemployed workers, and everyone else rendered vulnerable and precarious in the age of austerity. A "good college education" is not only predicated on debt and unemployment but the exploitation of low-wage workers and low-income students of color. 


We cannot retreat into liberalism and take refuge in school anymore: the University is waging class war just as much wall street; and sometimes they wage war together. We must realize that the diploma factory seduces us with a future that is absent. We have to find the courage to abandon our old dreams and desires in order to find new ones. We have to be brave. It's not that we have nothing left to lose but that together we have everything to win. And we are strongest when we come together outside of the instituions that exploit and divide us: in our neighborhoods, parks, and streets. 

III.
 When I was released from my holding cell at around 3:00 a.m. with my fellow comrades I was shocked when I realized that we were all taking the train to the same place: Zuccotti Park. As our subway car grinded to halt at the Wall Street station I saw small groups of friends with backpacks rubbing their hands (a sign that they had been in zip-ties earlier) and smiling as they slowly climbed up the stairs. They were smiling because, like us, they were going home.