I feel like I'm missing out on what might be my only chance to join a mass protest.

When I started really learning about the Civil Rights Movement in the context of African-American Studies classes here at Princeton, learning about all the discontent and political fracturing that my high school history classes and textbooks had glossed over, if bothering to mention them at all, I wanted to be a rebel. I gained enough insight into the atmosphere of the time to finally decisively cast my lot with my father, who marched with Malcolm X, instead of my grandmother, who was one of King's disciples. I would never deny that I most likely owe the very circumstances of my life to Dr. King, but regardless, I want to FIGHT.

When Princeton experienced the one big racialized incident of my time here during the Winter of my Sophomore year, I was all over the t-shirt/sign-making and wanted to draw lots of attention to the small group of us counter-protesting. I remembered hearing about the Black Student Union taking over Nassau Hall to protest the Vietnam War and wanting a tiny piece of history like that to call my own. But alas, my classmates were meek and apathetic, and our under-participated-in protest will be remembered only in the archives of the Daily Princetonian (and even those articles will be remembered more for their racist comments than for the actual content). 

No one wanted to fight. And so I started to buy into the idea that all the good causes are done, even though everything I know about the world begs to differ. Maybe out-and-out activism in the form of anything other than an academic work just wasn't for me.  Maybe "the movement" as a social construct had died out.

And then representatives from the 99% of the country that is currently being shit on by the tops of the corporations on Wall Street finally realized Marx's dreams of class consciousness and began to come together to rise against the system that is keeping us down. It started with a few angry students, and is now in its 3rd week in NYC and has spread to major metropolitan areas all across the country. Support is pouring in from all over the world. More than 700 peaceful protesters have been arrested in NYC alone. There are ingenious signs, catchy slogans, supplies, celebrities, meditation circles and chanters and marchers. 


The Movement is back, and every time I read a blog post or see an article about #OccupyWallStreet, a very large part of me aches to be there. Maybe this is our fight. I know my presence could never make or break things, that one more person doesn't actually change the game at all...but maybe it would change me. Durkheim calls it "collective effervescence," the feeling of exhilaration one gets from being in a crowd. I think I need to be reminded that people care about things. Normal ordinary people, not just those of us in the Ivory Tower. I think I need that jolt of recognition that things MATTER. I want to feel that I'm part of this larger thing that existed before me and will exist after me and has to exist, must exist...I need to feel a part of something I want to perpetuate. And I know I already have things like that, but none of them feel important the way this feels important. 

I don't hope to ever see a crisis bigger than 1% of the country owning more wealth than the other 99%, or more than half of Black and Latino men in prime employment age (18-35) unemployed, or teachers being laid off by the hundreds, or college students dropping out because tuition got too high, or people who graduate being unable to get jobs, or housing falling to absolute shit, or people interpreting abuse by the government as abuse of the government. This is our crisis. This is our movement. And I can't really justify the expense of going, but these images and words move me beyond expression.

Photo by vincemie

 

Original here.

Original here.