Forum Post: It's Time for Phase 2

Let's identify Phase 1 of the Occupy movement specifically as Occupy Wall Street. If the goal of that phase was to publicly display outrage at the self-reinforcing system of inequality that benefits the very wealthy 1% of Americans at the cost of prosperity for 99% of Americans, then congratulations are in order. Phase 1 was a huge success! The world hears you, and more importantly, the world supports your protest. But Phase 1 has reached a tipping point - a point at which public support is waning and could collapse if the Occupy movement continues to protest without working towards systemic change. We can only scream "This isn't right! This isn't just" for so long before the world starts to tune us out. Now that we have the world's attention. It's time for Phase 2.

Phase 2 must be, as Robert Reich suggested, an Occupy Democracy movement. This doesn't mean that every protester needs to run for public office. No, what this means - very literally - is that the OWS movement and its local municipal subsidiaries (Occupy Portland, Occupy Houston, etc.) need to move their protest sites to congressional offices. Protest your congressional representative for sustaining such an abhorrently perverse financial system. If the office is on private property (as many of them are), then protest on the nearest public land. I still believe that we are a government that is of the people, by the people, and for the people. So go now to the office of your senators and representatives and demand that they work to change the system. And don't stop protesting until we have change the supports the 99%. Occupy Democracy!