 How can that be true that we cannot afford to do all sorts of things that we need to do for our people when we are the richest nation and continue to be the richest nation in the world? You may not realize this, but we are actually now at the 10th anniversary of Occupy Wall Street. I'm joined today by an illustrious inequality media person who also was there, an Occupy activist who was there in New York occupying Wall Street. Kara Siegel, what do you make of this 10th anniversary? The Occupy movement was an incredible statement in the wake of 2008 that was people coming forward and saying that they were upset about the state of economic inequality and the lack of corporate accountability. And this narrative of we are the 99% versus the 1% was this incredibly unifying force in which every person could see themselves as part of an economically exploitative system. One thing that surprised me at the time was how quick the whole thing happened. Many of us have been talking about widening inequality for years, but this was like a kind of a firestorm taking over. And I maybe like you thought, well, this is the beginning of a fundamental change. When we think about why it happened, my assessment is the financial crisis, the Wall Street bailout really catapulted a lot of energy and a lot of outrage because the banks got bailed out. A lot of people, millions of people lost their jobs, their homes, their savings and not a single CEO of any big Wall Street bank went to jail. And people were outraged. They were also outraged on the right. And that outrage on the right took the form of the Tea Party movement. What amazed me at the time here was that the Tea Party movement and the Occupy movement used such similar language. They talked about crony capitalism, corporate welfare. They didn't want a big government and big corporations colluding against everyone else if it had merged in some possible manner with the Occupy movement. And if the Tea Party movement hadn't been co-opted by big money, by the Koch brothers, by others in the Republican right, maybe we could have seen the beginnings of almost a third party movement in America. When you look back on the history of social movements in the United States, do you think that Occupy resembles that time or do you think it resembles prior movements in American history more? Well, Occupy was really and will be remembered as a blip, but a blip that has some significance. One of the biggest lessons of the Occupy movement was that you can't only have a demonstration. Demonstrations are great. Demonstrations are important to bring attention to certain critical issues. But if you lack mobilization and organization and a political strategy, then you're just basically engaging in a performative act. You're indulging in a performance. You aren't really changing the course of history. I think the challenging thing from my perspective is Occupy created an important narrative. But what it failed to do was institutionalize because it wasn't able to embed itself within existing institutions and power structures that we used to make decisions. Yeah, it was kind of apolitical or anti-political. And I remember being in discussions with various Occupy people at various sites in which I would say, well, what's the next political move? Or how are you thinking about structuring this? Or what's the strategy? And there would be silence. There's no strategy. There was a lot of conversation at the time around a leaderless movement. But I know, at least in the activist scene in New York, what we talked about was building leader full movements. About the idea that we don't want to step away from power, but instead, as people with a vision for the future of America, we want to step into power. An important thing happened in that people used the networks and communities they had built during Occupy to actually go on and build other movements. And so things like sunrise movement or various mutual aid associations, all of these things are movements that have come out of the lessons learned from Occupy and the idea that in order to be a leaderful movement, you need to have political vision. Well, I'd like to be that optimistic about what happened and what will happen as a result of Occupy. And I think there is a direct connection between Occupy and Bernie Sanders and then AOC and a lot of the progressive and populist energy that is now in the Democratic Party and some would say even dominating the Democratic Party now. Would this have happened but for the Occupy movement? Maybe, but I think the Occupy movement was at minimum a symptom of a growing sense of outrage about how power was misallocated and is misallocated in America, economic and political power. I think this continues. The big debate in America is essentially who do you trust less, big corporations or big government? The who do you trust less meme is really meaningless because big corporations are and have been taking over our government and have been taking over our society. And the only real sustaining countervailing force historically has been government but a government of the people by the people, for the people, a government that is really shaped and managed in a way that responds to the needs of average people, working people, poor people and that can only happen if we all get actively and keep actively involved.