It is difficult to sense any "progress" from the outside, of from above, which is how our government and mainstream media work. Someone has to stick their head out to be noticed. [In Aaron Swartz' case, the DOJ pounded it back into the ground with a sledgehammer weighing $1 million and decades in prison.]
What Occupy has realized is a fundamental flaw in that system. The people at the top stand on top of the rest, profit from their hard work, and abide by an alternate justice system. However, technology has outmoded the hierarchical design that bestows so much power on so few. The design of the Internet, of a network – of the rhizome – gives users the means to share all with all. It no longer makes sense for so few people to control such a disproportionate amount of the country's wealth and political influence.
That is why, in Occupy, there are no leaders. The fact that they have endured for so long as a people's assembly speaks to the efficacy and potential this structure has.
Occupy is trying to prove that they can make the differences they seek at a horizontal pace – everyone in a layer (in Occupy's case, one could call this layer the middle class, or simply the 99%) moves upward and progresses as a team – a rhizome. They will not simply send a captain to do all the hard work and welcome him back to catch everyone else back up. They all must collaborate with ideas, then hold one another accountable to keep up. No matter how slow.
Occupy changes/progress will of course be difficult to measure because it is slowly taking place in individuals. No longer do the 99% need the 1% to decide everything for them. Most people can hep themselves, and that knowledge is being been practiced so far that it has permeated the mindset of Americans.
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