This post is part of our special coverage #Occupy Worldwide [1].
David DeGraw, one of the early participants of the 99% movement [2] has explained about the birth and development of the Occupy Wall Street protest in a one year anniversary video (the first interview he has given in six months).
Interviewed by Cenk Uygur [3] for the TV program ‘The Young Turks’, he touches on the emergence of the movement, the organization's pitfalls, how hard it was to unify such a diverse group people, the expectations to have him become a spokesperson of a leaderless organization, and also the triumphs of the movement.
As quoted by AmpedStatus.org [3], the 99% media outlet was what opened a new generation's eyes to see that they could make a change:
This is about empowering a new generation to be leaders, to be engaged. […] We have millions of people engaged in creating change that were not engaged and creating change a year ago. […] Occupy globally is the big bang of humanity’s next phase of evolution. It created this wild new ecosystem of mass transformation. Millions of people turned on, let out of the propaganda cage. The first step is that you have to open the prison door so people can come flying out and realize that we can change things. You say another world is possible. Now, another world is happening.
For the future, there is the need to get money to fund the movement, but DeGraw is quite closed about what the next big step will be. On his tumblr blog [4], he speaks about the evolution of the movement and where it should be going in the future:
It’s time to flip the protest script »
Instead of protesting what we are against, let’s rally around what we are for.
We need to occupy & amplify the solutions. Let’s occupy the forces that are evolving our society to a sustainable and prosperous future, for the 100%.
Let’s hold rallies around successful alternative monetary systems, alternative energy, alternative education, alternative media, alternative food, alternative healthcare, alternative systems of governance.
This post is part of our special coverage #Occupy Worldwide [1].