Michael Levitin

Generation Occupy

Reawakening American Democracy

The fight for a $15 minimum wage. Nationwide teacher strikes. Bernie Sanders’s political revolution and the rise of AOC. Black Lives Matter. #MeToo. Read how the Occupy movement helped reshape American politics, culture and the groundbreaking movements to follow.

"Fluidly written . . . Levitin’s enthusiasm is infectious . . . It is no exaggeration to say that Occupy Wall Street and its offshoots changed a good deal more of the landscape than Zuccotti Park’s three-quarters of an acre in New York’s financial district." —Tod Gitlin, The New York Times Book Review

On the ten-year anniversary of the Occupy movement, Generation Occupy sets the historical record straight about the movement’s lasting impacts. Far from a passing phenomenon, Occupy Wall Street marked a new era of social and political transformation, reigniting the labor movement, remaking the Democratic Party and reviving a culture of protest that has put the fight for social, economic, environmental and racial justice at the forefront of a generation.

The movement changed the way Americans see themselves and their role in the economy through the language of the 99 versus the 1 percent. But beyond that, in its demands for fairness and equality, Occupy reinvigorated grassroots activism, inaugurating a decade of youth-led resistance movements that have altered the social fabric, from Black Lives Matter and Standing Rock to March for Our Lives, the Global Climate Strikes and #MeToo. Bookended by the 2008 financial crisis and the coronavirus pandemic, Generation Occupy attempts to help us understand how we got to where we are today and how to draw on lessons from Occupy in the future.