Generation Occupy

Now out in paperback!

“Fluidly written . . . Levitin’s enthusiasm is infectious.” The New York Times Book Review

“A vigorous history of the Occupy Movement.” Kirkus Reviews

“Levitin contends that the movement galvanized a generation of activists and upended top-down models of civil disobedience.”Publishers Weekly


From the fight for a fifteen-dollar minimum wage to the nationwide teacher strikes, from Bernie Sanders to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and from Black Lives Matter to #MeToo, Generation Occupy reveals the lasting impacts of the Occupy movement on American politics and culture. Read how Occupy Wall Street redefined economic rights, progressive politics and activism for a generation.

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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.

Authors praise Generation Occupy

“Occupy Wall Street may not have changed the way the wealthy see the world, but as Michael Levitin beautifully documents, it changed everything for the 99% of us who must learn to live here, together. Occupy was less a protest than the formulation of a new approach to economics and governance, whose full impact is only being realized today. Levitin draws the connections between OWS and everything from Black Lives Matter to the Climate Strikes, reminding us we have a shared legacy, a common cause, and a hopeful future.”
Douglas Rushkoff
Author of Team Human
“This documentary account about the Occupy community refreshes North American nonfiction writing, creating a beautiful collage of stories about idealism, disenchantment and influence ex post facto. The idealist in you will unfold anew over the course of these pages, again, with gratitude for the discussions started by Occupy and for the lives it changed.”
Rick Moody
Author of The Ice Storm
“What started as a scrappy protest camp in 2011 has lived on as a long, surprising echo through the institutions — not a march of people through the halls of power so much as an immediate and lasting influence on grassroots movements like Black Lives Matter, on policies within the Democratic Party, even on Wall Street itself. Levitin writes an elegant, hard-edged history of the American Left over the last ten years.”
Michael Scott Moore
Author of The Desert and the Sea
Michael Levitin portrait

“You could call us the Obama Generation. The iPhone Generation works, too. We were the Anti-Globalization and the Millennial Generation, the Unaffordable Rent and College Debt Generation.

We were also, of course, the September 11, Iraq War, Financial Crisis and Great Recession Generation.

We were the Occupy Generation. Generation Occupy.”


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