semantics

I've been thinking about the words occupy, occupied,  and occupation.
We occupy a space, we occupy other's field of vision, we occupy a place in time or in mind.
A place is occupied, our time is occupied, we get occupied with things.
An occupation is how we spend our time, or how we treat a place.

I find it instructive that we say we are going to occupy a street, or a campus, or city when these are places where we live. Maybe they don't feel like our space anymore, maybe they won't until we make a monumental effort to insist that these are our places, our homes, and our time.

The concern of journalists to find a single demand and slogan, a simple set of words that will allow pundits and analysts and commentators to quickly categorize us and then dismiss us is amusing. I find the worries about finding the right message to be similarly unnecessary. The word occupy says plenty, and our new occupation will say more.

Solidarity everyone.