Occupy November

As the weather turns chilly, the Occupy movement comes to mind.  

This time two years ago, its ad hoc movement of activists set up near Wall Street and elsewhere, getting the attention of everyone from the New York City police to Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson.   

Last November the leaderless movement led the recovery efforts after Hurricane Sandy in New York, returning certain Brooklyn churches to their roots as places where the naked are clothed and the hungry are fed.  

This year the movement – and especially its philosopher-activist Andrew Ross – is pursuing an innovative process of debt forgiveness.  

Debt relief, you’ll recall, was an initiative embraced by religious leaders during the Jubilee year 2000 – and then just as quickly set aside, it seems to me, once the Jubilee year had passed.  

Occupy, whose members took up residence in Zuccotti Park, have taken up residence in my conscience.  Their works are a worldly advent – a reminder of what we are meant to anticipate at Christmas: the crooked paths straightened, the rough places made plain.     

• 15 November 2013
• #media commentary
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