occupy seemed like something different than your average protest. it's not that i ever thought that going out and marching and screaming would really change anything directly, and more that i was looking for a group of like-minded people to build parallel institutions with. you will get nothing done working in the system of government, because it's designed to prevent things from getting done. it would be great if it was that easy, but the reality is that it's impossible to implement change from the bottom up in a representative, parliamentary democracy; once in a while, we get lucky and have enlightened members of the upper class implement good ideas from the top down (which, contrary to the popular myth, is how the liberals wrote the health care system in canada, which is based on the nhs, not on the system advanced by tommy douglas in saskatchewan, which was not single payer but actually virtually identical to the affordable care act in the united states). it's just not a true form of democracy. you pick which oligarch you'd prefer, and they make decisions from the top down.

if you want to build parallel structures and try to exist outside of the status quo, you can't do it yourself. you need solidarity. that's what i was excited about with occupy.

but it was a setup run by the cops. i was in rooms at points with 20-25 people, and i was the only person in it that wasn't a cop. there wasn't one or two informants. the whole thing was orchestrated by squads of officers trying to get people to break laws.

i didn't do anything stupid, because i'm not a stupid person, but i was asked to on multiple occasions. for example, i have a pretty clear memory of a night where i was coerced into keying up a guy's car because he was accused of sexually harassing an employee, without any due process, which would have been an overwhelmingly retarded thing to do. it was a cop directing this, trying to get activists arrested.

i did end up on some kind of list and have been under overwhelming surveillance ever since.