by Naeem Mohaiemen

The power hosing of Zuccotti Park (renamed Liberty Plaza) eradicated the central, signal organizing space. At the same time, the Occupy movement that had become consumed with protecting a square block of "public" property was suddenly free of that burden.

Gradually, the hibernation ends. New posters start materializing: spring training, rebirth. Preparations are underway for May Day. In the OccuPrint meeting, someone holds up a poster of a lit match and a cheshire cat. A design consensus emerges. At a weekend Left Forum gathering, Gayatri Spivak discusses the possibility of general strike. People move into and through their affinity groups, rhizomatic in structure, open to new possibilities, difficult to coopt. In November, one sign said: "This is the beginning of the beginning."

Somewhere out there, George Orwell’s question is circulating: "Shall the common man be pushed back into the mud, or shall he not? I myself believe, perhaps on insufficient grounds, that the common man will win his fight sooner or later, but I want it to be sooner and not later– some time within the next hundred years, say, and not some time within the next ten thousand years."

Orwell wrote this in 1943.