Red Pepper: Birth of a new movement: Occupy goes global

‘We shall fight, we shall win – London, Paris, Rome, Berlin.’ That was one of the most inspiring slogans of 1968. But today, October 15 2011, the list of cities being swept by resistance is much too long to fit into a chant.

This new movement of ours, the Occupy movement, first exploded in New York, on Wall Street – and it was inspired in turn by the uprisings in Cairo and Tunis, via Madrid. Today there was hardly a city in the world not touched by the occupations. This global day of action saw protests in up to 1,500 cities in more than 80 countries across five continents.

15 October 2011: Today there was hardly a city in the world not touched by the occupations

‘We are all indignados now,’ said London occupier Claire – one of 5,000 who turned up to target the London Stock Exchange. ‘We are all standing together with the people occupying Wall Street. We are making Tahrir Squares everywhere.’

From Boston to Belfast, from South Africa to South Korea, we have taken the streets, taken the squares, reclaimed the space that has been stolen by us inch by inch. We have a new model of protest: not a march from A to B, but occupations from A to Z. It will take time to see how many of today’s protests settle into long-term occupations, but that it will be hundreds upon hundreds seems all but certain.