It has been a little over a decade since the dissolution of the encampment at Zuccotti Park in Lower Manhattan, the flagship of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Which means it’s been 10 years since phrases like “the 1%” entered the American political vernacular and since a new generation of progressive activists was launched. Many of those activists, of course, are Jews.
But for journalist and activist Michael Levitin, 45, who grew up in Sonoma County and now lives in El Cerrito, Occupy Wall Street was hardly the beginning of his involvement in progressive political movements. After graduating from UC Santa Cruz, he traveled to Bolivia in the midst of the Cochabamba Water War of 1999-2000, a fight over the privatization of the water system in the Bolivian city, now seen as one of the first major conflicts over globalization. While covering it, he became editor of the English-language newspaper in La Paz.
Years later, in 2011, Levitin helmed the Occupy Wall Street Journal, a short-lived print publication distributed around Zuccotti Park during the height of Occupy Wall Street.
In his new book, “Generation Occupy: Reawakening American Democracy,” he looks back on the decade since Occupy Wall Street, combining interviews with its leaders and personal recollections. This interview has been edited for clarity.
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