February 17, 2026

Occupy Minneapolis 15 years later

1 hour 41 minutes

September 17th will be the 15-year anniversary of Occupy Wall Street protest movement that swept through the US and other countries throughout the world in 2011. I talked with my friend Cinema Timshel, who I met at the Occupy protests in Minneapolis that October, about what it was like to participate and organize with Occupy, where we were successful and where we weren't, how recent protests in Minneapolis compared to the “vibe” and tactics of Occupy, whether Occupy was the incubator for the “Woke Era,” and the state of leftist activism today (among other things).

Thanks to Cinema Timshel for taking this trip down memory lane and discussing our Occupy experiences and what we think now! Subscribe to his newsletter here and check out his YouTube channel here. Related links and videos are below the topic summary.

And a very special thanks to Prester John Andrews for the original music used in this podcast episode!

Topics include:

* How Occupy Minneapolis started and how Cinema and Lirpa each got involved

* The vibes of Occupy in the beginning vs the end

* AdBusters’ role in Occupy and the counterculture in the 2000s and early 2010s

* Cinema explains the fittingly rebellious origins of the Wall Street bull

* The occupation of the Wisconsin state capitol in Madison introducing Lirpa to the world of protest and occupying as a tactic

* Lirpa’s discovery of “OccupyMN” and the initial organizing meetings through MN NORML

* The Arab Spring and other revolutions that happened leading up to Occupy as the whole world seemingly had the same idea at the same time

* What was the point of Occupy and what were we trying to do?

* The media and the broader right who said Occupy didn't have any goals, and what they actually were

* Consensus-based decision making in Occupy and how it worked, and how it changed over time throughout different occupations across the country

* Why was this decision-making model used, and was it realistic for this type of protest or “community”?

* Maybe consensus-based decision-making is better left to small nut butter farms run by hippies

* The holes in the consensus model in the General Assemblies and how they were easily exploited

* The Iraq war protests of the early 2000s’ influence on Occupy’s initial 100% consensus model

* Minneapolis being the last occupation to abandon 100% consensus and Lirpa’s initial devotion to the principle

* Bob Carney, perpetual local political candidate, and his influence on our finally abandoning the 100% consensus model

* “Progressive stack” and what it was

* Was progressive stack the visible beginnings of the left's changed focus to identity politics? Did it contribute to Trump’s first and second terms?

* Did we even need progressive stack with the way the GAs were set up and with how vigilant about identity-based equality everyone was already prone to be in such a movement?

* How these sweeping critical theory-based procedures are out of touch with how things operate on the ground

* How Cinema blocked progressive stack, but effectively unsuccessfully because of aforementioned holes in the consensus model, and Lirpa's mad that she doesn’t even remember that happening

* Cinema probably being blackballed after the progressive stack blocking

* Occupy Homes

* Affinity groups, how they differed from committees, and how the term and concept got bastardized over the years after Occupy

* How Occupy Homes became so effective as an offshoot and had the general Occupy participants as backup

* Defending Sara's house and an Occupier being intentionally pushed by a Minneapolis police officer with his vehicle, and how it relates to ICE's rationale for shooting and killing Renee Good in Minneapolis more recently

* The notable lack of violence at the Minneapolis occupation compared to others in the country, like Oakland, and to the anti-ICE protests in Minneapolis and the George Floyd riots in 2020

* Lirpa's experience watching the city burn from DC

* Cinema tries to buy ice cream during the rioting

* “Outside agitators” during protests and how real they are

* Tim Pool and his Livestream start in Oakland and and why Lirpa hates him disproportionately for his later political betrayal

* Cinema's theories on how Tim Pool became so right wing

* The DRE program where state police gave occupiers free drugs and Alex Jones interviewed an Occupier about it

* CHAZ/CHOP and its potentially segregated community gardens and also the murders

* What did Occupy actually accomplish?

* Was Occupy the incubator of wokeness?

* Occupy as idpol's first victims

* Democracy and its open decline in popularity today

* Lirpa being radicalized by Occupy and calling herself an anarchist for awhile

* Paranoia, snitch-jacketing, infighting that seems to always be present among left-wing protest movements

* An Occupier getting canceled for being a “sexual predator” for the crime of awkwardly flirting on the internet

* The fear of publicly standing up to the cancelers and the feelings of regret associated with it

* Cinema's OccuPirates video and Lirpa's subversive contribution to it

* The utility or lack thereof of marches

* Did rioting in Minneapolis help or hurt since nothing else, like marching and tactics like it, worked?

* Does leftist activism need more intentional hierarchy to be effective?

* Why left-wing movements are so often decentralized and “leaderless”

* Diversity of tactics

* Will Stancil and the paranoia of the Minneapolis ICE protest Signal chats and how it wrecks the movements' effectiveness

* The point of civil disobedience

* Rough ICE actions against protesters and Cinema's friend's experiences, and the rage about Alex Pretti being shot the way he was

* How Occupy is still the lens through which Cinema and Lirpa view activism