by Just Another First Occupier

Chicago is in the bones of this project. Not the polite brochure version, not the pizza-and-skyline Instagram version — the real Chicago. The city where May Day was born. Where the Haymarket martyrs stood against capital and paid with their lives. Where working people learned early that power only shifts when ordinary citizens stop asking nicely.

Occupy 2.5 didn’t grow out of theory or branding or political consultants. It grew the way everything real grows in Chicago: organically, under pressure, and without permission.

Back in 2011, before anyone knew the word “Occupy” would become a movement, a handful of us were already talking. Angry. Disillusioned. Done with the polite lies. Done with the rigged game. Done with the quiet desperation of being told the system works if you work hard enough. We knew better.

When the first sparks flew in New York, we didn’t wait around for orders. Chicago never waits. We tried Sears Tower first — and yes, it will always be Sears Tower, no matter what some branding firm thinks. But the energy was wrong there. Too corporate. Too polished. Too removed from the bloodstream of real people.

So the protest shifted to the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, right across from the Board of Trade. Two cathedrals of American financial power facing off against a cluster of nobodies who refused to stay quiet.

The cops showed up, of course. Not the uniformed patrol — detectives in suits. Management-level eyes. They didn’t know if we were trouble or just noise. They didn’t bother us at first. Chicago cops like to size you up before they pick a side. But City Hall was watching, and once they decided we were a problem, the tone changed.

The Fed’s security people didn’t want protesters leaning on their building. Fine. We used the city-owned flowerpots instead — because in Chicago, public space is ours, and we know the municipal code better than most aldermen. When the crowd grew, we spilled across the street. Traders tossed McDonald’s applications out the windows like confetti from above. Someone hung a “We Are the 1%” sign. We got the message.

But we kept going.

Everyone talks about encampments when they talk about Occupy. Tents, kitchens, drum circles. Chicago never had that. We had an improvised supply cart that got illegally seized and crushed in a garbage truck. We had people riding the L all night to stay warm because winter doesn’t care about revolutions. We had livestreams, solidarity hand signals, and a stubborn refusal to go home just because power told us to.

And when the police arrested dozens of people at “Take the Horse,” every charge was thrown out. Selective enforcement doesn’t survive daylight, even in a city that prides itself on creative policing.

That’s the spirit Occupy 2.5 carries forward.

We’re not rebuilding nostalgia. We’re extending unfinished business.

Occupy 2.5 exists because the forces we stood against in 2011 didn’t fade — they hardened. Corporations swallowed politics whole. Authoritarians crawled out of their holes. The wealthy automated their power. Ordinary people were told again and again to shut up, behave, and count themselves lucky.

No.

We weren’t born to be quiet.

Occupy 2.5 is a media node, a watchdog, a documentation engine, a reminder that people still see what is happening, even when the news cycle has given up. We’re not neutral. We’re not polite. We’re not here to soothe the powerful or comfort the comfortable.

We’re here because someone has to be.

Chicago taught us how to resist.
Those lessons haven’t expired.

And until the work is done, Occupy 2.5 will keep the lights on.