Old systems are dying. What comes next?
Preparing for Baha sa Luneta Manila protests and other ruptures
Today I am moving through my doubts and fears like trudging through Manila’s recent floods. This rainy season brings so much pain and release, as it typically does. The collective is letting go of old and fresh wounds, of dreams that have soured.
This country is one that still dreams of freedom despite itself. We are making way for new strategies and ways of relating to one another.
Ethan started playing Michael Bublé last week, which means we are well and truly Filipino now, if there was every any doubt—the impatience for the Christmas holidays a symptom of our deep desire for ease and joy. Maybe we’re drawn to the mythology of a saint giving us presents for no other reason than because we asked.
Imagine if our own autonomy was achieved as easily as this, if we could wish for our freedom in a letter. We might say autonomy is a fundamental quality of freedom, which means we need to own our cities, our grocery stores, and our flood control projects. At the top of our list would be democratic governance. But then, many of us have tried this method through requesting for reform and lobbying politicians, with little success.
I was speaking to a close friend recently, wondering about how we can move from processing collective colonial trauma to changing our cities with our hands. Some of us are still reckoning with our entanglements to Empire and unlearning oppression in our bodies. This unlearning is necessary, but we also need to seize the present moment and build towards our freedom—in small but sure steps.
I’m talking about prefiguration, building the new in the shell of the old.1 If radical imagination is familiar to you, prefiguration is essentially that concept extended to action. It’s “organizing and embodying the modes of existing and understanding that you long for, in the present.”2
Old systems are truly dying. Multiple countries in the Global South have ruptured with long-simmering frustration against the elite. You can see it in the protests in Indonesia and in Nepal, and of course, in the Philippines, where two massive protests against corruption and inequality are being staged on the anniversary of Martial Law this 21st of September.3 People all over the world are demanding change.
But protests are only the beginning. What comes after is even more important than the show of force that a protest brings. If, let’s say, we succeed, and the current powers step down after a long and gruelling mass movement, how will we feed each other? How will we make decisions together? What institutions will we build to embody the antithesis of our current institutions?
“Prefigurativists do not defer radical change to the future.” (2)
The Occupy Wall Street movement answers some, if not all, of these questions. The movement was a huge success because of its prefigurative qualities. Although it lasted only fifty-nine days, Occupy Wall Street (OWS) is mentioned in much of libertarian, socialist, and anarchist discourse for the lessons it teaches to future movements.
Solidarity — We are the 99%
OWS was organized around solidarity against the elite. The slogan that rallied 50,000-100,0004 people on the initial march was “We are the 99%.” Day laborers, students, prison workers, and all kinds of people worked together to stand for better jobs, income equality, and restrictions on the powers of banks.5 It was important to the organization of OWS that marginalized voices be heard first, and this was practiced in their general assemblies. Women and people of color were encouraged to come forward at the start while white men were encouraged to listen (here I think of improv class, of all things, and the games we played learning to speak one at a time with our eyes closed—a game that taught us how to listen without talking over each other).
I’ve been wondering what’s at the heart of genuine, long-lasting solidarity. I suppose, as one friend and author of Gentle Subversions put it, we spend time with each other. Even if we disagree. Under a system that tells us we are individuals alone, we must insist on knowing each other.
Convergent spaces
Why was OWS so long? You might ask—fifty-nine days! It’s an inconceivable number for other cities, other populations. It’s because OWS consisted of more than just marches. Yes, there were marches, but there were also convergent spaces for food, medical care, legal aid, art-making, action planning, and a people’s library—because OWS folks had all the intention of staying and claiming that space. They were in it for the long-run.
The People’s Library of Occupy Wall Street was a library without due dates, co-governed by a rotating cast of volunteers: “full-time activists, artists, retirees, college professors, poets, students, parents, punks, wandering Canadians, and professional librarians.”6 The public library is a key feature of any truly democratic society, as a space to learn, unlearn, dream, and organize. Wherever there’s books and zines and poetry, there are thinkers. In a library, people are encouraged to ask questions and seek dialogue rather than build taller and taller polarized walls.
Learning in action: “praktis lang”
What strikes me more than the words “We are the 99%” is one of the common chants at OWS: “This is just practice.” The Taglish translation: praktis lang. Perhaps the most exciting thing about revolution is that we cannot predict what the outcome will be because we have to practice it every day.
As organizer and filmmaker Marissa Holmes writes in her book Organizing Occupy Wall Street: This is Just Practice,7 “Wherever there are people who insist on acting as if they’re already free, the spirit of Occupy is present.”
I’m hoping that protesters will continue the action even after the 21st to build solidarity across class and identity divisions against the Filipino elite, to organize convergent spaces, and to occupy public spaces everywhere in Manila.
See you on the streets. See you in your practice.
Lightsey, Louisiana (2017). “Prefigurative Politics,” Global South Studies.
YouthxYouth (2024). “Prefigurative Politics in Practice: Examples and Strategies,” The Commons Social Change Library.
Chi, Cristina (2025). “What to know: September 21 anti-corruption rallies at Luneta, EDSA,” Philstar.
Graeber, David (2012). “Occupy's liberation from liberalism: the real meaning of May Day,” The Guardian [Accessed through web.archive]
Lowenstein, Roger (2011). “Occupy Wall Street: It’s Not a Hippie Thing” Bloomberg Businessweek [Accessed through web.archive]
(2013). Librarian is My Occupation: A History of the People’s Library of Occupy Wall Street. Librarian Shipwreck.
Holmes, Marissa (2023). Organizing Occupy Wall Street: This is Just Practice excerpt from The Commons Social Change Library.