This is because Occupy is not one movement, but an umbrella term that encompasses several different groups that have varied aims, organizational structures, and gaping theoretical differences.

Occupy may not be dead, but its power as a powerful social movement has surely been splintered into a dozen or so mini-movements. For example, a good, broad definition of a social movement is a large group of people who collectively try to achieve certain agreed on goals.

A social movement without common goals does not move in one direction, but many; an organization without a common set of principles or agreed upon demands is not a “group,” but "groups.”

Consequently, Occupy's various mini-movements move in different directions, towards different ends, using different means, while rarely coordinating with the other groups that are focused on their respective organization, growth, habits, and campaigns.

The result is that collective mass action large enough to change social policy - another key definition of a social movement - is rendered impossible.

Sadly, this was the state of the left prior to Occupy: different groups organized on an "issue based activism" basis, focusing on their own projects, disconnected from any common vision or collective action. Occupy was different precisely because it was massive, and that these various groups found connection under a single banner. But the banner has since been pulled in hundreds of directions until it tore.

Occupy came close to becoming a real social movement but didn't cross the threshold. Although Occupy failed to evolve into a social movement, it has laid a foundation for one, through its successful mass education around highlighting the 1% vs. the 99% and experiments with organizing and its creation of a new layer of revolutionary activists. Occupy's inability to grow into a mass social movement may have been inevitable, since the left's disunity runs especially deep in the United States.

Occupy did, however, create additional barriers for itself to become a social power. Occupy was organizationally wedded to a lack of organization, preventing the enormous energy from being funneled into a social force, and thus spilling in every possible direction.

Enough Occupiers were against goal setting that no goals could be collectively pursued. The well meaning attempts to create direct democracy and inclusion - through general assemblies, consensus, spokescouncil structures, etc. - resulted in gridlock, inefficiency, and exclusion instead, since most working people found it impossible to attend the initial lengthy, daily meetings that seemed unable to push the movement forward.

Some will argue that Occupy is doing fine, and that working towards a multitude of goals will inevitably bring victory, since all paths lead toward the same end, though few Occupiers agree on what this end should be. Working class people, however, are only powerful when they are united in mass numbers and acting collectively on an ongoing basis - no social movement has achieved social change without this preliminary factor. Whereas Egypt and Tunisia steadily gained momentum, Occupy eventually lost it.

It is still possible that a faction within Occupy - and there are several - could regenerate Occupy as a whole by working towards goals with a mass appeal that unite Occupy in a campaign capable of re-inspiring and mobilizing the broader population. But lessons must be learned from Occupy's experience. The key lesson - in this writer's opinion - is that social movements are created when they base themselves on concrete issues/goals that the majority of the population is concerned with.

For example, in the Arab Spring the movement's goal was specifically anti-dictator/pro-democracy; in Europe it is anti-austerity/pro social services; South America's ongoing social movements were born fighting foreign economic domination, in the form of the austerity policies implemented by the IMF and World Bank.

In all these cases the majority of working people in these countries could relate or sympathize with the goals of the movement, which helped multiply the initial protests into what later became powerful social movements.

In the United States, the number one concern of most people today - says numerous polls - is jobs.

Occupy could demand that the federal government create millions of jobs, as was done in the 1930s, and pay for the program by taxing Wall Street as many in the Labor Movement have advocated."

Accessible, affordable quality public education and government social services are other major concerns. Occupy could focus its energies on demanding that the rich and corporations are taxed so that teachers could be rehired and tuition at colleges and universities could be reduced.

In other words, Occupy could aim at increasing taxes on the 1 percent in order to meet the needs of the 99 percent. This would also reduce the growing inequality in wealth. But these issues were lost in a whole laundry list of other goals that, although important, only concerned a periphery of the population.

The movement that Occupy gives birth to will be born at a higher level, with unity of purpose and collective action. It will not simply protest corporate power but directly challenge this power and the political system tied to it by the combined power of working people.

Shamus Cooke is a social service worker, trade unionist, and writer for Workers Action (www.workerscompass.org)

you write "The key lesson - in this writer's opinion".... correctly, .....

which is the most common complaint + criticism + rejection of OCCUPIES work and efforts and accomplishments....that a single major goal with a big mass of people in it to look BIG and Strong and make a media impression of Forcefulness.

But that is one version of change...the commonest one. The usual one. The one of many ways change does and has occurred. History is not the only bestest version to view. Try some experimentation for improvements, changes of paradigms, imagine more than repeat.

Small wins are wins any how they are done. Each cell moves and connects and changes the next cell, in organisms, bodies and people's lives and 'movements'.

Movement means moving as a noun instead of an action or verb. Many great past thinkers have admitted we are verbs, not objects, not static things, but always in motion, wanting to or not, even in death.

So for OCCUPY to be valid is just to exist, for however long, and in this current media-focused society with technological trinkets, to be noticed.

With low short attention-spans, every minute is one more in the accumulation of learning or getting information. The word itself has become so 'commonplace' in vocabularies now that is is instantly recognized ...globally.

That is a huge accomplishment, to enter the 'language spoken daily' and recognized by any person, educated or not.

To make any motion, and revealed thru mass or mini media

is the additional boon to group actions, even small ones.

Resistances in other big European wars were not huge big visible movements, but 1 person joining somewhere secretly and thus spread to help whomever they could.

The total count does not always have to be huge or high to be valid. Every life saved, every action done [even if not as planned to accomplish] helped. To discount any of these is to pretend only the celebrity movie version is real life.

Let's not dis-count the continual co-opting of the "occupy" this and that titles that everyone in everytown wants to NOW use because OWS and even OLA have initiated, copying other revolts, in Spain, other European urban cities, other mid-east major cities, and seldom in villages or rural sparse & community-heirarchal-controlled-areas.

So, this is a good article, for provoking thought and reflection, but the same-old same-old solutions rebrought forth are not 'good enough' for these times of cosmic dramatic changes happening.....everywhere the newsreporter can tell us about and show pix.

The upheavals speak to the phenomena, called "movement" or "whatever"...

It IS HAPPENING anyhow you plan it, dis it, criticize and feel one-up to what others are doing [for you too], and some of us with our own personal opinions think that more creative innovative experimental daring willing-to-change-some- what-even is what is happening, needed, and encouraged.

Not just repeat a prior historical model that is out of our current context.

the ending of article above says, and acts one-uppit-like and says :

" The movement that Occupy gives birth to will be born at a higher level, with unity of purpose and collective action. It will not simply protest ....."

This is showing the elitist attitude of the critic,...maybe even an occupyer themself,... but still now discounting what has happened. Even with the "OCCUPY" word/ name having gone 'global' , not ballistic, and the recognized word has meaning and even gone into even commercial-attempts-to- be-one-of.... those who did come together, who have joined in camps and groups, large or small or tiny too. To be popular or hook up with a trendy word - occupy this, occupy that, occupy anything that helps them too get noticed as important or rebels or dissidents....

The attempts to critique Occupiers - as if the writer knows in their personal hind-sight - what SHOULD BE and SHOULD HAVE BEEN and as if he knows better - is questionable.

Everyone loves to talk about what others do or dont do, and decide for others if it was done well or 'not-good-enough' . It's So easy to write, talk, gab, gossip or brag. But those results are only that.. just words...left to trickle down... into any gutter that can absorb the waste.

Yet every single Action, - whether then seen on TV or in a newspaper or web or not even 'reported' or photoed - is valid in of itself.

And when individuals group together, even temporarily, in camps, in actions or in meetings, GA's, etc....all this is a PIECE OF THE ACTIONS and thus contribute to the effects of more and more changes.

To say how 'they should do it better' is always a trick to pretend that one person or group obviously ...? huh ? claims they 'know better and would have done /been better...." an attempt to USE others' actions to climb UP on to elevated status..huh ??? what gall.......

no way !! get off that imaginary high mtn and come on down

where everyone who was involved is still in IT,any OCCUPY group or motion, no matter what form it takes , what goals, what short-term actions, or what exposure is available.

All of it counts ...in the end, and in the moment.

words are only language, not real life. So, Get real !