Occupy is a network. Occupy is a metaphor. Occupy is still alive. Occupy is dead. It is the spirit of revolution, a lost cause, a dream deferred.
"I would say that Occupy today is a brand that represents movements for social and economic justice," says Jason Amadi, 28, a protester who now lives in Philadelphia, "and that many people are using this brand for the quest of bettering this world."
Without leaders or specific demands, what started as a protest against income inequality turned into an amorphous protest against everything wrong with the world.
"We were there to occupy Wall Street," says Pete Dutro, a tattoo artist who used to manage Occupy's finances, but became disillusioned by the infighting and walked away months ago. "Not to talk about every social ill that we have."
The movement's remaining $85,000 in assets were frozen, though fund-raising continues.
"The meetings kind of collapsed under their own weight," said Marisa Holmes, 26, a protester among the core organizers. "They became overly concerned with financial decisions. They became bureaucratic."
In other words, they became a microcosm of the society that Occupiers had hoped to abandon.
Occupy organizers in other U.S. cities have also scattered to the winds in recent months.
"I don't think Occupy itself has an enormous future," says Mark Naison, a professor at Fordham University in New York City. "I think that movements energized by Occupy have an enormous future."
In New York, groups of friends who call themselves "affinity groups" still gather at each other's apartments for dinner to talk about the future of Occupy. A few weeks ago, about 50 Occupiers gathered in a basement near Union Square to plan the anniversary.
A document called "The Community Agreement of Occupy Wall Street" was distributed that exhorted Occupiers not to touch each other's belongings and laid out rules about logistics.
It is this sort of inward-facing thinking - the focus on Occupiers, not the world - that saddens ex-protesters like Dutro.
On Monday, he'll be down at Liberty Square again. "We came into the park and had this really magical experience," he says. "It was a big conversation. It was where we all got to realize: 'I'm not alone.' "
