“It’s as though the great New York-centric moment of openness after 9/11, when we were ready to reexamine our basic assumptions and look each other in the eye, has returned, and this time it’s not confined to New York City, and we’re not ready to let anyone shut it down with rubbish about patriotism and peril, safety and sanitation.”

This Guernica essay looks at Occupy Wall Street in the context of the decade since September 11^th, framing the current movement as a divorce between “Ms.