The Spark of Protest

I distill my outlook on activism into a few core ideas.

I was in eighth grade when I first discovered the unfiltered power of protest—not from a textbook or manifesto, but right there in my classroom. I decided not to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. It felt like a simple, almost private, act of defiance. But one day, another classmate stayed seated. Then another. And pretty soon, the teacher told me I wouldn’t be allowed on the end-of-year field trip. Even now, that tiny rebellion reminds me how a single spark can spread. It wasn’t a calculated move with a list of policy demands. It was this deep-down feeling that said, “I’m not standing for this anymore.”

Years later, I found myself at Adbusters, that scrappy magazine known for culture jamming and radical imagination. We spent our days tossing out wild ideas, hoping one of them would catch fire. Then came Occupy Wall Street, which did a whole lot more than just “catch”—it exploded into a global phenomenon. Even the experts didn’t see it coming. They thought protest had flatlined after the early 2000s anti-globalization marches. But Occupy erupted with this quantum chain reaction of energy, crossing invisible lines of discontent. It was never about posting bullet-point demands. It was about people chasing that rush of freedom. When they set up those encampments, a lot of them didn’t even know the final objective—but they felt alive.

I came to think of activism as a quantum leap. It doesn’t follow the usual rules of linear cause-and-effect. You can’t plot a mass uprising in a spreadsheet or focus group. Occupy taught me that if you throw out a provocative enough call—and it touches that hidden longing to break free—people will run with it. They’ll organize their own assemblies, figure out how to feed each other, and create little mutual-aid networks in cities you’ve never even seen. That’s the beautiful chaos: it’s unstoppable once it catches. Of course, it’s also unpredictable. There’s no formula that tells you when or how the spark will ignite.

But Occupy also showed me how delicate that spark can be. Infiltration, surveillance, internal rivalries—all of it can dismantle a movement in no time. And infiltration isn’t always dramatic spy-thriller stuff. It can be simple wedges driven between people, stirring up enough suspicion and confusion to fracture the group. We had FBI informants mingling with Anonymous. We had left-wing “allies” who conveniently looked away while governors coordinated mass evictions of the camps. We had ideological splits: East Coast prefigurative anarchism versus West Coast insurrectionary tactics. Before long, Occupy fractured. Progressive Democrats helped lead a near-simultaneous crackdown. After that, we were scattered and spent.

In the aftermath, I wrestled with what it all meant. Some ex-Occupiers veered toward Donald Trump, seeing him as anti-establishment, which was the vibe Occupy once had. I couldn’t follow them—Trump’s racism was a nonstarter. Meanwhile, I was confronting my own identity. Why was I always so at ease standing against the grain, from sitting out the Pledge to hanging in Occupy camps? Why did the COVID lockdowns feel almost relaxing for me, when everyone else seemed anxious for social contact? Turns out, I might be autistic—an insight sparked by a comment from Roseanne Barr, of all people. It gave me a framework for understanding why I could immerse myself so totally in revolutionary ideas, immune to the usual backlash or doubts.

Two years ago, I changed my name to Micah Bornfree. The new surname was chosen by Chi and inspired by Rousseau’s line: “Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.” It was a way to claim a new path for me and our family kids, free from the weight of the history of enslavement or my abandoned public persona.

These days, I distill my outlook on activism into a few core ideas. First, mass protest is closer to quantum mechanics than classical physics, fueled by a raw, emotional need to be free that can leap from nation to nation. People don’t wait for fully fleshed-out demands; they get fed up and join whomever is doing something. Occupy stayed so loose and undefined because nobody needed a neat bullet list to realize things felt broken. We wanted a taste of a different way to live—even if we couldn’t articulate it in policy terms.

Second, I’ve seen how powerful collective action becomes when it aims for what seems impossible. Occupy showed how tens of thousands of people can almost instantly reorganize, building mini-societies with kitchens, libraries, self-governance. I believe we can channel that same energy to solve big problems—whether it’s responding to pandemics or even venturing off-world. For me, it’s not about left vs. right anymore. It’s about humanity’s barely tapped potential to do the extraordinary when we hit our breaking point. But we also have to remember how fragile that momentum is. Without safeguarding our trust and cohesion, the spark burns out fast.

Finally, I see every social uprising as a temporary “clearing,” a moment in the darkness lit by a sudden bolt of lightning. In that flash, people see possibilities they never noticed before. They speak up, stand together, and risk everything with a surprising bravery. But the forest can go dark again if we slip back into old habits or let ritualization creep in. The real challenge is keeping that clearing open—protecting the breakthroughs, forging new kinds of collaboration, and refusing to let the momentum fizzle. Occupy was a brief but dazzling illumination. It ended, but the charge from that flash hasn’t disappeared for me. I feel it, humming away in the background, ready to ignite again.

I’ve voluntarily drifted from the public stage, but I still trust in the power of that spark. It can start anywhere—quietly, unexpectedly—and the next time it flares up, maybe we’ll hold on to that light long enough to reshape our world for good.

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If all of this resonates—if you’ve ever felt that electric surge of possibility in a protest or sensed the clearing of a new world just over the horizon—I’d love for you to explore these ideas further in my book, The End of Protest. It digs into what really drives us to rise up, how those quantum sparks ignite, and why some of our most seismic movements fizzle out before they can reshape our reality. If you’re curious about tapping into that raw emotional energy and turning it into lasting change, I invite you to dive in. Let’s trace the contours of that brief flash of freedom we glimpse in every mass uprising, and figure out how to keep it alive long after the camps disperse.