In a little more than a week, the Occupy Wall Street protests will be 3 months old and, especially since their evictions, no more immune to the criticism that they haven’t done anything more than make a big stink in a public place. Irrespective of the “victories” of inserting “income inequality” back into the public discourse and Cuomo’s reconsideration of the millionaire’s tax, there is still a lot wrong in the State of America. People are still making a stink, however (there have been two days of action of note even this week: the Occupy Food protest of U.S. agricultural policy and today’s Occupy Homes seizure of bank-owned foreclosed houses), and the opposition is still calling the “movement” a bunch of smelly crybabies who should just get jobs. This accusation can be stressful to people sympathetic to the occupations as they strive with general assemblies and resolutions to validate their existence and speak directly to policies. While I have no problem with the protesters engaging in such noble pursuits, I submit that change in the system was unlikely to ever come from the protest camps themselves, but rather spring up from the larger ideological movement that the camps are a symptom or projection of.

With all due respect to the occupations, at heart they are an art project, that is, a culture jam conceived by Kalle Lasn and delivered by Anonymous. Lasn, a long-time critic of American capitalism, and Anonymous, techno-Lokis extraordinaire, wanted to see what would happen if you plopped a bunch of weird, pissed-off, arty, educated, and drum-playing people on the doorstep of conservative, white-collar America. Just as they hoped, people freaked out. Cops beat people up. Other occupations in every major U.S. city cropped up. Homeland Security started advising. Ports got shut down. A big stink got made. It was awesome. But the protests are, at their core, protests. Protests don’t solve the problems, but they’re provocative. They get people going.

I would be ecstatic if the solutions to America’s ills came from the protests, but I’m skeptical. That’s where projects like Farmers & Builders come in. We are building the alternative to the system the occupiers are protesting against. We and the protests are two different projections of the abstract, deep-down sense that the status quo is unjust, unsatisfying, and unsustainable. As the protest camps are one-by-one swept away, Farmers & Builders and other alternative economies and societies stand in solidarity and ready for those who want to occupy themselves, providing as a composite for our necessities while enabling the autonomy to pursue our own ventures.

What’s your occupation?