OCCUPY LOVE (2013)

[midnight]

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The solution put forward in Occupy Love is that love, combined with action, is the key to opposing a society that seems predatory and a planet that appears doomed. The ideology is indebted to Martin Luther King Jr., whose words feature prominently in the film: “Power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love.”
“Love and power together is enough to save the world, but not love alone,” Ripper said. “We need to accelerate change, a paradigm shift, and it’s got to be rooted in love. That’s the only way we’ll be able to keep ourselves anchored. But we need to be fierce and uncompromising in that love, and we’re going to have to revolt.”
There is an acknowledged bias in Occupy Love. Ripper makes no secret of the fact that he has an involvement with and an admiration for Occupy. As shots of protesters’ placards – “I Care About You,” “Occupy Your Heart,” “We Truly Love the 1% But the System Needs to Reinvent,” “The Beginning is Near” – come up against footage of police attacking protesters, the message can seem heavy-handed. Zuccotti Park was plagued by theft, violence and sexual assault. (Lauren DiGioia, who is featured in the film, was groped while she was sleeping, but later railed against the officers who handled her case, carrying a sign that read, “I was more victimized by the NYPD who handled my sexual assault case than I was by the assaulter.”)
Nonetheless, the evidence Ripper supplies for the tenderness of Occupy argues convincingly that media coverage of Occupy was shamefully one-sided.