In a noted 2008 essay, Mark Fisher reflected on the pervasive sense of capitalism’s permanence, a feeling he termed “capitalist realism.” But despite its gloomy tone, the piece ended on a note of hope:

The very oppressive pervasiveness of capitalist realism means that even glimmers of alternative political and economic possibilities can have a disproportionately great effect. The tiniest event can tear a hole in the grey curtain of reaction which has marked the horizons of possibility under capitalist realism. From a situation in which nothing can happen, suddenly anything is possible again.

For Occupy Wall Street, the hole in the curtain was definitively torn open on October 14. In the dead of night, when word went out that Michael Bloomberg was sending the police to Zuccotti Park to force an end to the month-long occupation, an emergency call for help went out from OWS.