Occupy Wall Street is a Mushroom

The Occupy Wall Street movement, now in its fourth week of non-stop protest in downtown Manhattan, and its offshoots in various cities throughout the United States and other countries, is sometimes referred to as a “grass-roots” movement. Its detractors dismiss this idea and instead refer to it as “Astroturf” – artificial grass.

But in reality, the movement does not resemble either natural or artificial grass very closely. Grass is a plant with as much going on aboveground as it has under the soil. Astroturf is all aboveground, with no roots at all. But the Occupy Wall Street movement is almost all roots, with the people who are actually involved in the protest in New York and other places representing only the tiniest fraction of its total mass. Most of the activity goes on, and has for years, under the surface, in the dark, where most people outside the movement see nothing.

In this respect, it is not a grass-roots movement in the traditional sense, and certainly not a fake grass-roots movement orchestrated by backers, but something new. Occupy Wall Street is a mushroom.

Mycelium and Spore Pods

Anyone who has ever grown mushrooms knows that the spore pods, which are the mushrooms you buy in the grocery, pop up from a bed of fibers called “mycelium.” These fibers are the main body of the fungus, lacing all through a growth medium so thoroughly that it is more like the circuitry of a brain than a root system per se. From this network of root fibers, which can theoretically grow to a mass of tons, given sufficient growth medium, nutrients, and time, mushrooms sprout at random points. These pods bear spores which are sent wafting away on the wind in search of new fertile places to land and engender new mycelium networks. This is of course part of the reproductive strategy of the mushroom, but it’s also capable of propagating itself through the growth medium just through the expansion of the mycelium fibers.

The mushroom itself is all that is visible to the naked eye without looking below the surface. But it is only a growth from something much larger than itself. Cut off the mushroom, and the main life of the fungus goes on, to sprout new mushrooms continually.

The mycelium is highly decentralized. There is no single trunk or stem, as there is in most plants. Cut a chunk of mycelium out of the whole, transplant it to a new bit of growth medium, and it will expand to fill that medium, becoming a new mushroom culture and erupting with new spore pods. Being decentralized, with each part independent of the whole and capable of surviving on its own, it resembles in some ways the Internet, and that brings me back to Occupy Wall Street.