For the New York Times, Ginia Bellafante has recently written this article relating the Catholic Worker to Occupy.

America readers who are interested in these matters should know that Occupy, in conjunction with dozens of other organizations dedicated to the equitable sharing of social resources, is calling for a General Strike in the United States on May 1.

For more information, see the latest from the Occupy Wall Street website here, or the MayDay NYC website here, or the InterOccupy site for various May Day General Strike cities here. Occupy Catholics are here.

I think that if Occupy is able to make a strong showing on May 1, then its fall 2011 mojo has a good chance of returning, and what happens on May 1st may begin a summer of Occupy resurgence leading through a 4th of July national Occupy convention and into an influence on the fall 2012 elections, while also focusing all along on local, often anonymous, partnership with those in need of jobs, housing, food, clothing, medical assistance, education, and more.

As those who follow the news know, many Occupy sites have been cleared in recent months by newly militarized police forces, and the movement itself has often found its decision-making structures fraught and fragile.

I, for one, hope that May 1st shows Occupy’s vitality — not because Occupy is the only global movement advocating equitable sharing of social resources, but because it is one of a very few global movements with the potential, already partially actualized, to become a hub for a multi-perspective consensus about the economic and spiritual violence enabled by our socioeconomic structures and our own participation in those structures. 

If my unscientific observations are accurate, Occupy has become a place where many people who identify as religious, nonreligious, post-religious, and more can come together to witness to and discover what sort of better world is possible, and how to get there. It is far from perfect; it is an evolving, decentralized experiment. And we’ll see on May 1st where we stand. 

 Tom Beaudoin is associate professor of theology at Fordham University, in the Graduate School of Religion. His latest book is Witness to Dispossession: The Vocation of a Postmodern Theologian.