Ten years after Occupy Wall Street took over a small park in downtown Manhattan, the new left that was birthed there continues to develop and grow. The occupation of Zuccotti Park — and the numerous other occupations that it inspired — was short-lived, but it transformed the political landscape in the United States and beyond. At Zuccotti, a tent city thrived with newspapers, a library, a kitchen, and dozens of working groups, and it buzzed with constant political discussion about a world in which 1 percent of the population enriches itself at the expense of the rest of us, the 99 percent. A decade later, writes Occupy participant, documentary filmmaker, and author Astra Taylor, the US political situation “remains far more promising than it was at the start of the last decade.”

In the years leading up to Occupy, Taylor recently commented, the Left was demoralized and fragmented. But Occupy inaugurated a “social movement renaissance,” and we “have not stopped talking about capitalism, we haven’t stopped talking about class, we haven’t stopped talking about debt” ever since.

In her latest book, Remake the World: Essays, Reflections, Rebellions, Astra Taylor weighs in on the legacy of Occupy, the organizing capacity of debt resistance, and our prospects for achieving something resembling democracy. Taylor’s own path through Occupy Wall Street took her from a supportive observer — returning “day after day, unable to resist the bizarre and growing gathering of the discontented” — to an active organizer via an Occupy offshoot that began organizing around debt.