I was nearly arrested outside the World Economic Forum in 2002. Here’s why activists should work with them today.

It is of special significance to be writing for the World Economic Forum’s Agenda because I was nearly arrested during an anarchist protest against the Forum’s 2002 gathering in New York City.

Running from the police that day was not my first act of protest. In fact, I have been an activist my entire life. I started creating activist campaigns when I was 13. Despite the many punishments that I received for being an activist, I persisted and one day, in 2011, I co-created Occupy Wall Street.

Occupy was a social movement against the moneyed elite. The movement’s protest encampments spread to 82 countries and nearly 1,000 cities. Back then, I was an editor at Adbusters, a radical anti-consumerist, anti-corporate magazine that was beloved on the activist edges of society. Occupy’s dissipation kicked off a wave of protest that continues in many different forms — including Black Lives Matter, March for Our Lives and Extinction Rebellion.

In other words, I’m an activist to the core and yet, here I am writing for the World Economic Forum. What ought an activist write in this situation?

Lately, I have been reflecting on why I am increasingly being approached on neutral, if not outright friendly terms by corporations, intergovernmental organizations and powerful elites that I once protested against.