Less than a year ago, Justin Sane, the frontman for the punk band Anti-Flag, felt like giving up.

“I felt like I was one of the only people who really cared about justice and equality and about the future of our world,” he said. But when the Occupy Wall Street movement began, Sane suddenly felt hopeful again. “It made me believe again that a better future was possible. Occupy has given so much more to me than I can ever give back.”

Anti-Flag was on tour when the movement first began, but as soon as the band came home, Sane went straight to New York City. One particular event stands out in his memory; on one of the first snowy, freezing nights at the start of winter, he was attending a General Assembly and a man began speaking about the power of language and its importance in creating social change. He also mentioned the history of Zuccotti Park, and how it used to be called Liberty Plaza Park. The speech moved Sane, and he knew he needed to write a song about it. Just like that, the idea for “Don’t Call It Zuccotti, Call It Liberty” was born.

The Occupy movement has influenced Anti-Flag’s latest album, The General Strike, as well. Sane first began writing the new songs to voice his frustration with the Obama administration, especially with its handling of the Gulf oil spill. “I really just felt like there was no hope for the future,” he said. But by the time the band began recording, Sane felt rejuvenated and inspired by the Occupy Movement, so he actually went back and changed some lyrics. “I really wanted to change the meaning of that record. I wanted to change that tone to a rally cry to say that if we work together, these are the kinds of things that we can turn around.”

While haters are eager to pronounce the movement dead, Sane firmly disagrees. “In terms of the time it takes for a movement to grab hold and get organized and move forward, this movement has all taken place overnight," he said. "That says so much about the possibilities of where this movement can go and where this movement is headed." Rather, the protests are just barely gaining momentum. On a recent tour around the world, Sane was thrilled to find the movement had already spread to places like Malaysia, which still has a king, and citizens risk jail time by speaking out. “When we compare it to movements in the past, some of them took years to get where the Occupy Movement got to in a matter of weeks and months,” he said.

One of the biggest messages Sane takes from the movement is to simply to be kind to our fellow man.

“It is really up to us to see each other as human beings and take care of one another on that very personal level, and to see each other in that very humanistic, individualistic way,” he said. “When we start to do that, that’s when the class divisions come down. That’s when the warfare ceases to exist. I would really encourage people never to underestimate their ability to affect positive change simply by being good people.”