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Two years after the original occupation of Zuccotti Park on Sept. 17, 2011, many things remain unchanged. Wall Street hedge funds and banks continue to siphon money out of our economy, the 1% has seized , and our public places have not become permanent festivals of direct democracy.

You almost certainly came away with new friends and acquaintances. And they weren鈥檛 just any friends.

But transforming the foundations of our society doesn鈥檛 happen overnight, so you might have to look a little harder to see the practical, everyday ways that Occupy changed things for the better. Here are six social transformations that Occupy helped make possible:

1. You can refer to the 鈥�1%鈥� and have everybody know what you are talking about.

Just a few years ago, merely talking about income inequality in the United States was almost forbidden, like a form of 鈥渃lass warfare.鈥� It didn鈥檛 really matter if you were a plumber, a politician, or a pundit: if you said there was too much money concentrated at the top and that policy was to blame, you were not to be listened to.

But at least these days people on all sides of the political spectrum are aware that income inequality is a thing, and that the real concentration of wealth is in the hands of a tiny few. You can see the results through looking at Google鈥檚 records on searches for the term 鈥渋ncome inequality,鈥� which peaked strongly in late 2011 and never quite went back down.

2. You can fight back in court if you are stopped and frisked in New York City.

Stop and Frisk is a policy in New York City and some other places where the police stop people at random, ask them questions, and pat them down. When Occupy began in September 2011, New York City police officers stopped and frisked New Yorkers more than 685,000 times, according to the New York Civil Liberties Union. Nearly 90% of those stopped were Black or Latino, and 86% were totally innocent. The police department had been slowly expanding the policy over a decade, and justified it by saying that the small number of arrests the program produced made it worth it.

The issue was already notorious among dedicated activists and engaged members of affected communities, while few others had ever heard about it. But Occupy made 鈥淪top and Frisk鈥� into a huge issue, repeatedly holding specifically about the policy. A lot of the momentum driving that came from neighborhood-based Occupies such as Take Back the Bronx and Occupy Harlem. The resulting coverage in the mainstream media significantly raised the profile of Stop and Frisk.

As word got out, Occupy stepped away and the New York Civil Liberties Union鈥攚hich had already been organizing around this issue鈥攂egan focused campaigns against it. This summer, it came to the New York District Court in the case of , where judge Shira Sheindlin ruled the policy unconstitutional and called it 鈥渁 form of racial profiling.鈥� The police union has .

Meanwhile, New York鈥檚 City Council passed the , which bans racial profiling in the NYPD and allows citizens to seek redress if it happens. Mayor Bloomberg attempted to veto the act, 鈥�There is no need for additional oversight of the NYPD,鈥� but the City Council

3. You can share things online without being immediately sued.

Just a few months after the heyday of Occupy Wall Street, Internet activists in the U.S. successfully fought off legislation that would have severely curtailed our ability to post and share online content. The legislation was called the 鈥淪top Online Piracy Act,鈥� or , and it was defeated (so far) through a remarkable collaboration between Internet companies like Google and Yahoo, nonprofits like Wikipedia and Human Rights Watch, and legislators like Nancy Pelosi and Ron Paul.

But Occupy played a role as well, according to Peter Higgins at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, setting the cultural and technological stage for an uprising against the bill. Higgins says that Occupy taught a whole generation to use social media tools politically. Occupiers got used to using Twitter and Facebook to communicate about politics, he told me, and that ended up being a tool they used again when the SOPA came up (as well as a related bill known as ).

The longstanding alliance between Occupy and Anonymous also helped bring issues related to online freedom to the masses that had previously been talked about mostly among hackers and geeks.

4. Various new media projects.

Tidal is the media organization that came most directly out of Occupy Wall Street. The print and web magazine was originally the project of a working group called 鈥淥ccupy Theory,鈥� and the magazine鈥檚 URL remains . Tidal continues to publish a gorgeous print magazine that keeps the key issues of Occupy front and center: economic fairness, liberation and joy in everyday life, and the way that solidarity among us鈥攐r the lack of it鈥攄etermines our political fate.

Writer and editor Travis Mushett that his literary and comics magazine, , also owes its existence to Occupy.

鈥淭he DIY spirit of OWS helped my co-founders and I to realize that maybe we don鈥檛 need to throw ourselves at the feet of editors to get our work out there,鈥� he wrote. 鈥淢aybe we can do it without asking permission.鈥�

5. Senator Elizabeth Warren.

If you haven鈥檛 seen the video posted below, in which Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts asks the officials responsible for regulating Wall Street when was the last time they actually prosecuted a bank, you are missing out. (They tell her they鈥檝e never done it!)

While Warren鈥檚 advocacy for economic fairness makes her a somewhat lonely voice in the Senate, it鈥檚 good to know that she鈥檚 there. And Occupy helped make that possible: Warren was a relative unknown running an anti-Wall Street platform in a crowded Massachusetts Democratic primary. She became a darling of the movement for her fearless willingness to call out bankers鈥� crimes, which raised her profile significantly. Republicans then sought to use her association with Occupy against her, but she never denied her solidarity with the movement, and ultimately she won.

6. A more deeply networked activist world.

If you spent enough time embroiled in Occupy activities, you almost certainly came away with new friends and acquaintances. And they weren鈥檛 just any friends; they were people who you had camped next to on rainy nights, people you鈥檇 locked arms with when the police suddenly ordered a march to disperse for no reason, people you鈥檇 debated tactics with until you each gave a little and finally reached consensus.

Of all the not-insignificant practical gains listed here, this is probably the most important and the toughest to quantify. There are the brick-and-mortar institutions that came out of friendships forged at Occupy, like Seattle鈥檚 Black Coffee, a cooperatively owned caf茅. But beyond that, there are just a whole lot of people who are more likely to know their fellow progressives鈥攂oth across the street and across the country鈥攖han they were before Occupy.

That creates a better environment for the social change projects we need so badly at this moment, and adds an element of warmth and fun to the often-exhausting project of changing the world for the better.