What’s the Big Idea? Occupy and the Arab spring will continue to revitalise political protest. The Arab spring, notably in Egypt and Syria, seems to be running out of steam.
The vivacious drive of the Occupy movement has faltered and it is not clear what new life will appear. Can popular protest regain its energy and inspiration, or is that it? Rather than retreating into the comfort of despair or cynicism, perhaps this is a moment in which we can try and gain a broader view of matters. Power is the ability to get things done. Politics is the means to get those things done. But the space of politics has remained the same as it has for centuries, localised in the nation state with its prosaic variations of representative, liberal democracy.
The premise of western representative democracy is the following: citizens exercise political power through voting; representatives are elected; governments are formed and these governments have power to get things done, a power identical to the will of the people. Occupy Wall Street group chains open doors to New York subway stations. An Occupy Wall Street-affiliated group has claimed responsibility for chaining open more than 20 subway gates in New York City, in an action intended to highlight issues surrounding the public transit system.
According to a statement released by a group calling itself the Rank and File Initiative, "teams of activists, many from Occupy Wall Street, in conjunction with rank-and-file workers from the Transport Workers Union Local 100 and the Amalgamated Transit Union, opened up more than 20 stations across the city for free entry". Chains and padlocks were used to hold emergency gates open on the F, L, R, Q, 3, and 6 lines. Signs resembling Metro Transit Authority notices were posted on the subway walls that read "Free Entry, No Fare.
Please Enter Through The Service Gate", while activists above ground urged passengers to ride for free. Transit fares have increased by 50% over the last decade. "It was an attempt to say we're united," said Occupy supporter José Martín. Bc video: Story of the Week (Exclusive): Lobbyists target Occupy Wall Street. NYC Protest for World Revolution. Occupy Indiana! 2012 February. Anonymous statement “Im sick of how bail out banks have acted in recent years” Posted on: Wednesday, February 29th, 2012 Filed under: Testimonials 1 Comment » Brian Coalson “We should be moving our funds to institutions that are responsible to our community” Posted on: Wednesday, February 29th, 2012 Filed under: Testimonials 1 Comment » Gem Hurlman “Keep Austin Weird, Keep Austin money Local”
Occupy the London Stock Exchange. Occupy Wall Street demonstrators march to protest against police violence. Hundreds of Occupy Wall Street demonstrators marched to protest against police violence and demand the resignation of New York City police commissioner Ray Kelly on Saturday afternoon.
Protesters marched from the movement's original base of operations, Zuccotti Park, in lower Manhattan to Union Square, where occupiers and police have been facing off for the past week. The mood varied from playful to confrontational throughout the afternoon. A handful of occupiers had fashioned their bicycles to look like police scooters, wore mock police uniforms and barked familiar orders at protesters as they passed.
Throughout the march protesters repeated anti-police chants. A chant of "hey-hey, ho-ho, Ray Kelly has got to go," steadily morphed into "Hey-hey, ho-ho, every cop has got to go". Early on, at least two young women and a man were arrested after the women laid on their backs in a busy intersection. Occupy Wall Street march – in pictures. "Occupy Bat Signal" Artist Returns With "Occupy Batmobile," Codenamed "The Illuminator" On Nomember 17, 2011, during a major national day of action for the Occupy Wall Street movement, protestors marching across the Brooklyn Bridge looked back at the Manhattan skyline and were greeted with what quickly became an iconic image: the characters "99%" projected onto the monolithic façade of a famously ugly Verizon building in Lower Manhattan.
It was dubbed by some the "Occupy Bat Signal. " Following the tremendous attention received by that guerilla light-projection work — ARTINFO's own editor Ben Davis deemed it one of the most important artworks of 2011 — one of the two artists behind that intervention, Mark Read, will unveil its next phase at Zuccotti Park on Saturday, a mobile cinema and library dubbed the Illuminator, soon to be followed by a second vehicle, dubbed the Changemaker, if all goes according to plan. ARTINFO talked to Read about the logistical (and legal) challenges of such a project, and its art-historical precedents. There are a lot of logistics. Not much.