[FILM] What would Jesus buy? 99 Percent Spring: the Latest MoveOn Front for the Democratic Party. A new social movement has arrived on the scene and it even has a sexy brand: “The 99% Spring.”
Combining the “99 percent” meme, made famous by the Occupy Wall Street movement, with the “Arab Spring” meme, made famous through the ongoing struggle for democratic rights in the Arab world, the organizers of the movement say they will attempt to carry the momentum created in these social movements forward in the coming weeks and months ahead. This is exciting stuff, to say the very least. The 99% Spring movement states its goal with stark clarity: Horizontalism and Territory. Horizontal social relationships and the creation of new territory, through the use of geographic space, are the most generalized and innovative of the experiences of the Occupy movement.
What we have been witnessing across the United States since September 17th is new in a myriad of ways, yet also, as everything, has local and global antecedents. In this essay I will describe these two innovations, and ground them in the more recent past, specifically in the global south in Argentina.