6 Ways to Get Ready for the May 1st GENERAL STRIKE Yesterday, 60,000 marched on Madison to mark the one-year anniversary of the passage of Governor Scott Walker's drastic dismantling of collective bargaining rights for public employees. Last year, Walker's attacks on labor rights sparked massive protests that saw hundreds of thousands occupy the Wisconsin capital building. Their actions prefigured Occupy Wall Street and inspired countless others to take a stand against economic inequality, political injustice, and the tyranny of the 1% enforced through politicians and banksters alike. This is just one example that people across the globe are actively resisting attacks on the 99%. This winter, we refocused our energies on fostering ties with local communities, saving homes from corrupt banks and jobs from greedy corporations, and building and expanding our horizontal infrastructure. We are getting ready. 8am-4pm: Midtown action staging zone in Bryant Park.Disruptive actions in midtown all day! And this is just the beginning.
Occupy Research | les nouvelles NEWS Occupy May Seem To Be Receding, But Look Closer hide captionOccupy Wall Street protesters shout during a "Shut Down the Corporations" demonstration in New York on Wednesday. Timothy A. Clary/AFP/Getty Images Occupy Wall Street protesters shout during a "Shut Down the Corporations" demonstration in New York on Wednesday. For people who watch TV news or read newspapers, the Occupy movement might seem to be in hibernation. Most of the encampments are gone, and diminished numbers take part in protests. But there's a lot of ferment behind the scenes — at least at Occupy Wall Street. Check the Occupy Wall Street website and you'll see at least 15 events every day: meetings by working groups on arts and culture, alternative banking, media, security. 'Pop-Up' Protests And there are actions. "We're kind of going to occupy a Bank of America and turn it into a 'Food Bank of America,'" Occupy protester Luke Richardson says, describing an event on Wednesday. Richardson stood behind a table with donated cans of food. Karen Bleier/AFP/Getty Images
So what the fuck has occupy done so far? Can Occupy survive its representation? | Protest Camps Can the Occupy movement survive its representation? This was one of the questions asked of us during the McGill Occupy workshop. The question essentially sought to open a discussion around Slavoj Žižek’s speech at Occupy Wall Street warned activists not to fall in love with themselves (which was also published as a Guardian Comment Is Free article). This question is an important one but immediately raises the question, representation by whom? Also when considering if the Occupy movement can survive its own representation, we need to consider the constant commodification of dissent. At present there is a television ad doing the rounds by Maple Leaf Foods which uses the guitar riff from Buffalo Springfield’s ‘For What It’s Worth’ (which some people may know as ‘There’s something Happening Here’). It is also challenge the Occupy movement continues faces. The Occupy movement was never about occupying a lawn or a sidewalk, but about occupying an idea. The beginning is near. Like this:
The Occupy Movement: Rising Anarchy April 03, 2012 By: Ian Oxnevad The Occupy movement presents a challenge to police and policymakers both in the United States and abroad. Occupy, the now-worldwide movement spawned by Occupy Wall Street, serves as a 21st century anarchist movement the likes of which has not been seen since WWI. So far, Occupy protests in the United States exhibit a mostly peaceful nature. Modern anarchism traces back to mid-19th century leftist groups in Europe. Immediately after it’s formation as an ideology, historical anarchists targeted a number of individuals and organizations both in the Americas and Europe. The most significant anarchist attack occurred in 1914 when the anarchist group, the Black Hand, murdered Archduke Ferdinand of the Austrian Empire. Today’s Occupy, with Occupy Wall Street as the informal flagship of the overall movement, has its intellectual origins in small groups of left-leaning academics and publications.
America’s last hope: A strong labor movement The fate of the labor movement is the fate of American democracy. Without a strong countervailing force like organized labor, corporations and wealthy elites advancing their own interests are able to exert undue influence over the political system, as we’ve seen in every major policy debate of recent years. Yet the American labor movement is in crisis and is the weakest it’s been in 100 years. The urgency is striking. Over the past 30 years, American employers have become even more aggressive at violating their workers’ rights to organize under a toothless and outdated labor law regime. As worker power has eroded in the workplace, the labor movement’s political clout has also declined. With a labor-friendly White House and a Democratic Congress, organized labor began strategizing about how and when to push for its No. 1 priority, the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA). But the move to pass EFCA failed, revealing just how weak organized labor has become.
Occupy Un-Occupies Its Own Strike Campaign - National The next major action planned by Occupy Wall Street is a nationwide general strike set for May 1, and to promote it they've started producing a lot of great-looking works of propaganda that largely downplays the involvement of Occupy itself. The videos, posters, and paintings promoting the strike that actually mention Occupy tend to place it in the background rather than as the central component. Organizers say they're aiming a much larger audience than the folks who camped or protested in city squares last fall. The ambitious action, which calls for people to skip work, school, chores, shopping, and basically everything else, coincides with International Workers Day (also known as May Day), which celebrates the labor movement on the anniversary of the 1886 Haymarket Massacre in Chicago during which police opened fire on striking workers. Rock poster artist R. There's a definite sci-fi bent to a lot of the posters out there, speaking to the nerd crowd.
Occupy Wall Street's Battle Against American-Style Authoritarianism The Occupy Wall Street movement is raising new questions about an emerging form of authoritarianism in the United States, one that threatens the collective survival of vast numbers of people, not through overt physical injury or worse, but through an aggressive assault on social provisions that millions of Americans depend on. For those pondering the meaning of the pedagogical and political challenges being addressed by the protesters, it might be wise to revisit a classic essay by German sociologist and philosopher Theodor Adorno titled "Education After Auschwitz," in which he tries to grapple with the relationship between education and morality in light of the horrors perpetrated in the name of authoritarianism and its industrialization of death.[1] To see other articles by Henry A. For such a goal to become meaningful and realizable, Adorno contended that education had to be addressed as both an emancipatory promise and a democratic project. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.
Crushing Dissent - The Smearing of Wikileaks and Occupy Close your eyes for a moment and imagine the worst possible future abuse by a government over its own citizens. The first thing likely to come to mind for many would be assassination of citizens without due process. Sadly, you will have to think a bit harder; in the US, which so often describes itself as the world's leading democracy and regularly criticizes the human rights records of other nations, the right to kill its own citizens before allowing them a chance to give their side of the story has already been reserved. Targets are placed on a 'kill list' by a secret panel working out of the White House, and their findings are brought to the President, who makes the final decision on whether a suspect will live or die. And not just the suspect, anyone else unfortunate enough to be standing close by when the drone strikes. Imagine if citizens, sufficiently outraged, took to the streets and blogs to protest. The Occupy movement has suffered a similar fate. What is the answer?