Cultural Outcomes of the Occupy Movement By William Gamson I must begin by acknowledging the extent to which the occupy movement has occupied my own life in the last several months, knowing no boundaries between work life and social, political, and personal life. In my worklife, I was teaching a graduate seminar on social movements (“The Quest for Social Justice”) in which each participant chooses a case to study and to which they apply the various course readings. Outside of class, in my professional life, I have been struggling for the past few years in trying to understand why there was not some high energy mobilization against the increasing economic inequality in American society. The movement has already succeeded in making its efforts an item of widespread cultural interest in my circles of friends and family. My wife and I made time to make personal visits to Dewey Square (Occupy Boston) and Zuccotti Park in New York and to participate in meetings and actions of our local support group, “Occupy Martha’s Vineyard.”
Inside Occupy Wall Street’s (Kinda) Secret Media HQ | Threat Level The revolution may never be televised, but if Occupy activists in a semi-secret media war room in New York’s Bowery district have their way, it will be livestreamed. Police seizures at occupations, as at the flagship camp in New York City on Tuesday, not to mention rain, cold and theft, are horrible for expensive media gear, as Occupy Wall Street found after setting up an ad hoc media operation in Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park in September. So Occupy Wall Street decided the best way to keep livestreams of the protests online was to move much of the gear to a safer location somewhere indoors. Wired.com visited the sorta-secret Media HQ in Manhattan last week for the first thorough tour of the facility. The popular all-volunteer operation, originally run from a tent in Zuccotti Park, moved to a narrow room in the A.J. “It’s really important that it’s decentralized so people can tell their own stories,” said Spike. Like other occupations, Zuccotti has several independent video teams on-site.
Occupy Wall Street | September 17th | #OCCUPYWALLSTREET The joyous freedom of possibility. Dissent can be personal, collective, creative — whatever you want it to be. Revolt can be physical or spectral, a blackspot on a corporate logo or a digital mindbomb posted online. Edit a billboard, speak to a friend. There are no limits, no minimum or maximum. The revolutionary spark is the same one that lit human existence. Print & Post If you only do one thing today and during the heady days of climate protest that follow, print out as many copies of this #WORLDREVOLUTION poster as you can and tape them up on bus stops, bank and shop windows, cash machines, government buildings, everywhere in your city where people will see them. Download September 11, 2014 What will you do on the September 17th anniversary of Occupy Wall Street? September 16, 2013 Revolution is a Rhizome September 19, 2012 Tactical Briefing #38. September 12, 2012 Where do we stand? July 23, 2012 Tactical Briefing #36 June 5, 2012 Occupy morphs into a new model! May 24, 2012 May 16, 2012
Let’s not make money With the Occupy Wall Street manifestations taking up much of our social and political imaginations these days, we thought we’d highlight a few great films that bring context to the current uprising and related issues. Protesters are of course creating awareness about and resisting the global financial system and all its inequities and bad blood lineages. A broken economic system fuelled by greed and passed down to generations looking out for what their parents looked out for—themselves—is suddenly and finally the topic of the day, thanks to all the amazing activists occupying our financial districts and our attention. Yet still many don’t fully understand what it’s all about, and since the devil is in the details, why not check out some documentary fare to round out the picture? Below is a list compiled from Cinema Politica and elsewhere of 10 docs that poke and prod at the capitalist economic system with creativity and criticism. Who’s Counting?
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. Giroux visit The Public Intellectual Project. Democracy is always an unfinished project. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.
Declaration of the Occupation of New York City This document was accepted by the NYC General Assembly on September 29, 2011 Translations: French , Slovak , Spanish , German , Italian , Arabic , Portuguese [ all translations »] As we gather together in solidarity to express a feeling of mass injustice, we must not lose sight of what brought us together. We write so that all people who feel wronged by the corporate forces of the world can know that we are your allies. As one people, united, we acknowledge the reality: that the future of the human race requires the cooperation of its members; that our system must protect our rights, and upon corruption of that system, it is up to the individuals to protect their own rights, and those of their neighbors; that a democratic government derives its just power from the people, but corporations do not seek consent to extract wealth from the people and the Earth; and that no true democracy is attainable when the process is determined by economic power. To the people of the world,
The Corporate State Will Be Broken I spent Friday morning sitting on a wooden bench in a fourth-floor courtroom in the New York Criminal Court in Manhattan. I was waiting to be sentenced for “disturbing the peace” and “refusing to obey a lawful order” during an Occupy demonstration in front of Goldman Sachs in November. Those sentenced before me constituted the usual fare of the court. The country’s most egregious criminals, the ones who had stripped some of those being sentenced of their homes, their right to a decent education and health care, their jobs, their dignity and their hope, those wallowing in tens and hundreds of millions of dollars, those who had gamed the system to enrich themselves at our expense, were doing the dirty business of speculation in the tall office towers a few blocks away. Our electoral system, already hostage to corporate money and corporate lobbyists, gasped its last two years ago. Turn off your televisions. Voting will not alter the corporate systems of power.
Occupy Colleges | In Solidarity with Occupy Wall Street 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. That truism has been a progressive mantra since the Clinton administration. However, union density has continued to decline from roughly 16 percent in 1995 to 11.8 percent of all workers and just 6.9 percent of workers in the private sector. 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. Now is the time to challenge that feudal relationship.