Occupy Wall Street

URL = http://occupywallst.org/ FAQ

Internet Presence

1. The NYC General Assembly leads the direct democratic process in Liberty Square. Website
2. OccupyWallSt.org is a primary source of information from Liberty Square.
3. OccupyWeb is a 'river of news' (RSS) on the various Occupy movements

Working Groups

The GA consists of a number of working groups that act autonomously to organize events, engage in project and present proposals to the GA, where they can be acted upon.

• FLO Solutions Working Group

Surveys

Occupy Wall Street with Revolutionary Stunts!

Best Practices

• Working Group Registration Workflow

Description

1.

"For discussing ideas, strategies, tactics and logistics related to the September 17th (and beyond) popular occupation of Wall Street in New York City.

On the 17th of September, we want to see 20,000 people to flood into lower Manhattan, set up tents, kitchens, peaceful barricades and occupy Wall Street for a few months. Once there, we shall incessantly repeat one simple demand in a plurality of voices, following the lead of our Egyptian brothers and sisters in Tahrir Square." (http://www.reddit.com/r/occupywallstreet)

2.

"Hundreds of people have been occupying Liberty Plaza, a park at the heart of Wall Street, NYC, since 9/17 in order to build, "the world that we want to see, based on human need and sustainability, not corporate greed."

The action, "OccupyWallStreet" grew organically online--crowd sourcing its plan to occupy the street. The fact that there is no centralized leadership has puzzled the police, who have nevertheless closed in using aggressive tactics in an attempt to move the protestors, many of whom set-up tents on the street. There are reports of over $8000 in donations being given to the occupiers--including the delivery of pizza and gifted sleeping bags and blankets.

According to the site https://occupywallst.org/ the group aligns itself with recent uprisings around the world:

"Like our brothers and sisters in Egypt, Greece, Spain, and Iceland, we plan to use the revolutionary Arab Spring tactic of mass occupation to restore democracy in America. We also encourage the use of nonviolence to achieve our ends and maximize the safety of all participants." (http://www.realitysandwich.com/peoples_wall_street)

History

"Justin Elliott spoke to Adbusters co-founder and editor in chief Kalle Lasn about the practical and ideological origins of the movement and about the continuing debate over its demands.

• You issued the original call to occupy Wall Street back in July. How did that come about and what was the thinking behind it?

It was a poster that we put in the middle of the July edition of Adbusters magazine and a listserv that we sent out to our 90,000-strong culture-jammers network around the world. It was also a blog post on our website. For the last 20 years, our network has been interested in cultural revolution and just the whole idea of radical transformations.

After Tunisia and Egypt, we were mightily inspired by the fact that a few smart people using Facebook and Twitter can put out calls and suddenly get huge numbers of people to get out into the streets and start giving vent to their anger. And then we keep on looking at the sorry state of the political left in the United States and how the Tea Party is passionately strutting their stuff while the left is sort of hiding somewhere. We felt that there was a real potential for a Tahrir moment in America because a) the political left needs it and b) because people are losing their jobs, people are losing their houses, and young people cannot find a job. We felt that the people who gave us this mess — the financial fraudsters on Wall Street — haven’t even been brought to justice yet. We felt this was the right moment to instigate something.

• One Adbusters editor was quoted saying the role of the magazine in this is “philosophical.” Can you define the philosophy behind this?

We are not just inspired by what happened in the Arab Spring recently, we are students of the Situationist movement. Those are the people who gave birth to what many people think was the first global revolution back in 1968 when some uprisings in Paris suddenly inspired uprisings all over the world. All of a sudden universities and cities were exploding. This was done by a small group of people, the Situationists, who were like the philosophical backbone of the movement. One of the key guys was Guy Debord, who wrote “The Society of the Spectacle.” The idea is that if you have a very powerful meme — a very powerful idea — and the moment is ripe, then that is enough to ignite a revolution. This is the background that we come out of.

1968 was more of a cultural kind of revolution. This time I think it’s much more serious. We’re in an economic crisis, an ecological crisis, living in a sort of apocalyptic world, and the young people realize they don’t really have a viable future to look forward to. This movement that’s beginning now could well be the second global revolution that we’ve been dreaming about for the last half a century.": (http://politics.salon.com/2011/10/04/adbusters_occupy_wall_st/)

More Information

• Adbusters editorial: http://www.adbusters.org/blogs/adbusters-blog/occupywallstreet.html