Occupy Wall Street

URL = http://occupywallst.org/ FAQ

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)

Interview

Al Jazeera interviewed 4 participants:

• AJE: Can you explain, as simply as possible, the purpose of Occupy Wall Street? What statement are you making, and what does it mean to have a protest without a defined goal?

ET: Occupy Wall Street is a growing movement of people who came together for a lot of different reasons – it’s pretty broad and there haven’t been any explicitly stated demands, although implicitly, by being on Wall Street and by taking over the space and all the actions that have been coming out of it, it’s people who are angry about the way that corporations and politics and money controls their lives and controls the way that they live and breath and function in society, and who have some sort of vision for a different world that exists outside of greed, racism, patriarchy, corporate power and political oppression.

MS: It’s an expression of frustration at the feeling that the political process is being run by economic interests and by giant corporations in particular.

MM: When people use the word ‘occupy’ what they mean to say is: Bring the public into a role where they actually advance decision-making, most importantly the decision-making of our economic well-being. The way that the institutions operate in the type of society we live in, is not very conducive to high levels of democratic participation. I think often people feel disconnected. We have these elites in our society that really make us question whether we do indeed live in a democracy, or do we really live in a plutocracy – a country controlled by elites? In this case, the economic elite. In depth coverage of US financial crisis protests

JAM: It should be reasonably clear to anyone who looks at what’s going on at Occupy Wall Street that the goal is ending the corrupting influence of extreme wealth on democratic politics. I don’t really buy that people don’t understand what this is about. Wall Street controls America, and we oppose that.

Just because there aren’t demands for a certain bill to be passed or a certain law to be repealed, that shouldn’t make us believe that it is somehow un-unified or a meaningless gesture. The meaning is clear.

Occupy Wall Street is not only a political protest, but it’s also a model society, which I think is the really interesting political protest – that it is itself the demand.

There’ve been meaningful social movements before without a unified, coherent list of demands, and there’ve been movements before in which the demands have taken years to develop – whereas the occupation has lasted 16 days now.

In 1949 it was inconceivable that by 1968, black folks would have the right to vote… As late as December of 2010, there wasn’t a single American pundit or expert on the Middle East predicting that by January 25th, (Egypt’s) Tahrir Square would be teeming with people and that not very many weeks later, Hosni Mubarak would have been ousted." (http://www.thenewsignificance.com/2011/10/07/jesse-strauss-understanding-wall-streets-occupation/)

Governance

"AJE: How does the group decide to move forward with anything specific? What is the group‘s decision-making process?

ET: The way it’s set up is that there are general assemblies twice a day. Anyone can make a proposal, an announcement, or their point, and things are decided through consensus … rather than it just being an elected group of leaders who get to decide things together in their closed little bubble.

A big task is translating ourselves and making it more accessible to people who don’t really understand what it means to make decisions horizontally – which means that there’s no single leader or single people who have control and tell everyone what to do.

MS: I disagree. I’m hesitant to say that it’s non-hierarchical, that there’s no leadership, because I do really think that there’s a core of people – the media and press team – who are doing a lot of the organising and shaping the public image. Me and some other folks have encountered resistance on their [the leadership's] part to incorporate other ideas into the work and to think critically about what’s going on.

We tried to talk to one of the media folks about the problem of there not being people of colour, and the problem of people of colour not necessarily feeling comfortable participating, and there was resistance on their part to acknowledge that. They deflect criticisms by saying, ‘if anybody want’s to get involved they can get involved. If they want to be represented, they just come and they can do it too.’ I think it’s denying the real power dynamics that are at play now. I’m not sure if that’s a way for the leadership to deflect responsibility, or if they really don’t think that they’re excercising power in the movement." (http://www.thenewsignificance.com/2011/10/07/jesse-strauss-understanding-wall-streets-occupation/)

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
• Jimmy Higgins: The Meaning of the Movement

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