Zuccotti Park Archives - Occupy Toronto

The Democracy Project: a History, a Crisis, a Movement

The Democracy Project: a History, a Crisis, a Movement by David Graeber – review What&#8217s the 1st question that springs to thoughts when you believe about Occupy Wall Street? Where did it go? Was something in fact achieved? What went incorrect? These are not the concerns that David Graeber desires to answer in his new book on the protest and its ramifications. Graeber, an anthropologist and lifelong activist, was there from the beginning and helped give OWS its start in life in September 2011. He also helped coin the slogan &#8220We are the 99%&#8221, which did so significantly to brand the movement. Now, nearly two years on, Graeber wants to draw some of the wider lessons. He thinks the query that demands to be answered is: Why did it function? This is not as crazy as it sounds. Graeber has two motives for believing that Occupy was a huge good results. The 1st is that so several folks showed up at all. Graeber, who is also an anarchist, is a veteran of actions, rallies and occupations whose participants can normally be counted in the tens, not the tens of thousands. Bloombergville, a forerunner of the occupation of Zuccotti Park, was a camp of 40 activists living in tents opposite City Hall in decrease Manhattan throughout the summer time of 2011. No a single noticed, which is what tends to occur with this kind of protest. The original occupation of Wall Street on 17 September drew a couple of thousand folks, which was regarded as a triumph. But within weeks the movement had spread to a lot more than 600 cities, and large crowds were assembling day-to-day in New York. Graeber writes of possessing to pinch himself as he watched thousands of men and women mimicking the hand gestures and rallying cries of activists who were more used to shouting at every single other across empty rooms. full article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2013/mar/28/democracy-project-david-graeber-assessment...

Jim Leyland’s Occupy Baseball Moment

Occupy Toronto 22 October 2012 by Michael Holloway Wrote this in the Youtube page where I created the video edit, reprinted in it’s entirety. First the Video: MLB Tigers’ manager Jim Leyland’s Occupy Baseball Moment (00:31) What I wrote under it: Jim Leyland’s Occupy Baseball Moment Published in Youtube, Oct 22, 2012, by Michael Holloway In this edit, Tigers manager Jim Leyland talks about the World Series festivities in Detroit, the focus in the media on big money, and “the spirit of the people”. A nod to the emphasis in this economy on money; Leyland points out – like the older ones are supposed to do – that it is “the spirit of the people” that is the most valuable commodity when a whirl-wind of consumerism and hedonistic excess lands on a place. As soon as the words uttered his mouth I had a sudden image of Zuccotti Park on a rainy fall day last year – the hope we created, the Joie de vivre we enjoyed. Another World is Possible....

Another Occupy Is Possible — and Necessary

By Chris Maisano of Democratic Socialists of America and the Jacobin editorial board At the height of Occupy Wall Street’s efflorescence, when the enragés who took up residence in Zuccotti Park succeeded in raising the battle standard of the 99% for the entire world to see, I sat down for an interview with Frances Fox Piven to help make sense of what was unfolding before us. Although I thought I knew more than my fair share about the theory and practice of social movements in the U.S., as a child of the End of History, I had never really been part of one. I was born in the early 1980s, during the dreadful dawn of “Morning in America,” so aside from my days as an undergraduate global trade summit-hopper I learned almost everything I know about this stuff from books. The occupation of Zuccotti Park went on for days, days turned into weeks, and weeks turned into months. It looked as if an honest-to-goodness social movement was breaking out in this country for the first time in my life. To be sure, I was elated. But to my surprise, that elation was often overcome by a sense of foreboding. I looked at all of the silliness that accompanied the encampments and feared that the movement (I still hesitate to use that phrase) would self-destruct before it made even a small dent in the power of the 1%. As is her wont, Piven was effusive in her praise for the protests. But she also reminded me and anyone who read the interview that when it comes to assessing the strength and development of social movements, it’s best to not get caught up in the exigencies of the moment and to take the long view instead. All the great movements in history, she reminded us, do not progress in a linear fashion, ever onward and upward until the final battle has been won. They grow and develop unevenly, moving by fits and starts, hitting peaks and valleys along the way. They may produce moments of collective euphoria, as in those first few weeks in Zuccotti Park, but they also inevitably bring with them periods of discouragement and demobilization. Full article at: http://www.thenorthstar.info/?p=935...