World Occupy Everywhere Newswire Archive

Photo from Occupy London, live stream at  http://livestream.com/occupyLSX

It remains to be seen whether the internal contradictions within the Occupy movement-the limits of the 99% as a framework understanding for race, class, and police in America will be overcome by its significant contributions to the renewal of revolutionary potentials-its defiance of authority, its willingness to operate outside of dead-ended political channels, and its ability to arouse a sense of possiblity in thousands previously hopeless.

Occupy the London Stock Exchange
15th October
12pm
St Paul’s Cathedral

A quote well-known among activists, variously attributed to Gandhi or US labor leader Nicholas Klein, says that “first they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” In the space of just the past several weeks, it’s possible to discern the first three steps of this progression in the response of the US political, economic, and media elite to the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement. This fact should be a great source of encouragement for all those brave and dedicated individuals who have helped build this movement.

The Occupy Wall Street movement and subsequent protests that are continuing across the United States have drawn world-wide attention. Our correspondent, a college freshman, participates in the first demonstration of his life. Here is his point-of-view of Occupy Wall Street.

Before I went to Occupy Wall Street, I did some research to see what I was protesting. I went to Occupywallst.org which told me the time and location of the occupation, but not much more. “The one thing we all have in common is that We Are The 99% that will no longer tolerate the greed and corruption of the 1%,” claimed the site. I felt like I could buy into this cause, so I got a couple of people from my college dorm just outside New York City to come with me to Manhattan to be stereotypical protesting college students. We were going to go down in history, just like the kids from the UC Berkeley Free Speech Movement, the Paris spring of 1968, and Tiananmen Square. Hopefully not just like Tiananmen Square.

Transcripts
Part One: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eu9BWlcRwPQ

…2008 financial crash more hard earned private property was destroyed than if all of us here were to be destroying it night and day for weeks. They tell you we are dreamers. The true dreamers are those who think things can go on indefinitely the way they are. We are not dreamers. We are awakening from a dream which is tuning into a nightmare. We are not destroying anything. We are only witnessing how the system is destroying itself. We all know the classic scenes from cartoons. The cart reaches a precipice. But it goes on walking. Ignoring the fact that there is nothing beneath. Only when it looks down and notices it, it falls down. This is what we are doing here. We are telling the guys there on Wall Street – Hey, look down! (cheering).

The police may sympathize with us, they might even join us, but we can never forget that it is not the working class man behind the riot shield, but the role he plays when he puts on the uniform and attacks our occupations. Whenever we begin to resist the rich and powerful to a breaking point, the police are called out to defend that system that keeps the rich rich and all of us poor.

We just got back from the opening march for Occupy Portland, and were even more disappointed by how liberal, reformist, and nonthreatening it was than we had expected. The website for Occupy Portland had promised that "proper actions" would be taken against "instigators" of any "illegal activity (property destruction etc.)," which we can only interpret as a threat to snitch to the cops, so we went with low expectations, but this was by all means a massive disappointment even taking into account our pessimism from the get-go.

We attended the opening march for Occupy Portland because we are some angry-ass proles who really hate capitalism. Although Occupy Wall Street (and the various off-shoot occupations) have few official defined goals or positions, there is a general opposition to "corporate greed" and "corrupt politics". As anarchists, we seek to expose and destroy the roots of these problems - as long as capitalism and the state exist, there will be greedy corporations and corrupt politicians. Capitalism and the state cannot be reformed into something kinder, gentler, or more humane, it is exploitative by nature. We wished to push the discourse at Occupy Portland in a more radical, explicitly anti-capitalist and anti-state direction. So we attended the Occupy Portland opening march in full team colors with a big banner that read "NEVER GONNA GIVE YOU UP (A) NEVER GONNA LET YOU DOWN." Hey, we do have a sense of humor.

One notable feature of Occupy Wall Street is its participants’ lack of hesitation in using the term ‘revolution’. Here comes the revolution! This is the first step of the revolution! Get up, get down, the revolution is in this town! You won’t stop our revolution! etcetera, etcetera. Distinguishing from these assertions of a revolution that has arrived, what does it really mean to envisage a revolution? And why should revolutionaries fear to act as well as talk, camp, and march?

Starting with the occupation of a park next to Wall Street on September 17, a new movement is spreading across the country in which people gather in public spaces in protest against social inequalities. We’ll present a full analysis of this phenomenon here shortly; in the meantime, here’s an open letter to the occupation movement, engaging with some of the issues that have arisen thus far. Please forward this widely and print out versions to distribute at the “Occupy” events!

Dear Occupiers [online viewing version]

Dear Occupiers [print version]: A two-sided flier intended to be folded down the middle, longways.

OccupyLA Day Seven. The encampment at City Hall continues to grow. The camp now numbers close to 100 tents with at least two occupants per tent. Rain on Wednesday failed to discourage the occupiers, and the encampment is now larger and more organized than ever. Tomorrow the camp will have completed its first full week. It has been an action packed week and has drawn much media attention even competing with the Jackson murder trial just down the street.

While the slant of corporate media coverage of the Wall Street Occupation has focused on the general motivations behind the movement, often missed are the variety of personal perspectives, backgrounds and desires that brought this protest-city together. Here are some of the many voices that have combined their efforts to bring New York City the Wall Street live-in protest.

For anyone who is not familiar with this movement or the events taking place all over the world, we would like to try and provide an introduction….

Here are a number of reasons why one might feel compelled to get involved in the Occupy Britain movement.

In 2008 the global recession was felt worldwide, and although the media reported ‘recovery’ there has not actually been one, in fact, what has held off the, what appears to be an inevitable global financial collapse thus far, is a process called ‘quantitive easing’ and the selling off of national institutions, such as the NHS, with job losses, redundancies, cuts to vital services, school closures, unreasonable welfare reforms, increase in the cost of living, banking institutions requiring bail outs, and the tax payer footing the bill and paying for the mistakes of others.

People are now recognising that there is a split in fairness and equality, we see bankers bonuses increasing, media tycoons controlling and withholding information that they should be reporting, in the public interest, systemic corruption of our police force, politicians and quite possibly our prime ministers, the introduction of, an ever increasing amount of legislation and statutes to further restrict our ability to speak out against them.

Occupy the London Stock Exchange - World Revolution Day 15th October

The entrapment and arrest of 700 peaceful Occupy Wall Street (OWS) activists on the Brooklyn Bridge has created a huge wave of support for their movement. The number of daytime occupants in Liberty Plaza doubled or tripled from 100 the week prior to 200-300 this past Monday and Tuesday. These people are the core who maintain the occupation of the plaza, making it possible for several hundreds and sometimes thousands to hold rallies in the late afternoon and participate in the open mic speakouts and General Assembly meetings in the evening.

On September 27th Lauren Ellis published an essay in Mother Jones Magazine entitled “Is #OccupyWallStreet Working?”

The essay argues that Occupy Wall Street (OWS) is not working because the movement has no clear message and is not demographically representative of those who are affected most by the current economic problems. While Ellis does raise important points about movement-messaging and political representation, she in no way tries to understand the internal logic and outward expression of OWS.

Ellis’ conclusions center around four main points: that OWS’s “kitchen sink approach” is a form of ineffective messaging; that the media’s focus on the police brutality distracts from OWS’s main message (or lack thereof); that the hacktavist collective Anonymous inhibits the OWS movement; and that the OWS participants are the “usual suspects” of “dreamers.” In what follows, I provide counter-arguments to each of Ellis’ points as an attempt to flesh-out some of the philosophies, practices, and communicative strategies of Occupy Wall Street. I want to note that I am not seeking to attack Lauren Ellis in any way. Instead, I am trying to demonstrate why her arguments—representative of many like-minded skeptics—are insufficiently substantiated.

As grassroots anger grows against the feeble facade that is democracy in the US, the 'Occupy' movement is gaining in popularity, and its massive online presence is being translated into boots - and tents - on the ground. After getting their start on Wall Street - the belly of the imperialist beast - the occupations have spread across the country.

Activists have been occupying Manchester for five nights now as part of the global movement of the 99%.

It began as a call in July 2011 by the magazine Adbusters to hold powerful business interests on Wall Street to account, and drawing on inspiration from the famed 2011 grassroots protests across the Middle East. But the mantle has been taken up by grassroots activists in New York City to forge an ongoing occupation outside of Wall Street and throughout New York City. The effort in its first two weeks has spurred a national movement with sibling efforts in at least 130 other cities, including Chicago.

Occupy Chicago, merely a week old, has already drawn hundreds of grassroots protesters, who "march…each day…After an hour long general assembly meeting, demonstrators headed through the financial district, Millennium Park, the Magnificent Mile and back to base camp to once more spread messages of solidarity, positivity and persistence in the face of a political system that’s left 99% of Americans without a real voice in governance…While it may be young and still trying to get organized, the movement to Occupy America is growing and cohering. And though many went home after Saturday’s march, more than a hundred stayed to continue organizing and evangelizing, with no plans to leave until they feel their job is done."

UPDATE: Occupy Chicago threatened by Chicago police to stop.

Additional Coverage: Lessons Learned from Occupy Wall Street | Five Things that Occupy Wall Street Did Right | Occupy Chicago Entering Day 6 | Protestors Occupy Chicago in Solidarity with Occupy Wall St NY | An American Spring is Possible | Open Letter to Occupy Chicago.

Outside Resources: Think Progress; NY Times' Andrew Ross Sorking Sneers at Occupy Wall Street | Protests Work Better with Specific Demands | Occupy Wall Street Makes Its Own Media.

Social Media Resources: Tumblr | Twitter | Live Video Stream

The "Occupy Wall Street" protests in the financial district took a dramatic turn on Saturday when protesters tried to march across the Brooklyn Bridge. When police arrested 700 of the demonstrators, the event quickly turned into one of the largest arrests of non-violent protesters in recent history. Some protesters claim police lured them onto oncoming traffic on the bridge’s roadway; others said they did not hear instructions from police telling them to use the pedestrian walkway. Meanwhile, similar "Occupation" protests have spread to other cities, including Chicago, Boston and Los Angeles, where hundreds of protesters are now camped out in front of City Hall. We host a roundtable discussion with Marisa Holmes, an organizer with the main organizing group of Occupy Wall Street, called the General Assembly, Marina Sitrin, an attorney who is part of Occupy Wall Street’s legal working group, and Laurie Penny, a writer and journalist who reported on protests in London earlier this summer