Who are the Occupiers?

A recent study called "Changing the Subject: A Bottom Up Account of Occupy Wall Street in New York City" shows that the majority of them were educated professionals, not jobless. The 51 page report was written by Ruth Milkman, Stephanie Luce and Penny Lewis and published in 2013. All three contributers are holders of a Ph. D in Sociology.

  New York Times journalist Colin Moynihan writes, "More than a third of the people who participated in Occupy Wall Street protests in New York lived in households with annual incomes of $100,000 or more, according to a study by sociologists at the City University of New York, and more than two-thirds had professional jobs."

It'd be cool to make a graphic of the other results of the study:

"nearly a third of the protesters had been laid off or lost a job, and a similar number said they had more than $1,000 in credit card or student loan debt."

"Nearly 80 percent had at least a bachelor’s degree, the authors wrote, and about half of those with bachelor’s degrees had a graduate degree."

Despite Occupiers' education, "nearly a quarter working fewer than 35 hours a week."

New term: “precariat” — educated people forced into unsteady or insecure jobs because little else is available.

Can I submit the Thesis as a Blog?

Complete with hyperlinks to the cites, news articles, videos, graphics

Part 3: Old Paradigm

Movements to compare to Occupy that provide a contrast in structure, methods, and hierarchy... and use of networking technologies?

Going back in time...
Civil Rights
Women's Rights

Present...
Tea Party? Same issues, different approach

Occupy: The Movies

Watch the trailer for "Occupy: The Movie"

Read an interview with director Corey Ogilve.

"Currently, Occupy is a model of how to relate to each other in a group setting to get something done. It has no park or physical space, but rather it is a social space people can enter, and leave, at their own will. I am very encouraged to see Occupy applying this model to doing humanitarian work at Hurricane Sandy, as well as many home foreclosure defenses. This is Occupy’s greatest strength: No one owns it, or rather, anyone can own it, they just have to show up and be part of it." -Ogilve


Others...

“99%: The Occupy Wall Street Collaborative Film,” will have its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival next Sunday. It is one of three films at this year’s festival, along with the Arab Spring documentary “The Square" and the Tea Party documentary “Citizen Koch,” that are racing to catch up with rapidly evolving social movements.

The Occupy Wall Street film is the most experimental, as Ms. Ewell and Mr. Aites tried to mirror the consensus-building, nonhierarchical democracy of that movement. The title cards announce, “The film you’re about to see was made collaboratively by more than 100 filmmakers and newcomers across the United States.” The unusual credits read, “A film founded by Audrey Ewell and Aaron Aites,” and go on to list two other directors, Lucian Read and Nina Krstic, and five co-directors: Katie Teague, Peter Leeman, Aric Gutnick, Abby Martin, and Doree Simon.

“They actually tried to cut a film that resembled the process of the movement itself,” said John Cooper, director of the Sundance Film Festival.

they focused on reflecting the diversity of the movement. “The biggest way we thought we were mirroring the movement was actually not so much about the consensus process,” Ms. Ewell added. “It was about the idea that people from all walks of life all over the country would have a voice in the final film.”

It’s no accident that the tension between democratic access and goal-oriented expertise becomes a theme in the film itself, as people argue that Occupy Wall Street’s horizontal structure prevents it from making a greater practical impact.

“They need a production manager,” Ms. Ewell said, “to get that thing whipped into shape.”

Mr. Aites said, shrugging: “I don’t know. They did what they did.”

Ms. Ewell replied, nodding in agreement: “I know, I know. I’m imposing other values on them — and that’s what we try not to do too much of.”

(New York Times: "The Messy Work of Organizing Disorganizations")

What is the Occupy Movement Doing?

http://whattheheckhasoccupydonesofar.com/

http://www.occupythesec.org/

The Occupied Wall Street Journal

Graphic designs related to OWS

http://occupydesign.org/ 

http://occuprint.org/

Tumblr page: expressions of frustration

Alternative Banking blog

New York's new Millionaire Tax (NYT article)

http://www.occupytogether.org/aboutoccupy/ :

Changing Discourse

One of the important accomplishes may simply be changing the social and political discourse in America as the #occupy movement has called attention to important issues of unchecked corporate influence in politics and social and economic inequality. "We are the 99%" has become a rallying cry by many, familiar by virtually all, and acknowledged but mocked by the wealthy, showing their disregard for the majority of American people.

EX: Survey Finds Rising Perception of Class Tension (NYT)

From Big Banks to Credit Unions

On November 5th, 2011, #occupy held its first National Bank Transfer Day, encouraging individuals to transfer money from their accounts with major corporate banks to local credit unions. The event was a success as over $50 million dollars were withdrawn and accounts were closed with big banks. On an even larger scale, Occupy Buffalo pressured the City of Buffalo to withdraw $45 million dollars from JP Morgan Chase and start a new account with a smaller regional bank.

Salt Lake Tribune article

Ending illegal foreclosures

Occupy Our Homes and Occupy Foreclosure have been two organizations that have been at the front of preventing banks from foreclosing on homeowners affected by predatory lending and corporate wrongdoing. Employing many tactics including camping out on property to prevent evictions, these groups have prevented many all over the country from getting kicked out of their homes due to the greed of banks. Actions continue from Buffalo to Birmingham, St. Paul to Oakland as the foreclosure crisis continues to affect millions.

EX: Homeowners Fighting Back

ALEC

On February 29th, 2012, Occupy protesters from around the country coordinated demonstrations in over 80 American cities. The day was known as #F29 Shut Down the Corporations and its intent was to turn the spotlight on the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), and organization that brings elective officials and corporations like Walmart, Bank of America, and McDonalds together to draft legislation beneficial to corporations. These demonstrations caused a high-level of scrutiny to befall ALEC, forcing many of its largest corporations to abandon the organization.

EX: 28 Lawmakers have left ALEC this month --RepublicReport

Rolling back greedy bank practicesWhen Bank of America, Chase, Suntrust, and Wells Fargo announced they were all going to charge their customers an additional $5 a month to use their debit cards, many were angry. Occupy protesters amplified the displeasure felt by many by demonstrating in and out of the bank. Bank of America heard the message and dropped the fee.

How does the movement work to achieve these goals?

RESIST

In the spirit and tradition of civil disobedience #occupy takes to the streets to protest corporate greed, abuse of power, and growing economic disparity.

RESTRUCTURE

#occupy empowers individuals to lead others into action by gathering in the commons (public spaces, parks and online) as engaged citizens to demonstrate a culture based on community and mutual aid. We will be the change we are seeking in the world.

REMIX

Work to make fundamental changes in the system.

Events Overview (NYT)

Source: New York Times 

"Overview

The Occupy Movement began on Sept. 17, 2011, when a diffuse group of activists began a loosely organized protest called Occupy Wall Street, encamping in Zuccotti Park, a privately owned park in New York’s financial district. The protest was a stand against corporate greed, social inequality and the corrosive power of major banks and multinational corporations over the democratic process. 

The idea was to camp out for weeks or even months to replicate the kind, if not the scale, of protests that had erupted earlier in 2011 in Tunisia and Egypt.

The group’s slogan — “we are the 99 percent” — touched a raw nerve across the nation. The 1 percent refers to the haves: that is, the banks, the mortgage industry, the insurance industry, etc.; and the 99 percent refers to the have-nots: that is, everyone else. 

Within weeks, similar demonstrations spread to dozens of other American cities, including Los Angeles, San Francisco, Oakland, Chicago and Boston, as well as cities in Europe, Asia and the Americas, drawing thousands of people. Occupy protests rapidly sprouted on major campuses across the country.

In the United States, the political impact of the movement was increasingly plain. Democrats offered cautious support and Republicans were generally critical, but both parties seemed to agree that the movement was changing public debate.

Whatever the long-term effects of the movement, protesters succeeded in implanting “we are the 99 percent” into the cultural and political lexicon. Soon after the protests began, politicians began using “Occupy” lingo. Democrats in Congress began to invoke the “99 percent” to press for passage of President Obama’s jobs act — and to pursue action on mine safety, Internet access rules and voter identification laws, among others. Republicans pushed back, accusing protesters of class warfare; Newt Gingrich called the “concept of the 99 and the one” both divisive and “un-American.”

The Struggle to Maintain Visibility

In the months since it began, the Occupy Movement has been at risk of fading to the edges of political discourse. Driven off the streets by local law enforcement officials, who have evicted protesters from their encampments and arrested thousands, the movement has seen a steep decline in visibility. That has left Occupy without bases of operations in the heart of many cities and has forced protesters to spend time defending themselves in court, deterring many from taking to the streets again.

With less visibility, the movement has received less attention from the news media, taking away a national platform.

Occupy does not have a traditional leadership structure, making it difficult for the movement to engage in conventional political organizing in support of state legislators and members of Congress, like the Tea Partyhas. And some activists, angry at politicians across the board, do not see electoral politics as the best avenue for the movement, complicating efforts to chart its direction.

Occupy activists acknowledge that building and maintaining a populist movement is daunting and that the clashes over the right to protest have drained some energy.

Background: Early Days and Gaining Union Support

Within a week of the initial demonstration in Lower Manhattan, the protest grew. On Sept. 24, police made scores of arrests as hundreds of demonstrators, many of whom had been bivouacked in the financial district as part of the protest, marched north to Union Square without a permit. As darkness fell, large numbers of officers were deployed on streets near the encampment in Zuccotti Park, where hundreds more people had gathered.

Efforts to maintain crowd control suddenly escalated: protesters were corralled by police officers who put up orange mesh netting; the police forcibly arrested some participants; and a deputy inspector used pepper spray on four women who were on the sidewalk, behind the orange netting.

On Oct. 1, the police arrested more than 700 demonstrators who marched north from Zuccotti Park and tried to cross the Brooklyn Bridge. The police said it was the marchers’ choice that led to the enforcement action, but protesters said they believed the police had tricked them, allowing them onto the bridge, and even escorting them partway across, only to trap them in orange netting after hundreds had entered.

As the Occupy message of representing 99 percent of Americans spread across the country, news media coverage of the Occupy movement spread, too, to the front pages of newspapers and the tops of television newscasts.

The protest  got reinforcements on Oct. 5, when prominent labor unions — struggling to gain traction on their own — joined forces with the demonstrators. Thousands of union members marched with the protesters from Foley Square to their encampment in Zuccotti Park.

The two movements may be markedly different, but union leaders maintain that they can help each other — the weakened labor movement can tap into Occupy Wall Street’s vitality, while the protesters can benefit from labor’s money, its millions of members and its stature. Labor leaders said they hoped Occupy Wall Street would serve as a counterweight to theTea Party and help pressure President Obama and Congress to focus on job creation and other concerns important to unions.

Buoyed by the longevity of the encampment in Manhattan, a wave of protests swept across the world, with hundreds and in some cases thousands of people expressing discontent with the economic tides in marches, rallies and occasional clashes with the police.

Other than Rome, where a largely peaceful protest turned into a riot, the demonstrations across Europe were largely peaceful, with thousands of people marching past ancient monuments and gathering in front of capitalist symbols like the European Central Bank in Frankfurt. Similar scenes unfolded across cities on several continents, including in Sydney, Australia; Tokyo; Hong Kong; and Toronto.

The Police Response

The actions of the New York police suggested the flip side of a force trained to fight terrorism, but that may appear less nimble in dealing with the likes of protesters.

In everyday policing situations, the one-two punch of uniformed response usually goes like this: Blue shirts form the first wave, with white shirts following. But those roles seem reversed in the police response to the Wall Street protests.

As the protests lurched into their third week, it was often the white shirts — the commanders atop an army of lesser-ranking officers in dark blue — who laid hands on protesters or initiated arrests. Video recordings of clashes showed lieutenants, captains or inspectors leading underlings into the fray.

Police officers, law enforcement analysts and others cited a number of reasons for it. The prevalence of white shirts around Zuccotti Park, the center of the protests, signaled how closely the department monitors high-profile events. Strategies are carefully laid out; guidelines for crowd dispersal are rehearsed; arrest teams are assembled. It is all in an effort to choreograph a predictable level of control.

The Political Response 

As the protest entered its fourth week, leading Democratic figures, including party fund-raisers and a top ally of President Obama, were embracing the spread of the anti-Wall Street protests in a clear sign that members of the Democratic establishment saw the movement as a way to align disenchanted Americans with their party.

But while some Democrats saw the movement as providing a political boost, the party’s alignment with the eclectic mix of protesters made others nervous. They saw the prospect of the protesters’ pushing the party dangerously to the left — just as the Tea Party had often pushed Republicans farther to the right and made for intraparty run-ins.

Mr. Obama spoke sympathetically of the Wall Street protests, saying they reflected “the frustration” that many struggling Americans were feeling. Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Representative Nancy Pelosi, the House Democratic leader, sounded similar themes.

It is not at all clear whether the leaders of the amorphous movement actually want the support of the Democratic establishment, given that some of the protesters’ complaints are directed at the Obama administration. Among their grievances, the protesters say they want to see steps taken to ensure that the rich pay a fairer share of their income in taxes, that banks are held accountable for reckless practices and that more attention is paid to finding jobs for the unemployed.

Leading Republicans, meanwhile, grew increasingly critical of the protests. Eric Cantor, the House majority leader, called the protesters “a growing mob,” and Herman Cain, the former Republican presidential candidate, said the protests were the work of “jealous” anti-capitalists.

The Media Take Notice

Coverage of the movement in the first week of October 2011 was, for the first time, quantitatively equivalent to early coverage of the Tea Party movement in early 2009, according to data released by the Pew Research Center.

The data confirmed an anecdotal sense that the movement, which slowly gained speed in September, had entered the nation’s collective consciousness for the first time when President Obama was asked about it at a news conference and when national television news programs were first anchored from the Wall Street protest site.

In the first full week of October, according to Pew’s Project for Excellence in Journalism, the protests occupied 7 percent of the nation’s collective news coverage, up from 2 percent in the last week of September. Before then, the coverage was so modest as to be undetectable.

The study showed that cable news and radio, which had initially ignored the protests almost entirely, started to give the protests significant coverage in early October, often with a heavy dose of positive or negative opinion attached.

Some protesters assailed news media outlets for scoffing at their leaderless nature and lack of agreed-upon goals, but some also carefully courted attention from those outlets.

The spike in news media coverage was significant because, among other reasons, it may have lent legitimacy to the movement and spurred more people to seek out protest information on Facebook and other Web sites.

Each City’s Own Stew of Grievances

While the protesters seemed united in feeling that the system was stacked against them, with the rules written to benefit the rich and the connected, they were also just as often angry about issues closer to home, like education and the environment. Each gathering bubbled up from its own particular city’s stew of circumstances and grievances, and the protesters bring along their pantheons of saints and villains.

After weeks of cautiously accepting the round-the-clock protests spawned by the Occupy movement, several cities came to the end of their patienceand began to crack down.

From late October to December 2011, mayors in cities across the country moved to clear encampments in New York, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Atlanta, San Francisco and Boston, among others, with several removal attempts resulting in violent confrontations between police and protesters.

One of the most resistant occupations was Occupy Oakland, which had been encamped in front of Oakland City Hall since Oct. 10, 2011. In late January 2012, about 400 members of Occupy Oakland were arrested and three police officers were injured after a violent confrontation between protesters and law enforcement officers. Some protesters broke into City Hall, the police said, although some demonstrators said they found the building’s door ajar.

Protesters in other cities rallied to show their support for Occupy Oakland. Demonstrators in Manhattan chanted “New York is Oakland, Oakland is New York” as they moved through the streets of Greenwich Village. Several were arrested. In Washington, one protester was subdued with a Taser.

The Protest Moves to Campuses

In November 2011, the Occupy movement — on campuses, at least —began transforming itself into a student-led crusade against tuition hikes. In a demonstration aligned with the Occupy movement, students at the University of California, Davis, were protesting against an increase in tuition, which had nearly doubled over the previous several years.

During the demonstration, videos were taken of two police officers in riot gear dousing the protesters with pepper spray as they sat on a sidewalk with their arms entwined. The videos were widely distributed over the Internet, with hundreds of thousands watching a relatively small encampment compared with the larger protests across the country. 

The attack galvanized protesters on other campuses. Students at the Los Angeles, Berkeley, Riverside and Davis campuses said that they intended to restart their encampments, in part to test whether they would be rousted or arrested in the wake of the pepper-spraying.

In New York, a rally by City University of New York students against a planned tuition increase turned turbulent when marchers ignored police requests to clear the lobby of a building where the university’s trustees were meeting, and 15 people were arrested. At Baruch College in Manhattan, students were pushed to the ground and taken away in handcuffs from the lobby, while protesting a planned tuition increase for the 2012-13 academic year.

In the Spring, Trying Out a New Tactic

The protesters arrived on Wall Street on an April night carrying bedrolls, quilts and blankets. They spread pieces of cardboard on the sidewalks. Then, as several police officers stood nearby, the protesters made signs with anticorporate slogans.

For the third consecutive night, Occupy Wall Street protesters used a tactic that many of them hope will emerge as a replacement for their encampment at Zuccotti Park, which was disbanded by the police in November 2011.

Norman Siegel, a prominent civil-rights lawyer who visited the protesters, said a decision by a federal court in Manhattan arising from a lawsuit in 2000 allowed the protesters to sleep on sidewalks as a form of political expression so long as they did not block doorways and took up no more than half the sidewalk.

The protesters first cited that ruling in early April 2012, sleeping outside bank branches near Union Square, but said that they wanted so-called sleep-outs to occur nightly around the New York Stock Exchange. Their presence on and near Wall Street has drawn the attention of the police, but officers have not dislodged them.

Dozens of Occupy encampments around the country were forcibly cleared months previously by police forces, and organizers in New York have acknowledged that it would be difficult to mount a new occupation of a park or plaza. Instead, many of them said, they would rather establish these sleeping spots.

Preparing for a Political Convention

In Charlotte, N.C., it was spring, and hay and grass seed covered the bare spots on the lawn in front of the stately old City Hall where Occupy Charlotte’s camp held its ground for nearly four months. The occupiers were gone and the protest movement quieted after arrests, a new anticamping ordinance and, to a degree, the group’s own missteps.

But as the grass began to take root, so did a resilient Occupy Charlotte. A small group was still meeting regularly in the city, participating in targeted protests and planning for Sept. 3, 2012, when the Democratic National Convention comes to town.

Every four years, the political conventions become magnets for mass protests, but this year the Occupy movement has added an unpredictable element to the mix. In Charlotte, the movement has already shown its clout through the hundreds of protesters who gathered in October 2011 to demonstrate against Bank of America and a resulting encampment on the lawn in front of old City Hall.

But the Occupy movement in Charlotte has been beset by troubles.

There was infighting over leadership within the group at the start, and there were repeated public relations gaffes. A flag burning in December split the group, and undermined acceptance and support within a skeptical Charlotte community as well.

Occupy Charlotte’s encampment may have had the unintended effect of getting the authorities prepared for convention protests; officials began planning a series of ordinances to manage such demonstrations after Occupy began.

On Jan. 23, the Democratic-controlled Charlotte City Council passed the ordinances, including a camping ban, on a 10-to-1 vote. A week later, Charlotte-Mecklenburg police officers crossed the street from their headquarters and arrested seven people on the way to dismantling the camp.

Occupy Charlotte members continued to meet regularly and arrange smaller protests, including a daylong event outside a Bank of America branch in town. But without the camp, the number of active members has dwindled just as planning for the convention kicks into high gear.

Bill Dobbs, a member of Occupy Wall Street’s press team, said there is continuing communication with Occupy Charlotte members as they plan bank and convention protests. And as many as 60 groups have signed on to join the Coalition to Protest at the D.N.C.

In Florida, Occupy Tampa is involved in planning similar efforts for the Republican National Convention, which will be held there in August, but the group has had smaller protests than those in Charlotte and the city has proposed a “clean zone” limiting where demonstrations can be held.

Trying to Make May Day an American Tradition

For decades, workers in Europe, South America and China have been celebrated with an official holiday on May Day.

The United States, however, has not followed suit. (Britain and Canada have tried to wash out the holiday’s leftist hues.) Even though the day’s origins date to a riot in Chicago in 1886 known as the Haymarket massacre, labor is celebrated in the United States in early September.

Socialists and trade union movements have long used May Day as a protest day. And on May 1, the Occupy movement hoped to bring numerous cities to a standstill in commemoration of International Workers Day.

That did not happen. However, in New York the protests continued into the wee hours of the next day, with about 2,000 marchers gathering at theVietnam Veterans Memorial Plaza on Water Street after dark and several hundred returning to Zuccotti Park, Occupy Wall Street’s former home base, after midnight.

The police said that 34 people were arrested and another 52 issued desk appearance tickets for lesser offenses by the end of a day that also included pickets, marches and rallies in Midtown, Union Square, Washington Square Park and on the Lower East Side.

Alive and Well in Oakland

Last spring, as the Occupy movement struggled, vainly, to recapture its lost energy in New York and elsewhere, in Oakland it remained vital.Occupy Oakland was the show that wouldn’t close, complete with its own cast of celebrities including Scott Olsen, a 25-year-old Iraq war veteran who is the movement’s Ron Kovic; Phil Tagami, a real estate developer who is the city’s Charles Bronson; the city’s mayor, an ex-radical herself; her countless critics; and Oakland’s infamous police department — O.P.D.

In a sense, Oakland is the last place you would expect to find the most stubbornly active outpost of the Occupy movement. It’s a city almost entirely devoid of financial or corporate institutions, a city that “capital” fled decades ago. The shimmering skyscrapers of downtown San Francisco, packed with Pacific Heights investment bankers and venture capitalists, are all of 12 minutes away. Silicon Valley, bursting at the seams with dot-com millionaires, isn’t much farther. Why not take the fight there, to a more plausible surrogate for Wall Street?

Maybe because Occupy Oakland, whether its leaders have articulated it or not, isn’t a protest against what Oakland is, but rather what it’s in danger of becoming. Oakland may be broke, but all of the wealth being generated in its immediate vicinity needs someplace to go, and some of that wealth is already beginning to find its way to Oakland, to a place that has long been the catch basin of America’s radical energies and personalities.

Why are radicals so inexorably drawn to Oakland? The cheap rents don’t hurt (free, if you’re willing to squat in an abandoned house or industrial space, and hundreds apparently are). Oakland is urban, dangerous and poor — fertile social conditions for inciting revolution. What’s more, it has a long, easily romanticized history of militancy. America’s last citywide strike, in 1946, took place there; and the Black Panthers were born in Oakland.

Running parallel to this history of political militancy is a history of lawlessness. In the early 1970s, when the Hell’s Angels were scandalizing America, their most infamous clubhouse was located in East Oakland.

Occupy is a dream that still exists in Oakland — that the world can be taken from the haves and delivered to the have-nots. Like all dreams that are on the brink of being extinguished, its keepers cling to it with a fierceness that is both moving and an extreme exercise in the denial of the reality that is at their door.

Frankfurt Camp Closed as a Health Hazard

In early August 2012 in Frankfurt, police in riot gear methodically cleared a tent city at the doorstep of the European Central Bank, ending months of tolerance for the encampment, following complaints that it had become more of an eyesore and health hazard than a protest against global capitalism.

After a court rejected an appeal by protesters, officers surrounded the park next to the downtown building that houses the bank, blocked off the adjacent streets and began dismantling tents.

Though Frankfurt is a center of global finance and the seat of monetary policy for the euro zone, the city adopted a laid-back attitude toward its local Occupy protest movement when it began in October 2011. By contrast, the New York police arrested nearly 200 people when theycleared the Occupy Wall Street camp at Zuccotti Park in November, about two months after protesters began gathering there.

Partly as a result, the Frankfurt Occupy encampment lasted longer than many others around the world. An unusually harsh winter posed a greater challenge to the protesters than did the city authorities, who largely ignored the protests. But later reports said that the site housed more homeless people than political activists and that it had become infested with rats.

City officials estimated that about 60 people were living at the site before the police cleared it, while protesters put the number as high as 100. Activists said they chose the site to call attention to what they said was the Central Bank’s lack of democratic accountability, and to protest the austerity measures it has helped impose on deeply indebted countries like Greece.

Though the site in Frankfurt joined a long list of Occupy encampments that have been shut down, some continue, including one in Hong Kong next to the headquarters of HSBC, the international bank."

Occupy Websites

Occupy.com

About: 
"Occupy.com is...

…a work in progress.

…a new media channel that will amplify the voices of Occupy. We use media to call for social, economic and environmental justice. We seek to inspire resistance, engagement and the creation of the new world we imagine.

…an open invitation to creators of every stripe: journalists, musicians, photographers, painters, filmmakers, poets, game developers, cartoonists, podcasters – every genre, form and style. We're striving to become an open platform, where everyone can post and everyone can curate. In the meanwhile, we're curating the content ourselves. We’re building the site one step at time. We’re learning.

…independent and non-profit. We consist of a small but growing group of dedicated occupiers working in solidarity with the movement. We are supported by a combination of donations and volunteerism. There is no GA or Spokes Council overseeing us, but we are morally accountable to the movement as a whole. "

occupywallst.org

About: 

OccupyWallSt.org is the unofficial de facto online resource for the growing occupation movement happening on Wall Street and around the world. We're an affinity group committed to doing technical support work for resistance movements. We're not a subcommittee of the NYCGA nor affiliated with Adbusters, anonymous or any other organization.

Occupy Wall Street is a people-powered movement that began on September 17, 2011 in Liberty Square in Manhattan’s Financial District, and has spread to over 100 cities in the United States and actions in over 1,500 cities globally. #ows is fighting back against the corrosive power of major banks and multinational corporations over the democratic process, and the role of Wall Street in creating an economic collapse that has caused the greatest recession in generations. The movement is inspired by popular uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia, and aims to fight back against the richest 1% of people that are writing the rules of an unfair global economy that is foreclosing on our future.

The occupations around the world are being organized using a non-binding consensus based collective decision making tool known as a "people's assembly". To learn more about how to use this process to organize your local community to fight back against social injustice, please read this quick guide on group dynamics in people's assemblies.


http://www.occupytogether.org

#occupytogether is an independent group of activists working to help people learn how to get involved in #occupy in whatever way they find meaningful.

The #occupy movement

is an international movement driven by individuals like you. All of us have many different backgrounds and political beliefs but feel that, since we can no longer trust our elected officials to represent anyone other than their wealthiest donors, we need real people to create real change from the bottom up. Organized in over 100 cities in the United States, #occupy aims to fight back against the system that has allowed the rich to get richer and the poor to get poorer. We no longer want the wealthiest to hold all the power, to write the rules governing an unbalanced and inequitable global economy, and thus foreclosing on our future.

How did #occupy start?

The #occupy movement, originally initiated by a call from Adbusters to "Occupy Wall Street," was inspired by several international protests, most notably, the Arab Spring protests. Thousands answered the call and arrived in Zuccotti Park, at the heart of New York City's financial district, to protest the damaging influence of corporations on politics as well as social and economic inequality. Hundreds stayed every night for two months and created an encampment in the park, a model that was adopted by people all over the country as the movement spread to well over 500 cities.