Tag Archives: Occupation

September 21, 2011, 12:49 pm

Police Violence Escalates: Day 5 on Wall Street

Amy Goodman of Democracy Now: “In a just world, with a just economy, we have to wonder: Who would be out in the cold? Who would be getting arrested?”

Chanting “Who do you protect? Who do you serve?” the protesters occupying Wall Street are digging in for a fifth day and circulating graphic images and video of escalating police violence and harassment.

There are several reports of injuries, including at least one hospitalization due to brutal arrest tactics, such as this one showing a protestor tossed headfirst to the pavement from atop a pile of equipment. Police were using the pretext of protesters’ having covered their media gear with a tarp to claim they’d illegally erected a tent on city sidewalks.

Never mind that it wasn’t a tent, wasn’t on a sidewalk, and that every media professional in New York covers their gear when it rains without the police uttering a word, much less…

September 19, 2011, 8:50 pm

Wall Street Occupation, Day 3

By Marc Bousquet

Thousands gathered Saturday

a guest post by Zach Schwartz-Weinstein

Zuccotti Park in the Lower Manhattan financial district has been occupied by a politically diverse group for the last three days, with participation of up to several thousand at a time. Protesters have renamed the space “Liberty Park,” to brand it as an American counterpoint to Cairo’s Tahrir (“Liberation”) Square, and it has played host to general assemblies of thousands of people, hundreds of whom have slept in the park for the last two nights.

They hope to begin a sustained occupation to, in the words of two of the authors of the original call to action, “escalate the possibility of a full-fledged global uprising against business as usual.”

Taking cues not only from the so-called Arab Spring…

September 13, 2011, 4:12 pm

What Are You Doing for the Next 2 Months?

By Marc Bousquet

Thousands of students and educators will join the 9/17 Wall Street occupation

On Saturday September 17th, movement organizers hope to funnel 20,000 protesters into Manhattan’s financial district, set up kitchens and tents, and occupy Wall Street for the next several months. Proclaiming we are the 99 percent, many of the 7,500 persons who have indicated an intention to participate are the highly educated working poor, underemployed with graduate degrees, or even fully employed but unable to meet their education bills like this woman (see her blog and related stories),who writes, “I have a masters degree & a full-time job in my field—and I have started selling my body to pay off my debt.”

After a September 1 test run resulted in nine arrests, Adbusters and Alexa O’Brien of US Day of Rage…

April 25, 2011, 3:44 pm

Big Brother on Campus

By Marc Bousquet

For the third year in a row, U.S. student direct action continues to rise. The year’s best-known action was the amazing occupation of the Wisconsin state capitol. The most important all-but-uncovered action was the continuing fierce struggle at the University of Puerto Rico, held by riot police for more than six weeks. Two weeks ago, California State University activists coordinated protests across the CSU system, ending in simultaneous occupations at as many as 11 of the 23 campuses. Last week, in an apparently coordinated action, United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS) affiliated students occupied presidents’ offices at Tulane and Emory, demanding ethical employment practices (targeting Sodexo and other subcontractors). Student-led occupations and sit-ins are spreading to high schools, Department of Education events, oil rigs, and consulates. It’s not, say, France or England, but…

March 1, 2011, 12:19 pm

From the Occupied Capitol

By Marc Bousquet

A guest post by Michael Verderame

This Sunday a fellow member of the University of Illinois Graduate Employees Organization, Zach Poppel, and I traveled to Madison to support the occupation of the Wisconsin Capitol. We went there in support not just of public workers in Wisconsin, but of the very idea of collective bargaining. Many of us also were there because we know graduate employees in Wisconsin, and know how higher education in Wisconsin will be decimated by these proposals.

The University of Wisconsin would find it much harder to retain faculty if its professors have to surrender their hard-fought gains in collective bargaining (currently faculty on the Eau Claire and Superior campuses are unionized, and the LaCrosse campus recently voted for unionization as well). Similar proposals for gutting unions are being pursued elsewhere—Indiana, Ohio, New Jersey, Florida,…