occupy movement

Coming Full Circle: Creating a Three-Pronged Housing Justice Strategy

Submitted by Eviction Free Zone on Dec 12 2013 19:44

Direct action is at the center of the housing justice, but what do we need to see a movement that is fully realized and can target housing-for-profit at its very core?

The housing justice movement saw an explosion after the financial crisis of 2008 and the housing bubble collapse in 2010 for reasons both obvious and esoteric. The primary one for the general public is the absolute scale of the crisis. First, communities not normally affected by mass rates of foreclosure, the white middle class, started to be hit in unprecedented numbers.

Kshama Sawant and Capitalism's Shock Absorbers

Seattle skyline at night

An analysis from Black Orchid Collective on the recent election of Socialist Alternative candidate Kshama Sawant to Seattle City Council, and this election's relationship to the broader social movement forces and conditions of the city.

“While you waitin’ for the mention in the pages of ‘The Stranger’
You can find me in the basement makin’ heaters for later…
we’ve been living in conditions we’re tired of
Come on and rise up”

- Blue Scholars, “North by Northwest”

Intro: the shifting political terrain

Occupy City Council!: Minneapolis and sewer socialism

Submitted by Juan Conatz on Dec 5 2013 02:56

A mostly finished writing on Ty Moore, Socialist Alternative, Occupy and SEIU in Minneapolis. For the 'sewer socialism' reference in the title, see this Great Moments in Leftism strip.

[i]This was originally written in October 2013, but then I decided not to publish it or even adequately finish it because I thought the immediacy I felt when I wrote it was overblown. Also, putting something out like this before the election would have just made me look like a jerk, which I probably do a good enough job with any way.

To the party members

The sound and image of a drum cir­cle may be one of the most easily-mocked moments asso­ci­ated with the Occupy move­ments. But the role of music in the move­ment, and its rela­tion to protests and polit­i­cal action in gen­eral, bears closer inves­ti­ga­tion, beyond the drum circle.

Occupy the work­place: orga­nized labor and the occu­pa­tions move­ment

The Occupy Wall Street phe­nom­e­non has achieved a stature and longevity unri­valed by recent demon­stra­tions in the United States, and has under­stand­ably struck a chord with a wide range of peo­ple dis­mayed by the bar­baric level of inequal­ity that is the defin­ing fea­ture of con­tem­po­rary Amer­i­can soci­ety.

Insurrection, Oakland style: a history

An article by Matthew Edwards on the roots of Occupy Oakland, which includes the movement and riots that happened in response to the police murder of Oscar Grant in January of 2009.

This is an unfin­ished work – a snap­shot of his­tory as it occurred, expe­ri­enced by me, reported on social media, or retold by trusted com­rades. It will lack the final­ity of hind­sight. Con­tained within is my account of the Oak­land Insur­rec­tion, as it has unfolded over the past days and weeks. Both the insur­rec­tion and this essay are works of hope.

From Egypt to Wall Street

Wendell Hassan Marsh on the links between the Wisconsin protests, the Egyptian Revolution and the Occupy movement.

For­mer Egypt­ian pres­i­dent Hosni Mubarak had already stepped down, fol­low­ing a pop­u­lar move­ment that estab­lished a micro-republic, the Gumhuriyyah el-Tahrir (Repub­lic of Lib­erty), which con­tra­dicted the per­vad­ing logic of the inter­na­tional eco­nomic sys­tem.

Who threw the can of green paint?: the first two weeks of Occupy Philadelphia

An article by Ben Webster on the contradictions and potential of the Occupy movement in Philadelphia during Fall 2011.

On the morn­ing of Octo­ber 14, one week into Occupy Philadelphia’s encamp­ment beside City Hall, some­one emp­tied the con­tents of a paint can on the building’s south­west­ern entrance. The unknown painter fled the scene, leav­ing behind a decid­edly unsym­bolic smear. Not of angry black or bloody red, but a smear of bland mint green.

Everybody talks about the weather

Asad Haider and Salar Mohandesi analyze the Occupy movement and the conditions that created it.

“Every­body talks about the weather. We don’t.” This 1968 poster was a response by the Ger­man Social­ist Stu­dent Union to an ad cam­paign for weath­er­proof trains. The stu­dents were sug­gest­ing that like the fig­ures pic­tured above, they had more impor­tant con­cerns than every­day things like the weather.

Occupation and revolution

This is the postface from The Anarchist Turn, published by Pluto Press in 2013.

I
The coming occupations will have no end in sight, and no means to resolve them. When that happens, we will finally be ready to abandon them.