The Rumpus.net » Occupy Wall Street

Have you heard of The Rolling Jubilee?

Pat Johnson — Sat, 10 Nov 2012 00:31:50 +0000

Occupy, once again, has devised a clever way of thwarting Wall Street.

The Rolling Jubilee is an organization created to “free debtors from their debt” and claims:

“We buy debt for pennies on the dollar, but instead of collecting it, we abolish it. We cannot buy specific individuals’ debt – instead, we help liberate debtors at random through a campaign of mutual support, good will, and collective refusal.”

On November 15, the Rolling Jubilee along with “The People’s Bailout,” will present a live streaming show and telethon at rollingjubilee.org. The show will feature a variety of performers such as Janeane Garofalo, Lizz Winstead, Max Silvestri, The Yes Men, and many more. All proceeds go towards buying and eliminating debt. For example, $25 buys and eliminates $500 worth of debt; $50 eliminates $1000 of debt, etc.

So sit back, crush some debt, and enjoy the show!

Sean Stewart and the Underground Press

Walter Gordon — Mon, 06 Aug 2012 23:00:40 +0000

“No matter how you feel about the whole thing, what can’t be denied is that millions of people feel betrayed. The people held up their end of the bargain and rightly feel that they got sold out.”

At Guernica, Matthew Newton interviews Sean Stewart, former owner of the now closed Babylon Falling, a radical bookstore and gallery space in San Francisco, and editor of On The Ground: An Illustrated Anecdotal History of the Sixties Underground Press in the US.

Aside from compiling his book, Stewart has also converted Babylon Falling into a blog, a transformation perhaps indicative of a larger movement of underground press sources onto the internet.

“Big Little Wolfs” (Rick Moody Remix)

Jeff T. Johnson — Tue, 01 May 2012 21:00:12 +0000

The band Aeroplane Pageant and novelist, musician and Rumpus contributor Rick Moody have collaborated on a new version of a song from the band’s recent album, Float Above the Yard. Moody’s remix of the song “Big Little Wolfs” is ambient and drifting without being lulling, a place (near the docks) as much as a song. Have a listen here.

The song is also set to appear on Occupy This Album, which benefits OWS and also features music by Yo La Tengo, Mogwai, Devo, Blondie, Michael Moore (!), Patti Smith, Ladytron, Yoko Ono, Willie Nelson, Jackson Browne, Crosby and Nash, and others.

The Rumpus Interview with Adam, an Occupy Medic

Jennifer Sky — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 22:35:34 +0000

On Thursday, November 17^th, thousands of students gathered in Union Square Park as part of a mass strike in solidarity of the Occupy Wall Street Movement. Guest speakers from all the major NYC schools spoke about the inequality of the wealthy and rest of us. A CUNY student from the projects addressed how it used to be a free school for the under-privileged and that tuition has been increased as a result of each fiscal crisis. Pam, an administrator from The New School, came to tell us about an Occupy Wall Street Student Debt relief program launching on Monday. A speaker from the Egyptian Tahrir Square movement told us not to give up. And with that we moved to the streets, towards Foley Square, the crowd chanting, “Students and workers, shut the city down!”

Thousands were in the streets, walking south. Traffic was stopped. We marched down the middle of Canal Street. Multiple helicopters followed our movement overhead.

At Foley Square we met up with numerous other Occupy groups. Our numbers were large, over 5,000. We were gathering peacefully. But, at the borders of the park, there was a heavy police presence waiting in hard plastic riot gear.

I was tired and thirsty. I sat on a bench. There I met Adam, an Occupy Medic. He had a cross made of red duct tape on his sleeve. He handed me some water.

***

The Rumpus: Can you tell us what happened to the medic tent that was taken down in Zuccotti Park?

Adam: When the clinic was torn down—this is two military tents that were donated—we lost thousands and thousands of dollars of equipment, in actual cash donations, and also in patients’ personal, confidential records that we were keeping for them as we were running basically a road side walk-in clinic. As far as I know that is completely illegal. The police have no right to confiscate patients’ personal records. So it was quite a hit, quite a loss for Occupiers of all sorts.

Rumpus: What should folks do if they come into contact with tear gas or pepper spray?

Adam: To my knowledge the police have not been using tear gas, yet, in New York. Pepper spray definitely, everyone’s seen the footage of that. So I’m equipped to deal with that, the solution that we put together is an antacid and water mixture in a squirt bottle. If you get pepper-sprayed this solution will neutralize the burn, because the spray is a chemical burn. So this will neutralize that burn, a couple of squirts in each eye.

Rumpus: So what’s the solution made of?

Adam: Maalox and saline. And we have straight up saline, which is for cleaning wounds and things like that. And stuff to take care of abrasions and lacerations: gauze, wrapping tape. Today it’s cold out, and we have to deal with rain, so we have rain covers, ponchos for people, thermal blankets, little heater pads, some of us are even carrying around dry socks; just things to prevent mild hyperthermia. No one is going to get serious hyperthermia out here, but definitely the beginning stages of it can develop. We have cough lozenges; we have throat medicine, all over-the-counter. Some kits are more advanced than others. I had a fully decked out kit that I had to donate a couple of days ago after the camp was raided, because we were so low on supplies.

Rumpus: What would be in a full decked-out kit?

Adam: Exactly what you need for minor wound care. You’d also have what you need for any sort of chemical attack. Pepper spray, tear gas. You have things for burn care. Burns can occur when a victim is tased. If they are using tear gas, burns can happen if you pick up a canister and throw it. A canister can be very hot. You will have things like a flashlight to check the level of consciousness for people who could have some sort of brain injury, if someone has been hit in the head. The list goes on. Anything to help stabilize a person and get them to the hospital. We are not trying to cure anyone beyond our expertise here. Our job is to stabilize someone and if they need to go to the hospital, send them to the hospital, without question.

Rumpus: Stop the bleeding, stop the immediate pain, get them set up and get them on their way.

Adam: Exactly. You know like today, people are cold. Just providing them comfort and heating them up. And if the situation does get really stressful, you know if the police are being really aggressive, and people need some mental care, we are also here for that, we are here to help people and take care of them when they need it.

Rumpus: I feel mentally cared for. Do you have any cigarettes in there? Because I need a cigarette, I’m feeling stressed. I know, that’s the opposite of medical care…

Adam: We don’t advocate smoking, but some of our medics do smoke, so I’m sure you can find one.

A rough photo of Adam's red cross.

***

All photos by the author.

Arrested Reporters

Lisa Dusenbery — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 20:20:45 +0000

The Awl assembles a list of the 26 reporters arrested (so far) covering Occupy Wall Street stories and reveals what they do and who they are.

“Only seven of the 25 arrested are full-time employed traditional news-gathering employees. A number were student reporters; a few were interns; a larger number were freelancers. Some work for traditional “objective” news organizations; others work for “non-objective” news organizations, like Alternet and Indypendent Reader.”

People’s Library Reoccupation

Lisa Dusenbery — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 20:40:42 +0000

After this morning’s eviction of Zuccotti Park, the 5,000 books that encompassed the People’s Library have depressingly ended up in a dumpster. However, writers are planning to restock the People’s Library this evening in Liberty Plaza.

“Authors will bring their books, readers will bring their favorite books to donate and together we will rebuild to create the revolution this country needs,” according to the Library’s blog.

UPDATE: It seems the books have been stored, not tossed. Hope that holds true. (Via Galleycat)

An Occupy Roundup

Amy Letter — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 20:00:25 +0000

Yesterday was Veterans Day and the American Occupation of America was focused on its members who have served in the armed forces.

In the hot front city of Oakland, Scott Olsen, the first veteran seriously injured when police fired ordinance against their fellow American citizens, was released from the hospital, and much more is going on as well. Events are being live-blogged by local news here and here.

In Atlanta, Veterans foreclosed on Bank of America.

At least one story emphasized the veterans’ usefulness as people “expert at living in tents” who “take solace in the act of being useful. [As one vet] puts it: ‘I haven’t had one nightmare since I’ve been here.’”

In New York, the slogan was “Honor the Dead, Fight Like Hell for the Living.”

Deaths and other unfortunate events at Occupation sites are being used as rationale to support the desire some municipalities had to see the protests “go away.” (In my best Seven of Nine voice: “they will fail.”)

The Occupation is not just in big cities, and small local television stations are capable of some damn good reporting. This local TV report from Niles, Indiana tells us not just that veterans are part of the occupy movement, but why veterans have particular reason to get involved. Hint: it involves some troubling statistics.

Why Occupy Wall Street Has Already Won: A Poet’s Report from the Trenches

Brendan Lorber — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 08:45:28 +0000

The demands on Occupy Wall Street far outnumber the demands by Occupy Wall Street — because occupiers don’t demand, they exist and they triumph by using their existence to overwrite the host. But unlike an invading army, we don’t have to win over hearts and minds because we are the hearts and minds. There’s no more need for us to explain the occupation than there is to explain what it is to occupy our own bodies.

It’s like this: If the boy or girl of your dreams is about to kiss you and you demand an explanation you’re not getting either the explanation or the kiss. The reason we’re in the streets is no less mysterious or urgent. If you need an explanation, you are not paying attention to your own dreams.

The demands on us range from the insistence that we issue a manifesto to the suggestion that we just go home. The single demand by the movement is to live uncoerced in the equitable, participatory society we were promised. But our demand is less a demand than it is an intent — with or without the permission of the 1%, the 99% are going to do this. In fact, we already are.

The simple reason no proclamations are being rolled out nor old-school revolutionary communiqués released is because the movement is not an emblem of the people’s desires — the movement is the people’s desire. It doesn’t represent a thing — it is the thing. The leaderless, non-hierarchical structure of the movement is the structure of the society we most want. Its ability to continue meeting the needs of participants even as the number of protesters and encampments grow, reveals its sustainability. Its non-violent resistance to politicians, oppositional media, police forces and the corporations that overtly fund all three — the successful resistance to reactionary impositions shows that the movement is necessary.

It is also unstoppable: Traditional attempts to disrupt communications and freeze assets have had little toxic effect on the movement — and have actually enhanced it. Our economic precariousness as individuals brought us together — what better way to keep our common plight center stage than to limit the financial resources available to the collective? We are committed to avoiding the militaristic, corporate hierarchy that has improved the efficiency of other revolutions at the expense of their moral compass. What better way than to have little media coverage, coverage which tends to build manufactured leaderships from its emphasis on the personalities of experts and spokespeople. Corporate media blackouts and distortions have bolstered the already extant, completely distributed viral communication network that gave rise to the uprising in the first place. Even on the ground, laws against electronic amplification like bullhorns, have encouraged the development of unique communal, non-dictatorial consensus building. Nobody can steal the spotlight from within the movement because there is no spotlight to steal. Nobody can discredit, corrupt or topple the leadership from outside the movement because there is no leadership. No one person represents the occupation, but the occupation’s aims and methods exist within the suddenly awakened, blazing consciousness of every member.

We can gauge Occupy Wall Street’s success in two ways — its effect on the occupied and on the occupiers. That is, its effect on the existing economic structure and on the people struggling to bring about a new one. Its ultimate impact on the occupied, on capitalism and the oligarchy that amplifies its latencies, that impact remains to be seen. But the corporate responses — mockery and violence — are (unintuitively) heartening because it means the system recognizes in us the threat of the good example.

But for the occupiers, success has already manifested itself. Cultural success for having created a viable, self-perpetuating alternative. An autonomous society apart from the dominant, inhumane system. And individual success in the form of a matrix of new relationships and with it, new conceptions of how to live. Though they use some of the well-trod trappings of earlier social critique, this occupation is not a mob of chanting sloganeers, nor an institutionally-backed group designed to parrot its leaders’ talking points. It is nothing less than the spontaneous gathering of thousands of people to share and enact ideas. The moral society that we want, the society based on respect and cooperation, has emerged in camps from New York’s Liberty Plaza to the most isolated corners of the earth as a counterpoint to bleak societies based on inequity, coercion and brutality. A corrupt civilization may argue that the ends (control) justify the means (violence). But a civilization acting in the interests of the people need not argue anything at all. That’s because, in the case of the occupation, where peaceful coexistence is both the method and the goal, the means are the ends.

Let’s examine ways the movement is occupying new cultural spaces, how it is quantifiably expanding. Occupy Wall Street has been joined by unions and other institutions of the left which is both good and bad. It’s great because of the increased resources, visibility and momentum. We’ve become the lead story now, even if the coverage is still dismissive and the otherwise very nice people who form their opinions from the why-would-I-lie corporate media continue to denigrate it with silly arguments. The primary obstacle to the clear demands of the occupation has never been the banks — the banks like the government can’t function without popular support — it’s the New York Times moderates who up til now haven’t realized they are part of the 99%.

Martin Luther King Jr. talked about those people in his letter from Birmingham jail where he said the main resistance to civil rights wasn’t the active racists — it was people who said they liked what the movement was, just not its methods — the so-called moderates who advocated that everyone just settle down and wait for things to get better on their own. But things don’t get better on their own. People have to intercede. The media may cast this uprising as extremist, but how can the concerns of almost all humanity be anything but mainstream? It’s the well-dressed gentlemen of Wall Street who are the extremists — as are the senators and presidents who have done their radical bidding for decades. And that extremism is infectious as evidenced by the misguided belief of so many Americans in the myth of economic mobility, the faith that someday I too will join the ranks of the 1%. In a perverse reversal of the old IWW motto, so many people believe an injury to the 1% is an injury to me.

So the involvement of large organizations with this movement ought to go a long way towards convincing the nay-sayers, foot-draggers and someday-1%ers that we are all in this together. But it does so perhaps at the expense of what the movement will actually ask for. With institutional support, we’re more likely to get something, but the something is less likely to be amazing. At best another Glass-Steagall bank reform and at worst a cap on ATM fees.

But what Occupy Wall Street really wants, the reason it exists as a spontaneous uprising beyond the bounds of political or economic institutions, what it really wants is to break a system that is inherently heartbreaking. We want to replace the current system with one reflected in the very structure of the movement itself—an egalitarian economy where cultural equity is prized above capital, where coercion is unneeded because everyone is able to articulate their weird, loving, unapologetic and unafraid potential to be human. Will it happen? I hope so. And I’m optimistic because in one way, in one big way, it already has.

Within the movement this world has already been created and is only becoming more alive. It was created the moment two people showed up here at Liberty Plaza, the moment that people sat down in the autonomous zone beyond the standard normative constraints of life. The moment they arrived here to discuss the mechanics of the system in which we live, to realize their positions within the 99% and to explore what new telemetry they could plot. The people coming to the occupations around the world are more likely, because of this experience, to pursue engagements with social justice, the environment and creative pacifism, to better themselves by enhancing the lives of their neighbors, and to base their days and nights not on making rent but on performing meaningful acts.

When the police arrested 700 people on the Brooklyn Bridge and hundreds more around the country, they disrupted local occupations for a few hours but they intensified people’s commitment to it, not just in the short term, but for the rest of their lives. Most of us had never been arrested before, never considered ourselves the kind of person who would get arrested. The experience changed this occupation from a exciting dalliance, a youthful indiscretion to be remembered fondly 20 years from now — changed it to a peak experience that altered our very identity. A before and after moment. Who we are is now directly connected to this movement. It is imminent — we aren’t just involved with it, we and the movement are one and the same.

So to recap: Looking outward, institutional support means we’re more likely to get something, but the something is less likely to be transcendent. Looking inward, the movement has been a success since day one and as long as it continues to exist without artificial structures, without limits on what the human heart truly desires, its success will only grow.

Every element of our society is arrayed against the possibility of viral grassroots organization. Occupy Wall Street should not exist. Yet it does. Its mere existence is a success because something in the prevailing cultural environment has to have changed to permit its birth. Its existence is proof that we are not just hoping for a new world — we have already created it and our creation grows every day.

We occupiers intend on living within a society that supports our fundamental rights and encourages the complete attainment of our potential. Within the encampments we have already achieved that — either the rest of society complies with what is really in their hearts — or the camps will swell and replace that society. Either way, the world will be occupied.

This isn’t what democracy looks like, for that word is, like socialism, terminally co-opted by the manufacturers of consent — this is libratory sweetness, this is the unguilded uprising of the spirit, this is dissent, dulcet toned and angry in the service of love. It looks pretty good from here inside the plaza — and I trust it looks just as bright from the plaza inside yourself. The space within you where those notions are also awakening and stretching their infinite limbs into what, a mere month ago, was impossible.

The Acculorber Weekend Weather Forecasts on acculorber.com are uploaded directly from Liberty Plaza each Thursday night.

Kevin Thomas #OWS

Maria Chiang — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 20:17:01 +0000

Our own Kevin Thomas has posted an insightful #OWS comic over at OccupyWriters.com. You can check it out here. Enjoy!

An Occupy Wall Street Roundup

Amy Letter — Sat, 05 Nov 2011 19:00:39 +0000

Latest from the American Occupation of America:

The Oakland Occupation is the hot front in the struggle against Corporate Exploitation: an attack by the police that injured Iraq vet Scott Olson led to a general strike and a large and successful march that closed the Port of Oakland. It was followed by a small destructive spree, and now a second Iraq vet has a lacerated spleen after being beaten by police batons.

Perhaps after this, more Americans will have an opinion on the movement?

Occupiers in cities across America are co-habitating with homeless people and working to make these ad-hoc communities safe for everyone.

The Atlanta Occupation has taken the issue a step further by moving the protest to a homeless shelter.

And the Des Moines Occupation wants Occupiers from the other 49 states to converge here in Iowa for the Republican Caucuses.

The Rumpus.net » Occupy Wall Street

Have you heard of The Rolling Jubilee?

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Sean Stewart and the Underground Press

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“Big Little Wolfs” (Rick Moody Remix)

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The Rumpus Interview with Adam, an Occupy Medic

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Arrested Reporters

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People’s Library Reoccupation

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An Occupy Roundup

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Why Occupy Wall Street Has Already Won: A Poet’s Report from the Trenches

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Kevin Thomas #OWS

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An Occupy Wall Street Roundup

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