Tidal Occupy Theory
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A Brief History of Occupy Wall Street ROSA LUXEMBURG STIFTUNG NEW YORK OFFICE by Ethan Earle Table of Contents
A Brief History of Occupy Wall Street ROSA LUXEMBURG STIFTUNG NEW YORK OFFICE By Ethan Earle Table of Contents Spontaneity and Organization. By the Editors................................................................................1 A Brief History of Occupy Wall Street....................................................2 By Ethan Earle The Beginnings..............................................................................................................................2 Occupy Wall Street Goes Viral.....................................................................................................4 Inside the Occupation..................................................................................................................7 Police Evictions and a Winter of Discontent..............................................................................9 How to Occupy Without an Occupation...................................................................................10 How and Why It Happened........................................................................................................12 The Impact of Occupy.................................................................................................................15 The Future of OWS.....................................................................................................................16 Published by the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung, New York Office, November 2012 Editors: Stefanie Ehmsen and Albert Scharenberg Address: 275 Madison Avenue, Suite 2114, -
The Occupy Wall Street Movement's Struggle Over Privately Owned
International Journal of Communication 11(2017), 3162–3181 1932–8036/20170005 A Noneventful Social Movement: The Occupy Wall Street Movement’s Struggle Over Privately Owned Public Space HAO CAO The University of Texas at Austin, USA Why did the Occupy Wall Street movement settle in Zuccotti Park, a privately owned public space? Why did the movement get evicted after a two-month occupation? To answer these questions, this study offers a new tentative framework, spatial opportunity structure, to understand spatial politics in social movements as the interaction of spatial structure and agency. Drawing on opportunity structure models, Sewell’s dual concept of spatial structure and agency, and his concept of event, I analyze how the Occupy activists took over and repurposed Zuccotti Park from a site of consumption and leisure to a space of political claim making. Yet, with unsympathetic public opinion, intensifying policing and surveillance, and unfavorable court rulings privileging property rights over speech rights, the temporary success did not stabilize into a durable transformation of spatial structure. My study not only explains the Occupy movement’s spatial politics but also offers a novel framework to understand the struggle over privatization of public space for future social movements and public speech and assembly in general. Keywords: Occupy Wall Street movement, privately owned public space (POPS), spatial opportunity structure, spatial agency, spatial structure, event Collective actions presuppose the copresence of “large numbers of people into limited spaces” (Sewell, 2001, p. 58). To hold many people, such spaces should, in principle, be public sites that permit free access to everyone. The Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement, targeting the engulfing inequality in the age of financialization and neoliberalization, used occupation of symbolic sites to convey its message. -
What Comes After Occupy?
What Comes After Occupy? ADAPT LABOUR STUDIES BOOK-SERIES International School of Higher Education in Labour and Industrial Relations Series Editors Tayo Fashoyin, University of Lagos (Nigeria) Michele Tiraboschi, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia (Italy) Guest Editors Massimo Pilati, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia (Italy) Hina Sheikh, UCLA University of California (Los Angeles) Francesca Sperotti, ADAPT Senior Research Fellow (Italy) Chris Tilly, UCLA University of California (Los Angeles) English Language Editor Pietro Manzella, ADAPT Senior Research Fellow (Italy) ADAPT (www.adapt.it) is a non-profit organisation founded in 2000 by Professor Marco Biagi with the aim of promoting studies and research in the field of labour law and industrial relations from an international and comparative perspective. In collaboration with the Centre for International and Comparative Studies on Law, Economics, Environment and Work (DEAL) at the Marco Biagi Department of Economics of the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia (Italy), ADAPT set up the International School of Higher Education in Labour and Industrial Relations, a centre of excellence which is accredited at an international level for research, study and the postgraduate programmes in the area of industrial and labour relations. ADAPT International Scientific Committee Bertagna Giuseppe (University of Bergamo, Italy), Bulgarelli Aviana (ISFOL, Italy), Fashoyin Tayo (University of Lagos, Nigeria), Frommberger Dietmar (Universität Magdeburg, Germany), Grisolia Julio Armando (Universidad -
Real Democracy in the Occupy Movement
NO STABLE GROUND: REAL DEMOCRACY IN THE OCCUPY MOVEMENT ANNA SZOLUCHA PhD Thesis Department of Sociology, Maynooth University November 2014 Head of Department: Prof. Mary Corcoran Supervisor: Dr Laurence Cox Rodzicom To my Parents ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This thesis is an outcome of many joyous and creative (sometimes also puzzling) encounters that I shared with the participants of Occupy in Ireland and the San Francisco Bay Area. I am truly indebted to you for your unending generosity, ingenuity and determination; for taking the risks (for many of us, yet again) and continuing to fight and create. It is your voices and experiences that are central to me in these pages and I hope that you will find here something that touches a part of you, not in a nostalgic way, but as an impulse to act. First and foremost, I would like to extend my heartfelt gratitude to my supervisor, Dr Laurence Cox, whose unfaltering encouragement, assistance, advice and expert knowledge were invaluable for the successful completion of this research. He was always an enormously responsive and generous mentor and his critique helped sharpen this thesis in many ways. Thank you for being supportive also in so many other areas and for ushering me in to the complex world of activist research. I am also grateful to Eddie Yuen who helped me find my way around Oakland and introduced me to many Occupy participants – your help was priceless and I really enjoyed meeting you. I wanted to thank Prof. Szymon Wróbel for debates about philosophy and conversations about life as well as for his continuing support. -
Women Activists of Occupy Wall Street Consciousness-Raising and Connective Action in Hybrid Social Movements Megan Boler and Christina Nitsou
11 Women Activists of Occupy Wall Street Consciousness-Raising and Connective Action in Hybrid Social Movements Megan Boler and Christina Nitsou REDEFINING SOCIAL MOVEMENT “SUCCESS” On the Second Anniversary of Occupy Wall Street, September 17, 2013, political commentator Robert Reich dismissed the movement as having failed, in part due to its “lack of a clear leadership.” 1 Such judgments per- sistently accusing Occupy Wall Street (OWS) of having “no clear goals or aims”—widely held misrepresentations of OWS which began almost as soon as media began reporting—refl ect a fundamental misunderstanding and misrecognition of the particular commitments, aims, and visions of OWS as well as how contemporary “hybrid social movements” function, mobilized by a new generation of young, often fi rst-time activists. In par- ticular, the horizontal (nonhierarchical) organizational structure can appear to those unfamiliar with horizontalism as a lack of clear goals. Such accu- sations fail to recognize a key feature of contemporary social movements: the increasingly important commitment to a process of liberation as part and parcel of any end goals or singular aims. OWS is known as a leaderless movement for this reason, including features such as consensus-based deci- sions and radical inclusivity. Horizontalism creates a nonhierarchical space which invites women to thrive and fi nd spaces and places to assume “leadership.” A key participant from Occupy Santa Cruz tells us, . since we were in a horizontal structure, and in a vertical structure women are often put at the lower rung of the ladder, it was a way for women to be heard. So that did happen and . -
Occupy Wall Street: a Movement in the Making
Trinity College Trinity College Digital Repository Senior Theses and Projects Student Scholarship Spring 5-20-2012 Occupy Wall Street: A Movement in the Making Hannah G. Kaneck Trinity College, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/theses Part of the American Politics Commons, Civil Rights and Discrimination Commons, Economic Policy Commons, Education Policy Commons, Energy Policy Commons, Environmental Policy Commons, Health Policy Commons, Human Rights Law Commons, International Law Commons, Law and Gender Commons, Law and Politics Commons, Law Enforcement and Corrections Commons, Organizations Law Commons, Political Economy Commons, and the Social Policy Commons Recommended Citation Kaneck, Hannah G., "Occupy Wall Street: A Movement in the Making". Senior Theses, Trinity College, Hartford, CT 2012. Trinity College Digital Repository, https://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/theses/245 Occupy Wall Street: a movement in the making Hannah Kaneck Spring 2012 1 Dedicated to my grandmother Jane Armstrong Special thanks to my parents Karrie and Mike Kaneck, my readers Stephen Valocchi and Sonia Cardenas, the Trinity College Human Rights Program, and to my siblings at Cleo of Alpha Chi 2 Table of Contents Timeline leading up to September 17, 2011 Occupation of Wall Street…………………….……………….4 Introduction…………………………………………………………………………………..……………………………….….……..6 Where did they come from?...........................................................................................................7 -
The Occupy Movement: Two Steps Forward, One Step Back
Class, Race and Corporate Power Volume 1 Issue 1 Reflections on Class, Race and Power Article 3 2013 The Occupy Movement: Two Steps Forward, One Step Back Ronald W. Cox [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/classracecorporatepower Part of the Political Science Commons Recommended Citation Cox, Ronald W. (2013) "The Occupy Movement: Two Steps Forward, One Step Back," Class, Race and Corporate Power: Vol. 1 : Iss. 1 , Article 3. DOI: 10.25148/CRCP.1.1.16092148 Available at: https://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/classracecorporatepower/vol1/iss1/3 This work is brought to you for free and open access by the College of Arts, Sciences & Education at FIU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Class, Race and Corporate Power by an authorized administrator of FIU Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. The Occupy Movement: Two Steps Forward, One Step Back Abstract The op-ed evaluates the successes and limitations of the Occupy Movement in the United States. Ronald W. Cox argues that the Movement was inspirational in directing media focus to the trends of growing inequality and the privileges and power of the one percent. The critique of establishment parties and progressive organizations was a key part of the Occupiers efforts to rethink the meaning of social change. The limitations of the Movement became evident, however, in its extremely decentralized structures that emphasized consensus over majoritarian decision-making, and in its refusal to acknowledge and hold accountable its own leaders. Keywords protest, one percent, Occupy, inequality Creative Commons License This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. -
Occupy! Scenes from Occupied America 28 Daily Acadlemsice Bo Ork Reevievwsi Efrowm T Hoe Sfo Cbial Oscoienkcess 2012 Blog Admin
Jul Book Review: Occupy! Scenes from Occupied America 28 daily acadLemSicE bo oRk reevievwsi efrowm t hoe sfo cBial oscoienkcess 2012 Blog Admin Like 19 Tw eet 28 Share 3 In the fall of 2011, a small protest camp in downtown Manhattan exploded into a global uprising, sparked in part by what many saw as the violent overreactions of the police. Occupy! is an unofficial record of the movement and combines first-hand accounts with reflections from activist academics and writers. Jason Hickel finds the book has excellent moments of insight but thought it could benefit from a more lengthy analysis. Occupy! Scenes from Occupied America. Astra Taylor and Keith Gessen (eds). Verso. 2011. Find this book When a small group of activists first occupied Zuccotti Park in Lower Manhattan last September nobody thought it would amount to much. But it wasn’t long before Occupy Wall Street struck a chord with a nation embittered by bank bailouts, plutocracy, and rising social inequalities, galvanized hundreds of thousands of angry protestors, and inspired similar encampments in dozens of cities across the United States and Europe. As a scholar who followed OWS closely with both personal and scholarly interest, I was thrilled to get my hands on Occupy!: Scenes from Occupied America, one of the first book-length texts to have been published on the topic. Occupy! was composed in an unconventional style. It compiles 34 short chapters and dozens of sketches and photographs selected and edited by a team of eight scholar-activists, mostly from radical journals in New York such as n+1 and Dissent, led by Astra Taylor and Keith Gessen. -
The Right to Occupyâ•Floccupy Wall Street and the First Amendment
Fordham Urban Law Journal Volume 39 | Number 4 Article 5 February 2016 The Right to Occupy—Occupy Wall Street and the First Amendment Sarah Kunstler Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/ulj Part of the First Amendment Commons, Law and Politics Commons, and the Supreme Court of the United States Commons Recommended Citation Sarah Kunstler, The Right to Occupy—Occupy Wall Street and the First Amendment, 39 Fordham Urb. L.J. 989 (2012). Available at: https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/ulj/vol39/iss4/5 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by FLASH: The orF dham Law Archive of Scholarship and History. It has been accepted for inclusion in Fordham Urban Law Journal by an authorized editor of FLASH: The orF dham Law Archive of Scholarship and History. For more information, please contact [email protected]. KUNSTLER_CHRISTENSEN 7/11/2012 9:25 AM THE RIGHT TO OCCUPY—OCCUPY WALL STREET AND THE FIRST AMENDMENT ∗ Sarah Kunstler Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty—power is ever stealing from the many to the few.1 Wendell Phillips, January 28, 1852 Introduction ............................................................................................. 989 I. Symbolic Speech ............................................................................... 993 II. Symbolic Sleeping and the Courts ................................................. 999 III. The Landscape of Symbolic Sleep Protection After Clark v. CCNV .......................................................................................... 1007 IV. The Occupy Movement in the Courts ....................................... 1012 Conclusion .............................................................................................. 1018 INTRODUCTION The Occupy movement, starting with Occupy Wall Street in Zuccotti Park in New York City, captured the public imagination and spread across the country with a force and rapidity that no one could have predicted. -
Case Study: Occupy Melbourne – a Missed Opportunity
Occupy Melbourne General Assembly Photo Nick Carson CASE STUDY: OCCUPY MELBOURNE – A MISSED OPPOrtunitY In September 2011 the Occupy movement, inspired in part from the Spanish Indignados movement, and kicked off by Occupy Wall Street, exploded worldwide, with uprisings in 951 cities in 82 countries. In Australia, the most high profile Occupy presence was in Melbourne. “Occupy Melbourne became the largest occupation in Australia, and indeed, the southern hemisphere. Like most truly novel historical events, the Occupy movement caught most people off guard.” James Muldoon, Occupy Reflects Whilst the range of political views and experiences across the world were as diverse as the participants, a simmering sense of injustice, and the feeling that something was ‘not quite right’ on a range of fronts – across economic, social justice and environmental concerns; seemed to drive the involvement of some of the Melbourne participants. Other occupations in the United States established by people with a clearer initial focus on economic justice – neatly summarised by the ‘We are the 99%’ slogan – which contrasted the experience of the majority of Americans with the wealthiest 1% who exploit them for economic gain. Some of the encampments elsewhere seemed to be initiated by people with more experience and clearer anti-authoritarian/ anarchist organising principles, however, there was a much more varied and diverse group that made up Occupy Melbourne. “Occupy was my first real taste of activism, I don’t know why, I’ve always been an activist at heart, outraged by the injustice of the status quo...I guess I just have not been terribly active.” Kate Phillips, Occupy Reflects A general sense of inequity, and disaffection with government were broad underlying themes that motivated Occupy Melbourne supporters. -
Occupying Identities: Hierarchal Divisions and Collective Identity in the Occupy Movement
1 Occupying Identities: Hierarchal Divisions and Collective Identity in the Occupy Movement By Bridget Eileen Stirling A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of Social and Applied Sciences in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in Intercultural and International Communication Royal Roads University Victoria, British Columbia, Canada Supervisor: Dr. Phillip Vannini July 2015 Bridget Stirling, 2015 Occupying Identities 2 COMMITTEE APPROVAL The members of Bridget Stirling’s Thesis Committee certify that they have read the thesis titled Occupying Identities: Hierarchal Divisions and Collective Identity in the Occupy Movement and recommend that it be accepted as fulfilling the thesis requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in Intercultural and International Communication: Dr. Phillip Vannini [signature on file] Dr. David Black [signature on file] Dr. Robert Benford [signature on file] Final approval and acceptance of this thesis is contingent upon submission of the final copy of the thesis to Royal Roads University. The thesis supervisor confirms to have read this thesis and recommends that it be accepted as fulfilling the thesis requirements: Dr. Phillip Vannini [signature on file] Occupying Identities 3 Creative Commons Statement This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial- ShareAlike 2.5 Canada License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/ca/. Some material in this work is not being made available under the terms of this -
Occupy Wall Street's Challenge to an American Public Transcript
City University of New York (CUNY) CUNY Academic Works All Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects 10-2014 Occupy Wall Street's Challenge to an American Public Transcript Christopher Neville Leary Graduate Center, City University of New York How does access to this work benefit ou?y Let us know! More information about this work at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/324 Discover additional works at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu This work is made publicly available by the City University of New York (CUNY). Contact: [email protected] OCCUPY WALL STREET’S CHALLENGE TO AN AMERICAN PUBLIC TRANSCRIPT by Christopher Leary A dissertation submitted to the Graduate Faculty in English in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, The City University of New York 2014 This manuscript has been read and accepted for the Graduate Faculty in English in satisfaction of the dissertation requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Dr. Ira Shor ________ _ 5/21/2014 __________________ ______ Date Chair of Examining Committee __Dr. Mario DiGangi ______________ _________________________ Date Executive Officer Dr. Jessica Yood Dr. Ashley Dawson Supervisory Committee THE CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK ii Abstract OCCUPY WALL STREET’S CHALLENGE TO AN AMERICAN PUBLIC TRANSCRIPT by Christopher Leary Adviser: Dr. Ira Shor This dissertation examines the rhetoric and discourses of the anti-corporate movement Occupy Wall Street, using frameworks from political ethnography and critical discourse analysis to offer a thick, triangulated description of a single event, Occupy Wall Street’s occupation of Zuccotti Park. The study shows how Occupy achieved a disturbing positionality relative to the forces which routinely dominate public discourse and proposes that Occupy’s encampment was politically intolerable to the status quo because the movement held the potential to consolidate critical thought and action.